“Is Your Blood Clean?”: The Paranoid Pastor Who Turned His Church into a Violent Cult

“Is Your Blood Clean?”: The Paranoid Pastor Who Turned His Church into a Violent Cult

On the evening of October 17, 2021, a thirty-nine-year-old woman named Taneka Gardner pulled a suitcase through the gates of a church in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She had been introduced to Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries years earlier by her aunt, and Gardner had been attending often—captivated by the sermons of the church’s charismatic founder and pastor, Kevin Smith. Smith was a self-proclaimed prophet, sharing a preaching s…