Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Broken Faith Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship One of America's Most Dangerous Cults by Mitch Wei ‘One of America’s Most Dangerous Cults’ Insists It Wants to Spread God’s Love: What Ex Members Say Really Goes on Inside. John Cooper was only a toddler — “a little tiny kid” — the first time he remembers hearing Jane Whaley scream at someone else. “I was freaking terrified of her,” Cooper tells PEOPLE of Whaley, the co-founder of Word of Faith Fellowship in North Carolina. “I was sitting in a chair, and I was so short I couldn’t even see over the chair in front of me. We were in a sermon and I remember her screaming so loudly into the microphone,” Cooper says. “The volume of the noise terrified me. But that’s my first memory of her is her at the podium, just screaming at this woman in the congregation that she was upset with,” he continues. “I didn’t even really know who she was at this point. I was just like, ‘Who is this lady?’ I was probably 2 or 3. And then I, over time, learned — ‘Oh, this is Jane.’ ” Cooper is far from the only one who won’t forget her name. Whaley’s church, which she co-founded with her husband more than 40 years ago, has long been shadowed by allegations it is a dangerous cult that ensnares its members and evades justice. Church officials adamantly deny this, comparing accusers to bigots and heretics who have conspired together to defile God’s name. “God is a god of love, God is not a god of abuse. He loves us and he doesn’t allow us to be abused,” Mark Morris, an attorney and minister at Word of Faith, said in a 2017 video posted by the church “refuting serious media lies.” He said the church’s other responses had been twisted or ignored by reporters. Various members have been prosecuted for fraud, assault and other alleged crimes, however. In July 2014, some 20 years after he first joined, Cooper became the first in his family to “escape” the church. • Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’ s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases. The sixth of nine kids born to Rick and Suzanne Cooper, John was 18 months old when he, his parents and his siblings joined Word of Faith in 1993. All nine have since left the congregation, but some of their relatives remain. The bruises of the abuse they say they suffered have long since healed. But the memories remain — and Word of Faith is very much still active, with the 80-year-old Whaley still presiding. “Unlike some other cults that have been written about — the People’s Temple, Jim Jones, David Koresh — those are all gone, right? Those cults have disbanded because of things that have happened; they’ve ended in tragedy. But in this case, this cult still continues, and law enforcement is still looking the other way,” investigative journalist Mitch Weiss tells PEOPLE. He and Holbrook Mohr, a fellow reporter at the Associated Press, are the authors of Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America’s Most Dangerous Cults , published in February. Written in three parts, Broken Faith is a detailed account of Word of Faith’s history and practices — including what multiple ex-members described to Mohr and Weiss as coercion and control, violence and manipulation. “That’s what’s really disturbing,” Weiss says. “You have children that are being abused, continue to be abused, and it seems like nobody — the people with the power — [is] doing anything to stop it.” According to the AP, a federal prosecutor was once recorded saying, “We had a horrible time trying to make cases against them. For whatever reason, it was always something.” A former district attorney in the area echoed that, telling the AP in 2017: “Don’t take this the wrong way — and I knew people were being abused down there — but you just got tired going against them.” The AP previously reported that two local prosecutors were members of the church and gave coaching to other members during law enforcement investigations. John Cooper and his family are some of the former members who decided to speak out and are profiled in Broken Faith . Others include Matthew Fenner, who said he was beaten for being gay; Suzanne’s niece Danielle Cordes, whose own account of child abuse was investigated when she was 10 years old; and Jamey Anderson, who said he was abused and held in isolation for a year. In 2017, after an AP article written by Weiss with some of these accounts, the church released a statement denying any stories of abuse. “People like to focus just on the physical aspect … and that is very vividly striking for people and they want to focus in on that. But for me, I would’ve rather been spanked or punched or beaten or whatever than put on what they call ‘church discipline,’ where you’re basically isolated for potentially months at a time — in some people’s case, years at a time,” John tells PEOPLE. “That is a lot more psychologically damaging to a kid. And that definitely still goes on.” Both John and his mom, Suzanne, 59, talked to PEOPLE about their experiences with Word of Faith, which was started in 1979 by pastor Jane Whaley and her husband, Sam Whaley, in Spindale, North Carolina. According to reports, the membership grew over the decades to some 750 — with another 2,000 congregants internationally. Multiple members of Suzanne’s extended family are still living at Word