Speaker 1: All right, can we are we ready?
Speaker 2: Yes? Boss?
Speaker 1: That was to me because you that was to you?
Speaker 2: Huh, you could never be in charge? Yes, employee.
Speaker 1: Wow? Wow, what's the president of this podcast? My Robert Sophie.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, you admitted it.
Speaker 2: Who is who is the dictator overlord of this podcast? Myself?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be I'm gonna have Daniel cut that little
Speaker 1: bit out where you where you introduced me as boss,
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna play that like.
Speaker 2: A I am introduced you as boss. I introduced myself
Speaker 2: as boss.
Speaker 1: No, I'm going to get a little two little buttons,
Speaker 1: one of them, one of them has you introducing me
Speaker 1: as boss, and one of them has Garrison calling Reuter's routers.
Speaker 1: And that's funny. That's gonna be all I need.
Speaker 2: That's very funny. One of one of the weird things
Speaker 2: about being associated with iHeartRadio is that I have an
Speaker 2: org chart that literally shows you as my as my employee.
Speaker 1: So wow, this is I have to ask Sophie of
Speaker 1: a minute and a half ago, who's in charge? Because
Speaker 1: I seem to recall what she said.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Anyway, this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast of Vicious
Speaker 1: power struggles, where we occasionally talk about some of the
Speaker 1: worst people in all of history. Our guest this week,
Speaker 1: Alex stead of You are good the podcast and the
Speaker 1: general concept.
Speaker 3: Yeah, both, and thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Alex. Alex pointed out that the one time we
Speaker 2: met in person was at Jamie Loft. This is thirtieth
Speaker 2: birthday at medieval times, where we were both extremely intoxicated,
Speaker 2: and I've never felt more endeared to a guest in my.
Speaker 1: Life now, Alex. Yes, how do you feel about colts?
Speaker 3: Oh, colts? I find them fascinating. They're part of our
Speaker 3: They're part of our national history.
Speaker 1: How do you, on a similar topic, feel about the
Speaker 1: largest wildfire in Colorado State history?
Speaker 3: I have no feelings or knowledge, no feelings towards your
Speaker 3: knowledge about pro wildfires.
Speaker 1: Got it. I'm just taking notes too, you. Okay. So
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking today about a cult that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess most people. I had not really heard
Speaker 1: of these guys until I started digging into them. But
Speaker 1: it's it's a fascinating, real, real fascinating cult leader, real
Speaker 1: terrible journey. We're just gonna hear a lot of awful
Speaker 1: things this week, just deeply unpleasant. So are you are
Speaker 1: you ready? Are you strapped in to just have a
Speaker 1: very bad time?
Speaker 3: You know, I've listened to the show before. I know
Speaker 3: we're in for and I'm eager for the journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this one's it's been a while since we've
Speaker 1: had a good cult episode. You know. That's our bread
Speaker 1: and butter. So yeah, get ready for some bread and butter.
Speaker 1: Get ready for like the carb equivalent of sorrow. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that would be.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, el.
Speaker 1: Existential depression maybe.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: On December thirtieth, twenty twenty one, embers from an approved
Speaker 1: trash fire caught dry vegetation on fire in the suburbs
Speaker 1: between Denver and Boulder, and inferno followed, tearing through desiccated
Speaker 1: grassland in the Rocky Mountain foothills. One hundred mile an
Speaker 1: hour winds meant that for quite some time there was
Speaker 1: no feasible manner of fighting what became known as the
Speaker 1: Marshall Fire. It killed two people and did around two
Speaker 1: billion dollars in damage. It is to date, the most
Speaker 1: devastating wildfire in Colorado history, although give Colorado some time,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'll break that record very soon. The way
Speaker 1: things are going for everybody ari fires. So after eighteen
Speaker 1: months of investigation, state authorities concluded that the blaze had started,
Speaker 1: likely due to smoldering embers from the aforementioned trash fire,
Speaker 1: and it was like wood trash that was being burned.
Speaker 1: The fire had started on the communal living property owned
Speaker 1: by a little known colt called the Twelve Tribes. This
Speaker 1: sparked renewed interest in the group and the investigations that
Speaker 1: followed what inspired these episodes. I should note here that
Speaker 1: Colorado authorities opted not to charge the cult or its
Speaker 1: members with the blaze. This may seem unjust, but the
Speaker 1: logic's actually pretty solid, Like this was a trash burn,
Speaker 1: the authority showed up, the fire department gave them the
Speaker 1: go ahead. It just was the driest it's ever been.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to say the horrible fire this cult
Speaker 1: caused probably chalked down more to climate change than the cult,
Speaker 1: But we have to start there because it's kind of
Speaker 1: the biggest recent touchstone with this cult. It is weird.
Speaker 3: If you're a cult, you don't want to remind people
Speaker 3: that you exist.
Speaker 1: No, No, you really want to not start the largest
Speaker 1: wildfire in state history because it might start a Denver
Speaker 1: Post investigation. Indeed, it's pretty good, quite good. As a
Speaker 1: basically fair man, I think it's important to acknowledge, even
Speaker 1: as we dig into how the authorities have ignored decades
Speaker 1: of allegations of child abuse committed by this cult, that
Speaker 1: the fire that they got famous for probably not their fault. Today,
Speaker 1: the twelve Tribes number about three thousand members somewhere around there,
Speaker 1: although we have no insight into their actual numbers because
Speaker 1: they are a very shady cult. We do know they
Speaker 1: own about thirty six million dollars in real estate in
Speaker 1: the United States, and they operate communes in twenty two states,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of these communities. And they also
Speaker 1: operate a lot of businesses, which we'll be talking about later,
Speaker 1: mostly like little cafes and restaurants and enormous construction companies.
