-
Great Commission International (1965)
Great Commission International, later known as the Great Commission Association of Churches and Great Commission Churches (GCC), was an association of independent evangelical Christian congregations that developed from a campus evangelism effort in the late 1960s. The movement was founded by James Douglas McCotter, a businessman and former student evangelist born in 1945. Over more… Continue reading
-
Grandview Valley Baptist Church North (c. 1975)
Grand Valley Independent Baptist Church and its smaller offshoot, Grandview Valley Baptist Church North, were independent Baptist congregations in southwest Missouri that became the subject of criminal investigations in the mid-2000s. The congregations operated on gated, self-contained properties in the Ozarks and maintained communal lifestyles that later attracted public scrutiny and comparisons to cults. Grand… Continue reading
-
Grail Movement (c. 1920)
The Grail Movement is a millenarian new religious movement that emerged in central Europe during the early 1920s under the leadership of Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, a German businessman who wrote under the pen name “Abd-ru-shin.” Before the First World War, Bernhardt worked in London. From 1914 to 1919, he was interned as a German national.… Continue reading
-
Grace Road Church (2002)
Grace Road Church is a South Korean religious movement founded in 2002 by Pastor Shin Ok-ju, also known as Ok-joo Shin. It began as a small group and grew into an organization with roughly 1,000 followers. Shin’s early teachings centered on the belief that a global famine was imminent. She taught that true believers needed… Continue reading
-
Grace Cathedral (c. 1950)
Ernest Winston Angley was an American televangelist, author, and faith healer who founded Grace Cathedral and built a multi-million-dollar media ministry in Northeast Ohio. Raised in North Carolina, he began his career in the early 1950s as a traveling Pentecostal evangelist. Around 1954, Angley built a following in Akron, Ohio, through tent revivals, later acquiring… Continue reading
-
Bill Gothard (1961)
William W. Gothard Jr. is an American Christian minister, speaker, and writer who founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), an independent fundamentalist Christian organization. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies from Wheaton College in 1957, a master’s in Christian education in 1961, and later a doctorate from Louisiana Baptist University in… Continue reading
-
Gospel Outreach (1970)
Gospel Outreach was a Christian church movement that emerged in Northern California in 1970, part of the Jesus movement, a wave of religious revivalism among countercultural youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The movement centered on the Lighthouse Ranch, a former Coast Guard station on an eight-acre bluff overlooking the Pacific in Humboldt… Continue reading
-
Gospel Assembly (1914)
Gospel Assembly Churches is a non-denominational Christian movement founded in 1914 by William Sowders, a former Louisville police officer, during the early years of American Pentecostalism. The movement began in Paducah, Kentucky, before Sowders established a central congregation in Louisville, which he led until his death in 1952. Before settling on its current name, the… Continue reading
-
Good News International Ministries (2003)
Good News International Ministries, later known internationally as the Shakahola cult, was founded in Kenya in 2003 by Paul Nthenge Mackenzie and his first wife. Mackenzie was born in 1973 in Kwale County to an evangelical family. He grew up singing in church choirs and began preaching young. He also showed a volatile temper as… Continue reading
-
Feroze Golwalla (1999)
Feroze Golwalla, a Pakistani national and self-described Christian convert from a Zoroastrian Parsee background, founded the Parsee Ministry Team, also known as Baruch Ha Shem International, in 1999 while a graduate student at Wheaton College in Illinois. Golwalla framed the group as a missionary effort to evangelize Parsee communities in Pakistan and Iran, and it… Continue reading
-
Godianism (c. 1948)
Godianism, also known as Chiism, is an indigenist religious movement founded in Nigeria between 1948 and 1949. It emerged during the country’s independence movement, when Kalu Onu Kama Onyioha established it as the National Church of Nigeria. Onyioha became the movement’s Supreme Spiritual Teacher under the title Ahanyi. Onyioha sought to challenge Western descriptions of… Continue reading
-
God’s Creation Outreach Ministry (c. 1990)
God’s Creation Outreach Ministry was a small Pentecostal storefront church in Kansas City, Kansas, founded and incorporated in April 1992 by Christy Edgar. Operating under the Church of God in Christ denomination, the congregation was pastored by Neil Edgar, while his wife, Christy Edgar, served as co-pastor, evangelist and self-proclaimed “prophet.” The church operated from… Continue reading
-
God Squad (c. 1972)
The God Squad, officially known as the Full Gospel Mission and later the St. John Volunteer Corps, was an apocalyptic Christian sect active in New Zealand from the late 1950s until its collapse in the late 1990s. The group was founded and led by Douglas Alexander Metcalf, a self-styled “Bishop” who presented himself as a… Continue reading
