Bobbie Houston recently put this out on Instagram:
Ladies … if you’ve lost perspective and are having a meltdown over spilt milk or whatever, let this image remind you of what “hard” really is. #sisterhood #forsuchatimeasthis #sisterskeeper #helpthemJesus
Source: Bobbie Houston, Instagram, http://instagram.com/p/sf8dC1IY1Y/, 04/09/2014. (Accessed 04/09/2014.)
Quite frankly, it’s hard to know what is worse:
1. A pastrix proving she is unqualified to speak on such serious matters, setting off a firestorm of comments from Muslims on Instagram.
2. A pastrix who falsely promotes awareness about an “evil act” against women, at the same time plugging her “#Sisterhood” conference/movement.
So what is this image actually about?
Pastor Gervase Nicholas Charmley has this to say about the picture:
These pictures are well known, and (as the fact that the “guard” is carrying a sword rather than an AK-47 should indicate) are from a Shia religious commemoration called Ashura, which commemorates the battle of Kerbala. Part of Ashura is the re-enactment of scenes from the battle, one of which is the leading away in chains of the women and children. Basically it’s the Shia Muslim equivalent of a Passion Play, the re-enacting of a significant time in their history.
The women are all willing participants, who are playing the role of prisoners.
There is [also] an image from Ashura that has been circulating for a while with the caption “Muslim girls are led off in chains to meet their husbands”, a caption as ludicrous as it is false.
Source: Ps Gervase Nicholas Charmley, Written 04/09/2014.
Speaking about the image, one commenter, Suheild says “I’m glad someone out there is educated enough to know the difference.”
We appreciate that there are followers on Bobbie Houston’s Instagram account prepared to point out the facts about the image. Exposing those who take liberties with the truth to create a false “outcry”, especially during a time of truly great suffering for both Christians and Muslims.
UPDATE (05/09/2014):
Bobbie Houston decided to follow up with this comment on her instagram page:
Ok everyone —so another day has passed and this timeline and post is probably history in everyone’s Instagrams. I hope you found some peace amid “the various dialogue” and that we considered the human heart at stake. These are crazy days. A world of diversity and contrast, a world in need of kindness and love. May God’s “good and kind and gracious and pure and compassionate and righteous and HOLY Spirit” overshadow all our thoughts and endeavors. Be blessed and like the saying goes … “go make the world (your world) a better place”. Selah. Xoxo
Source: Bobbie Houston, Accessed 05/09/2014.
If there is anyone making these last days crazy, it’s uneducated “teachers” like Bobbie Houston. Her Instagram which promoted falsehoods was neither kind nor loving.
Even though she was corrected by those on her Instagram feed, don’t expect an apology from Bobbie. Instead Bobbie band-aids the harm she caused with an American Beauty pageant “world peace” response.
Hillsong Church Watch 
How does a Christian wife and mother who is meant to be displaying empathy and kindness in her attitude towards both her congregation and her fellow sisters in the Lord get away with making these kind of ‘suck it up princess’ comments?
Ms Houston is in an incredibly privileged position. Not only does she earn huge amounts of money based on a lie, but she is using that position of massive influence and faux authority to lecture other women based on sweeping generalisations both of the actual situation for Muslim women and of the individual circumstances of the lives of Australian women. There are actually women in this country suffering as well Bobbie. Not you of course, but other, real women who work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet and suffer exhaustion, despair and oppression from their economic difficulties. They don’t need this kind of moralising from a rich white princess.
Ms Houston’s apparent disdain for the women of her vast multi-national congregation has the effect of reducing her comments to meaningless and vapid sound bites generated to produce the impression that she is a combination of Mother Theresa and Michelle Bridges. Epic Fail on that score.
In short, Ms Houston alongside her husband, has disqualified herself as either an elder or any position of authority in the Christian church.
PS. Can you please stop using the term pastrix. It may be a cool word on the internet at the moment, but it sounds too much like a cross between a sexual term and a character from one of Rene Goscinny’s children’s cartoons. Ew!!!
The use of “pastrix” was initially termed by Chris Rosebrough on “Fighting For The Faith”. This was his way of addressing women who claim the unbiblical role of pastor in the church today. Another popular term is “impastor”.
i’m disappointed too @ anitameg – she has a lot to say for someone who can’t tell the difference between a serious video showing the alleged mistreatment of Muslim women and a scripted passion play – she has a lot to say about everything from time to time, but eventually says nothing meaningful – nothing at all.