Speaker 1: So one thing that interested me right away with this
Speaker 1: cult is that while it's got a charismatic founder who
Speaker 1: goes mad with power, it may have functioned in most
Speaker 1: of its history is in a less like centralized manner,
Speaker 1: right where the cult leader was kind of potentially usurped
Speaker 1: at some point by his equally sketchy wife. It's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to say exactly because the life of the
Speaker 1: cult founder Eugene Spriggs is a little bit obscure. But
Speaker 1: we're going to do our best here to pull back
Speaker 1: the veil about this guy and what happens to him. So,
Speaker 1: Elbert Eugene Spriggs Junior gets born on May eighteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven to a devout Methodist family in East Ridge, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: His childhood is mostly a mystery to us. I can
Speaker 1: tell you his dad was named Elbert Senior, which is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: and his mother wasn't Mabel, So he's like very thirties kid, right,
Speaker 1: Mabel and Albert, Like that's like you can only be grandparents,
Speaker 1: Like while you're I think you get like skipped over
Speaker 1: straight to their grandparents stage. If you've got old people
Speaker 1: names like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're out of they're out of Tennessee. This
Speaker 3: is like a scene from Pearl Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Try and also just like try to imagine an eighteen
Speaker 1: year old Albert, Like it's impossible, you can't do it.
Speaker 1: It can't like cannot be done.
Speaker 3: To Benjamin Button suation, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do. I want to. I'm never gonna have a kid,
Speaker 1: but I want to, like try and start a movement
Speaker 1: of like gen Z kids to bring back some of
Speaker 1: these ridiculous old timey names like I want a bunch
Speaker 1: of gin Alpha Mabels, like a lot of little baby
Speaker 1: Mabel and Ethel's. Like wandering around.
Speaker 2: I did meet a very nice dog named Mabel once.
Speaker 1: She was we Yeah, but dog. She was a called
Speaker 1: dog's anything.
Speaker 2: She was a Corgie. She was just doing she was sniffing,
Speaker 2: and her name was Mabel and it worked so good.
Speaker 2: Can we have a dog exception?
Speaker 1: There's always a dog exception.
Speaker 3: I know I knew a Mabel named after Maybel Carter
Speaker 3: as a dog. So yeah, I guess that's a that's
Speaker 3: a two of them.
Speaker 1: That's a popular dog, that's very popul Yeah, seems like
Speaker 1: Mabel's the hot new dog name. Everybody's everybody's going with.
Speaker 1: Why not name your kid Mabel? You know what, bring
Speaker 1: it back. That's how we get back some of those
Speaker 1: good thirties values, like smoking lots of cigarettes.
Speaker 3: And putting kids to work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because like Elbert's a cigarette name, Like Elbert's fucking
Speaker 1: like smoking the way people just can't smoke today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you know about him. So very religious family
Speaker 1: like again, Hella Methodist. They went to church three times
Speaker 1: a week on a pretty regular basis. Just a nightmare life.
Speaker 1: One bio I found notes that Eugene Spriggs was a
Speaker 1: football stand out at Central High School, so we can
Speaker 1: assume a handful of childhood head injuries. He graduated and
Speaker 1: moved to Chattanooga to attend the University of Tennessee, where
Speaker 1: he got a degree in psychology. Now. A paper I
Speaker 1: found on the Virginia Commonwealth University website describes his young
Speaker 1: life as unsettled in a number of ways, as he
Speaker 1: held a succession of jobs pretty wide variety, everything from
Speaker 1: like labor jobs and stuff to he was a high
Speaker 1: school guidance counselor. For a spell, he was the tour
Speaker 1: director of a travel agency. He did a stint in
Speaker 1: the army, and he seemed to have unusual difficulties staying
Speaker 1: in relationships. This is a at this point fifties guy
Speaker 1: who gets divorced three times. Oh yeah, you don't run
Speaker 1: into that a lot. That means you're really running through
Speaker 1: like you got to be absolutely And it seems like
Speaker 1: he is leaving them right like he has one kid
Speaker 1: and wife takes it. I don't know it's a little
Speaker 1: unclear to me what happened in each relationship. But that's
Speaker 1: not a common story in this period of time.
Speaker 3: No, not, Although it feels like a common story with
Speaker 3: male cult leaders. It does at this at this time
Speaker 3: that there's like a couple wives before you find one
Speaker 3: who's like, let's I like your zany ideas, let's.
Speaker 1: Move on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he does you
Speaker 1: actually have predicted where this goes because wife number four
Speaker 1: is going to be down to clown.
Speaker 3: This already sounds a lot like I forget the name
Speaker 3: of the cult. But then Tony Alamo, Yeah, who makes
Speaker 3: the like beaded jackets. This is almost exactly his story.
Speaker 1: Art well, it's also I mean it's not l Ron Hubbard,
Speaker 1: like he did everything extra panache, but he gets is
Speaker 1: divorced basically two or three times before he finds the
Speaker 1: lady who's going to go to prison for him for
Speaker 1: infiltrating the FBI.
