Fear to freedom: Family urges others to leave faith-healing PA church they now call a cult

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania — Amanda Kuykendall was 12 years old when she first questioned the teachings of a faith-healing church in Pennsylvania she now calls a cult.

Those doubts eventually led Kuykendall, now 44, to leave the Mechanicsburg branch of the Faith Tabernacle Congregation in 2008. She said she hit her breaking point when she took her 5-year-old son to the doctor, and a church member told him he was going to hell.

The church—with branches in Philadelphia, Lebanon, Mechanicsburg, Altoona and Shippensburg—has a history of child deaths dating back to 1906, with mixed success in charging those involved, according to researchers and county officials. Two Lebanon County parents were charged with endangering the welfare of children in April, and a Berks County couple charged in a case that made national news in 2017.

Kuykendall’s decision to leave was one that led church members to shun her, isolating her from her family.

Now, the brother-sister duo wants to encourage other people who are still part of Faith Tabernacle to look deeper into their hearts.

Both are still devout Christians who live to serve God but said they have also found freedom in leaving a church they say isn’t living what it’s teaching.

It wasn’t until 2020 that her brother, Johannes Notz, now 35, followed Kuykendall out of the church.

Now, the brother-sister duo wants to encourage other people who are still part of Faith Tabernacle to look deeper into their hearts.

Both are still devout Christians who live to serve God but said they have also found freedom in leaving a church they say isn’t living what it’s teaching.

“Our family is such a testimony to what God’s love can do and how it can break down those walls,” Kuykendall said. “Even after how many years of being shunned.”

Forging a path forward

Amanda’s Story

From a young age, Kuykendall wasn’t allowed to ask questions about their religion, which controlled nearly every aspect of her family’s lives.

Their faith dictated where they went to school, what they wore, the length of their hair, what they could and couldn’t do for fun, who they could be friends with, what happened when you got sick, who you can marry, and how women serve their husbands.

“It felt like if it got to a certain point where when they didn’t have an answer, then they’d shut down, it’d be like, ‘Well, you don’t disrespect a pastor,’ or, ‘you don’t have enough faith,’” Kuykendall said.

She said Faith Tabernacle Congregation denies medical care, and other worldly things, because it encourages its members to trust in God, not in man—including doctors.

Kuykendall remembers when her sister was 14 and dislocated her knee. She said her family didn’t take her to a doctor as she lay in pain on the couch, her kneecap out of place. Instead, she said, they called a church member with medical experience to take a look.

Kuykendall asked her mother, what is the difference between this man looking at her sister’s knee and a doctor?

She said she never really got a straight answer.

“I was labeled as rebellious and not having enough faith,” Kuykendall said. “So questions were just not welcomed growing up.”

Kuykendall herself would not see a doctor until her twenties.

She said she questioned the church up until her son turned 5 in 2008. She stepped away from the norm and sent him to kindergarten, where a school nurse said he had fluid in his ears and would need to see a doctor.

“My mom was praying that I wouldn't go,” Kuykendall said. “A lot of family members came up to me and told me that you just don’t have enough faith, and try to instill a fear, even though I don’t think that was in their heart.”

Kuykendall ultimately took her son, who had so much fluid in his ears, doctors said his hearing was equivalent to holding his head underwater. They put tubes in his ears to remove the fluid.

The breaking point came at a later church service. Kuykendall said another member told the 5-year-old boy he was going to hell for seeing a doctor.

“I decided I definitely cannot stay at this church,” she said. “I am not going to have my son being told he’s going to hell for going to a doctor.”

That year, Kuykendall became the first in her family to leave Faith Tabernacle.

When asked how that felt, Amanda’s voice broke.

“Really hard,” she said. “I was always a black sheep anyway, so it just confirmed that.”

Kuykendall said her relationship with her family and friends was also complicated by the fact she married a divorced man—something not allowed by “church rules.”

“But I was like, I don’t feel it’s wrong," Kuykendall continued. "I’m not going to continue to live a lie off of somebody else’s so-called convictions when I know in my heart it’s not wrong.”

At that point, her brother said he was basically told he couldn’t talk to her anymore.

“When she married her husband there were differences her and I had about it,” Notz said. “I didn’t agree with her. And it was in our immediate family where Amanda was unfairly judged by me and my other sisters and family.”

Kuykendall may have left her church and many in her family, but she found “total freedom” with a closer relationship with God, she said.

Kuykendall said it took her many years to think of Faith Tabernacle as a cult, and while she still doesn’t like to call it that, she said, she dislikes “untruths” even more.

“My walk with God is no longer just following rules and keeping up a good front like too many there believe it is,” she said.

Johnny’s Story

Notz first doubted the church after the death of his mother in 2008. He said she’d been sick his entire life after she gave birth to him.

All births within the church are home births, helped along by women called “midwives,” although, Kuykendall said, they are not trained or certified as such. She said they are simply women who have been around births or had kids themselves.

Their mother got worse around July of 2008, when Notz was 17.

He believes she had a stroke and lost feeling in the right side of her body. She had large boils on her legs he and his siblings would help drain.

She was in constant pain but refused to see a doctor, despite Kuykendall’s pleas. She became bedridden.

Notz said he was always taught that God would save those who follow church rules.

“In my mind, because growing up in the church, it was like, ‘oh, you know, if you honor your parents and you do all these things and live your life by God, you will live a long life,’” he said. “And it’s all faith-based healing. So in my mind, I was convinced that she was going to be healed, like I wasn’t even worried about it.”

Three days after Christmas that year, their mother died at 50 years old.

Notz said everything he had been taught came crashing down.

“At this point, I mean, we’ve lost both parents due to health issues that had they gone to a doctor and gotten health care, they most likely would still be around,” Kuykendall said.

