The Cheeky Chicanery Of The Gladstone/Madison Cult : Under The Eye Once More

These are trying times. Everybody's trying something and getting caught.                                          The Church Lady, 1987

In January 2025, a major newspaper in Cincinnati, Ohio published it's own investigative series on the Queen City's very own Gladstone/Madison cult movement and the unending controversies it has championed for well over twenty years.  Written in the well qualified neutral tone that a legally-curated document in our litigious age can be expected to be presented in, the article nevertheless stirred the cultural pot around the burgeoning enclave of Madison Place where the movement has insinuated itself. 

Gladstone/Madison is as culty as cults can be. They like to protest how misunderstood they are and commend their feigned and persecuted sanctity as martyrs for a pure, communal New Testament lifestyle. For all of those years, led by a core group of now middle aged single men pushing their interpretation of Christian community as the only correct way to live, they've successfully enchanted hundreds of men and women to live in economic, social and spiritual compact with one another in a variety of group homes and businesses there. 

During all of that same time, their practical and doctrinal excesses have infected all of the good works and piety they have expressed. While preaching the Christian gospel creatively through a variety of mission works and cooperative efforts with clueless churches partnering with them, they come off as a gentle and winsome band of youthful zealots for Jesus even as their leaders privately and continually use a full court press of control, manipulation and abuse upon them to compel their submission to a  this coercion as a discipline of "Spirit-led" formation. Innumerable testimonies of personal violation, the destruction of external family ties and an absolute domination of idealistic disciples through cultic mind control and a compulsory form of what is a virtual slave laboring have been circulating there for many years and remained an ugly reality simmering beneath the bright colors of the community's chipper public persona. This isn't a testimony of "gossip" or jealousy - just the unvarnished truth.

Many of the Gladstone movement's neighbors in the area were clueless about their history and the report stated that it was a Reddit posting in 2022 was what got them looking into things. It missed, of course, the existential reality that those living there have long known of the manifold homes, businesses and the  church 'Gathering Place" among them where its populace of mobile pedestrian membership constantly walk around them from building to building.  People quickly looked away, in perfect American civil aplomb, even if whispers and even eyewitness accounts testified to warped doings there that underscore their socially questionable place.

But thanks to the sacrificial and courageous testimonials we had already been taking from family and former members  about it, a full year before the Enquirer's work emerged, in October 2024 Spiritwatch Ministries published a six part expose that was based upon first hand testimony and documented evidence about the cult that had remained largely unexamined for decades.  The story is far bleaker than the polished book report about it which the newspaper presented. It is instead, we found, a tale of deceit, compromise and human trafficking.  There are horrors beyond belief routinely borne by hundreds if not thousands of people in its orbit, while most churches around it empowered it to go on, even insisting that their example was a model of stellar Christian community that only ignorance and jealousy could misunderstand. This became very apparent as we first examined the Gladstone controversy in 2022.  

During our investigation, we also published on our "Where Are We Going" podcasts and YouTube channel livestreams several interviews with many of the same people who would be quoted in our expose - and who would go on to add their proverbial two cents to the Enquirer reporter.  They helped document that an agenda of literal oppression advanced by smiling, cunning leaders steers the lives of dozens of smiling young people and families whose sunny visages conceal the abuse of mind, spirit and body that they are subject to every day.  This has been the operative reality for over two decades which the Madisonville neighborhood has beheld all around it, their communal lifestyles magnifying their own tradition and its unique control over them. And as it usually goes in communal cults thriving in American society, none outside the grouop seem able to fully see the unethical, abusive and at times illegal activity they are charged to cheerfully endure while posing as "a Christian fellowship and part of the Body of Christ in Cincinnati."

One ex-member with close ties still within Gladstone wrote a few months ago a brief overview of the state of affairs within what they call "Community"  since the latest release of the Enquirer's work:

Since the front-page article, what we’ve seen is not repentance but resistance. Instead of humbling themselves, Community has doubled down. A few have left, but many are still trapped and hurting. Rather than confessing sin, the leadership continues to cast blame outward—painting us as the source of their troubles. In their meetings they use vague words like “we messed up,” “we made mistakes,” or “we were immature.” But there is no confession of sin. No stepping down. No real accountability. 

When Benjamin Von Korff and Cebastian Hilton left leadership, the internal narrative within the community quickly shifted to, “It was all their fault—now things will be better.” But the truth is, the same patterns continue. Zak Kijinski may no longer hold the official title, but it appears Brian Roselli is functioning as the leader.

Meanwhile, outside of the community, the responses have been revealing. Some ministries and Christian leaders have rightly severed ties. Others are clinging tighter, as if protecting their own reputations. And still others are silent—hoping it will all just fade away. But silence is complicity. We are still waiting for local Christian leaders to speak publicly and say, “We were wrong.” They were wrong when countless desperate families came pleading for help, only to be told that “Community was the army of God.” 

They were wrong to ignore the cries of the wounded. And they remain wrong today if they continue to look the other way.

Every elder, every Christian leader tied to Community, has already been given multiple private opportunities to respond. The time for silence and excuses is long past. The truth has been exposed. What remains to be seen is whether they will repent—or continue to protect the system that has destroyed so many.

 

To those of you who have carried the weight of this—ex-members, family, and friends—please know this: your courage in speaking the truth matters. You are not alone. The deception is being uncovered, and healing is possible. What they refuse to confess, God still sees. And what they will not repent of, He will bring into the light.