Speaker 3: It's a high standard really to be like, will you
Speaker 3: go to jail if it comes to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, listeners, what you should take from this
Speaker 1: is that if you're looking to start your own cult,
Speaker 1: get divorced a lot. I mean, I mean, because honestly,
Speaker 1: unless you're able to, unless you've got real experience abandoning fan,
Speaker 1: then you're not going to have the kind of emotional
Speaker 1: distance that it takes to be a good cult leader.
Speaker 1: It's just basic sense.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You can you can learn more about this in my
Speaker 1: in my forty two hundred dollars weekend course Divorce Your
Speaker 1: Way to Leadership Skills.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think Robert has a free PDF about this.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, Sophie, you're you're my dealer basically. So
Speaker 1: by age yeah, by age thirty two, Spriggs is super divorce,
Speaker 1: the most divorced man in the nineteen sixties and working
Speaker 1: as a carnie in Chattanouga, which is so funny, like
Speaker 1: he is living the most depressing divorced skill.
Speaker 3: Like if you were doing that today.
Speaker 1: It would be word oh yeah, yeah. So he's he's
Speaker 1: a divorced Carney doing divorced Carni shit in fucking Chattanouga,
Speaker 1: which is a rough place to be a divorced Carti.
Speaker 1: And then he hears the voice of God ask him
Speaker 1: a question, is this what I created you for? Hell?
Speaker 1: Normally that's like you should go to the doctor. Experience, right,
Speaker 1: Spriggs does not do that. In fairness, doctors didn't really
Speaker 1: exist back then, so he would later claim that his
Speaker 1: time as a carney had given him an intimate look
Speaker 1: into the most sinful and debauched aspects of life. This
Speaker 1: is the only thing he says that I think is
Speaker 1: probably true, because I've known some carnies and they all
Speaker 1: report that love them. So he decides this is not
Speaker 1: what God has in mind for him, and so he
Speaker 1: follows a large percentage of his generation and fucks off
Speaker 1: to California. Now, the late sixties early seventies are famous
Speaker 1: in this country for having been the age of the
Speaker 1: Hippie movement and its disillusionment and collapse into what eventually
Speaker 1: became the soulless corporatism of the Reagan era. Now, I
Speaker 1: think the fact that the hippie movement gets so much
Speaker 1: play in media in part because like the kind of
Speaker 1: people who made movies and shit were likely to be
Speaker 1: as kids, the kind of people who were into that
Speaker 1: social movement. There's this like belief among people that it
Speaker 1: was the generation that spawned that movement was much more
Speaker 1: radical than they were. The Boomers were always a very
Speaker 1: conservative generation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole like hippies were the way people are.
Speaker 3: Thing drives me nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was not. I mean, hippies weren't the way
Speaker 1: hippies are, like you talk to people like. For one thing,
Speaker 1: it was still a very homophobic, very like most people
Speaker 1: who were who would have called themselves hippies held to
Speaker 1: some what we would call very traditional values about sexuality
Speaker 1: and gender still. And it was also just like most
Speaker 1: people like that, like the fringe, who were super progressive
Speaker 1: anti war, hippies were not anything close to a majority.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that kind of makes this
Speaker 1: point is that at the same time that the hippie movement,
Speaker 1: you know, is kind of winding down, another major cultural
Speaker 1: trend is happening that tends to get left out of
Speaker 1: popular histories of the era. Have you heard of the
Speaker 1: Jesus Movement?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So these are kind of a mirror of the
Speaker 1: hippies in that, like most of the Gjesis movement, people
Speaker 1: who get swept up in this, they're like they've got
Speaker 1: long hair, they're kind of unkemped. Most many of them
Speaker 1: have dropped out of society. It is a lot of
Speaker 1: the same kind of you know, living in buses, traveling
Speaker 1: around doing like handcrafts. A lot of them people are
Speaker 1: like pooling resources to you know, start farms and stuff together,
Speaker 1: back to the land. And the thing that kind of
Speaker 1: separates them from the hippies is that the Jesus Movement
Speaker 1: sees Christ as a counter culture hero, so they are
Speaker 1: kind of Jesus. Yeah, yeah, hippie. There is like a
Speaker 1: bit of that going on, but it's still it is,
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about, still quite conservative. Now.
Speaker 3: When I went to church as a kid, like this
Speaker 3: is how they sold me on Jesus. Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: like there were it was clearly people who got into
Speaker 3: Jesus in one way or another from because I grew
Speaker 3: up in Maine. There were a couple of different kinds
Speaker 3: of back to the Landers. There were like the hippie hippies,
Speaker 3: and there were religious hippies, and those were the ones
Speaker 3: who sold Jesus as like a social justice figure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is because you get the Jesus Movement,
Speaker 1: some of the what splinters out of it is going
Speaker 1: to be kind of more progressive. Jesus, you know, was
Speaker 1: fighting against these injustices that are still present with us today.
Speaker 1: But a lot of it's going to lead to the
Speaker 1: religious right, like it feeds directly because you have kind
Speaker 1: of Jesus movement is sort of late sixties through parts
Speaker 1: of the seventies and kind of that's also right around
Speaker 1: when you know, in the late seventies you get Jerry
Speaker 1: Folwell start to emerge, you get the religious right welded
Speaker 1: into this political coalition for the first time. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the people who get swept up in this generally called
Speaker 1: either Jesus people or Jesus freaks. That is where the
Speaker 1: term Jesus freak comes from. And yeah, it's a charismatic movement.