of Faith and participating in the church’s teachings, including sister Cindy Cordes; Cindy’s husband, Steve Cordes; two of their four children; and Cindy and Suzanne’s nephew Justin. Their sister Shana Muse and her other kids have left, as have Cindy’s other two children, including daughter Danielle. “I still hold out hope that they may eventually get out,” John, who is “not religious” now, says of his other relatives. “If I could say anything to my family, I guess I would say, ‘Be strong and trust your own judgment,’ ” he continues. “When you’re in there, you give up your own judgment — you give up your own moral compass of knowing what’s right and wrong and defer to what Jane says is right and wrong. [But] if I sat face to face with my family, there’s nothing I could say that would help them understand how bad of a situation that they’re in. It’s something people have to discover for themselves.” ‘It Seemed Like a Loving Place’ The Coopers’ journey to Word of Faith began in the ‘90s in Georgia, where Suzanne’s then-husband, Rick Cooper, was a pastor. She was pregnant with her seventh child when she and Rick moved from their home in Darien to Spindale so Rick could attend the Bible school at Word of Faith, where their children would also be enrolled. “For the first year or two,” Suzanne says now, “it just seemed like a loving, nice place.” “They talked about doing the will of God all the time, and they talked about rebellion and about specific issues, such as how you dressed. And they talked about how we shouldn’t wear bathing suits,” she says. “And I listened and some of it made sense.” “I did want to learn more about God,” she says, “so I did listen, to just learn about it.” Jane, who had been a math teacher before starting Word of Faith, was not always volcanic. Suzanne has one memory in particular: She cut her finger while cooking and mentioned it in passing to Jane over the phone. “She took the time, when I left church that night, to take my hand and look at the cut and take me to go get a Band-Aid and put it on my finger,” Suzanne says. “It seemed a little over-loving, over- … I don’t want to say shepherding , but that’s the best word I know.” Over the years, Suzanne, Rick, John and the rest of the Cooper family — Jeffrey, now 37, Lena, 35, Benjamin, 34, Peter, 32, Chad, 29, Blair, 26, Adam, 23, and 15-year-old Jaclynn — say they realized the truth of the church they had chosen: not only the “pure manipulation” Jane could wield over them but also the abuse called “blasting,” a form of prayer intended to drive out evil. (Church members insist no such form of abuse is tolerated.) According to the Coopers and other former Word of Faith Fellowship members interviewed for Broken Faith , “blasting” was usually carried out by many congregants surrounding an individual who had broken a rule in a way Jane or another senior church member deemed unsavory. “There were a ton of rules” and “brainwashing,” John says. “Blasting” could involve anything from screaming, beating, choking and being held down to being “thrown through a wall” — which John tells PEOPLE happened to a cousin. (“There’s never any abuse,” minister Mark Morris said in the 2017 church video.) In "Broken Faith," investigative journalists dig into the secretive Word of Faith Fellowship church. Journalists Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr spoke to Salon about their book on the controversial enigmatic church. By Mary Elizabeth Williams. Published April 2, 2020 4:00PM (EDT) Shares. This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. For most of us, being removed from the outside world is a very new reality. According to a new book by investigative journalists, some members of the Word of Faith Fellowship are perhaps more accustomed to it. "They isolate you; they separate you from your family on the outside," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mitch Weiss claimed in a recent interview. Co-written with investigative journalist Holbrook Mohr, "Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults" (Hanover Square Press), presents a rare look into the Word of Faith religious organization and its leader Jane Whaley, told largely through the lens of one family's experience. Founded in North Carolina in 1979, the Word of Faith Fellowship describes itself as "a body of believers committed to worshipping and serving our Lord and savior Jesus Christ." But Weiss and Mohr allege that the ministry has engaged in a decades-long pattern of extreme physical and psychological punishment for members who run afoul of its strict protocols. "Throughout his life," they write of one former member, "he had been choked, punched, and beaten to expel the demons they said possessed his soul." The centerpiece of the narrative is the tale of the "Five Boys." As a group of young teens in the early 2000s, their close-knit friendship reportedly aroused the suspicion of Whaley, resulting in what the authors claim was a year of physical abuse and shunning. "Those were some of my darkest times," Jamey Anderson, one of the now adult Five Boys, recounts in the book. "It was extreme, even for there." Culled from interviews with nearly 100 individuals involved, as well as court documents and audio and video recordings, "Broken Faith" has been hotly challenged by the Word of Faith. Two years ago, A&E pulled a documentary series on the