Their dad, who had Lyme disease, died in 2023 after he suffered an arrhythmia in the ocean.

Notz said he was still attending the occasional Faith Tabernacle service when in 2017, he met a coworker who changed his view of salvation. The coworker shared that you don’t have to earn heaven because Jesus died on the cross as a gift freely given to everyone.

“And I was like, ‘I don’t know about that,’” Notz said. “That doesn’t make sense because that’s not what’s been ingrained in me for like 25 years.”

Notz and Kuykendall said church members tended to believe that breaking church rules, by doing things like going to a doctor or even wearing glasses, would bring consequences.

He said it’s also believed that anyone who leaves the church can’t get into heaven.

“Because you’ve left ‘the truth’,” Kuykendall added. “Which is equivalent to leaving God in their minds."

But still, Notz said he was intrigued by what his coworker had said. He started to attend Bible study with that coworker, and that’s when he decided to start trying other churches.

He officially left Faith Tabernacle in 2020, and both he and Kuykendall have since found a home in Celebration Church in Dillsburg.

Now, Notz works in youth ministries and loves to go on mission trips, including a trip to Nicaragua in recent years with Kuykendall and one of her sons.

“A fear-based religion”

Kuykendall said she and her brother suffered spiritual abuse as part of Faith Tabernacle’s “rules.”

“Is it for control? Yes,” Kuykendall said. “Even if their control is originating from what they feel is best for the person, they are trying to control you. They want you to follow all the rules and not question and ask why.”

She also said there’s a fear of outsiders.

“There is a fear to talk to police officers or those in authority because they don’t want people coming in and taking their children to take them to a doctor,” Kuykendall said.

“There is a fear of outsiders that they’re going to change your beliefs. There is a fear you’re going against the church. There is a fear of people in the church talking about you or shunning you,” she said, growing tearful.

Kuykendall said women don't have the same freedoms men do. For example, women in the church are discouraged from to college or having a job outside the home once married, and they are supposed to marry within the church.

She also said women never feel like they have a voice because they aren’t allowed to tell their husband he’s wrong. She said a lot of men she knew growing up were “very domineering, very legalistic, verbally abusive, sometimes physically abusive.”

Men are rarely held accountable, Kuykendall said, unless they went to a hospital.

“But if they do something inappropriate with their child, that’s not spoken to,” she said.

The brother and sister outlined more of what they said are some of the church’s core principles: not seeking medical care, not drinking alcohol, not watching TV. Women can’t wear pants, cut their hair or wear makeup, and men can’t wear shorts.

It’s these rules, and the fear and isolation that comes from “breaking” them, that led the brother and sister to call the church a cult.

Cult allegations

Berks County District Attorney John Adams, whose team researched the church as part of an investigation into a couple charged with their child’s death, also referred to the church as a “cult” in an April interview with CBS 21.

In that case, parents Grace and Jonathan Foster were charged in 2017 after their child died without them seeking medical care, according to court documents. Pastor of the church, Rowland Foster, was also charged for allegedly not reporting the death as a mandated reporter. Charges against him, however, were dropped twice, Adams said.

Adam Mohr, a researcher who spent 15 years attending Faith Tabernacle services in Philadelphia, told CBS 21 in a prior interview that he made friends at the church who later left and said they also realized it was a cult.

CBS 21 has also heard similar stories and allegations from other former Faith Tabernacle members.

CBS 21 did reach out to Pastor Foster, who is listed as the lead pastor of the Mechanicsburg Faith Tabernacle location, for comment. He said he was too busy to discuss in-person or electronically and never followed up with CBS 21.

A message for others
Kuykendall and Notz said their other siblings have since left the church, and leaving Faith Tabernacle seems to be a growing movement.

Kuykendall now has three boys of her own and two stepchildren. Notz has a daughter and one on the way. They said they are both raising their children to respect women, believe in themselves, to know and love God, and to ask questions when they arise.

The brother and sister were willing to share their stories in order to encourage other people within the church to leave.

They shared the following messages:

Johnny:

“I would say that, you know, we had talked about fear, just the fear of leaving the church and fear of stepping out and doing the abnormal. I would say, constantly the Bible mentions ‘do not fear’ or ‘do not be afraid’... And I would like to say don’t be afraid to be the one... I wasn’t the first one—Amanda was. She got to be that light that showed onto our family that I truly believe made a difference for us all to open our eyes. And even though it was really hard, and there were struggles, like, we are on the other end of that.

“Being in it is tough, and it may seem like there’s no way out, but you will come out on the other side, and it will be ok, and it will probably be better than you can even imagine.

“So when you’re in the moment, and you’re fighting the fear of, you know, 'is my family going to reject me? I may not have friends anymore.' Don't worry about those things. Keep your eyes on God and just work through that. Reach out to people like us or to other people that will love you and not judge you and work through it with you.

“Because all it takes is one person to step out and do the right thing, and others will follow because it will make them reevaluate, ‘Oh crap, well, if this person did it, maybe I can do it,’ or, ‘they had the courage to do it; I can too.’

"I would say it just takes one.”

Amanda:

“I would just encourage anyone who has questions to actually open their Bible and read it and talk to God and let God reassure you. Don’t worry about human affirmation, but worry about God’s affirmation of who you are.

"Who God says you are is so much different than getting human affirmation. And there is such a peace in your heart when you know you’re following God and not people.

“There is such a peace, and that is what I would hope to encourage anyone in that church—like, it’s not about a church. It’s not about church rules. It’s not about stepping away from the truth of the church. It’s about having God in your heart and following him. It’s about having the Holy Spirit live in your heart so that it overflows.