Speaker 1: It's cross denominational, So there are Catholics who like sects
Speaker 1: of Catholics who are part of this Jesus movement. There's
Speaker 1: Protestants in it, and it's like a lot of different organizations,
Speaker 1: lots of different churches that you can just kind of
Speaker 1: like broadly call part of the Jesus movement, not because
Speaker 1: they're part of the same thing with each other, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you have this sort of hardcore Protestant, you know church,
Speaker 1: that's Jesus movement, they're not the same thing as Catholics
Speaker 1: who might also be swept up in it, but the
Speaker 1: similarity they have is that like they're all adopting this
Speaker 1: really like charismatic kind of countercultural attitude towards their religious worship.
Speaker 1: Followers would often speak in tongues. That's a big part
Speaker 1: of like when that gets more popular in the United States,
Speaker 1: and there's generally a big focus on what's called the
Speaker 1: gifts of the Spirit, which is like restoring this kind
Speaker 1: of sense of a direct connection personal connection to God
Speaker 1: usually an a static connection, right, So this is part
Speaker 1: of why you get these like big tint revival worship ceremonies.
Speaker 1: A really good documentary to watch if you want to
Speaker 1: understand the texture of this movement in time is Marjo
Speaker 1: M A. R. Joe. It's about this kid, Marjo Gortner,
Speaker 1: who was like the youngest priest in the country. It
Speaker 1: was kind of a carnival sideshow grift run by his parents,
Speaker 1: but he went back as an adult to film behind
Speaker 1: the scenes and it shows a lot of this period
Speaker 1: you can get Are you.
Speaker 3: Aware of where this was happening, Like did it all
Speaker 3: over spring out of one geopiece?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: So okay, all I think it does start in the
Speaker 1: West Coast, Like I think that's where you sat, like California,
Speaker 1: but it spreads everywhere. As we'll talk about these guys
Speaker 1: are very much a Jesus movement. Story, Eugene Spriggs is
Speaker 1: going to be a Jesus movement, like that's when he
Speaker 1: kind of starts becoming a religious leader. And they do
Speaker 1: embody to an extent a big wing of it. And again,
Speaker 1: when we talk about the Jesus movement, it's not like
Speaker 1: a cult. It's not like a one thing, right, It's
Speaker 1: like a bunch of different in some cases, very much
Speaker 1: like opposed different sort of religious organizations, traditions, communities. They're
Speaker 1: just kind of bound together by certain similarities as a
Speaker 1: result of this cultural moment. Yeah, and it's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that, like a lot of people who get pulled
Speaker 1: into the Jesus movement, there's a big focus on this
Speaker 1: idea of like returning to the lifestyles of early Christians,
Speaker 1: which is part of what convinces them of Like why
Speaker 1: a lot of them do sort of the back to
Speaker 1: the land shit, right, Like that's a big thing for them.
Speaker 1: This helps them kind of blend in with the hippies, right,
Speaker 1: And often Jesus freaks are people who had been hippies
Speaker 1: a few years earlier.
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 1: Their lives in a lot of cases collapse, they get
Speaker 1: criminal chargers or something, or they have you know, they
Speaker 1: burn out, you know, as a result of drug use
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then there's this kind of movement that
Speaker 1: has some aspects of values that are similar to the
Speaker 1: thing that had brought them in that they can you
Speaker 1: know that they wound up getting swept up in not
Speaker 1: an uncommon story.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's super common. I mean I did a podcast
Speaker 3: series a couple of years ago on Tony Alamo and
Speaker 3: the in his religious cult, and this is it's almost
Speaker 3: exactly beat for beat. Like they started in like sixty
Speaker 3: nine in Hollywood, and they were attracting just burned like
Speaker 3: hippies who are burned out on being hippies into Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah this makes sense. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of Jesus freaks wound up living in communes practicing versions
Speaker 1: of religious aestheticism. We see echoes of like modern trad
Speaker 1: culture in this. A lot of it is this sort
Speaker 1: of reaction to especially like feminism and stuff. There's this
Speaker 1: attitude of like the necessity of returning to traditional roles
Speaker 1: were changing in the wrong direction. Some of this is
Speaker 1: tied to the Cold War as well, particularly fears of
Speaker 1: nuclear war and how that merges with Christian apocalyptic prophecy.
Speaker 1: One of the key books of the Jesus movement is
Speaker 1: how Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth. And if you
Speaker 1: if you grew up as an evangelical kid, you probably
Speaker 1: heard about that book. It is hugely influential to these people.
Speaker 1: We can't actually know if Spriggs had the vision he
Speaker 1: claims he had in nineteen sixty nine. I kind of
Speaker 1: think he may have falsified that because it's an auspicious
Speaker 1: year for the counterculture. You know, if you're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about like, that's the year you do it. Part of
Speaker 1: why I suspect this is because some versions of the
Speaker 1: Spriggs story say that, you know, God came to him
Speaker 1: during his Carnie days in nineteen seventy, you know, a
Speaker 1: year later, whatever the case. After the late sixties, you know,
Speaker 1: as the nineteen seventies start, he does become very quickly
Speaker 1: like a player. In the newly energized Christian fringe, write
Speaker 1: up by The Times Free Press notes, while in California,
Speaker 1: he devoted his life to creating a ministry. According to
Speaker 1: reporting at the time by the Chattanooga News Free Press.