group shortly after allegations the producers paid participants. Salon reached out to Word of Faith for comment about the allegations made in "Broken Faith," and attorney Joshua Farmer sent us this response "on behalf of The Word of Faith Fellowship": Mitch Weiss's book "Broken Faith" is a continuation of the campaign of vitriol and lies by Weiss and certain members of the Cooper family against our church. This is another attempt to commercialize their concerted smear campaign after their failed attempt with the canceled A&E series, "The Devil Next Door." That series was irreparably tainted because many major participants were paid significant sums as they slandered the church. After the church publicized the existence of the payments, the series was canceled. We categorically deny Weiss's allegations of physical abuse and isolation of members. We have repeatedly reached out to Weiss and the publisher of this book. They have continually rejected our attempts to address their inaccuracies. The authors of the book spoke to Salon via phone about their book, Whaley and the Word of Faith Fellowship, and what drove them to keep going on a story other journalists gave up on decades ago. For someone like me who had not heard of this organization, who is Jane Whaley? Holbrook Mohr: Jane is a woman who was raised in rural North Carolina. From outward appearances, she had a relatively normal upbringing. Her father was a small business owner. He owned a plumbing store. She went to college at Appalachian State at a time when not a lot of women went to college; Jane's around 80 now. She became a math teacher and she married her husband, Sam, who was a religious man, and he wanted to be a pastor and further his spiritual journey. They started a church in Spindale, rural North Carolina, in 1979. Later they moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he attended a Rhema Bible College, which teaches the prosperity gospel. Over time, while they were there, Jane began to attract a small group of followers, mostly women, who were extremely loyal to her. As time progressed, she really became the more dominant religious force in her marriage. When they moved back to North Carolina, Jane kind of took over as the lead pastor of the Word of Faith Fellowship. Over the years she's been able to bring people into the Word of Faith Fellowship through her dynamic and charismatic personality. That's basically who she is, where she comes from. Mitch Weiss: I would add one more thing. She became this spiritual leader, this prophet, so to speak, at a time when evangelicalism was a male- dominated field. She was one of the few women. Essentially, she used that to her advantage because she was a little bit older. Some of her early congregants were young women. They were troubled with their sexuality or they were coming out of abusive relationships, and she was able to become a motherly figure to them. That's one of the things she did that was a little different than then the evangelists at the time. I'd also never heard of the practice of "blasting." Can you talk to me about what it is, where it comes from? Mohr: There are Christian denominations that do speak in tongues and lay on hands and have prayer circles and those kinds of things. What sets the Word of Faith Fellowship apart is their belief that this is something you have to do, number one, to cast out devils, and it gets more intense as it goes on. It can build up to violence. People being thrown to the floor, or slapped, whatever it takes to get the demons out of that person and for them to find deliverance. That is really what sets the Word for Faith Fellowship apart was this practice called blasting. Weiss: There are elements of this in the Pentecostal, evangelical movements, but [with Word of Faith] it's violence to get the devils out. She literally believes that every problem you have in life, if you're an alcoholic, if you're a drug addict, if you're, and I'm using quotation marks, "homosexual," then you have a demon inside you that's making you act that way or be that way. And the only way to get out or cast out that devil is by beating you, by screaming at you. Sometimes these things go on for hours — the yelling, the beatings — until they're convinced that they've expelled that devil. Obviously, exorcising demons has a foundation in the New Testament. But this is not something Word of Faith only uses for very extreme circumstances? Weiss: That's accurate. It becomes so part of your way of life that you kind of get used to it. A lot of former members, especially the ones who were born into the church, who all they know is blasting and beatings, said they got so used to it that what really bothered them more than being beaten for hours was the isolation. That was one of her techniques. There was an incident we talk about in the book about the "Five Boys." The worst part for those kids was the total isolation from their family. No one could talk to them. They were shunned. They had to go to school every day and watch Jane Whaley videos. The food was essentially: You open the door, you put the food in, like you're in a jail. No family member could talk to them. It's that isolation on top of it that was horrible. I hate to say you get used to beatings, but it was really that isolation that they feared almost as much. Let's take a step back. I wanted to ask you about the