Searing documentary on the Jesus Army cult to screen for lawmakers

We are excited to report the 2025 documentary INSIDE THE CULT OF THE JESUS ARMY made by Stern & Wild filmmakers Ellena Wood and Katie Buchanan will be screened in Parliament this spring as part of a campaign to extend the law on coercive control.

First broadcast on BBC Two in August last year, the two-part series explores the rise and fall of the Jesus Fellowship, an evangelical British Christian church best known to the public for the work of its outreach group the Jesus Army. Beginning as a small group of idealistic worshippers in rural Northamptonshire in 1969, the church developed over the following decades to become one of the UK’s most controlling cults before it was forced to shut down in 2019 under the weight of mounting historical abuse claims.

Produced by Big Sister Films and Docsville Studios for BBC Two, the series is directed by Ellena, series and exec produced by Katie and exec produced by co-creator Helen Littleby. Their focus in making the series was firmly on the survivors and their fight for justice: the church’s story is interspersed with filmed counselling sessions with former members conducted by psychotherapist Gillie Jenkinson, who was once in a cult herself.

Following the BBC broadcast, over a hundred former members of the Jesus Army joined the survivors’ support group featured in the series, many of whom went on to report their own abuse leading to Northamptonshire police opening a raft of new criminal investigations.

Ellena recently said: “We are very proud that the courage the survivors had to tell their stories for the first time means the series is having a real-world impact.”

The upcoming parliamentary screening for lawmakers is sponsored by Northamptonshire MP Sarah Bool and forms part of a wider campaign by the government-sponsored National Working Group against Spiritual and Ritual Abuse (NWG SARA) which is lobbying for legislation to outlaw forms of coercive control exerted by cult-like organisations such as the Jesus Army.

INSIDE THE CULT OF THE JESUS ARMY is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.