Agapemone, or "The A" was a Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 religious group and community founded in 1846 by Reverend Henry Prince in Spaxton

Spaxton

Spaxton is a small village and civil parish on the Quantocks in the Sedgemoor district of Somerset, South West England.-History:Spaxton was part of the hundred of Cannington....

, Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. He had been fired earlier in his career for his 'radical teachings'. The Agapemonites

Agapemonites

Agapemonites or Community of The Son of Man was a religious sect existing from 1846–1956, named for the meaning 'Abode of Love'.Founded in 1846 by the charismatic priest Henry James Prince this sect was based upon the theories of various German religious mystics and its primary object was the...

 predicated the imminent return of Jesus Christ. Prince's successor, John Hugh Smyth-Pigott, declared himself Jesus Christ reincarnate

Reincarnation

Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...

.

The Agapemone (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 for 'Abode of Love') community consisted mostly of wealthy, unmarried women. Both Prince and Smyth-Pigott took many spiritual bride

Bride

A bride is a woman about to be married or newlywed.The word may come from the Proto-Germanic verb root *brū-, meaning 'to cook, brew, or make a broth' which was the role of the daughter-in-law in primitive families...

s. Later investigations show that these "brides" were not only spiritual but physical also, and some produced illegitimate children.

In 1860, Prince lost a lawsuit

Lawsuit

A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...

 to two disgruntled followers, and the group vanished from the public eye. Around 1890, Smyth-Pigott started giving meetings in the community again and in 1902 his fame had spread as far as India from where Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was a religious figure from India and the founder of the Ahmadiyya Community. He claimed to be the Mujaddid of the 14th Islamic century, the promised Messiah , and the Mahdi awaited by the Muslims in the end days...

warned him of his false teachings and predicted his miserable end.