Pentecostal & Charismatic

Size

Pew counted 584 million Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in 2011, about a quarter of the world's Christians 14, when classical Pentecostals (members of the denominations that grew out of the early-twentieth-century revivals, such as the Assemblies of God), charismatics inside other denominations (Catholics and mainline Protestants who adopt Pentecostal practice), and independent neo-charismatic churches (independent churches with Pentecostal practice and no Pentecostal denomination) are counted together. That count includes charismatic Catholics, so it is not a subset of Protestantism, and it is the fastest-growing part of Christianity. ACADEMIC SOURCE

Who's in charge

In the founder's ministry, the dominant form worldwide, the founder is in charge personally. Enoch Adeboye leads Nigeria's Redeemed Christian Church of God and David Oyedepo leads Living Faith Church Worldwide; Edir Macedo leads Brazil's Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and also owns the Record television network.

Chosen by

Founders appoint themselves, and growth is taken as their validation.

Removable by

Nobody can remove them. No public record identifies any body with the power to remove any of them.

Money in one line

This is the tradition where the codex's financial chapter is not an inference. The teaching states the mechanism out loud: money given to the ministry is a seed, and the seed produces a harvest. Giving is not framed as duty, gratitude, or solidarity. It is framed as an investment with a promised return, delivered by God, brokered by the ministry.

Leaving in one line

Leaving is legally free and socially expensive, and the expense is concentrated in exactly the places where the movement is strongest: immigrant communities, diaspora congregations, and towns where the church is also the school, the clinic, the credit network, and the employer.

Evidence

Three of the 30 techniques are sourced to a named document. The grades are Documented 2, Taught 10 and Cultural 18.

The unanswered question

A US Senate committee asked six ministries for basic financial information and closed its inquiry three years later without full answers and without penalties. If the seed produces the harvest, what exactly is the difficulty in publishing the accounts?

Disclosure scorecard

• P
  Accounts publishedPartial
• N
  Leaders' payNo
• N
  Safeguarding policyNo
• N
  Police firstNo
• P
  Removal procedurePartial
• N
  Replies on recordNo

Y Yes — established from a public source · P Partial — true of some parts of the tradition, or true in some jurisdictions · N No — not established from any public source · ? Not assessable — no institutional apex exists to assess

Ngozi · A Tuesday in March · Lagos, Nigeria

The vigil ended at 4 a.m. and she is at the shop by seven, because the anointing (the Holy Spirit's power, felt as resting on a person or a service) does not excuse the rent. Her church is not a small thing. It has a university she cannot afford to send her daughter to, a generator that runs when the national grid does not, and a founder whose private jet is a matter of public record and public pride.

She sowed (gave as a seed offering, expecting a return) forty thousand naira in February. It was the money for Chidi's school fees. The prophet had said that whoever sows into this altar in this season will not see lack this year, and she had felt the word land in her chest the way you feel a doctor's hand find the exact place that hurts. She gave it. Chidi is at home this term.

Her sister asks about the school fees and Ngozi says God is faithful, and means it, and also notices that she has changed the subject. She has begun to notice when she changes the subject. She has not told anyone she has begun to notice.

At the midweek service the pastor teaches that the harvest is delayed by the seeds we hold back, and she does the arithmetic that everyone in the row is doing and nobody in the row will say: if the harvest comes, the seed worked; if it does not, the seed was too small or the faith was. There is no result that the teaching cannot absorb. She has never heard anyone ask what would happen if a promise could not fail.

The church fed two hundred families in the flood and hers was one of them. Nobody handed out a form. Nobody asked whether they tithed (gave a tenth of their income to the church). That was real, and she will not have it explained away, and she has noticed that it is the first thing she says when anyone questions the church, and that it is being used to answer a question about money that it does not actually answer.

At night she reads that a commission in another country found that some churches were selling anointed water and that the courts got involved. She thinks about the small bottle in her cupboard that cost two thousand naira. She thinks about how she would explain that to Chidi. Then she prays, honestly, and the prayer is honest, and the shop opens at seven again.

The unanswered question

The widest gap between word and record

One cost of leaving, beside its denial

The strongest objection, answered

The objection. You are describing a handful of American televangelists and smearing hundreds of millions of people, most of them poor, most of them in churches that have never asked anyone for a seed.

