the United States, counting 35,000 members in the country in 1994. The church has grown from its beginnings, especially among the population of German immigrants. Some German ministers emigrated to Southern Argentina in the 1920s, where they evangelised to other European emigrants. Most of the more than 200,000 believers in Argentina today are a result of this. There are 60,000 believers living in Brazil and 35,000 in Peru. There are 360 apostles of the church more than the half living in Africa. Out of 9 Mio believers...: 77.9% live in Africa. 12.8% live in Asia. 4.4% live in Europe. 3.6% live in South America. 0.9% live in Australia and Oceania. 0.4% live in North America. Membership in Anglophone countries: Great Britain, 2,722 (2005) USA, 37,514 (2005) Canada, 13,315 (2007) Australia, more than 100,000 (2008) South Africa, 440,000 (2008) Chronology of worldwide membership There are the numbers of believers between 1960 and 2018: Sociological profile According to a survey led in 2008 by Namini and Murken, the high amount (43%) of young NAC members under 15 who had lost their fathers could be explained by the theology of the father and the figure of the Chief Apostle at the top of the hierarchy. Controversies The NAC was very introverted until recently and has had strict guidelines, so recently it has had to face sharp criticism. Many aspects of this criticism have been shown, through multiple professional assessments, to derive from the "ancient" period, i.e. from the 1960s to the 1990s. The opening process of ecumenism has led the church to change many doctrines and guidelines, some drastically, making the church look more modern today in comparison to other churches. Former criticism By the 1990s, the church was fighting the following controversies which made them look like a sect in public. Resting upon the statement that only direct discipleship leads to eternal life, the Primitive Church established a system of obedience toward Jesus' apostles just after Jesus' death. The strict thought of obedience toward the apostle ministry is intended to continue this tradition. The social instruction strictly to obey a predecessor was so distinct that members had to obtain information from their "leaders". That information bound them, if only unconsciously, so that the ministers controlled the lives of many members, telling them that their information matched God's will. A new generation of free thinkers appeared in Europe in the 1950s, but that