International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 6 2023 62
social countermeasures.
Second, Sarteschi (2023) has recently constructed a
detailed profile and history of a pseudolaw cult centered
on Romana Didulo, the self-proclaimed Queen of
Canada. Starting in 2021, Didulo accumulated tens
of thousands of supporters who fund Didulo’s cross-
Canada caravan of recreational vehicles, and Didulo’s
inner entourage of uniformed facilitators. Didulo’s
cult of personality has persisted, if not thrived, despite
Didulo’s total failure to fulfill her extraordinary
promises and her increasingly absurd claims.
This article focuses on a further example of a pseudolaw
group or movement: the Church of the Ecumenical
Redemption International [CERI], and its central guru
figure, Edward Robin Jay Belanger. Some academic and
legal writing, and case law, already exists that relates to
CERI (e.g., Kent &Willey 2013, pp. 327-329 Meads
v Meads, 2012 ABQB 571, paras. 134-139, 183-188
Netolitzky, 2016, pp. 627-628 Netolitzky, 2021, pp.
177-178 Netolitzky, 2023a, pp. 820-821), however
that limited literature focuses on CERI’s variation
upon Sovereign Citizen pseudolaw, and how CERI and
Belanger have been uniformly unsuccessful in their
attempts to overturn the accepted legal order.
This current article explores CERI’s social structure,
belief system, and activities. Several characteristics
make CERI a highly unusual “legal cult,” so that a
closer investigation of this pseudolaw movement is
potentially useful to broaden our understanding of
pseudolaw groups and their social structures. While
most pseudolaw movements are comparatively short-
lived, CERI has been promoting not-law for almost 25
years, and has antecedents that date back much further.
CERI’s endurance is unusual and surprising, given the
more typical “surge and collapse” pattern observed
world-wide.
CERI has had no successes throughout that timeframe,
but its leader, Belanger, somehow remains active.
In that sense Belanger parallels certain other little
studied long-endurance pseudolaw promoters, such
as David Wynn Miller. Many pseudolaw groups avoid
court proceedings, since pseudolaw ideas always
fail in that forum. CERI, instead, has an extensive
litigation record. Most unusually, CERI is a “legal cult”
that pretends to be a “religious cult.” As such, CERI’s
members proclaim that they are devout King James
Bible literalists. However, that purported belief system
appears to be nothing but a false front to legitimize
claims of religion-based rights and support allegations
of discrimination and human rights abuses. In short,
CERI is a legal cult hiding behind the facade of a fake
church.
II. Source Materials
A reoccurring obstacle to the study of pseudolaw
phenomena is these social groups are usually transient.
For example, the Canadian Freeman-on-the-Land
population was active from 2000 to 2015, and largely
organized around a number of Internet websites and
forums. Almost none of these information resources
survive to the present (Netolitzky, 2023a, pp. 819-820).
This evaporation of information sources is usually
the consequence of neglect, rather than intentional
destruction to conceal what was, and who were,
involved in pseudolaw movements. The Tacit Supreme
in Law /United Sovran Nations (Netolitzky, 2016, pp.
628-629 Netolitzky, 2023a, pp. 828-831) pseudolaw
movement that operated in Calgary, Alberta around
2013 is rare exception to that pattern. That group
appears to have intentionally deleted and destroyed
its records and archived materials, including online
resources, and physical documents that were initially
seized by government investigators.
Belanger and CERI are an exception to this pattern
in four ways. First, Belanger’s primary website, “All
Creator’s Gifts,”3
1
has been in continuous operation
from at least 2006, and, fortuitously, Belanger’s
website design style is “accumulative,” so elements in
the oldest archived version of All Creator’s Gifts4 are
still present in the current website. Second, Belanger
adopted the “talking head” pseudolaw video lecture
format pioneered by Freeman-on-the-Land guru
Robert Arthur Menard (Netolitzky, 2021, p. 184), and
has periodically recorded videos that are archived on
YouTube5 and Bitchute.6
Third, CERI’s members and Belanger have been
involved in numerous Canadian court proceedings that
3 Website: https://www.allcreatorsgifts.org.
4 Archived website: https://web.archive.org/web/20060515193828/
http://www.allcreatorsgifts.org/.
