Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Charged Christian institutions & contexts Evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent Franco da Rocha, São Paulo, Brazil · 2018

Brazil: labor prosecutors sue a Word of Faith Fellowship-linked church for forced labor of congregants

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Charged

Authority role

pastors using deliverance/spiritual-control doctrine, affiliated church leadership (Word of Faith Fellowship, US)

Organization

Ministério Evangélico Comunidade Rhema, Word of Faith Fellowship (US affiliate)

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Pastoral spiritual authority and a 'deliverance'/demon-purging control doctrine were used to override congregants' free will and self-determination, which the labor prosecutor cited as the coercive mechanism constituting labor analogous to slavery.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2018-01-01 · civil action filed by government labor prosecutor

    Ministério Público do Trabalho (Public Labor Prosecutor's Office), 2ª Região (São Paulo), Brazil. Brazil's Public Labor Prosecutor's Office filed a civil action (case no. 1000125-39.2018.5.02.0292) against Ministério Evangélico Comunidade Rhema and its school, alleging pastors used psychological coercion to nullify congregants' free will, compelling unpaid labor and funneling young members to the US as unpaid laborers under the guise of 'Spiritual Seminars' run by Word of Faith Fellowship. The prosecutor sought dissolution of the church/school and damages.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • psychological coercion to override congregants' free will
  • unpaid labor framed through 'spiritual seminars'

Cited record

Sources

official prosecuting authority charging report 'Igreja é processada por exploração de mão de obra de fiéis', Ministério Público do Trabalho, 2ª Região (2018).

The Brazilian labor prosecutor's office documents its civil action alleging the church used spiritual coercion to compel unpaid labor.

local reporting charging corroboration 'Brazilian prosecutors sue to shut church over forced labor', WLOS (2018).

Corroborates the Brazilian labor-prosecutor action against the Word of Faith Fellowship-linked church.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis
https://www.prt2.mpt.mp.br/542-igreja-e-processada-por-exploracao-de-mao-de-obra-de-fieis Corpus classification: official-prosecuting-authority; evidentiary role: charging-report. SHA-256 ee0a2eb7b0619f77130203562e1d2b46998eab2737af10c6d494ea5570d33022
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis
https://wlos.com/news/local/brazilian-prosecutors-sue-to-shut-church-over-forced-labor Corpus classification: local-reporting; evidentiary role: charging-corroboration. SHA-256 3376445a64e46d54bf377310c69cde43619895d4aa77fbdb2e76be9b4504b992
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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