What is true in it. That objection is largely correct and this page concedes it in full. Most Pentecostal congregations on earth are small, poor, locally led, and run by pastors who are not paid enough. The movement's founding was genuinely radical, its relief work is enormous and real, and the empires are a minority of the churches even though they are a majority of the broadcast.

The answer. And the instrument is still the instrument. The material here does not come from hostile outsiders: it comes from a US Senate committee's own published review, a South African state human-rights commission, a Korean criminal court and Brazilian prosecutors, and the ministries' own recorded and sold appeals. The honest position is that the majority of this movement is not the subject of this page and is also the group most damaged by what the page documents — which is exactly why its own pastors are the most credible people to fix it.

• A healthy church publishes annual accounts, independently audited, and gives them to members without being asked. A minority of Pentecostal churches do this, and it is the single clearest marker on this page.
• Offerings are taken without appeals that promise a specific return, and without anyone being called forward by amount.
• The congregation owns its own building, on a title deed the members can read.
• Healing prayer is offered alongside medicine, and pastors ask whether you have seen a doctor and mean it.
• The pastor holds a denominational credential that a real body can revoke, and the church has a safeguarding policy with an external reporting route.
• The pastor can be told no by a board they did not appoint, and has been, in living memory.
• These markers exist inside the movement. The Assemblies of God elects its General Superintendent and has revoked the credentials of its most famous preachers: it defrocked Jim Bakker in 1987 and dismissed Jimmy Swaggart in 1988 12. Hillsong Church London, a registered charity in the United Kingdom, files public accounts with the Charity Commission 20.

Pentecostalism began in the first decade of the twentieth century as a movement of the powerless. The Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles from 1906 was led by William J. Seymour, the son of formerly enslaved parents, in a building on a dirt street, and it was interracial at a moment when almost nothing in American life was. That is the movement's founding fact and it is a genuinely radical one: the Spirit was said to fall on anyone, without seminary, ordination, license, or white skin. The prosperity gospel that now dominates the movement's global broadcast face is a later graft — traceable through E. W. Kenyon's writings into Kenneth Hagin's Word of Faith teaching (the teaching that believers can claim health and wealth through faith spoken aloud) in the 1960s and 70s, then into the healing-revival and television economies, and finally into the megachurch empires of Lagos, São Paulo, Seoul, and Manila. The distance between Seymour's dirt street and a founder's private jet is the whole subject of this page.

Timeline

1. 1901–1906Charles Parham's Topeka school; then the Azusa Street revival under William J. Seymour, interracial and lay-ledAuthority located in personal experience rather than office — genuinely democratic, and structurally unaccountable from the first day, because an experience cannot be audited.
2. 1914The Assemblies of God organizes in Hot Springs, Arkansas — the movement's first large denominational structureThe moment part of the movement chose accountable structure. The Assemblies of God still elects its General Superintendent, which is why its record differs from the empires'.
3. 1940s–1950sThe healing revival economy: tent crusades, radio, and the first mass mail-order ministriesThe offering becomes a broadcast instrument. Giving is decoupled from a congregation that can see the books.
4. 1960s–1970sKenneth Hagin systematizes Word of Faith teaching, drawing on E. W. Kenyon; 'seed faith' enters mass circulation through Oral RobertsThe theological engine is installed: giving is reframed from duty into investment, with a guaranteed return. A promise that cannot fail is a promise that cannot be audited.
5. 1987–1989The collapse of PTL (Praise The Lord, Jim Bakker's television ministry); Jim Bakker convicted in 1989 on fraud and conspiracy charges over lifetime-partnership lodging sold many times overThe first proof that the instrument was legally actionable — and that it took a federal prosecution, not a church body, to establish it. COURT RECORD
6. 1980s–2000sExplosive growth outside the West: the Redeemed Christian Church of God and Living Faith in Nigeria, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Brazil, Yoido Full Gospel in SeoulThe movement's centre of gravity leaves America. So does most Western scrutiny of it.
7. 2007–2011US Senate Finance Committee inquiry under Senator Charles Grassley into six large media ministries; the 2011 review closes without penalties, and several ministries decline to provide full informationThe clearest demonstration in this codex of the church financial exemption in operation: a US Senate committee asked, and did not use its power to compel; staff said the committee lacked the time and resources to enforce subpoenas 31. GOVERNMENT REPORT
8. 2014Cho Yong-gi, founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul — for decades the largest congregation on earth — is convicted of breach of trust involving church funds and given a suspended sentenceA founder convicted in a criminal court while the church continued. The conviction came from the state; the congregation was not the mechanism. COURT RECORD
9. 2014A guesthouse of the Synagogue Church of All Nations collapses in Lagos, killing more than a hundred people, most of them foreign pilgrimsA mass-casualty event inside the pilgrimage economy, and a coroner's process that ran into obstruction. GOVERNMENT REPORT
10. 2017South Africa's CRL Rights Commission (the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities) publishes its report on the commercialisation of religion, documenting the sale of anointed products and 'miracle' practices, and recommending a peer-review licensing systemA state human-rights commission naming the instrument in public and proposing regulation — and the proposal being fought by churches across the spectrum, including ones with no stake in the abuses. GOVERNMENT REPORT
11. 2022–2023Brian Houston resigns as global senior pastor of Hillsong amid the church's own disclosures; in 2023 an Australian court acquits him of concealing his father's child sexual abuseBoth halves belong on the record: a resignation forced by disclosure, and an acquittal on the criminal charge. The codex reports outcomes, not the ones it would prefer. COURT RECORD
12. 2024A BBC Africa Eye investigation publishes extensive former-member testimony concerning the late T. B. Joshua and the Synagogue Church of All NationsThe founder had died in 2021 with no institutional process ever having examined him. The examination arrived three years late and from a newsroom. INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

