A controversial Christian church eyes the Philly suburbs for expansion

A Plymouth Brethren Christian Church meeting room in Middletown Township, Delaware County.

Jesse Bunch

Philadelphia Inquirer 

March 16, 2025

A controversial Christian church at the center of investigations into excommunication and rigid control of its members is finding a foothold in the Philadelphia suburbs.

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church has about 54,000 members worldwide and a history shy of 200 years.

The evangelical group has long been known for imposing boundaries on outside life, with some former members going as far as comparing Brethren life to that of a “cult.”

Those allegations have reached larger audiences in recent years following investigations by leading news organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, where the Brethren’s influence is strongest.

Earlier this month, the Telegraph detailed a former member’s account of being shunned after her departure from the church, where “fear overruled my life, really, from about the age of four,” she recounted.

Those who speak out say the process can sever long-standing relationships between mothers and sons, grandmothers and grandchildren.

The Plymouth Brethren have categorically denied those allegations, and no comparable accounts have been shared in major American news outlets. The church has touted something of a modernization in recent years, loosening restrictions and integrating more members into public life.

And even as church membership dwindles across the country, the Brethren — in Delaware County, at least — are growing.

The church increased its membership in the suburban county significantly in the last decade, scooping up a handful of properties around Middletown Township in the process.

“Our relatively small congregation of 150 members has roughly doubled over the last 12 years,” a U.S.-based Plymouth Brethren representative, who asked to be identified as a church spokesperson, told The Inquirer.

That’s due to “our younger members building families, as well as members from outside of the area moving into Delaware County for the wonderful opportunities and lifestyle it offers.”

Who are the Brethren?

The Plymouth Brethren, often called “Exclusive Brethren,” originated in Ireland in the 1820s amid growing dissatisfaction with the hierarchical nature of the Anglican Church.

Groups splintered off over the years, and Brethren arrived in the United States by the 1860s.

Today, Australian multimillionaire Bruce Hales is the church’s global leader.

Brethren have practiced in Delaware County for several decades, according to the church spokesperson, though not at today’s scale.

The church’s “doctrine of separation” has become the subject of multiple media reports in recent years.

Many Brethren are forbidden from consuming secular sources of television and radio, for example. That is in addition to being discouraged from eating with those outside the church, attending college — and, by some accounts, living in homes that share walls with them.

Speaking with the New Statesman in 2023, former Brethren recounted those limitations as well as being “withdrawn from” — the church’s purported method of disciplining noncompliant members through isolation.

“Everything was really regimented and controlled — what you wear, what you do during your day, how you spend your evenings, what you think,” one former member told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in a 2024 report on life within the church.

What does the church say?

Of course, not all Brethren experiences are similar.

Some raised in the church have taken to social media sites like Reddit to soften the worst of those narratives (one user told of being allowed to listen to Taylor Swift, for example), and the church says many of its conservative beliefs are no different from those of other Christian faiths.

And while Brethren mostly avoid social media, members have begun to use it for business endeavors, the spokesperson said.

Brethren are deeply involved in entrepreneurial pursuits where non-church relationships are unavoidable; members own a variety of businesses, so much that well-connected Brethren-linked firms in the United Kingdom were recipients of more than £2 billion in government contracts for personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the allegations of cultlike behavior that have gripped the United Kingdom and Australia, no such accounts have been raised in Delaware County.

But in 2023, as the church eyed an expansion near Chicago, a group including former Brethren protested the sale, citing alleged abuses within the sect.

The Plymouth Brethren denied allegations raised in multiple reports through its U.S. spokesperson.

“To be clear, most of us live normal lives, run normal businesses, have normal families, and work with and alongside many people from outside of our church community,” the spokesperson said.

“The people who are feeding social media and media with stories to the contrary are misrepresenting our way of life. We work, live and interact with others every day as we strive to embody Christian principles in all we do — a free practice of religion like any other, whose tolerance and protection is built into the heart of this country.”

Where are the Plymouth Brethren expanding in Delaware County?

Within the past decade, the Plymouth Brethren have purchased five Delaware County properties through a nonprofit arm called Philadelphia Meeting Room Inc., according to tax and deed records.

The buying spree began in 2016 with the purchase of 40 State Rd. in Media. In 2022, the nonprofit bought a single-story property in nearby Chester Heights.

Philadelphia Meeting Room has since acquired three more properties along Middletown Road in Middletown Township.

