The AP Investigation and the Brazilian Branches

Word of Faith Fellowship became a national story in 2017, when the Associated Press published a series based on interviews with dozens of former members of the Spindale, North Carolina congregation. The reporting described blasting, the church's practice of loud, prolonged deliverance prayer aimed at expelling devils, as escalating in accounts of ex members into physical restraint and beating; it also documented how members employed at businesses owned by congregants reported donating unemployment benefits during the recession, which led to guilty pleas by several members for fraud, and how church members held positions in local prosecution and law enforcement that former members said had shielded the congregation from earlier complaints.

A further strand followed the church to Brazil, where affiliated congregations in Franco da Rocha and Sao Joaquim de Bicas sent young Brazilians to Spindale; former participants described confiscated passports and unpaid labour at members' businesses, prompting investigations by Brazilian labour authorities. The church and its founder Jane Whaley have denied all abuse, characterising the accounts as attacks on its worship, and criminal cases over specific assaults produced mixed results, including mistrials. The AP series won journalism awards and the congregation continues, its schools and businesses intact, leaving the fellowship as a standing American test of where the free exercise of vigorous religion ends and coercion begins.