Another former member, when asked about it, gives an eye opening perspective on why the beatific smiles and manner of current members persist even to this day:

As an ex member I know that any evidence of peace seen in each of the members faces is most likely due to the unfortunate reality of brainwashing.

When a member is introduced to the leaders and the system, at first there is the struggle they face as they are introduced to a new ideology. The leaders “help” the person to second guess themselves while introducing a new way of thinking and living. The right amount of personal pressure to comply with it using disapproval and intense love is applied by the social system all at the same time. Personal boundaries are crossed in the process and power by the leaders is asserted for them to buy into the system Hook, Line, and sinker. 

The new member's will is eventually broken and kept pliable by instruction to confess any doubt or insecurities about the leadership as sin to secure their control and to keep their will broken. Finally, the numbed expression of peace becomes stamped on their facial expression as they learn to obey the rules and . no longer disrupt the system.

This brutal revelation explains how this religiously abusive trauma owns so many so firmly that the few who manage to physically break free never quite actually get truly free, remaining damaged and wounded, fearful of the voices of Zak and others ringing in their heads as their conscience of torment.  

It comes from a former subject of "The Army of God" - a term coined for what has been for years an ad campaign that starry eyed yet blind piety among religious outsiders have depicted the Community to be. This virtual anointing has come from within the diseased imagination and defective discernment of a generation of churches and parachuch ministries around it that have empowered their deception.  Our expose tells this grotesque story and the Enquirer simply never went there to begin to address it. Supposedly an elite vanguard of cutting edge New Testament spirituality, the reality is that Gladstone/Madison is a purely human bondage behind the surreal pseudochristian atmosphere that extends throughout the overlapping social circles of the group - from the home fellowships to the Madison Place coffee shop and beyond. 

These same members confirm that in the past 2 years, since our podcast content and the expose has widely revealed the Gladstone/Madison oppressions, the group's social strictures have actually loosened considerably.  Within the group leadership caste, enough dissent arose that precipitated the elevation of Roselli after Hilton stepped back - supposedly as some harbingers of reform that would bring better days. Suddenly, community members are inexplicably now allowed to visit families outside of their communal Madison Place settings, without chaperones who would tag along to make sure they kept micromanagement over them. 

Pool parties with mixed bathing where alcohol flows freely and freer interactions among the sexes are part of the recreational scheme there where members are engaged with a daily schedule of dawn to dusk domination of their time, energy, hearts and minds.  These carnal lubes of human nature have become a sanctified part of  " sharing all things in common" -  except of course, actual dating or marital relationships.  And the harsh and vicious criticism by leaders among the group of those who have left has "toned down" somewhat and even reapproaching some of them has become a touching, even winsome, act of apparent "Christian" charity the community's outreach has included. Suddenly, relationships with ex-members outside the community that were iced over for years by silence and distance have thawed and the "love" always seems so real, so authentic. 

These refreshing gestures may be an attempt to soften their puritanical persona to make a point that "Community is changing". This delusional assumption is only bought into by those within and without the community who still accept that party line uncritically. It soothes whatever burnt stump of conscience may remain in those church and community leaders who bent over backwards in the past two decades to enable the cult's activity among them.  But these haven't stopped the ongoing waves of investigation that the Gladstone/Madison cult has been facing and faces today. 

Over the years, a variety of regulatory agencies have been quietly  probing the secular fringes of the cult's businesses and social settings, as well as their financial doings. We are aware that the Internal Revenue Service and Ohio Child Protective Services have initiated investigations in the past which as far as we know are ongoing. Others reportedly are probing alleged violations of labor law and occupational safety missteps in the cult's businesses. The latest CPS investigation was started in late February at the behest of an ex-member whose identity we are unaware of but which we've emailed them about, expressing our concerns about where the past investigations have gone. The public should have some way of learning about this and all child protective service agencies nationwide should be accountable enough to it and verify and explain what they do in a given situation within reasonable limits for confidentiality sake.  We are still awaiting their response.  

Within the closed circle of the community's insular existence, the leadership's free access to a massive work force made up of church members and a fluid populace of immigrants and visitors in recovery from addictive lifestyles has helped provide an economically potent labor force energizing their industries and supporting the overall operation of the group. Since the group involves a never ending inflow of people, family units that include children and teen agers, it's fairly easy to see how widespread their influence has been, especially when they routinely shuttle people from all over the country and the world in to bolster their activity, especially when its passed off as a Christian missionary effort.

However, flyers have started to again circulate throughout the neighborhood highlighting Gladstone/Madison's shady past and - quite without any doing of ours - started to call attention to the Spiritwatch exposes. A place truly blessed by God - as the New Testamen shows -  finds favor with God and man and grows until it shakes a city up with a testimony to the truth of the Gospel. This community of well meaning and yet horribly aberrant people are nothing of the sorty and their religiosity there in Madison Place has lost its luster even if it still can win hearings and cooperation with too many ignorant civic and church leaders there. The testimonies continue to mount and the outrage continues, as it should, and we hope the scrutiny starts to finally shine an unforgiving light into the darkest corners of the place. 

We are hoping to field more testimonies in our future "Where Are We Going" podcasts that will further reveal it's dark side and to demonstrate how spiritually bankrupt the personality cult championed by Brian Roselli being puppetmastered by Zak Kijinski actually is. Stay tuned. Other stories and testimony remain to be crafted.