One property serves as the Plymouth Brethren’s main meeting hall, the spokesperson said, a space that seats around 300 for weekend services.

Three smaller properties are used as meeting rooms, which the spokesperson described as “hyperlocal neighborhood worship centers for families in the immediate vicinity, used for prayer during the week,” that accommodate between 30 and 50 people.

The church has larger ambitions for the area.

“We are in the process of soliciting contractors for a new meeting hall located in Middleton Township, which we intend to break ground on in 2025,” the spokesperson said via email. “Once completed, we will consider offering for sale our property in Media, PA.”

Those driving by the Brethren’s property at 47 N. Middletown Rd. may also notice a sign for “Campus & Co.” deliveries. The global chain of Brethren-exclusive supermarkets is open only to church members and the stores are managed by volunteers.

Those are in addition to OneSchool Global, the Brethren’s worldwide network of independent schools; the closest campus is in Joppa, Md.

“We feel honored to be members of this beautiful community and will continue to contribute to it for many years to come,” the spokesperson said.

https://archive.ph/cQYLr

Book review: A Very British Cult: Rogue priests and the Abode of Love by Stuart Flinders

Church Times

14 March 2025

An abuser, Suzanne Fagence Cooper finds

WHEN does religious fervour tip over into madness? In Stuart Flinders’s study of a Victorian cult on the fringes of the Established Church, the tension between insanity and zeal hangs over every chapter. As The Times asked in 1860, were the worshippers who gathered at “The Abode of Love” being led by “a religious enthusiast, a lunatic or an adventurer”?

We read about court cases where young women who joined the congregation were denounced as hysterical by their bewildered families, and detained in asylums. And the priests at the heart of the cult, James Henry Prince and John Smyth-Pigott, were accused of being “blasphemous buffoons” and suffering from “Messianic delusion”. We are left wondering how Christ might be received if the Second Coming truly did happen in Somerset or the London suburbs.

A Very British Cult tells the story of two charismatic spiritual leaders who used their claims to be “the Holy Ghost personified”, or, indeed, “the Son of Man himself”, to groom and fleece their followers. Their devotees, who became known as “Agapemonites”, handed over their worldly goods in anticipation of the End Times. These offerings paid for a comfortable country house, where the congregation waited to be “translated”. On the surface, with its servants, stables, and croquet lawns, “The Abode of Love” looked like a genteel hotel. It was, however, both a cloister and a fortress. Journalists who tried to report on claims of sexual and financial improprieties within its walls found that the residents were forbidden to talk about their experiences.

As a result, Flinders’s narrative is mostly drawn from legal complaints against the group, or lurid speculation in the contemporary press. Still, some things are clear. Women who joined the group were deliberately isolated from their friends. If they tried to return home, they were told that they were “full of the devil” and shunned by the community. At least one follower, Mary Maber, took her own life after leaving all her property to the Clapton “Messiah”. It is also beyond question that both Prince and Smyth-Pigott abused the women in their flock. They took “spiritual brides”, and Smyth-Pigott declared: “We are all one here and follow the desires of the flesh.”

This exploitation of vulnerable people by church leaders inevitably raises worrying parallels with more recent scandals within the Church. Flinders does not, however, interrogate the reasons that this abuse was possible; nor does he fully address how survivors lived with the consequences of “Beloved’s” actions. He gestures towards other newly formed faith groups — the Salvation Army, Theosophists, and Mormons — without offering an argument about why, as he says, “many believed the end of the world was really nigh”.

This is a tightly focused historical study of a disturbing sect. Perhaps it would be useful, sometimes, to see the bigger picture, too.

Dr Suzanne Fagence Cooper is a cultural historian with an interest in Victorian and 20th-century Britain.

A Very British Cult: Rogue priests and the abode of love

Stuart Flinders

Icon Books £20

(978-1-83773-147-3)

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/14-march/books-arts/book-reviews/book-review-a-very-british-cult-rogue-priests-and-the-abode-of-love-by-stuart-flinders

Aleph, Aum Supreme Truth Cult’s Successor, Fails to Report ¥700 Million; Group Apparently Sought to Hide Assets

A government building that houses the Public Security Intelligence Agency is seen in Tokyo.

The Yomiuri Shimbun

March 9, 2025

Aum Supreme Truth’s main successor transferred financial assets in an apparent attempt to conceal them, according to a Public Security Intelligence Agency investigation report seen by The Yomiuri Shimbun.

The cult’s successor, which is called Aleph, used such means as extending loans to corporate entities represented or managed by people linked to the group, including its followers.

