By Tony Mator - Posted at MinistryWatch:
Published September 2, 2025
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.
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