Speaker 1: Spriggs said he wanted to reach young people who were
Speaker 1: not going to church, particularly those turned off of faith
Speaker 1: from their parents. That's interesting to me, like he's very
Speaker 1: much focusing on young people who especially this kind of
Speaker 1: very staid, stolid Protestantism that's really turn of the century,
Speaker 1: these very quiet, austere churches that still have kind of
Speaker 1: some of these Victorian attitudes and worship is very much
Speaker 1: like channeled through the pastor. A big part of what
Speaker 1: he's doing is like, no, we want like personal, astatic connections,
Speaker 1: and that's what will bring these young people back who
Speaker 1: kind of got burnt out of these very authoritarian churches
Speaker 1: of their youths. This is going to be ironic considering
Speaker 1: where Spriggs ends up.
Speaker 3: It often is, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In nineteen seventy two, he gets hitched
Speaker 1: for the fourth time and what will be the final time,
Speaker 1: to a woman named Marcia and Duval. By all accounts,
Speaker 1: Marsia shares his spiritual obsession. The two move away from
Speaker 1: these in full California coast and back to Chattanooga, where
Speaker 1: they found a Bible study group for young people that
Speaker 1: they call the Vine Christian community church named after their home,
Speaker 1: the Vine House, and they bring some California people with them.
Speaker 1: The Jesus movement is appealing to disillusioned dropouts, to former
Speaker 1: war protesters and stuff like that, and Jean realizes early
Speaker 1: on that these people are the easiest converts to his
Speaker 1: church because like dropouts people with criminal records, they tend
Speaker 1: to be desperate, and so he offers them what they
Speaker 1: need if they'll attend his services, and he starts opening
Speaker 1: his house to worshippers right, being like, if you're coming
Speaker 1: to church here, you can live with me, you know,
Speaker 1: like your food and whatnot will be taken care of.
Speaker 1: And so by nineteen seventy four there are between fifty
Speaker 1: and sixty people living with the Sprigses in their house,
Speaker 1: which must have smelled fascinating. That's too many people for
Speaker 1: one house. Perhaps because of this, they start asking their
Speaker 1: followers to pool their resources, and this is a limited
Speaker 1: affair at first. They're kind of just asking for donations, right,
Speaker 1: you know, if you do have money, if you've got
Speaker 1: family money or something, or you have savings when you
Speaker 1: come here, maybe give us some of it so we
Speaker 1: can pay for these other people who who have nothing.
Speaker 2: And this.
Speaker 1: They do well enough at this they're able to accrue
Speaker 1: a decent amount of money, and they purchase three additional
Speaker 1: homes in Chattanooga, and they buy a restaurant which they
Speaker 1: call the Yellow Deli. This becomes known as a place
Speaker 1: in town where if you're a runaway or a hitchhiker
Speaker 1: you can get a free meal. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people show up because, like, you know, they're starving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when they're starving, that's a really good way to
Speaker 1: just kind of pull people into what is becoming a cult, right,
Speaker 1: you know, that's your little fishing lure.
Speaker 3: Any move like that. That's the tricky thing, is like
Speaker 3: any movement usually starts with taking disillusion to people and
Speaker 3: giving them a reason and giving them some resources or
Speaker 3: making available some resources. But it gets it's usually just
Speaker 3: like what happens after that step where you determine is
Speaker 3: this going to be a cult or is this going
Speaker 3: to be a social movement or is it going to
Speaker 3: be a little of both?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is that is exactly the kind of situation here,
Speaker 1: and it's got to lean cult. Uh spoilers, because this
Speaker 1: is the show that it is.
Speaker 3: Well, it's like, if you think about just the commonalities
Speaker 3: of this and again Alamo and then just like Elijah
Speaker 3: Muhammett was sending people five dollars bills in prison, like
Speaker 3: it's it's a it's a great way to endear people
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this. It's this thing that the uh the
Speaker 1: wind friends and influence people like influencer grindset talk about
Speaker 1: a lot, but it is a real factor, like the
Speaker 1: reciprocity effect, right, where like if somebody gives you something,
Speaker 1: you feel like a psychological need to give them something
Speaker 1: to return the favor.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's just the fact that just the fact that Manson
Speaker 3: loved that book and in Dianetics just like makes all
Speaker 3: this and that just explains it all for you.
Speaker 1: It is. It is like exactly the books. Like at
Speaker 1: some point somebody is gonna feed those books to an
Speaker 1: ai and we're gonna have a real fucking problem on
Speaker 1: our heads because, like you, they're just going to create
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard the fucking chat bot. Very much.
Speaker 2: Looking forward, that's such a good idea. Can I have
Speaker 2: ten percent?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely I do. I am. I I am looking
Speaker 1: forward to when a bunch of like weirdo online influencer
Speaker 1: freaks like feed the right combination of books to a
Speaker 1: chatbot and convince themselves they've created a god.
Speaker 2: But also, why has it scientology made an l Ron Hubbard?
Speaker 2: AI like that, Oh they will, they will the lrih box,
Speaker 2: Like why haven't they done that?
Speaker 1: Because I would you know what, I would pay them
Speaker 1: money for that. I want that on my phone. I
Speaker 1: want to run all of my life decisions by the
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 2: Why haven't But I mean, obviously it's because they even
Speaker 2: miscatches wouldn't have power, But like, why haven't they done
Speaker 2: that in a strategic way? It doesn't make sense, like
Speaker 2: you're still putting the clothes out, Like why why haven't
Speaker 2: you done that?
