Ministry Helps Christians Escape ‘High-Control’ Churches
Group encourages believers to rebuild—not deconstruct—their faith
Photo via Facebook @Berean Holiness
Natalie Edmonson says she was a model student when she graduated as the 2017 valedictorian of Free Gospel Bible Institute (FGBI), a small Holiness-affiliated Bible school hidden among the rural back roads of Export, Pennsylvania.
Edmonson had followed all the rules, kept her head down and avoided challenging authority. But when she subsequently confessed to church leaders her disagreement with the Holiness teaching that its strict dress code was necessary for salvation, the response shook her.
“I lost my ministry positions, my church, and the place I was living,” Edmonson said. “As rumors of my ‘backsliding’ spread, friends were forbidden from speaking to me, mentors ghosted me, and I found myself utterly alone, living out of my car in a state where I didn’t know a soul.”
That crisis, combined with what she described on her ministry’s website as watching many “Jesus-loving teenagers” crumble under “undeserved rebukes, impossible workloads and spiritual manipulation,” inspired her to take action.
In 2019, Edmonson and her brother, Nathan Mayo, cofounded Berean Holiness, a ministry to help Christians escape “hyper fundamentalist” or “high-control” churches.
“Hyper fundamentalism is a fear-driven distortion of Christianity, characterized by extra-biblical rules, authoritarianism, tribalism and elitism,” Edmonson said, noting that such characteristics are prevalent in a number of groups, such as Oneness Pentecostalism and Independent Fundamental Baptists.
Through its website, social media, YouTube videos, one-on-one interactions and other means, Berean Holiness also aims to counter what it considers an alarming trend: hyper fundamentalists whose disenchantment leads them to abandon the faith altogether.
Natalie Edmonson / Photo via Berean Holiness
“There are millions of people in hyper fundamentalism, and in part due to the internet and social media, people are exiting these groups en masse,” Edmonson said. “Right now, it’s the anti-Christian deconstruction movement that is reaching most of these people in their highly vulnerable season, with the aim of turning them away from Christ. Our goal is to reach them first with free, faith-based resources, but to do that at the scale that is needed is going to take a lot of growth.”
“I’m still a very conservative Christian,” Mayo, a former Army captain and missionary to Haiti, wrote in his online testimony. “Around half of the Holiness young people I grew up with ended up leaving God altogether…And those who stay don’t do much for the lost except insult them.”
Berean Holiness operates with a team of just three paid staff members. Edmonson is executive director, and Mayo chairs its four-member board. But for a small ministry with such a niche concern, its reach is noteworthy.
In 2024 alone, the ministry reported 62,850 website visitors and over five million people reached through social media. Its Facebook page has about 12,000 followers. Edmonson noted that after the ministry’s Instagram page jumped to over 20,000 followers, she had to scale back her social media outreach because she lacked the capacity to handle all the people asking for help in leaving their churches.
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Hyper fundamentalist leaders have also taken notice. One group denounced Berean Holiness as “bitter bloggers.” The ministry posted a video montage of various churches speaking out against it.
“There’s a new movement out there. It’s called Berean Holiness, and they’re tearing apart everything that God’s word has instructed us to do, all because a few people got hurt in church,” one pastor says from a pulpit.
“They’re coming after your children and mine,” another pastor warns. “They are a ravening wolf.”
The leadership may have good reason to worry. In annual surveys taken by Berean Holiness in 2023 and 2024, over 600 respondents said the ministry played a role in their departure from hyper fundamentalism and the rebuilding of healthy faith. Over 400 said it influenced them to change their beliefs in Holiness standards.
Testimonials on the ministry’s website fill in details of what that experience looks like.
“When I came across your account I could hardly believe a resource like that existed,” wrote Genny. “It’s like you were talking to me and the exact belief system and unhealthy church setting I was raised in. Reading your content gave me so much courage, clarity and peace while I was in the middle of untangling the truth about God from the twisted rules I’d been fed my whole life. You helped give me the strength to leave that church movement this spring. Thank you for letting God use you in this way.”
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