Philadelphia Church of God / Gerald Flurry

The Philadelphia Church of God (PCG) was founded in December 1989 in Edmond, Oklahoma by Gerald Flurry (born 1935) and John Amos after their disfellowship from the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) for criticising the Tkach-era doctrinal reforms that were moving WCG away from Herbert W Armstrong's distinctive Sabbatarian / British-Israelist theology. Flurry's 1990 booklet Malachi's Message to God's Church Today claimed that WCG under Joseph Tkach had become the 'Laodicean' apostate church of Revelation 3:14-22, and that PCG was the faithful 'Philadelphian' remnant of Revelation 3:7-13.

The Armstrongite background matters for understanding PCG's distinctive coercive-control profile. Herbert W Armstrong (1892-1986) founded WCG and built it into a global ministry of approximately 150,000 members at its peak, distinctive for: (1) Saturday Sabbath; (2) British-Israelism (the doctrine that British and American peoples are the literal descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel); (3) a three-tithe system (10% on income for the church, a second 10% saved for Holy-Day attendance, a third 10% every third year for the poor); (4) annual observance of the seven Old Testament feasts; (5) prohibition of birthdays, Christmas, Easter, military service. After Armstrong's 1986 death and the Tkach-era reforms (1986-1995), WCG eventually became a mainstream evangelical denomination (now Grace Communion International), and multiple Armstrongite splinters formed: PCG (Flurry), Restored Church of God (David Pack), Living Church of God (Roderick Meredith), and United Church of God being the largest.

PCG under Flurry is documented as the most coercively controlling of these splinters. Distinctive PCG patterns include: (1) media ban: members are formally prohibited from watching network television, secular movies, or non-PCG religious media; the prohibition includes news media — members are expected to receive news only through PCG's own Trumpet magazine; (2) formal shunning of disfellowshipped members: PCG enforces 'no contact' between current members and disfellowshipped members or family who have left, including parent-child separation; (3) Flurry's claim to be 'That Prophet': Flurry has identified himself in PCG publications as 'That Prophet' of John 1:21 (referencing Deuteronomy 18:18) and as the 'fourth horseman' of Revelation 6 — a level of personal-prophet identification beyond Armstrong's own; (4) child-discipline doctrine: the PCG booklet The God Family Vision (and Flurry's Pedagogue to Bring Us to Christ) prescribe specific corporal-punishment practices; multiple child-abuse-cover-up civil suits 2010s-2020s; (5) 'That Prophet' personal lifestyle: Flurry has documented substantial personal wealth and the PCG-funded purchase of property including Armstrong's original Auditorium in Pasadena; (6) continuous three-tithe financial extraction.

Documented litigation includes the Exit and Support Network archive of multiple parental-rights cases where PCG enforcement of shunning split families, and a series of 2010s-2020s child-protective-services cases (Oklahoma and other states) involving PCG-member parents who applied PCG corporal-punishment doctrine and faced state intervention. Estimated current membership is approximately 6,000-7,000 across the US, UK, Australia, Africa, and Latin America.

The CLCI 31 (Extreme, lower boundary) reflects the formal shunning policy, the media ban, the three-tithe financial extraction, the 'That Prophet' personal identification, and the documented child-abuse-cover-up pattern. PCG is one of the most clearly documented small-scale Extreme-band coercive-control Christian organisations operating in the contemporary US.