5 Personal website: https://www.youtube.com/user/Owlmon.
6 Personal website: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/owlmon/.

ISSN: 2710-4028 DOI: doi.org/10.54208/1000/0006 63
have resulted in an extensive set of court filings, docket
records, and published court judgments. Identification
of pseudolaw litigation can be a challenge (Netolitzky,
2016, p. 612 Netolitzky, 2023a, pp. 809-810), however,
with CERI, the All Creator’s Gifts website has operated
as a kind of archive, since Belanger usually publishes
certain “Notice” and “Agreement” documents that
involve CERI litigants. Fourth, the All Creator’s Gifts
record is supplemented by data collected in the anti-
scam Quatloos! website.7
1
Comparison of these sources
detected only limited “pruning” of CERI’s public
information to conceal events and establish revisionist
narratives.
Combined, these resources provide a lengthy and
substantial record of CERI operations. While these
resources do not capture the entire scope of CERI and
its activities, much data is available to characterize
interactions within this legal cult, and understand how
CERI and Belanger engage state, law enforcement, and
court authorities. In that sense, CERI is an unusual
“open book.”
III. The Church of the Ecumenical Redemption
International -A Mighty Fortress, or Potemkin
Village?
CERI is something of a “last man standing.”
The importation of US pseudolaw around 2000
(Netolitzky, 2018b, pp. 5-10) stimulated the emergence
and development of two distinct, substantial, and
ideologically different pseudolaw movements: 1) the
generally apolitical (or politically fluid) anti-income
tax Detaxers, and 2) the anti-government, criminal,
Freemen-on-the-Land (Netolitzky, 2016, pp. 616-627
Netolitzky, 2018b Netolitzky, 2023a, pp. 814-820
Perry, Hofmann, &Scrivens, 2017, pp. 14-18, 28-29).
Both these communities are now essentially spent.
The results oriented Detaxer phenomenon collapsed
in the late 2000s after its claims consistently failed in
court (Netolitzky, 2016, p. 624 Netolitzky, 2018b, pp.
8-9 Netolitzky, 2023a, pp. 814-817). The Freeman
movement is also now only a remnant after its initial
leadership figures were discredited, and when several
generations of successor Freeman theories failed to
deliver their promised benefits: a “money-for-nothing,”
state-exempt, “freeloader” lifestyle (Netolitzky, 2016,
7 Quatloos! forums: https://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/index.
php.
p. 639 Netolitzky, 2018b, p. 10 Netolitzky, 2023a, pp.
818-831 Perry, 2017, pp. 16-18).
Amidst this eroding landscape, CERI has endured. Its
antecedents may even stretch back as far as the 1980s.
CERI is the brainchild of one man: Belanger. He
founded the organization in 2001, and since has been
the Church’s primary teacher, most active litigant, an
(unsuccessful) in-court advocate, and, overall, CERI’s
public face. The size of any pseudolaw population is
uncertain,8
1
but all available evidence indicates that
CERI has always been one of the smaller branches of
the Canadian pseudolaw phenomenon. Early in its
existence, CERI was centered on Belanger’s geographic
location: Edmonton, Alberta (Meads v Meads, 2012
ABQB 571, para. 134 Netolitzky, 2016, p. 627). Now this
group exists mainly online, knit together by Belanger’s
YouTube and Bitchute videos, weekly private video
conferences, and, most recently, a Telegram channel.9
Attendance and viewership for these online resources
is much lower than many other competing pseudolaw
examples.
Many pseudolaw gurus declare they have much in-
court and litigation experience, but those claims are
often false and/or deceptive (Meads v Meads, 2012
ABQB 571, para. 80). Belanger, however, does have
a decades-long record of frequent and diverse court
activity. Given that history, one might anticipate that
CERI would have exploited those opportunities to
develop, evolve, and hone its pseudolegal theories
and in-court strategies. However, as the subsequent
review of CERI’s court activities will illustrate, the
opposite, instead, is true. CERI, to date, has done
nothing but repeatedly ram the same misshaped key
into legal processes, failing over and over again, usually
with sharply negative consequences for its affiliates,
including Belanger.
CERI and its members have an atypical aggressive,
offensive litigation posture. In Canada, most pseudolaw
is employed to avoid legal obligations and debts, or to
8 Early media reports claimed Canada had 30,000 pseudolaw affiliates,
but that number has no apparent basis (Netolitzky, 2016, p. 612). More recent
information drawn from law enforcement sources estimated that Alberta
hosts about 150-250 active pseudolaw affiliates (McCoy, Jones, &Hastings,
2019, p. 61 Netolitzky, 2023a, pp. 807-809). This number has probably
undergone significant expansion during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
(Netolitzky, 2023c).
9 Telegram channel name: “@paracletian”.