MEANWHILE...

Source : 15/06/1989 Northampton Chronicle and Echo

From small beginnings in the popular Northampton village of Bugbrooke has grown a religious organisation now spanning the length and breadth of the Midlands - a vast multi-million-pound empire embracing property and business interest all over the country.

Tonight the Jesus Army is the focus of a hard-hitting documentary which asks: Jesus Army - Church or Cult? (Anglia 10.35pm).

Its recruitment drive among drug addicts and prostitutes has won it both friends and enemies and further controversy came in recent years with sensational national press allegations that the organisation brain-washed its members into absolute obedience and encouraged them to pour their personal wealth and possessions into its growing empire.

Reporter Bernard Jackson goes in search of the facts.