Moments in the room

The movement divides into the classical denominations (Assemblies of God, Church of God in Christ, Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)), the charismatic renewal inside Catholic and mainline churches, and the neo-charismatic independent sector, which is the largest and least structured and is where the prosperity megachurches sit.

Pew counted about 584 million Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in 2011 14.

Size and shape

Authority

• There is no apex. This is the purest case in the codex of authority that is charismatic rather than institutional: a founder's authority rests on demonstrated anointing — prophecy, healing, growth — and there is no office above the founder to test the demonstration.
• Classical denominations are the exception and deserve to be named as one: the Assemblies of God elects its General Superintendent, and the Church of God in Christ elects its Presiding Bishop. Both hold real elections and revoke credentials — the Assemblies of God defrocked Jim Bakker in 1987 and Jimmy Swaggart in 1988. The independent megachurch sector has neither.
• In practice authority flows through 'spiritual covering' or 'spiritual fatherhood' — a personal submission relationship between a junior pastor and a senior one, unwritten, unenforceable, and terminable only by the senior party. It is the movement's real org chart and it appears in no constitution.

The top of the chain

Who holds what

Succession watch

Who can compel an answer

Several bodies can compel an answer: charity regulators where the ministry is registered (the UK Charity Commission and Australia's ACNC have both acted); consumer-protection and advertising-standards bodies on health and financial claims; state attorneys general in the US; and in South Africa the CRL Rights Commission, which has already published on precisely this. For the classical denominations there is also an internal route that genuinely works: the credentialing body can revoke a credential, and does.

Where it comes from

• This is the tradition where the codex's financial chapter is not an inference. The teaching states the mechanism out loud: money given to the ministry is a seed, and the seed produces a harvest. Giving is not framed as duty, gratitude, or solidarity. It is framed as an investment with a promised return, delivered by God, brokered by the ministry.
• The instrument's defining property is that it cannot fail. If the harvest arrives, the seed worked. If it does not, the seed was too small, the faith was weak, or the timing is God's. There is no observable outcome that counts against the promise — which is the exact definition of an unfalsifiable financial claim, and in any other sector it would be a regulated one.
• Layered above the tithe are first fruits (often a full month's income in January), prophetic and 'covenant' offerings, building funds, seed offerings taken during the sermon that teaches seed offerings, and, in the documented worst cases, the sale of anointed oil, water, stickers, and bracelets.
• The scale is enormous and largely unexamined. In the United States churches file no public Form 990 (the annual return other US charities must make public). In Nigeria and Brazil, the largest ministries own universities and broadcast networks. The Senate Finance Committee inquiry of 2007–2011 remains the most serious attempt at scrutiny anywhere, and it ended without penalties and without full disclosure. GOVERNMENT REPORT

Follow the money

Money in numbers

• Hillsong Church London, 2024: Donations made up £9.26m of its £10.61m income 20.
• Kingsway International Christian Centre (UK), year to March 2025: Income was £6.47m, of which £5.96m came from donations, and spending was £6.76m 21.
• PTL "lifetime partnerships": They were the scheme behind Jim Bakker's 1989 conviction on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy 3.
• Yoido Full Gospel Church: A court found a ₩13.15 billion loss to the church in the breach-of-trust case against its founder 5.

