In 2024, columnist Logan M. Davis took deep dives into two different Christian nationalist organizations. In February, he wrote the first full accounting of the Narrowgate cult, which operated in the 1990s. Later in the year, Logan published an investigative series pulling back the veil of secrecy around a major Colorado-based ministry and revealing allegations of widespread abuse within. In the aftermath of that second investigation, the ministry’s long-time leader, Andrew Wommack, announced that he would be stepping down from his leadership position.
Bad Faith: The Narrowgate Cult
None of them realized they were in a cult until it was too late. It started in late 1993 as a Bible study group composed of students from Messiah College in Pennsylvania. By the time it shattered in February of 1997, most of the group’s members had lost their individual identities and many of their worldly possessions. Some had lost their marriages. The leader, the man who they say slowly wove a web of control around their minds and around their lives, had lost his wife and child: they fled in the night, afraid that he might kill them.
The group was named Narrowgate, and the teachings that drew members deeper into its leader’s control were based on audio cassettes from Colorado-based pastor Andrew Wommack, who today leads a ministry which commands tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. [Read more]
Fire on the Mountain: Part I
Tim McDermott was brushing his teeth in the bathroom of his home in Woodland Park, Colorado, when his life began to crumble. Hands shaking, he looked at himself in the mirror and saw a stranger: tall and thin, a beard working to cover the exhaustion etched into his face. For years he had rationalized the mistreatment, underpayment, and manipulation he experienced at work as the cost of striving for the Kingdom, a sacrifice he was making for the Lord. He internalized the lesson that any complaint on his part was a symptom of his own lacking faith. That morning in 2021, though, toothbrush in hand, his rationalizations – and the life he’d built atop them – fell to pieces. [Read more]
Fire on the Mountain: Part II
John Leong had a decision to make. The finances were a mess: the ministry was underwater after its latest land acquisition, and no one else in leadership seemed to take that fact into account. In an organization seized by the need to expand at all costs, the $18 million debt on the balance sheet was treated as an abstract problem. As Chief Operating Officer for Andrew Wommack Ministries (AWMI), John saw it in more concrete terms. Instead of dialing back their projected spending or slowing Charis Bible College’s desired rate of expansion, though, a new board member had proposed a riskier idea: selling investment opportunities to Wommack’s loyal followers. [Read more]
Fire on the Mountain: Part III
Abuse is everywhere at Charis,” Lucy told me, opening up about a topic which many of the men I interviewed were largely unaware of, but which the women of Charis are painfully familiar with: what sources describe as a culture in which domestic violence often proceeds unchecked.
Like Hannah, in part one of this series, Lucy lived through that culture of abuse – not just emotional and spiritual abuse, but physical abuse. And, like Hannah, she asked not to be identified by her real name in order to speak candidly, without fear of repercussions, about what she and many women see as the Charis-AWMI community’s greatest failing. [Read more]
Controversial Evangelist Announces ‘Transfer of Leadership’ After Colorado Times Recorder Investigation
Controversial Christian evangelist Andrew Wommack announced that he will transition out of leadership over his Woodland Park-based Charis Bible College next month.
Sources inside the ministry report that the announcement was first made internally at a staff meeting on Friday, July 26, the week after the Colorado Times Recorder published a first-of-its-kind series investigating the highly political Bible college and its founder. The Colorado Times Recorder‘s series revealed allegations that abuse has been allowed to flourish within Wommack’s ministry and Bible college, in addition to allegations that his organizations have fostered a cruel culture, fabricated claims of miraculous healings, and more. [Read more]
