Premiering Thursday 8 June on SBS on Demand and 7.30 pm Sunday 11 June on SBS, the feature-length documentary, The Kingdom, sees Walkley award-winning journalist Marc Fennell (Framed, Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) step back into the Pentecostal world he ran away from 17 years ago, to uncover the seismic shift driving Hillsong’s decline, and to confront his own complex childhood within the church.
Fennell meets current and fellow former believers who expose the human cost of the Pentecostal juggernaut and explores how allegations of bullying, sexual assault and financial mismanagement have eroded Hillsong’s once mighty empire.
He confronts his own past spent in these churches, where he witnessed adults speaking in tongues, falling to the ground, and demons being thrown out of people. He explains why he escaped and why he’s remained largely silent about it until now.
Presenter and producer Marc Fennell said, “The moment the rest of the world knows that you have this in your past, they don’t pay attention to whether you liked it, hated it or if you left. You get tarred with it. Many people have had their lives positively transformed by Pentecostalism. But there are also volunteers, staff, victims, and others who have been completely chewed up and spat out by modern megachurches.”
Spanning a journey around Australia and into the United States, The Kingdom takes cameras inside the up-and-coming Pentecostal megachurches making the bold move into Hillsong’s home turf and asks: is this the competition for souls it seems to be and can they succeed where Hillsong has failed its followers?
The Kingdom will be subtitled in two languages, streaming on SBS On Demand in Simplified Chinese and Arabic.
The Kingdom premieres Thursday 8 June on SBS On Demand and at 7.30 pm Sunday 11 June on SBS.