Information

• The movement's largest ministries own their own media — networks, publishing houses, streaming platforms, magazines. In Brazil, the Universal Church's founder owns a national broadcast network. A member's information about their own church is frequently produced by their own church.
• Prophetic authority extends to information itself: a word from the pulpit that critics are sent by the enemy is not framed as an opinion about journalism but as revelation about journalists.
• The independent sector has no denominational press office, no archive, no minutes, and no institutional memory — so a founder's account of the founder's history is often the only account that exists.
• Testimony culture is genuinely powerful and structurally one-sided: the healed testify publicly, the unhealed leave quietly, and the resulting evidence base is a survivorship record presented as a success rate.

Children

• Children in prosperity congregations absorb the arithmetic early: the family's poverty is a spiritual diagnosis. That is a heavy thing to teach a child about their own parents.
• School fees are one of the most commonly documented casualties of seed-faith giving, which means the instrument's cost frequently lands on a specific child's education. FORMER MEMBER TESTIMONY
• Deliverance practices (prayer to drive out evil spirits) applied to children — for disobedience, illness, or in the documented worst cases accusations of witchcraft — have produced criminal prosecutions and are the subject of standing UNICEF and NGO campaigns in several countries; UNICEF's study of children accused of witchcraft in Africa documents the practice 19. GOVERNMENT REPORT
• Where the church runs the school and charges the fees, the same institution receiving the family's offerings decides the child's academic future.

Bodies

• The movement ordained women decades before most denominations would, and that is a real and under-credited fact: Aimee Semple McPherson founded a denomination in 1927.
• The megachurch empires have largely reversed the inheritance. Founders' wives hold enormous informal power and almost never the office; succession runs to sons.
• Deliverance ministry is disproportionately applied to women's bodies and behaviour — barrenness, singleness, illness, and 'spiritual husbands' (spirits believed to marry women in dreams and block marriage) are recurring themes in documented testimony. INVESTIGATIVE REPORT
• The vulnerability is structural rather than doctrinal: a private prophetic relationship between a powerful man and a person in crisis, with no chaperone requirement, no records, and no complaints process.

Thirty named techniques from domestic-abuse and social-psychology research, applied to institutions, in the eight stages of the cycle. Each carries an evidence grade for this tradition.

All thirty at a glance

Stage 1 · Idealize

Stage 2 · Hook

Stage 3 · Devalue

Stage 4 · Confuse

Stage 5 · Isolate

Stage 6 · Extract

Stage 7 · Discard

Stage 8 · Replace

What they say, what the record shows

Accountability or theatre?

Last time the chair ran. It has run repeatedly, and almost always from outside: the PTL prosecution, the Senate inquiry, the CRL report, the Seoul breach-of-trust conviction, the Hillsong disclosures. In the independent sector, no internal body has ever run it on a founder.

Who holds the chair now. Nobody holds it in most of the movement. In the classical denominations an elected superintendent or presiding bishop holds it and can genuinely be voted out, which is why this page treats those bodies separately.

Prediction. The next scandal in the independent sector will be handled the way the last ones were: a statement about attack from the enemy, no external review, and no change of ownership. In the classical denominations, expect a credential revocation and a published process — the difference between the two is a constitution.

Words used here

What leaving costs

• Leaving is legally free and socially expensive, and the expense is concentrated in exactly the places where the movement is strongest: immigrant communities, diaspora congregations, and towns where the church is also the school, the clinic, the credit network, and the employer.
• The specific exit tax here is financial and irreversible. A person who leaves after a decade of seed-faith giving leaves with the giving gone, no equity in the building, and frequently no savings — and the teaching that explained the giving also explains the loss as their own failure of faith.
• The most common documented exit is not a departure but a slow, unannounced fade — because there is no membership roll to resign from and no one to tell.

The ledger of exit

How the cost is denied

Who benefits

• Founders and their families benefit. They own the ministries, the property, the media, and increasingly the succession.
• The conference and speaker circuit benefits. It is a genuine international economy in which platform access is traded between ministries.
• The ministries' commercial arms benefit. The universities, broadcasters, and publishers are capitalised by offerings and owned privately.
• Politicians in several countries benefit, trading access and favourable regulation for the endorsement of congregations numbering in the millions.

