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 a permanent building called the Temple of Healing Stripes. By the late 1950s, his congregation had grown past 3,000 members.
His ministry expanded significantly over the following decades. In 1984, he acquired the former Cathedral of Tomorrow complex in Cuyahoga Falls and renamed its 5,000-seat sanctuary Grace Cathedral. That same year, he was arrested in Munich for practicing medicine without a license.
His media presence grew alongside his church. The syndicated program The Ernest Angley Hour aired across North America, and in 1987 he purchased Akron’s WBNX-TV through the Winston Broadcasting Network, mixing commercial and religious programming. The ministry also ran an unaccredited online Bible college and owned a Boeing 747SP, named Star Triple Seven, for international missionary work.
Angley’s faith-healing claims, including that prayer could cure HIV/AIDS, drew scrutiny abroad. In 2007, South African regulators banned his ministry’s ads for lacking medical evidence, and Guyanese health officials publicly condemned similar claims.
Over the decades, former members, journalists, and legal authorities raised serious allegations about the church’s internal culture. Ex-congregants said Angley exerted heavy control over their personal lives through demanding schedules that limited outside contact.
A 2014 Akron Beacon Journal investigation featured 21 former members who described Grace Cathedral as a dangerous cult, comparing its psychological control to that of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple. Former members also alleged Angley discouraged childbearing and pressured congregants toward vasectomies or abortions, often framed as divine guidance. Several men said he subjected them to intrusive, sexually explicit questioning during counseling. Angley denied pressuring anyone into abortions but acknowledged examining men who’d had vasectomies, calling it advisory care.
The ministry also faced labor and safety controversies. In 1999, a former employee fatally stabbed a volunteer at the church-owned Cathedral Buffet, leading to a settlement with the victim’s family. In 2017, a federal court ordered Angley to pay back wages to buffet workers treated as unpaid volunteers; an appellate court reversed the ruling in 2018 on First Amendment grounds, though the buffet closed for good.
In 2019, former associate pastor Brock Miller sued Angley for sexual abuse and coercive control spanning several years; the case settled out of court in 2020 with a mutual non-disparagement agreement. The allegations coincided with a leaked 1996 recording in which Angley admitted to a sexual encounter with a male employee. He publicly denied being gay and called the accusations fabricated attempts to undermine him.
Angley retired from preaching in February 2019 without naming a successor, believing the end times were near. He died on May 7, 2021, at age 99. The ministry kept operating its media holdings for several years afterward. In October 2024, it sold WBNX-TV to Nexstar Media Group, closing out the broadcast enterprise Angley had launched decades earlier.
Key Sources:
Allard, S. (2017, December 19). Ernest Angley, Full of Grace, The Loan is With Thee. Cleveland Scene.
The Columbus Dispatch. (2017, December 19). Televangelist Ernest Angley’s church accused of taking life savings from woman with dementia.
Dyer, B. (2014, October 12). Ernest Angley’s Grace Cathedral rocked by accusations involving abortions and vasectomies. The Akron Beacon Journal.
Dyer, B. (2014, October 15). Former Grace Cathedral member says of Ernest Angley: “He divides and conquers families.” The Akron Beacon Journal.
Quintanilla, M. (2021, May 13). Controversial televangelist Ernest Angley passes away at 99. Crosswalk.