Calvary Chapel, a group that is a "granddaughter" church of the Assemblies of God (through it being founded via a split from Assemblies daughter-denomination International Foursquare) and being one of the major groups promoting in particular the "Kingdom Now Theology" variants of dominion theology (including its attendant spiritual-warfare movements) is probably best known, at least among readers of Dark Christianity, as being the centre of a massive religiocasting empire largely conducted through translator networks (in fact, it's been estimated by multiple sources that fully a third to half of the translator-based religious broadcasting in the US is directly from Calvary Chapel churches, and they are also responsible for much of the "translator invasion" and license hijacking occuring with legit LPFM broadcast license spots).

Less well known, but still of importance, is the fact that Calvary Chapel is one of the major promoters of deliverance ministry, a major component of pentecostal dominionism that uses tactics indistinguishable from those used in Scientology, and is also the primary plaintiff in attempts to sue the University of California college system due to the latter's rejection of dominionist curricula packages as being educationally substandard for purposes of college admissions.

It's also been documented that many of the same sorts of spiritual abuse that occur throughout pente dominionist groups in particular associated with "Kingdom Now" theology are rampant in Calvary Chapel (abuse which is often systemic, is part of the base theology of these groups, and in practice makes it almost impossible for real reform to occur in pente and neopente dominionist churches); this is now showing up with a real threat that the son of Calvary Chapel's own founder and their church may be expelled for being "too liberal".

The article, originally appearing in the Los Angeles Times and reprinted in Religion News Blog, notes:

There is a tradition among superstar evangelists like Chuck Smith the elder of bequeathing the pulpit to a son. Billy Graham did it, as did Robert H. Schuller.

However, it has been ages since anyone considered the younger Smith a possible successor to his father's 15,000-congregation ministry, the symbolic center of a network of independently run Calvary churches: about 1,000 across the United States, including two of the three largest non-Roman Catholic churches in California, plus radio and TV ministries.

Instead, critics whispered that the son was a dangerous impostor. Last year, those whispers exploded into a full-blown din. Online protests and fliers distributed at the younger Smith's church demanded that he drop the "Calvary" name because of his increasingly liberal drift on such non-debatable issues as the evil of homosexuality and the promise of hell for unbelievers. "What will it take for Chuck Sr. to stop the nepotism?" blogged Calvary congregant Jackie Alnor, one of the critics leading the charge. "Does his son have to burn incense to Isis and Zeus before he is disfellowshipped from a Bible-believing fellowship of churches?"

By last spring, one thing had become clear to Smith Jr.: Sprawling as it was, the church his father had built — the place that once embraced a generation of drug-addled hippies and helped change the way many Americans worshipped — had little room left for him.

"Even when I speak, some of what I say is opinion and confusion and error," says Smith Jr., 55, who wears shorts and flip-flops as he welcomes a visitor to his church. "I'm more in a place of learning than I am in a place of certainty."

Smith Jr. notes the extreme extent of spiritual abuse as a force of control in pente dominionist groups in particular:

He said he grew up as a true believer in his father's Pentecostal world, a world that could tilt and slide him into hell at any moment, or end with the thunderclap of doom. His earliest memories involve an overpowering sense of sin. "You can never be good enough if you're Pentecostal or if you're fundamentalist," Smith Jr. said. "Jesus may even be upset if you didn't make your bed or brush your teeth."

As the son grew, he began to question--accepting ideas more in line with mainstream Christianity, such as the point of Christianity being to help people in the here and now and specifically having doubts re Rapture-prognostication (common in pente premillenial-dispensationalist dominionist circles, including in Calvary Chapel proper). Not only was the son--and his congregation--condemned for this, but even for Smith Jr. not being "manly enough":

There was also, theology aside, the question of the son's temperament. He hardly fit the mold of the Christian soldier championed by his father in his book "Harvest," in which he spoke of "the ideal of a biblical man who is strong and not vacillating or weak" and denounced "the new touchy/feely men."

Smith Jr. weeps before his congregation, making no secret of his ongoing battle with depression that took him to the brink of suicide after his 1993 divorce. At the time, he stood before his congregation explaining that his wife of 18 years, the mother of his five children, was leaving him despite his effort to save the marriage.

"In my mind," he wrote in his book "Frequently Avoided Questions," "divorce was an alien behavior that could not touch true Christians, let alone a minister."

A friend got him a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist got him antidepressants. A local pastor called for his resignation, but his congregation sent hundreds of letters of support.

"My vulnerability allowed them to love me in need," he said.

Still, his condition alienated him further from his father's church, where depression is widely viewed as a spiritual problem bespeaking flawed faith.

William Alnor, a longtime Calvary congregant and former pastor, expressed the view in stark terms: "I don't believe any Christian leader should be flirting with depression."

(Of particular note here, chronic depression is a common sequelae of complex PTSD, a very common condition in both survivors of child abuse and of survivors of cults--often, sadly, combined to deadly effect in dominionist houses into the "deliverance ministry" movement in the name of religiously motivated child abuse.)

It's a very enlightening article, showing that the sons don't have to repeat the sins of the father--and also showing the practical difficulty (some would say impossibility) of reforming one of the cores of dominionism--the pente dominionist "Kingdom Now" movement, increasingly recognised as a coercive religious movement in and of itself--from within.