Money out, leverage back

• The relief work is enormous and frequently better than the state's — flood relief, food programmes, addiction recovery, and schools that function where public ones do not. In parts of Africa and Latin America the church is the only institution that shows up.
• That record produces standing, standing produces political access, political access produces regulatory protection, and regulatory protection is what keeps the accounts closed. The chain is the point, and it runs in that order.
• The hospitals and schools are also revenue businesses charging fees to the same population that funds them through offerings.

Who pays

• The poorest members pay the most, because unfalsifiable financial promises extract the most where the need is greatest and the alternative is nothing.
• Children pay when their school fees become seed.
• The sick pay where healing teaching delays medical treatment, the most severe documented harm on this page.
• Junior pastors pay. Their entire professional existence depends on a covering relationship they cannot afford to question.
• Honest Pentecostal pastors, the large majority, pay with reputations spent by the empires' conduct, and they are the movement's most credible reformers.

Where the weight lands

The costs in section 15 do not fall evenly. They fall hardest on people with the least room to refuse and the fewest places to go outside the church. The table names who carries the most, how, and what makes it worse. Two instances are on the record elsewhere on this page: school fees given as seed (section 11), and a Hillsong College student indecently assaulted by a staff member, who pleaded guilty in 2020 (section 19) 22.

Most of a ministry's work is done below the founder, by people who see how the money moves without deciding where it goes. The table sets out what each group does, what it sees, what it is asked to do and what it could refuse. In the classical denominations the credentialing officers hold one of the few real levers: the Assemblies of God used its credentialing process against Jim Bakker in 1987 and Jimmy Swaggart in 1988 12.

It has been broken before

Promises on the record

What would change this page

Any of the major prosperity ministries publishing audited accounts including founder compensation and the title deeds of its properties — voluntarily, without a subpoena — would revise this page's central financial findings at the root. A register of prophecies with dates and outcomes would revise the rest.

• Costi Hinn. The nephew of the faith-healer Benny Hinn, he worked his uncle's crusades, left the prosperity movement, and wrote God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel (2019) 2324.
• Anna Crenshaw. She was a student at Hillsong College when a Hillsong staff member indecently assaulted her; he pleaded guilty in 2020. In 2022 she took Hillsong to court over its handling of the assault 22. A settlement in principle in April 2024 fell through over a non-disclosure clause, and her claim against Hillsong continued after her claim against the staff member settled in July 2024 3233.
• The former disciples of T. B. Joshua. More than 30 of them described abuse at the Synagogue Church of All Nations to BBC Africa Eye in 2024 13.
• The Assemblies of God presbyters of 1987–88. These elected officials, who oversee the denomination's ministers, used their own credentialing process against the movement's biggest stars 12.

In closing

The Spirit you felt in that room is not the subject of this page, and no part of it has argued that your experience was manufactured. The movement that produced it began among the poorest people in America and gave authority to a Black preacher in 1906 when no institution in the country would. That inheritance is real and it belongs to you.

What this page argues is narrower and harder: that a specific financial instrument was grafted onto that inheritance in the middle of the last century, that it is taught out loud on recordings the ministries themselves sell, that it cannot fail by design, and that the people it extracts most from are the people with the least. A Senate committee, a state human-rights commission, and courts and prosecutors on four continents have all touched it. Not one internal body has ever acted on the instrument itself.

You do not have to leave to test any of this. The title deed is public. The accounts either exist or they do not. Ask for them once, calmly, and watch what happens to the temperature of the room — because in a healthy church that question is answered with a document, and nobody's face changes.

Practical guidance, not legal advice.

1. Stop the pledges first. Cancel recurring "seed", partnership and building-fund payments in writing and through your bank.
2. Your health decisions are yours. No healing promise replaces a doctor; tell your doctor what you were told.
3. If you work for the church, get your employment terms in writing before you announce anything.
4. If a church is a UK charity, you can report concerns to the Charity Commission 9; in Australia, the ACNC 10.
5. If you were abused, go to the police first, not the pastor.
6. Find support 252627.

Checked 2026-09-27.

