In Reply to: Re: The link between Berg and Mad Pastor John Hagee posted by Farmer on May 08, 2008 at 00:59:25:
Farmer, when you say AOG I assume you are referring to the Assemblies of God. I'm interested in the links between Berg and other charismatics/fundamentalists/evangelicals etc., probably for reasons opposite to yours. I was raised a Catholic, so that whole charismatic, evangelical world was foreign to me. That's partly why it was so easy for Berg's followers to convince me that they truly were different from any other Christians. I honestly thought that holding hands in prayer circles, "holy" hugs, etc. were Berg "inventions".
On my blog I recently posted some articles about the abuse scandal surrounding Mercy Ministries in Australia, a front group for the Hillsong Assemblies of God church in Sydney.
I was contacted by a reader, "a survivor of a coercive dominionist group", who provided me some very interesting information and links about that church. Similarities to how TF has/does operate are obvious. Here's part of what he wrote to me:
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As for Mercy Ministries--Mercy Ministries is a known frontgroup of Hillsong Assemblies of God church in Sydney, Australia--Hillsong being a particularly abusive Assemblies church which has been the subject of an ongoing expose in Australian press and a damning book by walkaway Tanya Levin (which Hillsong actively tried to stop being published by intimidating publishers via SLAPPs). Levin ended up being a "throwaway" after she revealed her concerns ().
This is far from the only incidents of abusive "rehab" facilities operated by the Assemblies of God--many similar cases, less well publicised, exist in the United States. Dream Center, a chain of "faith based rehabs" operated by the Assemblies of God (and in particular its western US regional division), has been the subject of abuse complaints including not only forced prosyletisation of Hurricane Katrina refugees as a condition of receiving aid (at Dream Center Los Angeles) and mistreatment of Hurricane Katrina refugees in general ( and ) but have had registered child sex offenders working with minors () in violation of state law at Dream Center St. Louis. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has detailed the case extensively: (archive of original article by permission)
Dream Center in general requires conversion to Assemblies theology as a condition of receiving aid () and this is common across practically all Assemblies-linked aid groups ().
I have also recently completed a 9-part series documenting systematic religious abuse at Teen Challenge, an Assemblies "faith-based rehab" chain targeting minors and young adults that is increasingly being used as a form of diversionary sentencing in lieu of imprisonment.
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That writer then included links to his 9 articles on Teen Challenge, which expose the coercive and abusive program, and is part of the Assemblies of God. For convenience I've posted all 9 links in one article on my blog at