A Wisconsin church is under fire for behaving like a — GASP! — cult.
A downtown Eau Claire church is picking up the pieces after a scandal that tested the faith of the congregation and led to the resignations of the entire pastoral team amid allegations of “spiritual abuse.”
Four Valleybrook Church pastors left after widespread claims surfaced about them pushing members and staff to reject their families, matching unrelated pairs of parishioners into “knit-together” relationships to replace biological family, sharing personal information gained in confidence, and abusing their authority by demeaning and shaming others.
Ho-hum. We are solidly into the post-Christian world, and so the pressure for pastors to bind their congregations to themselves in steadily increasing. Expect stories like this to increase.