Courts, government and regulators

1. UPI, "Assemblies of God defrocks Bakker" (6 May 1987). https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/05/06/Assemblies-of-God-defrocks-Bakker/6768547272000/
2. Christianity Today, "Why the Assemblies Dismissed Swaggart" (May 1988). https://www.christianitytoday.com/1988/05/why-assemblies-dismissed-swaggart/
3. Jim Bakker convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy, 5 Oct 1989 (PTL "lifetime partnerships") — UPI archive. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/10/05/Bakker-convicted-on-all-24-fraud-and-conspiracy-counts/6239623563200/
4. US Senate Finance Committee review of six media ministries (Grassley), 2007–6 Jan 2011 — NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna40960871
5. Korea Times, "Pastor Cho gets suspended jail term" (20 Feb 2014 — breach of trust and tax evasion; ₩13.15bn loss to Yoido Full Gospel Church; 3 years suspended for 5, ₩5bn fine). https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/20140220/pastor-cho-gets-suspended-jail-term
6. Vanguard, "Building Collapse: How coroner indicted T.B. Joshua's Synagogue church" (July 2015 — 116 dead on 12 Sept 2014; "criminal negligence"; Joshua the only summoned witness who refused to testify). https://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/07/building-collapse-how-coroner-indicted-joshuas-synagogue-church/
7. CRL Rights Commission (South Africa), Report on the Commercialisation of Religion and Abuse of People's Belief Systems (2017) — documents the sale of water, oils and other items to congregants; proposes peer-review committees and registration of religious practitioners through umbrella bodies. https://pmg.org.za/files/170627Believe_Systems.pdf
8. The Rio Times, "Statute of Limitations Bars Sentencing of Church Founder Macedo" — São Paulo prosecutors' 2009 charges expired without verdict; never convicted. https://www.riotimesonline.com/criminal-charges-against-universal-churchs-founder-edir-macedo-prescribe/
9. Charity Commission for England and Wales, inquiry report on Kingsway International Christian Centre (published 14 December 2016; inquiry 2011–2016 — mismanagement in the administration of the charity over a £5 million investment; interim manager in post 31 January 2014 to 14 May 2015, working alongside trustees who kept running the charity's religious activities). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/577308/kingsway_international_christian_centre.pdf
10. Hillsong Church, "A Statement … in relation to the ACNC" (Dec 2024 — compliance agreements and an undertaking resolving the ACNC's inquiries). https://hillsong.com/newsroom/blog/2024/12/a-statement-by-hillsong-church-in-relation-to-the-acnc/
11. TheCable, "CAMA 2020: On the contentious Section 839" — Nigeria's power to suspend trustees of religious bodies, opposed by the Christian Association of Nigeria. https://www.thecable.ng/cama-2020-on-the-contentious-section-839/
12. ABC News (Australia), Brian Houston acquitted of concealing his father's abuse (17 Aug 2023). https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-17/brian-houston-verdict-hillsong-concealing-child-sexual-abuse/102739578

Investigations and scholarship

13. BBC Africa Eye, Disciples: The Cult of TB Joshua (3 parts from 8 Jan 2024; 30+ former members interviewed). https://allafrica.com/stories/202401080015.html
14. Pew Research Center, Global Christianity — Movements and Denominations (2011) — ~584 million Pentecostal and charismatic Christians. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/12/19/global-christianity-movements-and-denominations/
15. Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Pentecostalism" — Parham's Topeka school (1901); Azusa Street (1906) under William J. Seymour, son of formerly enslaved parents; Assemblies of God organized at Hot Springs, Arkansas (1914); Aimee Semple McPherson's Foursquare Church (incorporated 1927). https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pentecostalism
16. Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (Oxford UP, 2013) — Kenyon → Hagin → Word of Faith; Oral Roberts and "seed faith". https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blessed-9780190280376
17. Grupo Record — owned by Edir Macedo since 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupo_Record
18. Officeholders in office in 2026: Enoch Adeboye (Redeemed Christian Church of God), David Oyedepo (Living Faith Church Worldwide) and Edir Macedo (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God). Adeboye: ThisDay (Lagos), 1 Mar 2026. https://www.thisdaylive.com/2026/03/01/tinubu-wife-felicitate-rccg-general-overseer-pastor-enoch-adeboye-at-84/ Oyedepo: Leadership (Nigeria), 2026, https://leadership.ng/oyedepo-urges-christians-to-get-pvcs-determine-who-governs-them/. Macedo: Portal de Prefeitura, July 2026, https://portaldeprefeitura.com.br/religiao/igreja-universal-marca-presenca-em-151-paises/624337/
19. UNICEF, Children Accused of Witchcraft: An anthropological study of contemporary practices in Africa (A. Cimpric, 2010). https://www.unicef.org/nigeria/reports/children-accused-witchcraft

