A Booming Church and its Complicated, Ugly Past
The New York Times’s Sharon Otterman profiles Zarephath Christian Church, a “dynamic evangelical congregation” in central New Jersey that includes a new $12-million sanctuary and Christian radio station. Otterman writes that the church has a problematic history as a congregation of the Pillar of Fire, a Methodist offshoot that endorsed the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century. In February, the church’s charismatic preacher Rob Cruver announced that he was stepping down as the congregation’s leader after admitting to an extramarital affair.