Sins of the Father focuses on Philip Cooper, a forty-seven-year-old Australian who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian commune established by his father, Neville Cooper, in New Zealand. In 1989, Philip left the commune and came to Australia. Since then, he has been trying to extricate his wife and children and create a ‘normal’ life.

Neville Cooper, a Queenslander, began his evangelical crusade in the late 1940s – ‘a hellfire and brimstone preacher whose mission was to rid the world of sin’. He joined several churches but, invariably finding other preachers not strict enough, always moved on. In 1967, Cooper moved his family to New Zealand where his religious zeal drew large crowds and he was likened to Billy Graham. Cooper envisioned a utopian commune, ‘a Christian island in a Godless world’.