Five Boys [written about in the book] because it really is a linchpin of this story. Mohr: These are just kids being kids. Smiling when they're not supposed to, being too close to one another. They just had little games. They would have little signals to communicate because you couldn't openly do it. Those things, for whatever reason, infuriated Jane. She considers that kind of behavior being out from authority. You're supposed to be "locked in," and everything is supposed to be approved and done the way the church wants it. If you don't walk that line, even what seems like minor activities can lead to some pretty severe consequences. For these boys, they were separated from their friends and families. They were isolated. They weren't allowed to take part of normal school activities. They just had to sit in a room and watch these tapes of Jane Whaley preaching. This had a devastating effect on them. Not just at the time, but even today. Word of Faith first came to wide attention 25 years ago. What happened then, and what didn't happen subsequently? Weiss: In 1995, "Inside Edition" did a story. Pete Evans with the Trinity Foundation infiltrated the church and took videos, and then he gave the videos to "Inside Edition." "Inside Edition" ran a story about this church and abuse inside the church, and that sparked an investigation by the state agency that comes in and looks into these things. They came back with a 315-page report that was never released to the public. We ended up getting it a couple of years ago. The DA at the time said, hey, we're closing the case because yes, they have some unusual practices, but really there was nobody inside the church who wanted to come forward and press charges. Well, of course when we got the 1995 report, we saw that there were close to a dozen people who said, "Yeah, we're going to press charges." They talked to the leadership who admitted they did these things. It went on and on and on. Holbrook and I quickly realized that the same people who were there in 1995 were still there when we were writing these stories. The problem is that you have the failure of the institutions to do their jobs. That's the problem. Word of Faith has 750 members in North Carolina, they have two churches in Brazil and one in Ghana. But in North Carolina, 750 people in a small rural county make for a strong voting bloc. They are well-dressed, they're well-educated, they come across as being completely normal. You basically did not want to cross them, because they had the money and they had the time to do whatever it takes to beat charges. There was a DA up there that we interviewed named Brad Greenway. He was actually a lawyer for DSS during this long battle, and DSS did try to come in and take action to protect the kids. They ended up losing. Well, they gave in because Word of Faith hired a law firm out of New York that represented the Church of Scientology. When I talked to Brad Greenway, who was later the district attorney, he said, look, they just wear you down. They come in, maybe you get a kid who wants to file a charge, and then he changes his mind. Or you have the church coming in, and they have all these people who are well-dressed, and you just give up. He said, I believe everything that went on down there, the abuse, but I just didn't have the energy. I looked at him and I said, "Then why don't you just stop being DA and let somebody come in who would do their jobs? Because by the failure of the DA and the police who would look the other way to do their jobs, you have a whole generation of children that were abused, that are emotionally scarred for the rest of their lives." And the worst part is it continues to this day. Continues to this day. Word of Faith also has ties to the White House? Can you talk about that? Mohr: Number one, this church's political connections go back years, way before this current administration. Sam Whaley opened a session of Congress with a prayer in 1999; they've campaigned for local, state, and federal leaders for years. Their political connections are not new. That being said, they did campaign for President Trump. If he comes to Charlotte, they're there. They actively support the President, but again they've gotten away with these things for years. That goes way back before the current administration. Weiss: I would add that this is a church that tells its members not to watch TV, not to read newspapers. They isolate you, they separate you from your family on the outside, the family members who aren't part of the church. These political ties go back almost to the very beginning. They do a lot of things that don't show up in campaign finance reports. They do the grassroots organizing, they get people out to vote. They have members who are precinct chairmen. Plus, their connection to congressional figures is just outstanding. They're connected to Mark Meadows, who's retiring, and so on. They're going to be cultivating those relationships. What the book says about Ray and Joshua Farmer gives your story a whole other dimension. Can you tell me about them? Weiss: Let's start with Ray Farmer. Ray Farmer is the head of security at Word of Faith Fellowship. This is a private church, and there's only one road really in and out of the compound. If you go down that road, I can tell you that you will not make it to the gate. There'll be a car that blocks