Speaker 1: Well, I think they're probably don't.
Speaker 2: Take no scientologists, you're despicable, But.
Speaker 1: I feel like you gotta know, like what I would
Speaker 1: like is a robot in my pocket that when I'm
Speaker 1: like what should I do in this situation? Says you
Speaker 1: should kidnap your own daughter and to Cuba because I've
Speaker 1: been looking for an excuse to go have a nice
Speaker 1: vacation there. You know, I've always wanted to see Cuba,
Speaker 1: and I feel like this could make it easier for me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'll kidnap somebody's daughter. Look, kids, you know
Speaker 1: it's there. They're small. Yeah, there's all all sorts of
Speaker 1: kids all around, so it's easy to find one. Anyway.
Speaker 3: It's not your fault if the scientology AI told you
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: It exactly, That's exactly what I'm going to say in court.
Speaker 1: And you know who else loves abduction?
Speaker 2: Where are you going with this?
Speaker 1: It's it's time for ads, So okay.
Speaker 2: But where are you going with this? Uh?
Speaker 1: To Cuba hopefully. Oh. We are just having a great
Speaker 1: time here talking about the beautiful birth of what's going
Speaker 1: to become quite a cult. So in one local news
Speaker 1: article about the Yellow Darties, if you will, the spark, yeah,
Speaker 1: and really the start of the like the little campfire
Speaker 1: from which they're going to burn down all of Colorado
Speaker 1: is the Yellow Deli. And one local news article about
Speaker 1: the deli's opening, Spriggs said, when people ask us who
Speaker 1: our interior designer is, we tell them we have the
Speaker 1: same one Noah had, which is an interesting like basically
Speaker 1: saying like God helped us design the interior, which I
Speaker 1: think means they probably did not have fire escapes. Seems
Speaker 1: like I thing God would miss. Spriggs was not at
Speaker 1: this point, openly describing what he was doing as separate
Speaker 1: from mainstream Christianity. In fact, he and his followers were
Speaker 1: careful to maintain regular attendance at a local church, First Presbyterian,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, like, even if you're doing an
Speaker 1: ostensibly Christian movement, there's nobody who's going to get pissed
Speaker 1: at you faster than like old conservative church goers. Right.
Speaker 1: So if you're doing this weird thing, if you're living
Speaker 1: with dozens of people and like convincing all the dropouts
Speaker 1: and hippies to move in with you and buying up
Speaker 1: large amounts of real estate, you really want to allay
Speaker 1: their suspicions. When he is asked by a journalist during
Speaker 1: this period of time about his plans for the future,
Speaker 1: Spriggs says, this, can you imagine what a wonderful thing
Speaker 1: it would be to have Yellow Delis all over America,
Speaker 1: a restaurant with good food for everyone in the community.
Speaker 1: But it would be a place to reach all the
Speaker 1: runaways who are passing through, or all the young people
Speaker 1: who are tired and mixed up. These people are not
Speaker 1: going to church. Sometimes they stop at shelters and guidance.
Speaker 1: People beat around the Bush. They don't tell it simple
Speaker 1: like it is, Jesus loves you. You can be happy.
Speaker 1: Let God run your life, you know.
Speaker 2: With God helping them build that. I really hope they
Speaker 2: got flood insurance.
Speaker 1: Oh no, God does not believe in flood insurance. That's
Speaker 1: not having enough faith in him, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Heaven is the insurance, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Heaven is your flood insurance.
Speaker 3: It's wild because this is the same time. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know, I know how much is happening at this time,
Speaker 3: but I never really think about all of the individual
Speaker 3: pinpointed moments. Is this is also the same time that
Speaker 3: they're opening the Source Family restaurant in La Is sixty nine,
Speaker 3: and they're like that's their gateway into their cult. So yeah,
Speaker 3: having like a branded hangout cafe spot was like the
Speaker 3: way to go, you know.
Speaker 1: So Reading California, where I used to live off and
Speaker 1: on for years, is run by a cult. Like there's
Speaker 1: a big church in town that absolutely runs everything. The police,
Speaker 1: politics like it and are increasingly like an iron grip
Speaker 1: on it. And I used to I used to work
Speaker 1: because like we had no internet for a long time
Speaker 1: in the trailer in the mountains that we lived in
Speaker 1: I used to have to go drive every day to
Speaker 1: this play I thing was called It's absolutely a part
Speaker 1: of this like fucking church thing all very like a
Speaker 1: lot of people having like evangelical conversations, like you know,
Speaker 1: pulling in someone from off the street, some trimmer or
Speaker 1: whatever and having very earnest talks with them about Jesus.
Speaker 1: It was that's where I wrote a lot of what
Speaker 1: became the first season of It Could happen here. It's
Speaker 1: like sitting in this cafe with all of these like
Speaker 1: hardcore Christian right fanatics who were very very carefully trying
Speaker 1: to expand their little king them quite successfully.
Speaker 3: You're like, in fact, it's happening right before.
Speaker 1: It is in fact happening right here. Yeah, fun town, Uh,
Speaker 1: don't go there unarmed reading, So we're gonna have like
Speaker 1: three reading listeners laughing a lot of times.
