Fragmentation of a Sect

In the mid-1930s Herbert W. Armstrong an unsuccessful American advertising executive founded a millennialist Sabbatarian Christian sect with a heterodox theology. Over the next half century despite a number of setbacks scandals criticisms and attacks from former members and anti-cultists Armstrong's organization the Worldwide Church of God grew to around 100000 baptized members with a world circulation of over six million for its flagship monthly magazine Plain Truth. In January 1986 Armstrong died. His successor changed most of the church's distinctive doctrines leading it towards an increasing convergence with mainstream Evangelical Christianity. This created a massive cognitive dissonance in ministers and members: should they accept or reject the authority of the church leadership which had abandoned the authority of the founder's teachings? Groups of ministers left the religion to form new churches taking tens of thousands of members with them. These schismatic churches in turn faced continuing schism resulting in over 400 offshoot churches within little more than a decade.