you, and inside is usually Ray Farmer. It's usually a big black sedan, tinted windows and stuff. Former members have told us about he has this big gun collection. So he's the head of security. Then you have Josh Farmer, the bankruptcy lawyer who filed for bankruptcy and somehow managed to dig up enough money to start a national trucking company. He's a guy who's also heavily involved in everything. He is the de facto spokesperson for Word of Faith. If you want to comment, you call Josh or email Josh. Josh and that trucking company, they do a lot of business. He issued a news release a couple years ago saying, wonderful news, Freight Works — which is the name of his company — it was certified as one of a handful of carriers who could transport sodium cyanide, which is used in the mining business. You get this dust on your arm, finger, you could die; you have to have special trucks to transport this stuff. What former members told us was that they were worried. They said, this is incredibly dangerous stuff. That's the former members talking, because so many of them have loved ones inside, and it's human nature to think the worst. That's what they've told us. This is not an easy story to follow and this is surely not been an easy story to stick with. What it was that drew you to the story and has kept you with it and persisting? Weiss: I think what kept Holbrook and me going is the fact that we know there are still kids inside there, and the fact that we know that abuse is still going on. I can't tell you how many late nights we've spent on this story, how many people we talked to to make sure that we could corroborate everything. It's those images and also the audio that some of the former members have of people being abused during blasting sessions. There was a tape. I just listened to it the other day, and I remembered I had buried this tape because I never wanted to listen to it again because it was so disturbing. This little girl, five years old, she's being blasted and abused, and all she wants to do is go to the bathroom and she's begging to go. Whenever Holbrook and I got tired, we supported each other and we just kept going. Because of the kids. Mary Elizabeth Williams. MORE FROM Mary Elizabeth Williams • FOLLOW embeedub. Word Of Faith's Pattern Of Abuse 'Got Worse Over Time,' Says 'Broken Faith' Author. In this March 2, 1995 file photo, Word of Faith Fellowship church leader Jane Whaley talks to members of the media, accompanied by her husband, Sam, in Spindale, N.C. Updated at 8:50 p.m. ET. In 1979, Jane Whaley and her husband, Sam, started the Word of Faith Fellowship church in North Carolina. Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults. by Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr. Hardcover, 411 pages | Buy Featured Book. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How? In recent years, the organization has been investigated for alleged abuse of its congregants — and has faced other charges ranging from fraud to human trafficking. Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr, journalists who have been exposing these stories, spent time interviewing hundreds of people who have been connected to the church over the years — and also acquired secret recordings, videos and documents for their new book Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America's Most Dangerous Cults. Interview Highlights. On what people saw in church pastor Jane Whaley. Mohr: I think that in the beginning, when people would go to the church, they were shown a lot of love. You know, the members of this church, they live in nice homes. They drive nice cars. The children are well-mannered. They have a Christian school. So I think when a lot of families first go there, everything seems great. But over time, Jane Whaley and her other ministers, they take more and more control of your lives. In fact, a lot of times they'll remove children from their family's home and place them with ministers to be raised. And what that does is over time, sometimes those kids care more about the ministers than their own parents. So it makes it difficult for families to leave. So it's not a quick thing where you just walk in the door and they say, hey, come on in. You can come in and you can never leave. We're gonna take your television, magazines, radio, all that away from you and institute all these rules. It's a slow, progressive thing. On using family members against one another. Weiss: You have to realize they believe that Jane Whaley was a prophet, that God spoke to her and everything she said was the gospel. And one of the techniques that she used was that she had everybody inform on each other. And the reason they did that was because that was the godly way of doing things. It was, in a way, she would have them tell her their deepest, darkest secrets. And then she kept a file of those secrets. And if they threatened to leave or did something wrong, she had all the evidence she needed there to keep them in line. On reconstructing a pattern of violent physical abuse. Weiss: Yes, it was something that really got worse over time. And you have to understand what her philosophy is. The doctrine is really pretty simple — devils are real. And if you're a drug addict, it's because you have this drug devil. If, you know, you're an alcoholic — the same. If you're having an affair, it's the same