Speaker 3: Actually, my brother's college roommates from Reading, so I look
Speaker 3: forward to asking him some follow up questions.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we may be covering them more
Speaker 1: in the future since I don't have to go back
Speaker 1: to that fucking town anymore. So the stuff that Spriggs
Speaker 1: is saying about, like yeah, we want to use these
Speaker 1: cafes to find these young people who are tired and
Speaker 1: mixed up. You know, this is the seventies. This is
Speaker 1: the fucking easy writer era, right these Like the fact
Speaker 1: that there's all these young people have kind of dropped
Speaker 1: out is a major like kind it's not really a
Speaker 1: culture war touchstone, but it's like a major concern, particularly
Speaker 1: for like older, more conservative Americans, And so this line
Speaker 1: plays well with them, you know, particularly well with people
Speaker 1: who might have been put off by the fact that
Speaker 1: he's kind of created a commune in their town. But
Speaker 1: there are some signs from the beginning that Spriggs was
Speaker 1: heading in an settling direction. In that same interview, he
Speaker 1: expressed that another one of his goals was to reach
Speaker 1: people who had dropped out of Christianity because they didn't
Speaker 1: like the faith that their parents had expressed. And this
Speaker 1: line from him is really interesting. You can't fool a
Speaker 1: dog or a child can see the hypocrisy and the
Speaker 1: phoniness in their parents' lives. Their parents take alcohol, tranquilizers, cigarettes,
Speaker 1: or they disobey speed laws, yet they want their children
Speaker 1: to stay off drugs and obey all laws. Which is
Speaker 1: not an inherently bad point, right that, like there's this
Speaker 1: very like conservative backlash era happening in the particularly in
Speaker 1: the seventies, but it's being kind of perpetrated by these
Speaker 1: people who are on what we now call some of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous benzos in the world. Right.
Speaker 3: He also, that's also like a very like cool youth
Speaker 3: pastor thing to say. Yeah, and then you're like, you
Speaker 3: know who else disobeyed laws?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly? Jesus. Well, I actually think Jesus would have
Speaker 1: been a fucking well. Anyway, we can talk about what
Speaker 1: drugs I think I may have bought from Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: but that's that's a separate story for another day. This
Speaker 1: was such a suit. Yeah, this was such a success
Speaker 1: that they next opened a coffeehouse and started ministering the
Speaker 1: local kids who were disillusioned with mainstream society. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: cults sent members out into the world to find new
Speaker 1: members in places where they thought people struggling on the
Speaker 1: fringe would congregate. This culminated in them for years. They
Speaker 1: would send a bus to follow the Grateful Dead on
Speaker 1: concert tours, and hand picked members would offer first aid
Speaker 1: and food to fans coming up or down on the
Speaker 1: various substances. Yeah, I do kind of I have this
Speaker 1: this beautiful image in my head of like the this
Speaker 1: cult bust crashing into the nitrous mafia's bus. I don't
Speaker 1: know who would have won that fight. So Jeene Spriggs
Speaker 1: promises all of his recruits, you know that if they
Speaker 1: work hard, he'll take care of them. You know, they
Speaker 1: won't have any unmet physical needs. All he needs is
Speaker 1: their yeah, their their labor, and their unyielding religious evoce.
Speaker 1: And he also promises you'll never be lonely again. Everyone
Speaker 1: lives communally in the cult, and they work communally too.
Speaker 1: They start to call themselves the Light Brigade in this
Speaker 1: period of time. They're not going to stick with that
Speaker 1: name very long because it's a dog shit name and
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. You don't have any autonomy
Speaker 1: when you're in the Light Brigade. But you also you're
Speaker 1: not exposed to capitalism, right, and that like you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about winding up on the street, you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about starving like that is a
Speaker 1: huge part of the appeal right especially again, this is
Speaker 1: a lot of these people are folks who had been
Speaker 1: swept up in the big social movements of the sixties.
Speaker 1: And now they're kind of dealing with how a lot
Speaker 1: of that failed, how chaotic and scary the world seems
Speaker 1: in the seventies, the promise that like you can forget
Speaker 1: all of that and forget interfacing with a confusing and
Speaker 1: chaotic world. Like that's appealing, right, that is objectively, that
Speaker 1: is appealing, Like a lot of people. Why it's why,
Speaker 1: Like folks in our generation idolize this this kind of
Speaker 1: mythical idea of like living on a farm with your friends.
Speaker 3: God, yeah, and then you live on a fucking farm.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's the downside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I live on a farm kind of it's
Speaker 1: a small one, but we don't like there's no attempt
Speaker 1: to like make a lifting or survive purely by that,
Speaker 1: because that's like a huge amount of work.
Speaker 3: Exactly. You get blake and no one eats for a year.
Speaker 3: It's bad. It's a bad time.
Speaker 1: No, I think.
Speaker 3: I do think that like the real sign of maturity,
Speaker 3: the eventual real sign of maturity is just like accepting
Speaker 3: no orientation or situation is gonna be good and they're
Speaker 3: all gonna suck a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's there's like dog shit that you have
Speaker 1: to deal with no matter what.
Speaker 3: You do, You're you're gonna eat shit somewhere somewhere on
Speaker 3: the journey.
