Man who feared NC church outbreak where 3 died charged with armed break-in at pastor’s home
A former member of a highly controversial Rutherford County church was arrested Sunday afternoon and charged with breaking into the home of a church leader while carrying a gun.
The break-in follows weeks of heightened tensions over whether the highly secretive Word of Faith Fellowship is hiding an outbreak of COVID-19, which critics say endangers this Foothills county of 67,000 residents, 70 miles west of Charlotte.
On Monday, Word of Faith’s attorney told the Observer that three church members who had the coronavirus illness have died and that the church does not know how many other members may be infected.
On a Facebook page that appears to belong to the alleged gunman — identified by Sheriff Chris Francis as Stephen Cordes of Raleigh — Cordes expressed fears this month that loved ones who still belong to the church might be exposed to COVID-19.
“If anything happens to my family that is still in there so help me ... ,” he wrote in an April 8 post on Facebook.
According to Francis, Corde has been charged with breaking and entering to terrorize and injure. He was also charged with two drug offenses, one of them a felony. He remained jailed Monday on $100,000 bond.
Cordes was arrested after an incident at the home of Brooke Covington, a senior associate minister at Word of Faith, according to a church lawyer and information from the county sheriff’s department website.
Cordes is accused of having a handgun at the time, but Francis would not say if it was loaded. He declined to release other details.
Word of Faith attorney Joshua Farmer said residents found an armed man hiding in the closet of Covington’s home and that the intruder also had a loaded shotgun in the trunk of the car he drove to the house.
Farmer, also a Word of Faith leader, blamed the break-in in part on what he described as “online hysteria” over whether Word of Faith is hiding a cluster of COVID-19 cases.
“We believe ... that those discussions were at least part of what motivated (the break in),” Farmer said in a Monday statement to the Observer. “We believe it is clear that he intended to do her, and perhaps others, physical harm.”
Farmer said the church believes the dead members were infected through healthcare systems outside of Rutherford County.
As of Monday, the largely rural county has North Carolina’s ninth highest per capita infection rate, with 119 cases and 6 deaths.
Francis declined to speculate on Cordes’ motive, but said his investigators planned to seek search warrants Monday to learn more.
Just after 4 p.m. Sunday, the sheriff’s office received a call from the residence on Brooke Breeze Lane in Rutherford County about “a subject with a gun,” Francis said.
By the time deputies arrived less than 20 minutes later, Cordes had been disarmed and restrained by people inside the home, Francis said.
There were no injuries among the residents of the Covington home. But Francis said Cordes was treated at a local hospital Sunday before being jailed. His arrest photo appears to show a swollen right eye and a possible bruise on his cheek.
‘Crossing the line’
A statement on the Word of Faith web page says that the congregation has been “100 percent compliant” with state and county health directives aimed at controlling the disease.
“Any suggestion to the contrary is reckless, defaming and a dangerous incitement to violence,” the statement said.
Farmer said the church went to remote services on March 27 after Gov. Roy Cooper issued a order banning gatherings of more than 10 people.
“During March, we repeatedly emphasized to members that they should not attend church” if they or any anyone in their families had symptoms or if they had been exposed to someone who had them, he said.
The church statement on its home page includes several Facebook posts from critics who said the church should be attacked and destroyed if it is harboring a COVID-19 outbreak. One post called for an “old timey lynching.”
“Could we just lock up the woff compound and burn it to the ground with them inside?” one person wrote. “That way, we can open up the rest of the county.”
Some of the social media anger has been channeled at county health officials who have so far refused to release specifics about where clusters of the coronavirus illness have occurred, citing federal and state privacy laws.
Word of Faith, which sits on a gated road patrolled by a church security force, has been a source of controversy across the Foothills for decades.
Critics say it is a cult that dominates all aspects of its members’ lives, and uses sometimes brutal spiritual practices, one designed to force believers to expel demons that are causing them to sin.
The church says it is following God’s will, contributes generously to the surrounding community and wants to be allowed to worship as it best sees fit.
Francis said the investigation into the social media threats against Word of Faith continues.
“I’m a big First Amendment supporter. There’s free speech that’s protected. But there’s speech that’s not protected,” the sheriff said. “Some of that stuff has probably crossed the line.”