thing. There are lustful devils. And so what she would do is it was called Devils in Deliverance, where they would have people surround you and scream at you to get the devils out. Get out, devil. And it would go on and on and on. Perfect example is with a baby. If babies cried, it wasn't because they were hungry or they had a dirty diaper. It was because there was a devil inside them that was making them cry. So you would have groups of people surrounding an infant and screaming until that baby would just get tired and finally, you know, go to sleep. And that's how she started at the beginning with her congregants. Over time, it became more and more violent. It wasn't enough just to scream, to scare the devils out of people. Now you had to punch people. You had to hold them down and restrain them. You had to choke them. You had to do everything possible to get rid of that devil. And that's when it became extremely violent. That's where the people who've recounted their stories would break down to us. They would tell us about their injuries. And they couldn't go to doctors. They couldn't be treated because they knew what would happen. So they had to keep it secret. But it's those beatings that really still seared into their brains now. They can't get rid of those images, those nightmares. On whether anyone has been held accountable for the alleged abuse. Mohr: There are five people currently charged with assaulting a former member of the church. Matthew Fenner, who says that he was beaten to expel his homosexual demons back in 2013. But, so far, nobody has been convicted in that case. And Matthew Fenner's waiting for justice. . Weiss: You have the sheriff. You have the district attorney. You have all these people who have looked the other way, who know what's going on, and they're just not doing their job. This church now is thriving. [Editor's Note: When NPR reached out to District Attorney Ted Bell, he responded via email: "Under my administration we have prosecuted allegations of abuse as well as worked with federal investigators and the US Attorney's Office in seeking prosecution at the federal level of violations of federal law." NPR also sought comment from the Word of Faith Fellowship and the sheriff of Rutherford County, N.C.] Correction Feb. 17, 2020. A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to the Word of Faith Fellowship as the World of Faith Fellowship. When a Community Becomes a Cult. A new book documents harrowing life within the Word of Faith Fellowship. Are we living in a golden age for cults? That’s not necessarily to say that cult membership is at an apex right now; instead, it’s to contend that cults have captured our collective attention, for better or for worse. The success of Netflix’s Wild Wild Country is one example; the way accusations of cultism have entered political discourse is another. A popular podcast dedicated to cults has aired over 130 episodes. And in the last two years, there have been no less than five onscreen depictions of Charles Manson or lightly fictionalized versions of him. But thinking about cults also opens the door to larger questions about belief, community and society. American history abounds with stories of utopian movements and isolationist groups; one person’s inspirational living situation might seem decidedly cult-like to another. And there’s also the question of where the line between religions and cults exist. Is there a certain point where devotion crosses some unseen line and curdles into something awful? That’s the process found within Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s new book. Broken Faith: Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America’s Most Dangerous Cults explores how something that began as a small religious community gradually became a politically influential, overly controlling entity — and how its members coped with the growing limitations on their everyday lives. Weiss and Mohr have written extensively about Word of Faith and its abuses of power — which includes physically and mentally abusing members of the congregation, running scams on the government and using church members from Brazil as unpaid labor. This book offers a complete picture of the group’s operations — and neatly traces just how such an organization can slowly cross the line from church to cult. For Mohr, the story of Word of Faith Fellowship — and the people who escaped its grasp — strikes at something essential to the life of a journalist. “You approach it as, Hey, is there something here? And if so, how can we expose this wrongdoing?” he says. “That’s the reason we got into the business in the first place.” For the two writers who explored the harrowing events at Word of Faith Fellowship, this narrative began like many that they’ve written about for the Associated Press. “We just approached this like we would any other AP story, really,” Mohr explains. “Mitch and I have worked together for years on the AP’s investigative team.” Broken Faith begins with a married couple, John David and Jessica Cooper, making their escape from Word of Faith. It’s a precisely timed maneuver, one designed so that they would not encounter resistance as they left their home for a better life elsewhere. From there, the book flashes back to describe the events that led to that point — and the reasons for their departure soon become clear. Under