Trump’s volunteers: the ‘beautiful ladies’ from a cult-like evangelical church

All are members of an evangelical charismatic Christian church in the tiny town of Spindale (population 4,238) in western North Carolina. The church, Word of Faith Fellowship, has for decades drawn controversy over its cultish insularity and its treatment of children and adults who have been judged by church leaders to be sinners. As church leaders have acknowledged in legal proceedings, Word of Faith relies on a practice known as “strong” or “blasting” prayer. Former church members have described the entire congregation surrounding and screaming at a single member for as long as an hour in an effort to expunge the evil from the person. Church officials say this characterisation is overstated. Beginning with a report by the TV news journal “Inside Edition” in 1995 and culminating in an investigative series by two Associated Press reporters that would become a book in 2020, numerous former church members have come forward and described being physically assaulted during such prayers. In an interview, Matthew Fenner, a former congregant who told the AP reporters that he was 19 when he was blasted and beaten by five church members in 2013 for being gay, said that Word of Faith rationalised its brutal treatment of him and others.