Christian
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Bergholz Community (1995)
The Bergholz Community, also known as the Bergholz Clan or Bergholz Amish, was founded by Samuel Mullet Sr. in Bergholz, Ohio, in 1995 with the aim of creating a more conservative Amish settlement than the one Mullet was previously affiliated with. In 1997, Mullet was ordained as a minister for the new settlement. Four years Continue reading
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Baptist Foundation of Arizona (1948)
The Baptist Foundation of Arizona (BFA) was a Southern Baptist-affiliated charitable organization founded in 1948 with the dual purpose of generating investment income for participants and funding Christian causes. Closely tied to the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention and the national Southern Baptist Convention, the BFA presented itself as a faith-based investment ministry. Through investor brochures Continue reading
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Awaiting Christ Church (c. 1990)
Awaiting Christ Church, also known as Silinde u-Yesu, was a millenarian Christian church in South Africa led by Nokulunga Fiphaza. The movement was characterized by its apocalyptic predictions and its fervent belief in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. The church originated in the village of Corhana. In 1995, the congregants, who initially worked as Continue reading
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Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph (1984)
Aum Shinrikyo, renamed “Aleph” in 2000, is best known for orchestrating the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which resulted in 13 deaths and thousands of injuries. The sect’s theology is an amalgam of Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu elements with millenarian overtones and the expectation of an impending apocalypse. Chizuo Matsumoto Continue reading
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Attleboro Sect (c. 1980)
The group commonly called the “Attleboro Sect,” but known to its members as “The Body of Christ” or simply “The Body,” emerged through a Bible study group in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, in the late 1970s. Its origins traced back to Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, originally the Radio Church of God, an offshoot Continue reading
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Army of Mary (1971)
Marie-Paule Giguère, born Roman Catholic in Quebec in 1921, reported hearing celestial voices when she was 12 years old. She considered becoming a nun but was advised against it by her local church, and in 1944 she married Georges Cliché. They had five children, but the marriage was an unhappy one, and they divorced after Continue reading
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Apostolic Pentecostal Church of Plaster Rock (1928)
The Apostolic Pentecostal Church of Plaster Rock, now known as the Family Worship Center, was founded in 1928 in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, by William Rolston, an Irish immigrant who began his ministry with tent revivals in the late 1920s. By 1932, a permanent church building was erected, marking the formal establishment of the congregation. Continue reading
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Apostolic Formation Center for Christian Renew-All (1968)
J. Roy Legere set up the Apostolic Formation Center for Christian Renew-All, an organization for lay Catholics, in Warren, Massachusetts, in 1968. Though the group did not have official backing from the church, it had a good relationship with the local diocese, which shared information on its retreats and activities. But after about five years, Continue reading
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Antrovis (1993)
In 1983, Edward Mielnik, a 42-year-old Polish boiler stoker, claimed to have had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who urged him to save the Slavic people with the assistance of extraterrestrials. He began spreading his message in his native city of Wrocław and eventually expanded his activities to other cities. Mielnik taught that Slavs Continue reading
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Antoinism (1906)
Louis-Joseph Antoine was born in Belgium in 1846 and became a coal miner at age 12, later working as a steelworker. His harsh but steady life as a laborer was disrupted when he was in his late 40s by the death of his son in 1893. Though Antoine had limited formal education, he had already Continue reading
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Ant Hill Kids/Holy Moses Mountain Family (1977)
Roch Thériault was born in Thetford Mines, Quebec, in 1947. He was an intelligent and charismatic child, and he developed a deep interest in spirituality. He left formal education after seventh grade. In early adulthood, he moved to Montreal and met Francine Grenier, who he would marry in 1967. They had two sons, Roch Sylvain Continue reading
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Anglo-Saxon Federation of America (1930)
Howard B. Rand, born in 1889, was raised in the British Israelite tradition, which held the belief that those born in Britain, and their Anglo-Saxon descendants elsewhere, were the direct descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. British Israelism has its roots as far back as the 17th century but became most prominent in Continue reading
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Altruria (1894)
Altruria was a utopian community founded in Sonoma County, California, that was inspired by A Traveler from Altruria, a novel by William Dean Howells published earlier that year. The novel, which had been published in serial form in The Cosmopolitan magazine in 1892 and 1893, was a critique of capitalism involving a visitor to a Continue reading
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Alamo Christian Foundation (1969)
Bernie Lazar Hoffman was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1934. While the details of his early life are obscure, he claimed to have been abandoned at Father Flanagan’s Boys Town and said that he was abused there, in part because he was Jewish. By the time he was 21, he had been convicted of burglary, Continue reading
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Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (1981)
The Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC), which has also been known as The Foundation, Free Love Ministries, Holy Tribal Nation, and Life Force Team, was founded in 1981 by James Green and Lila (Deborah) Green. James Green was born in Kentucky in 1945 and hitchhiked to California as a teenager, where he met Lila Continue reading
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Agape Ministries International (1993)
Rocco Leo was born in Italy in 1956 and was said to have survived a near-death experience after nearly drowning in a shipping channel at age six. He would claim to have been dead for several hours and that he was revived through his mother’s prayers. Leo also said this experience gifted him with divine Continue reading
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Adventures In Enlightenment (1982)
Terry Cole-Whittaker was a New Thought author and minister who founded Terry Cole-Whittaker Ministries, which later became Adventures In Enlightenment, which ran tours to exotic locations around the world that doubled as spiritual retreats. After winning the Mrs. California pageant and finishing third in the Mrs. America pageant in 1968, Cole-Whittaker became a motivational speaker Continue reading
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Adonai-Shomo (1861)
Adonai-Shomo, from the Hebrew “the Lord is there,” was a Christian commune in western Massachusetts in the latter half of the 19th century. It emerged from an 1855 meeting between Frederick T. Howland, a Quaker, and Caroline Hawks and Sarah Hervey at a religious meeting. This encounter sparked the community’s spiritual foundation, rooted in Adventist-influenced Continue reading
Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religious Movements 