Word of Faith Fellowship is an evangelical church based in Spindale, North Carolina, founded in 1979 by Jane Whaley, a former mathematics teacher, and her husband Sam Whaley. Doctrinally it stands within the broader Word of Faith / Pentecostal-charismatic stream, but it developed distinctive and intense communal practices. It has been the subject of extensive investigative journalism and of accounts by numerous former members, who have described it as a high-control congregation and alleged practices including a loud, aggressive form of group prayer directed at individuals (sometimes called "blasting") intended to expel sin or demons, tight control over members' personal lives, and physical and psychological abuse of adults and children.
A major investigative series by the Associated Press in the 2010s compiled many such accounts and prompted renewed law-enforcement attention, and there have been arrests, prosecutions, and civil suits connected to the church over the years, with varying outcomes; the church has denied wrongdoing and characterized the allegations as distortions of its religious practice. Because much of the record rests on former-member testimony and journalism, and because litigation has produced mixed results, the church remains a contested case. It is discussed in reporting and scholarship as an example of the difficulty of distinguishing protected, if unusual, religious practice from actionable abuse within a living congregation.