The agency has estimated that about ¥700 million in assets belonging to Aleph-linked corporations has not been reported to the government. It is believed Aleph had been attempting to prevent the assets from being seized for victims of Aum-related incidents who have demanded compensation.

The report was compiled by the agency in January 2023 based on the results of on-site inspections of Aleph facilities and other probes. It was submitted as evidence in a trial for a lawsuit filed by Aleph against the central government. A ruling in the trial was handed down in December last year. The Yomiuri Shimbun has confirmed the contents of the report.

According to the report, there are at least eight Aleph-linked corporate entities, with its followers being representatives, executives or investors. The head offices of these entities are all located at the same addresses as Aleph’s hub facilities. Aleph extended about ¥220 million in loans to some of the entities, transferred its right to receive repayments to other affiliated bodies and paid high fees for using facilities in order to transfer its assets.

The agency’s analysis suggests that Aleph’s actions were in response to a 2019 court ruling that ordered the group to pay more than ¥1 billion in compensation to victims of the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995, and other Aum-linked incidents. The agency believes that Aleph hid its assets because they could be seized based on the ruling.

According to the agency, Aleph’s assets, which the group is required to report to the government under the Subversive Organizations Control Law, fell sharply from about ¥1.286 billion in February 2019 to about ¥8 million in February 2024. On the other hand, the agency estimates that assets of Aleph-linked corporate entities, including for-profit businesses, rose from about ¥460 million in February 2020 to at least ¥700 million in February 2024.

https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/general-news/20250309-242449/

The Bizarre + Disturbing “Universal Medicine” Cult

 Noor Jasmine

Experts warn that recent school shootings show growth in new radicalization pattern

Odette Yousef

NPR

March 8, 2025

Two recent school shootings are highlighting what extremism researchers see as a growing — and poorly understood — trend among young people who embrace mass violence.

The attacks, at high schools in Madison, Wis., and Nashville, Tenn., defy categories that law enforcement and researchers have long used to understand radicalization pathways, such as radical Islamist terrorism and white nationalist terrorism. Instead, some researchers say these attacks are examples of "nonideological" terrorism. They say these attacks appear to be the result of several antisocial, decentralized, online networks coming together in ways that encourage and inspire younger children to commit atrocities.

"It's really about that violence for the sake of violence," said Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium. "There is a growth of intention and design within certain subcultures and subnetworks to inculcate that belief into younger people."

In December, Natalie "Samantha" Rupnow killed a student, a substitute-teacher coordinator and herself at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. The following month, 17-year-old Solomon Henderson killed himself and another student at Antioch High School in Nashville. Both appear to have been heavily influenced by mass killers of the past and preoccupied with the prospect of adding themselves to such a list.

"This is sort of the next chapter of what we could call 'far-right violence' looks like at this stage or what terrorism looks like," said Kriner. "One thing that we're trying to get people to start to wrap their heads around is that anything and everything is becoming a viable pathway to violence."

The True Crime Community

Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, shared-interest groups of people who obsess over mass killings have developed across social media platforms. Known as the True Crime Community (TCC), participants delve into detail about perpetrators' backgrounds and how they carried out attacks. Sometimes users share fan fiction inspired by true-life shootings.

Both Rupnow's and Henderson's apparent writings indicate that they were immersed in these cultures. Rupnow cited attacks in Finland, Turkey, Crimea and Brazil, among other places, referring to some perpetrators as "One true ideal" or "An Ultimate saint." Henderson, too, listed past killers whom he saw as inspiration for his attack.

But experts say that while there are darker corners of the internet that do encourage violent action, the TCC has not generally been one of them.

"Within the TCC, you don't see these blatant calls for violence in the same way that you might in neo-Nazi circles online," said Cody Zoschak, a senior manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

However, Zoschak says his team is now finding that a growing number of school shooting plots appear to tie back to the TCC.

"At this point, we have tracked at least seven, and likely more, school shootings or disrupted school shooting plots in the United States linked to TCC individuals in 2024 alone," he said. "This is a pretty significant number."

Zoschak and other analysts believe the shift reflects the blurring of lines between the TCC and other, darker online communities that has accelerated in recent years. Among them is the Terrorgram Collective, a terroristic, neo-fascist network that encourages violence to bring about societal collapse. Also, a subculture referred to as Saints Culture, which venerates mass killers as almost superhuman figures, frames high-casualty attacks as the ultimate and only legacy worth emulating. Other online movements, such as No Lives Matter, promote nihilism as justification for violence.