Perhaps Brian would be better off keeping her at home, out of public view and away from public comment…
Perhaps dumb blonds and pulpits just don’t mix and match after all…?
I think the term ‘pastrix’ is meant to be a mild insult in terms of it meaning a cross between a ‘pastor’ and a ‘vixen’ (female fox?) Or possibly the female variant of fox/wolf?
The word ‘pastrix’ is cross between ‘pastor’ and ‘dominatrix’.
dominatrix: a dominating woman…
How ’bout using the expression ‘Pastor-Barbie’. No bondage references and like, its so totally about living in a shopping mall and talking to your besties on social media and not worrying about the real world where actual trauma and oppression of women is taking place.
It reminds me of a gag from Jimmy Fallon who joked about a fourteen year old girl who was the youngest person to climb Mt. Everest. He quipped that most 14 year old girls would be so busy with their heads in their iphones texting that they would probably not even notice they were on the top of Everest until they looked up and went “This isn’t the mall….where am I …..ew!”.
You may not have been around at the time anitameg, but i once shared about a woman from Hillsong Brisbane, who described to me the former Garden City Church as a “shopping mall’, complete with ‘social networking’ youths and ‘texting’ young adults… Nothing left to the imagination there, but it is really sad to see and hear of such things as being the priority, in what is supposed to be Brisbane’s premier Hillsong venue…
So it seems that it doesn’t really matter whether such people are ‘in church’ or have ‘gone shopping’ – it all looks the same to them…
Right at the moment Life Church here in NZ is in the middle of it’s annual Sistas conference poisoning the minds of 100’s of women !!! Often Mrs Houston speaks at this conference as well…….yuk.
@ KiwiPirate
Another of your brethren alerted me to the megachurch shenanigans in NZ. My commiserations to you and my fellow Kiwi sheep. You gave us Houston and Pringle and ended up with Tamaki, Mortlock and De Yong instead. Sigh…
For those not familiar with the NZ royalty of megachurches:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/3254600/The-financial-figures-behind-the-faiths
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10900914
So KiwiPirate… you planning to start an NZ churchwatcher site? Go on…we’ll all read your articles and come and comment too!
Blessings in Christ, Sherryn
It is tempting to start a site Sherryn, but I spent years and a truck load of money with Life Church until I saw the light (lthanks largely to Fighting For the Faith) and the least I have to do with them now days the better.
To be brutally honest, I still hurt even after 5 yrs of not being there but in a great Bible teaching Church now.
To be brutally honest again, I don’t know if I could be objective and would probably use the site to try and exact vengeance which would not be good.
What I can do is confirm the reports in the links you have posted and tell you that they only tell half the story !!
How do I know that? I WAS in the inner sanctum, I WAS one of the elite, I WAS a big time contributor etc….. it IS all true and then some I assure you.
I will leave it at that, I am starting to riled again………………………… sad, really sad.
HI Kiwi Pirate,
I am sorry if I struck a raw nerve. I have so much appreciated your comments here! I am overjoyed that the Lord so graciously opened your eyes to the truth, and am glad to have you as my brother in Christ. Your response shows wisdom, and is entirely understandable. 🙂
Having come out of false teaching myself a couple of years ago (and yes, Chris Rosebrough and many other faithful believers who walked the road before me were a wonderful resource in the process), I have seen on a much smaller scale why these false teacher are referred to as ‘ravenous wolves’ and their teachings ‘destructive heresies’. And oh, how rotten the fruit is.
Whilst not in leadership, I had much to repent of (I still shudder at all of the false things I have unwttingly told others, believing them to be truth). Speaking out is certainly not received well, which you have no doubt learned from your own painful experience. The wounds leave battle scars. Perhaps they serve to sharpen our appreciation of what Christ has done for us? You are certainly wise to recognise your limits of how you can constructively engage with this awful stuff. Your contributions here are certainly a blessing to the body of Christ, and I hope you find encouragement here amongst the brethren.
On one hand I am so sorry for what you have been through, while on the other hand being so grateful to God that he brought you out of darkness and into his glorious truth! Another brother… praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
In Christ, Sherryn
And I can say AMEN to that KP – it’s not easy to give of yourself by sharing some of the bad old days type of experiences, but that’s what it costs from time to time in order to provide a warning to those who have been blinded by the bright lights of Hillsong et al…
Even if it falls mainly on deaf ears – the scoffers will still scoff – until judgment day…