the leadership of the charismatic Jane Whaley, Word of Faith Fellowship grew from a small enclave to a thriving community with outposts in Ghana and Brazil. Jane and her husband Sam founded the organization in 1979, when they were living in North Carolina. Not long afterwards, Sam took a job teaching at a Bible school in Tulsa, whose administrators gradually grew wary of the prayer services Jane led, which Holbrook and Weiss describe as “noisy and wild.” This led the Whaleys, along with 22 others, to move back to North Carolina in 1985. The book’s descriptions of Jane Whaley’s methods hearken back to other religious figures of the time. Holbrook and Weiss write that “[t]he impassioned shriek she used to cast out devils was part Jimmy Swaggert, part Billy Graham.” The congregation of Word of Faith Fellowship grew over time, including the Cooper family, who are the center of Broken Faith . There’s also an intriguing foray into rock history within the narrative: another member of the group was a musician named Joe English, who spent time in the 1970s playing alongside Paul McCartney in Wings. Jane Whaley soon implemented a program for the congregation known as “blasting.” Holbrook and Weiss describe it as “an extreme practice of peer pressure, emotional manipulation, browbeating.” What did that translate into? Numerous people shouting and screaming at someone while they sat there, mainly. After a few years, “blasting” began to involve physical violence as well, and Jane Whaley began to exert more control over her followers — including arranging marriages, separating children from their parents and dictating when married couples could and could not have sex. In 1995, Inside Edition ran an investigative report on Word of Faith Fellowship — which prompted the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to conduct their own inquiry. The resulting report was over 300 pages long, but wasn’t made publicly available; Broken Faith represents the first instance of it becoming available to a wider readership. That neither the media nor the local government could do much to stop what was happening had a chilling effect on the group. Weiss recalls a recent conversation with one of the people who’d escaped the cult. “I was talking to Jamey Anderson the other day, and he said he was thinking back to that Inside Edition episode. He said as a child that was one of the first times he felt hope, because he thought somebody was finally going to come in and rescue the children,” Weiss says. “He said when the investigation just fizzled out, it actually had the opposite effect,” Weiss continues. “It emboldened Jane Whaley; he said things became more harsh there.” Among the most unnerving elements of Broken Faith is the way the Whaleys manipulated their followers for material gain and political influence. One scene from the book depicts the moment in 1999 when Sam Whaley delivered the opening prayer for the US House of Representatives, a feat accomplished via his work campaigning for the North Carolina Republican Party. Weiss notes that the congregation’s political connections may have helped them fend off some of the charges of horrific behavior. “This was a congregation that was well dressed, well connected. They owned businesses,” he says. “Politically, they made sure they held these campaign nights for all the candidates. They’d reached out to every political candidate they could think of,” Weiss adds. This includes, he notes, support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It all adds up to a group who, on the surface, might have been indistinguishable from any other conservative religious congregation — but whose activities behind closed doors went in a much more sinister direction. All of which begs the question: was the Word of Faith Fellowship a cult from the beginning, or did it gradually become one? “It was an evolution over time; in the beginning, church members were allowed to celebrate birthdays, things like that,” Mohr says. “Those things were taken away. So it wasn’t immediate. “That’s how so many people ended up in there for so long, I think,” he adds. “We had one person in one of our stories say, you never try to join a cult — and by the time you realize you’re in one, it’s too late. And that’s usually because these things happen over time.” The religious component of Word of Faith Fellowship also played a role in why it was so difficult for many people to leave, even when they recognized that something was terribly wrong. “You have to also remember, you believe that the leader of this church, Jane Whaley, is a prophet,” Mohr says. “She has a direct pipeline to God and you feel like you’re special being part of this group and the only way you’re going to get to heaven is by listening to this prophet.” “So if she says, don’t watch TV, don’t read the newspaper, don’t have contact with family members outside of the church — you’re going to do that because you feel special,” he continues. “You know that at the end you’re going to go to heaven, you’re going to be rewarded for your sacrifice on earth.” While the investigative reporting of Weiss, Holbrook and others did help to bring some justice to the Word of Faith Fellowship, the group remains active. That, for the authors of Broken Faith , is the most chilling aspect of it. “When people write about cults, usually they write about them after the