-
G.O.D. International (1996)
G.O.D. International (Global Outreach Developments International) was founded in 1996 in Southern California by Gregg Garner and a group of college friends. The organization initially operated as a small ministry delivering food to people in need but gradually expanded its activities under Garner’s leadership. Garner claimed an extensive academic background in biblical studies, missiology, and… Continue reading
-
Gloriavale Christian Community (1969)
The Gloriavale Christian Community is an insular fundamentalist Christian group located in a remote area of New Zealand’s West Coast. It was founded in 1969 by Australian-born evangelist Neville Cooper, who later took the name Hopeful Christian, with the aim of emulating the early Christian church described in the New Testament. The movement began after… Continue reading
-
Global Revolution Church (2008)
Global Revolution Church is an evangelical congregation founded in October 2008 in Orlando, Florida, by pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz. Blake Lorenz had previously spent 16 years as pastor of Pine Castle United Methodist Church; Beverly Lorenz, a third-generation pastor, joined him in launching the new ministry. The church built its identity around end-times theology,… Continue reading
-
Gilbert Deya Ministries (1997)
Gilbert Juma Deya was a Kenyan-born evangelist who built an international following in Britain and Africa on claims that he could cure infertility through prayer. He was born in poverty in 1952 in a town outside Nairobi. He left primary school due to financial difficulty and bullying, and as a child engaged in begging and… Continue reading
-
GeorDavie Ministries International (c. 2016)
GeorDavie Moses Kasambale, a Tanzanian preacher, built an international church and media presence as a self-styled prophet, operating GeorDavie Ministries International, a network spanning church services, radio, television and music events. Kasambale, who usually goes solely by his first namr, says that he has possessed supernatural abilities, including prophecy and healing, since childhood, and bases… Continue reading
-
Gentle Wind Project (c. 1980)
The Gentle Wind Project (GWP) was founded around 1980 in Arlington, Massachusetts, by John “Tubby” Miller and Claudia Panuthos, who later went by Mary “Moe” Miller. In 1983 it was formalized as a Maine nonprofit, and the following year it moved its headquarters to Kittery, Maine, where core members lived together while running what they… Continue reading
-
Genesis II Church of Health and Healing (2010)
The Genesis II Church of Health and Healing was an American organization founded in 2010 by Jim Humble and Mark Grenon. Operating as an international distributor and promoter of a chemical solution called Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), the group described itself as a “non-religious church.” Its primary focus was promoting MMS as a treatment for… Continue reading
-
General Church of the New Jerusalem (1890)
The General Church of the New Jerusalem, commonly known as the General Church or New Church, is an international Christian denomination headquartered in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. Its theology is based on the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th-century Swedish scientist, philosopher, and theologian. Swedenborg never founded a formal church himself. He left behind 20 volumes… Continue reading
-
General Assembly Church of the First Born (c. 1870)
The General Assembly and Church of the First Born — commonly called the Church of the First Born or Followers of Christ — is a fundamentalist Christian sect defined by its commitment to divine faith healing and rejection of conventional medical care. It traces its roots to the 19th-century American frontier, developing from a network… Continue reading
-
Geelong Revival Centre (c. 1960)
The Geelong Revival Centre (GRC) is a Pentecostal church headquartered in Norlane, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Founded around 1960, the GRC expanded under pastor Noel Hollins into a network of more than 20 affiliated assemblies across Australia and internationally. Hollins led the church for about 65 years until his death in April 2024… Continue reading
-
Gatekeepers (c. 1990)
The Gatekeepers was a small apocalyptic group established in the early 1990s in Snohomish County, Washington, by Christopher Turgeon. The group began as a Bible study organization called Ahabah Asah Prophetic Ministries, with meetings held across Edmonds, Lynnwood, Everett, and Lake Stevens. The group’s direction changed after Turgeon announced that he had received a direct… Continue reading
-
Garden Ashram (c. 1977)
The Garden Ashram was a Hare Krishna-affiliated intentional community near Mullumbimby in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, situated on the Tweed River near Wollumbin (Mount Warning), a mountain significant to the Indigenous Bundjalung people. The region’s volcanic soil and heavy rainfall had long attracted people drawn to alternative lifestyles and Eastern… Continue reading