A little after five A.M. on December 11, 2017, a gray Volkswagen Passat inched through the darkness of Tijuana toward the brightly lit Customs and Border Protection port of entry at San Ysidro, California. It was in the SENTRI lane, the special passageway for pre-approved, low-risk travelers who have passed a stringent background check.

The driver, a stocky 54-year-old man with shaggy blond hair and a goatee, seemed as low-risk as they come. John Lee Bishop had established himself as one of the most successful pastors in America. His mega-church, Living Hope, was one of the country’s fastest-growing congregations. With over 8,000 members, it occupied an 85,000-square-foot former Kmart superstore in Vancouver, Washington, a working-class suburb just up the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. Locals called it “the Kmart Church.”

Bishop’s mega-church was a kind of blue-light special for those who other churches left behind: gay teens, junkies, the homeless, anyone who felt excluded. Bishop understood “the unchurched,” as he called them, because he started out as one himself, a social misfit damaged by an abusive childhood and turned off by organized religion. With his long hair, ripped jeans, and laid-back demeanor, he looked like Sammy Hagar, whom he was sometimes mistaken for, and preached like a Vegas showman, nearly getting mauled by a 350-pound tiger he brought onstage for a Noah’s Ark service...read more