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Alamo Christian Foundation

The Alamo Christian Foundation was an American cult which was founded in 1969 by Tony Alamo and his wife, Susan Alamo. Susan Alamo died in April 1982.

Founders
Tony Alamo (September 20, 1934 – May 2, 2017) was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman to a Jewish family in Joplin, Missouri. Susan Alamo (April 25, 1925 – April 8, 1982) was born Edith Opal Horn in Alma, Arkansas. Twice married and with a daughter, she moved to Hollywood and attempted to become an actress. ==History==
History
Early years Tony and Susan Alamo founded the Alamo Christian Foundation in 1969 in Hollywood, California. The church became the subject of controversy, especially as its members were active in trying to recruit new members in Hollywood. It was frequently criticized for its manner of evangelization, which frequently involved requiring young members of the congregation to walk around Hollywood, inviting people to convert to Christianity. They would take them to the church in Agua Dulce – roughly an hour away – for evening services, consisting of a meeting and a meal. Many of these individuals chose to stay on to become Bible students and lay ministers. The church published religious tracts, and it also distributed tapes of sermons by the Alamos. With the help of some church members, they also produced records and tapes, and they launched a national television ministry in the 1970s. It was then entombed in a heart-shaped marble mausoleum on church property. In 1991, the federal government confiscated the property. Its agents learned that Susan's remains had been removed. Her estranged daughter, Christhiaon Coie, filed a lawsuit against Tony Alamo because he had stolen the body. Her stepfather (by an earlier marriage of her mother) obtained a court order which required Tony Alamo to return the body. Tax problems and criminal proceedings In 1982, the same year that Susan Alamo died, Alamo discontinued the foundation in their name. He replaced it with the newly incorporated Music Square Church (MSC). After the federal government had started investigation of the entity, the IRS retroactively revoked that tax-exempt status on April 5, 1996. The IRS Commissioner found that "MSC was so closely operated and controlled by and for the benefit of Tony Alamo that it enjoyed no substantive independent existence; that MSC was formed and operated by Tony Alamo for the principal purpose of willfully attempting to defeat or evade federal income tax; and that MSC was inseparable from Tony Alamo, and failed to operate for exclusively charitable purposes." Death of Tony Alamo Alamo died on May 2, 2017, while he was in custody at the Federal Medical Center, Butner in Butner, North Carolina. He was 82 years old. The site, along with this notice, was still live, but it was inactive, . The website had made two posts about Israel and a post with a file entitled There is no Palestine or "19200.pdf". ==Beliefs and practices==
Beliefs and practices
The church was Protestant and Pentecostal in nature. It was frequently referred to as a sect of the Jesus movement. It was also extremely anti-Catholic. Additionally, it only accepted the King James Version of the Bible. Susan Alamo frequently attacked organized religion on her programs. Its members adhered to a moral code which required proper dress and standards of behavior, and condemned and forbade the use of drugs, homosexuality, adultery, birth control, and abortion. Individuals who sought to join the church agreed to turn all of their money and property over to the church. In return, their own needs would be met and their children would receive a basic education through high school. ==In popular culture==
In popular culture
In 2016, playwright Ernest Kearney produced his one-man show My Alamo War for the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, California. The show recounted his four-year struggle against the Alamo church in Hollywood. He succeeded in getting the high-end jackets which were designed by Alamo and manufactured by unpaid cult members removed from a majority of the clothing stores which were located on Hollywood Boulevard. He and his supporters also gained the attention of the local media by informing it about the abuses of the cult. The show won the Fringe's Encore Producer Award. In 2019, Sundance TV broadcast a four-part miniseries, Ministry of Evil: The Twisted Cult of Tony Alamo, based on the lives of Tony and Susan Alamo. It described their founding and running of the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation – it also called the foundation a "cult". It also described how the couple became rich by exploiting their followers who truly believed in them. Following his conviction, the program charged Tony Alamo with being a child abuser, a polygamist and a pedophile. The documentary series includes archival footage, including Alamo's videotaped deposition, and interviews with former members of the cult and the FBI agent who brought Alamo down. The series of four 40-minute episodes was also broadcast on BBC Four and in April 2024, it was broadcast on the iPlayer. In 2025, Freeform produced a series titled How I Escaped my Cult: Ten Stories of Survival, in which former members talk about their time in the Alamo Christian Foundation. ==See also==
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