The Christian countercult movement or the Christian anti-cult movement is a social movement among certain Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist and other Christian ministries and individual activists who oppose religious sects that they consider cults.
Warren Steed Jeffs is an American cult leader who is serving a life sentence in Texas for child sexual assault following two convictions in 2011. He is the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous cult based in Arizona. The FLDS Church was founded in the early-20th century when its founders deemed the renunciation of polygamy by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be apostate; there is no affiliation between the FLDS Church and the LDS Church.
Chi Alpha | ΧΑ, is an international and interdenominational, coeducational Christian fellowship, social club, student society, and service organization founded in 1953 on the campus of Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. Chi Alpha is sponsored by the Assemblies of God USA, a Pentecostal denomination established after separating from the historically African American Church of God in Christ in 1914 over race and administration.
The Jesus Army, also known as the Jesus Fellowship Church and the Bugbrooke Community, was a neocharismatic evangelical Christian movement based in the United Kingdom, part of the British New Church Movement. The name Jesus Army was specifically used for the outreach and street-based evangelism for which they were known.
David Brandt Berg, also known as King David, Mo, Moses David, Father David, Dad, or Grandpa to followers, was the founder and leader of the cult generally known as the Children of God and subsequently as The Family International. Berg's group, founded in 1968 among the counterculture youth in Southern California, gained notoriety for incorporating sexuality into its spiritual message and recruitment methods. Berg and his organization were accused of a broad range of sexual misconduct, including child sexual abuse.
Sovereign Grace Churches is a group of Reformed, neocharismatic, evangelical and confessional Christian churches primarily located in North America. It has variously been described as a family of churches, a denomination, and an apostolic network. It has also been described as a cult, due to its unorthodox teachings, systemic control of members, and allegations of covering up child sex abuse. As well as the North American congregations, there are also congregations in Australia, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Great Britain, Germany and Mexico.
KRQE is a television station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with CBS and Fox. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister to Santa Fe–licensed CW affiliate KWBQ and MyNetworkTV affiliate KASY-TV, both owned by Mission Broadcasting with certain services provided by Nexstar through shared services agreements. The three stations share studios on Broadcast Plaza in Albuquerque; KRQE's transmitter is located on Sandia Crest, east of Albuquerque.
The Twelve Tribes, formerly known as the Vine Christian Community Church, the Northeast Kingdom Community Church, the Messianic Communities, and the Community Apostolic Order, is a new religious movement founded by Gene Spriggs that sprang out of the Jesus movement in 1972 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The group calls itself an attempt to recreate the 1st-century church as it is described in the Book of Acts. The group's origins in Chattanooga led to planted churches in surrounding areas. In the late seventies, the group began a community in Island Pond, Vermont. As their relationship with the Chattanooga community deteriorated, the group eventually left Tennessee and moved primarily to Vermont.
William Kamm, also known as "The Little Pebble", is the founder and leader of a religious group in Australia called the "Order of St Charbel" named after the Maronite saint Charbel Makhlouf. The Order of St Charbel is considered as a Christian sect and a fringe religious grouping. His religious order claims to be part of the Roman Catholic Church, but the Maronite Church and the Holy See do not regard the group as being part of Roman Catholicism. He was released from prison after serving 9 years of a 10-year prison sentence/term for the rape and assault of a teenager.
The Church of Almighty God, also known as Eastern Lightning, is a monotheistic new religious movement which was established in China in 1991. Government sources estimate the group has three to four million members.
The Lord Our Righteousness Church, sometimes called Strong City, is a religious community near Clayton, Union County, New Mexico. It originated with a group of about eighty adherents who migrated to the area from Sandpoint, Idaho in 2000. In 2008, the community consisted of approximately fifty people.
The House of Yahweh (HOY) is a religious group based in Eula, Texas. The assembly has been controversial and is referred to as a cult by former members.
Fence Lake is a census-designated place located in southwestern Cibola County, New Mexico, United States. Designated in 1980 by the United States Census Bureau, Fence Lake had a population of 42 as of the 2010 census. The area is largely ranchland, and there are few businesses there. It was named after a small village which is contained within its boundaries.
The Alamo Christian Foundation was an American cult which was founded in 1969 by Tony Alamo and his wife, Susan Alamo. Susan Alamo died in April 1982.
The Second Chance Program is a controversial detoxification and rehabilitation program based on the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. It focuses on individuals convicted of substance abuse offenses. The program utilizes a combination of saunas, vitamins, minerals and oils to tackle the effects of drug addiction. Other elements of the program aim to improve the educational and social abilities of inmates, and to instil a moral code for them to live by. First established in Baja California, Mexico, in 1995, Second Chance has attracted controversy over its methods and claimed success rates.
Traditionally in Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy have been viewed in relation to the "orthodoxy" as an authentic lineage of tradition. Other forms of Christianity were viewed as deviant streams of thought and therefore "heterodox", or heretical. This view was challenged by the publication of Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum in 1934. Bauer endeavored to rethink Early Christianity historically, independent from the views of the current church. He stated that the 2nd-century church was very diverse and included many "heretical" groups that had an equal claim to apostolic tradition. Bauer interpreted the struggle between the orthodox and heterodox to be the "mainstream" Church of Rome struggling to attain dominance. He presented Edessa and Egypt as places where the "orthodoxy" of Rome had little influence during the 2nd century. As he saw it, the theological thought of the "Orient" at the time would later be labeled "heresy". The response by modern scholars has been mixed. Some scholars clearly support Bauer's conclusions and others express concerns about his "attacking [of] orthodox sources with inquisitional zeal and exploiting to a nearly absurd extent the argument from silence." However, modern scholars have critiqued and updated Bauer's model.
The "Haredi burqa sect" is a community of Haredi Jews that ordains the full covering of a woman's entire body and face, including her eyes, for the preservation of modesty in public. In effect, the community asserts that a Jewish woman must not expose her bare skin to anyone but her husband and immediate family. The garment in question, known as a shal, is also referred to as a frumka—a portmanteau of the Yiddish-language word frum and the Arabic-language word burqa. The Haredi burqa sect, with an estimated population of several hundred people as of 2011, is primarily concentrated in Israel, and particularly in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh. These Haredim rarely leave their homes; the married women who do come out in public are accompanied by their daughters, who also don long robes.
James Matthew Boyd was an American man who was fatally shot by Albuquerque Police Department officers Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the evening of March 16, 2014. A resident of a nearby subdivision called police at 3:28 p.m. to report that a man had been camping on the mountain behind his house for the previous month, a violation of local regulations. Two Open Space officers were the first to respond. They approached Boyd as he lay under a sheet of plastic; Boyd, mentally ill with a diagnosis of schizo-affective disorder, became irate, wanting to know why the "raid" was occurring. When an officer tried to pat him down, he produced two pocket knives, threatening the officers with them. The caller watched the confrontation from his second-story window and later testified that Boyd threatened the officers.
Heinrich (Henry) Hildebrandt is a Mexican-Canadian religious leader, activist, and conspiracy theorist. In 1991, Hildebrandt became pastor of a fundamentalist Church of God (Restoration) congregation in Aylmer, Ontario, a group described by former members as "controlling" and "cult-like". Hildebrandt also has the title of Apostle in the global presbytery of the Church of God (Restoration). In, what some suggest, is an effort to fulfill church prophesy and attract new members, Hildebrandt became an outspoken critic of COVID-19 restrictions and led his congregation in defying restrictions on gatherings since April 2020, which he alleges is a government conspiracy to destroy the true Christian church.