fact,” Weiss explains. “And the thing here is, this church-slash-cult is still in business and it’s thriving and it seems like they’re impenetrable. No matter what we write or anybody writes or says, they have some kind of protection, because they’re thriving.” This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now. “BROKEN FAITH”- by Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr. “Broken Faith is a gripping, meticulously reported account of a cult leader’s grip on a small southern community. It is also a prescient story of systemic abuse where the victims seek—and fail to find—justice from the very institutions that were meant to protect them.” —Ethan Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Murder in The Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8? Starting in February 2017; many read the investigative reporting of Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr as they spent countless hours interviewing ex-members, reading court documents and chasing the elusive truth about Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF) and the church leader, Jane Whaley. The tireless efforts of Weiss and Mohr opened the way for Federal investigations, which ultimately secured four felony guilty pleas sending one of the top church leadership to Federal Prison and three others to long term probation for crimes against the U.S. Government and State of North Carolina. The Amazon pre-order page on “BROKEN FAITH” lets us know we can expect different style of narrative. Rather than the facts-forward, space-restricted content of news reporting; I am expecting a more emotional and detailed story about the rise of Jane Whaley and her far-reaching, destructive influence. “Broken Faith is the meticulously reported story of a singular female cult leader, a terrifying portrait of life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Broken Faith offers both a cautionary tale and a deeply emotional examination of faith, resilience, and family. It’s the story of an entire community’s descent into darkness—and for some, the winding journey back to the light.” This description combined with what I know of Mitch’s writing style by reading – “The Heart of Hell- The Untold Story of Courage and Sacrifice in the Shadow of Iwo Jima” ©2016 published by Penguin Random House, LLC; gives me an eager anticipation for “BROKEN FAITH”. “Heart of Hell” was a captivating and emotional story- hard to put down! With “BROKEN FAITH”, choose your favorite format, hardback, Kindle, Audible or Audio CD- and pre-order. As February draws closer, I am hoping for the “Look Inside” option which allows potential readers to see the first few pages. No, I have not read this new book. I lived much of it in my 16 years under the influence of WOFF. I receive no commission or compensation for this recommendation. The book publisher nor Amazon have endorsed my review or comments. Follow here: Twitter – @religiouscults #exposeWOFF, #exposeWordofFaithFellowship. Thank you, for taking time to visit and read this blog. Please, consume the information on this site responsibly. The author is not a licensed mental health professional and encourages those that need professional help to seek it. The intent of the material is to inform and be a resource. Be sure to tell every member that you know at WOFF about this blog. There are readers at WOFF. Jane told me and Josh confirmed it. Comments are invited from all readers, including present or former members. Polls are not scientific and no private information is gathered. Look on the right side of any post for the option to subscribe by email for notifications or RSS feeds notifying of new postings. It is a great feature. Also, find more posts by selecting “Categories”. Guest posts reflect the opinions of the writers. Their opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of John Huddle or any other persons affiliated with this blog. Please, take time to read the Terms of Use for this personal blog. As mentioned, for posts written by John Huddle, any information about WOFF is from his memories and recollections as perfect as that may be or not be. Scripture references are Amplified Version unless otherwise noted.(Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation) This is post number 670. Everyone is busy and may not have the time to experience all the different resources on the unfolding. “Broken Faith- Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America’s Most Dangerous Cults” by Mitch Weiss and. The AP Investigation- Broken Faith has now posted audio clips under – “Voice from the Church.” The investigation. One thought on ““BROKEN FAITH”- by Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr” I was raised in a place with a woman pastor. We are stil living with this. I was in court for 9 years with these people. They stole 16 acres and I was trying to get it back. My Dad gave the first acre to start a church. But her and her family have it back. It is a cult and I wish someone would write a book about them. The District attorney is her friend. So I could win this. She belong to a fellowship Calle the living word of fellowship. This is fellowship is in Panama City Florida. The church Greenwood Bible Deliverance Church. In Summerdale Alabama. Everything in court records. Thanks for writing your book. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.