Experts say the result of this melding of communities has been a change in the profile of individuals mobilized to mass violence.

"Young Black men, for instance," said Kriner, noting Henderson's background. "This is not something we've seen in the trend of school shooters, especially when we look at it within the context of what the U.S. calls '[the racially motivated violent extremism] RMVE' or Canadians call the 'ideologically motivated violent extremism' space."

Kriner noted that the profile is also shifting younger.

"Most of the individuals who are targeted for this are falling in the range of 13 to 18," he said. "That is a considerably different targeted range than most of the radicalization targets that we've seen in the past from the neo-fascist movements."

Zoschak says it has also widened the reach of violent ideological movements to women.

"TCC has perhaps the best gender balance of any extremist community I've seen online," he said. "It is roughly 50/50."

Zoschak said girls tend to find their way to the TCC by way of online eating disorder communities. Boys, he said, often come from gore forums, where they have been desensitized to violence through watching graphic videos of torture, injury and death. From there, they may be particularly susceptible to ideological movements oriented around harm to themselves and others.

"This isn't the first generation to grow up online, but it's pretty close to it," he said. "And [this reflects] how those types of totally normal teenage hormones and emotions and feelings manifest in troubled individuals and really just spiral and snowball and go to a terrible place in these echo chambers."

The meaning of "764," and other dark subcultures

Among the more troubling developments within this evolving space is the influence of online networks that groom and sexually exploit minors. One of these, called 764, has come to refer to both a specific network but also this category of community.

"It's almost like they're little fandoms, and there's hierarchies, and in each one there are these people that are trying to push their victims to do more and more extreme harm to themselves for clout," said Mack Lamoureux, a former reporter for Vice News, who spent a year investigating 764.

"We've seen that they've been connected to kind of nihilistic, accelerationism, misanthropic stuff," he said. "They've been connected to some occult groups, and they've been connected to neo-Nazism. But at the heart of it, it truly seems to be misanthropy and nihilism."

Recent cases against people affiliated with 764 and similar communities that preceded it have highlighted the growing concern among law enforcement over these subcultures. This corresponds with a growth in reported cases of child sexual exploitation online that has alarmed child safety advocates.

"Between 2023 and 2024, we've had an over 300% increase in reports coming into our cyber tip line regarding some type of violent online group," said Kathryn Rifenbark, director for the cyber tip line at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "The ultimate goal of these offenders is that they are wanting that child to perform some type of violent act, whether towards themselves, like self-harm or suicide, or towards another person in real life, or even towards animals."

Although it is unclear to what degree Henderson and Rupnow engaged with child sexploitation networks like 764, Henderson's writings, in particular, indicate that there was at least some exposure.

"His manifesto showed that he was familiar with the parlance of the group, and he appeared to have engaged with the group," said Zoschak. "And this is where we start seeing these overlaps between online communities that glorify violence. And so, TCC might develop a young troubled person's interest in mass shooters and bring them into that community."

The growing presence of child sexploitation networks within the larger landscape of the TCC and violent ideologies is challenging law enforcement to approach cases differently, said Rifenbark.

"They are having to join up their counterterrorism folks with their crimes-against-children staff as well, and work together on this," she said. "It needs to have a wider approach taken than other types of victimization in the past due to it having those elements of terrorism along with victimizing children."

There is no detailed centralized data on mass shooting plots in the U.S.

As analysts continue to develop a framework to better define markers of nonideological radicalization, they have faced a fundamental challenge: a lack of usable data. To begin, Zoschak says, school shooting threats are typically handled in a decentralized, local manner. As a result, there is no single database.

Beyond that, he said, law enforcement's approach often is simply to intercept the crime, without an accompanying investigation into what radicalization factors led to it.

"What this really requires is a dedicated team digging into the social media every time we get a threat or an arrest or, God forbid, a school shooting," he said.

Experts say this would require significant time and expertise. And even in cases where such investment might occur, experts say that the novelty of this radicalization profile may elude investigators.

"Most of these individuals are so deeply online, their identities are so deeply intertwined with internet culture or subculture, it's really hard to understand why they're radicalizing or how they're radicalizing, because what they're consuming is like five layers deep of inside jokes and memes," said Kriner. "So the way to detect radicalization is becoming more complex. We're having a harder time identifying individuals before they carry out acts of violence."

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/08/nx-s1-5321082/school-shootings-radicalization