Two friends of mine asked me about a big building they spotted along Route 1 in Concordville. I knew the one they were talking about, it's on the south side of Route 1, just beyond Route 322, and I remembered years ago seeing a sign that the property belonged to some kind of a church.
Well! With a little online digging, what a sleazy and sad story I discovered. The church, called "Church of the Savior," was active in the 1970s and was run by a preacher from South Africa named Frederick Drummond. He soon faced accusations of squandering church money, bullying and beating his followers (as well as his children and his dog), falsifying his credentials, among even more unseemly acts, chronicled in fairly sickening detail in a collection of local newspaper articles at http://www.cosnews.org/.
Drummond's spin on the story? He writes on his personal website:
"His best learning experiences were gained in the school of hard knocks during his thirty-three-year tenure at the church in Concordville. It was there that he came to grips with himself, the angels in the attic and the demons in the basement."
Drummond appears to be involved with a Ft. Lauderdale church now. "Beginning in 1978, after a terrible church split that was mostly my fault, God began to teach me about His grace," he writes in the section of his new church's website modestly called "How God Qualified Me to Take My Place in the Kingdom as an End-Time Prophet."
The former church property on Route 1 now seems to be serving a happier function, as Concord Township offices and a community center.
I told a few old-time local reporter pals about this lurid story and it was news to them, as it was to me.
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