Further sources

20. Charity Commission for England and Wales, Hillsong Church London (charity 1120355), financial history 2020–2024. https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/4019447/financial-history
21. Charity Commission for England and Wales, Kingsway International Christian Centre (charity 1102114), financial history 2021–2025. https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/4006064/financial-history
22. Hillsong Church, "A statement by Hillsong Church in response to the legal proceedings commenced by Anna Crenshaw" (3 May 2024); it predates the collapse of the April 2024 settlement, for which see 32 and 33. https://hillsong.com/newsroom/blog/2024/05/a-statement-by-hillsong-church-in-response-to-the-legal-proceedings-commenced-by-anna-crenshaw/
23. The Gospel Coalition, review of Costi Hinn, God, Greed, and the (Prosperity) Gospel (Zondervan, 2019). https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/god-greed-prosperity-gospel/
24. Christian Today, "Benny Hinn's nephew slams prosperity gospel, reveals why he left affluent lifestyle behind" (10 Apr 2018). https://www.christiantoday.com/news/benny-hinns-nephew-slams-prosperity-gospel-reveals-why-he-left-affluent-lifestyle-behind
25. Recovering from Religion — (844) 368-2848. https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/
26. Faith to Faithless (Humanists UK) — helpline 0800 448 0748 (freephone; Monday 10:00–13:00, Wednesday 10:00–13:00, Thursday 16:00–19:00 UK time). https://humanists.uk/faith-to-faithless/helpline/
27. International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). https://internationalculticstudies.org/
28. NAPAC — 0808 801 0331. https://napac.org.uk/calling-our-support-line/
29. Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline — 1-800-422-4453. https://childhelphotline.org/
30. RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline — 1-800-656-4673. https://rainn.org/learn-about-rainn/contact-us/
31. Christianity Today, report on the end of the Grassley investigation into six ministries (Jan 2011) — a three-year probe; four of the six did not provide full information; staff did not issue subpoenas, citing the committee's time and resources. https://christianitytoday.com/news/2011/january/grassley-investigation-ends-with-no-penalty-for.html
32. The Roys Report, "Abuse victim Crenshaw rejects Hillsong settlement over NDA" (May 2024) — the in-principle settlement of 29 April 2024 and her refusal of a non-disclosure clause. https://roysreport.com/abuse-victim-crenshaw-rejects-hillsong-settlement-over-nda/
33. The Other Cheek, "Anna Crenshaw settles with Jason Mays but not the Hillsong Church" (6 Jul 2024) — claim against the staff member settled 5 July 2024; claim against Hillsong continued, trial set for February 2025. https://theothercheek.com.au/anna-crenshaw-settles-with-jason-mays-but-not-the-hillsong-church/
34. Hillsong Church, Australia Board Report (Dec 2022) — the governance review assisted by Murray Baird and Nick Barnett. https://cdn.hillsong.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/09022544/1.-Australia-Board-Report-1.pdf
35. Korea JoongAng Daily, "Rev. Cho Yong-gi, 85, founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church, dies" (Sept 2021) — Cho stepped down in 2008 and appointed Lee Young-hoon as his successor. https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/korea/rev-cho-yong-gi-85-founder-of-yoido-full-gospel-church-dies/11088233
36. Assemblies of God, AG News, "Business Sessions Begin with Key Elections and Reports" (Aug 2025) — Doug Clay re-elected General Superintendent at the 61st General Council. https://news.ag.org/en/articles/news/2025/08/business-sessions-begin-with-key-elections-and-reports
37. Church of God in Christ, "General Assembly Reelects Bishop J. Drew Sheard as Presiding Bishop" (12 Nov 2024). https://www.cogic.org/blog/2024/11/12

• 2026-10-03: Corrected the length of the Senate inquiry to three years, the status of Anna Crenshaw's case against Hillsong, and the dates and findings of the Charity Commission's action at Kingsway International Christian Centre. Rewrote claims that no internal body had ever acted, since the Assemblies of God removed Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. Corrected the size of the movement against Pew's count, the disclosure scorecard, the ages of the founders, and seven technique grades; removed the claim that a state commission documented door-closing and calling givers by amount, and the unsourced banks and airlines; named the current Assemblies of God and Church of God in Christ leaders; linked the South African commission's report; and added seven sources.
• 2026-09-27: Added Branches, Law & state, Money in numbers (Hillsong London accounts 2020–2024), five documented cases, Voices from inside, Leaving safely and Where to get help.