Speaker 1: The I think the appeal to something like that, it's
Speaker 1: the it's the inherent appeal of dropping out right, of
Speaker 1: like realizing how complex the problems are, and like, well,
Speaker 1: I just want an option that means I don't have
Speaker 1: to think about them, because then I can pretend it's
Speaker 1: not happening. You know, maybe I can escape, maybe I
Speaker 1: will be safe. And obviously the fact that all of
Speaker 1: Canada burned down this year as evidence that no, you
Speaker 1: can't be But we don't need to harp on that.
Speaker 1: Everyone is aware of that, right, We're preaching to a
Speaker 1: large choir here, so.
Speaker 3: And everyone has the vibe of people who know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I wanted to provide some context from one of
Speaker 1: the desperate young people lured in by Jean's cult, and
Speaker 1: I found it. This is a later account from two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, but I think it holds up. It's
Speaker 1: from an issue of the local Chattanoogan paper, The Chattanoogan
Speaker 1: titled I Escaped from the Yellow Deli quote. You would
Speaker 1: have to understand my situation at the time to understand
Speaker 1: how I was influenced by these people. I was twenty
Speaker 1: one years old and just got out of a three
Speaker 1: year abusive relationship, renting a room in a house in
Speaker 1: Saint Elmo, no direction and no family to turn to.
Speaker 1: They told me what I needed to hear. They loved me,
Speaker 1: and God loved me, and I could come live with them.
Speaker 1: When I became convinced, two members moved me out of
Speaker 1: my little room at three am. I was driven to
Speaker 1: their commune in Dalton, Georgia, and like, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that gets across, Like, yeah, it was in an abusive relationship.
Speaker 1: I got out. I've got no family, I've got this
Speaker 1: apart I can't afford it solves. They offer to solve
Speaker 1: all your problems as long as you want the Jesus.
Speaker 1: At first, the Light Brigade and the Weinhaus Church were
Speaker 1: augments to the local Christian culture, not a wild new
Speaker 1: vision of worship. This changes in nineteen seventy five when
Speaker 1: First Presbyterian makes the decision to cancel a Sunday worship
Speaker 1: session so that their pastor can go watch the Super Bowl. Right,
Speaker 1: He's like, you know it, don't come in Sunday, Like
Speaker 1: we're all going to go to the game anyway. Right,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a cool thing to do if
Speaker 1: you're a seventies preacher. But this is like Gene finds
Speaker 1: this offensive. Right, you don't skip worship for any reason,
Speaker 1: especially not this like profane worldly game. So he uses
Speaker 1: this as an excuse to break his flock away from
Speaker 1: the church entirely and start hosting Sunday services in a
Speaker 1: local park instead. This increases his hold over his flock,
Speaker 1: who now become They had been part of the community before. Right,
Speaker 1: you're going to church with everybody, you're somewhat tied to
Speaker 1: it from this point now they're only socializing and working
Speaker 1: with each other. Right, This is kind of he severed
Speaker 1: this like cord that they had to everyone else. This
Speaker 1: also brings Spriggs his first real opposition, because once the
Speaker 1: cult kind of steps away from this church, locals start
Speaker 1: to be like, this does kind of seem like a problem,
Speaker 1: like this cult. So from seventy five to seventy eight,
Speaker 1: local churches register protests against the Light Brigade. When Spriggs
Speaker 1: is spotted performing public baptisms, local papers start running the
Speaker 1: first articles accusing them of being a cult. Two local
Speaker 1: colleges ban their students from eating at the Yellow Deli
Speaker 1: after enough former students had dropped out to join the
Speaker 1: Spriggs cult, Like it's becomes such a problem of them
Speaker 1: like poaching college students. I'm guessing they're kids who were
Speaker 1: you know, you're in college, you find that you don't
Speaker 1: like your major as much as you thought, or you
Speaker 1: get stressed out during exams. You're poor, so you go
Speaker 1: to the Yellow Deli for a free meal, and they're
Speaker 1: like boys, seems like college isn't making you happy. You
Speaker 1: know it'll make you happy.
Speaker 3: The difference in your where your life turns out could
Speaker 3: just be like one free sandwich.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Just there's so many times in my life where if
Speaker 3: I got the free sandwich from the wrong place, I
Speaker 3: would have been screwed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I know a lot of like former
Speaker 1: punk kids who are anarchists because the food not bombs
Speaker 1: people showed up and gave them sandwiches and.
Speaker 3: Bombs is how I same. It's how I turned from
Speaker 3: a libertarian kid to a anarchist punk kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this is always the case with colts, right
Speaker 1: where like the things that let colts, I'm not going
Speaker 1: food not bombs a cult. I'm saying that, like the
Speaker 1: thing that colts use is something that also has a
Speaker 1: good site. It's good to give people things, it's good
Speaker 1: to take care of people who are desperate. If you're
Speaker 1: doing that because you like people and you want them
Speaker 1: to have an easier time, that's good. If you're doing
Speaker 1: it because you want them to like feel a sense
Speaker 1: of obligation to you so that you can rope them
Speaker 1: into your your cult, that's bad, right, Yeah, real estate scheme. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the key a big part of it. Whenever somebody is
Speaker 1: like showing up and handing out free food, is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: who's behind this. Is it just a bunch of people
Speaker 1: coming together to help out the community, or is they're
Speaker 1: a guy. Is there like a dude and this is
Speaker 1: his thing, you know, then then maybe it's a cult.
Speaker 1: Then maybe you should get your cult mace out.
Speaker 3: So, oh my god.
Speaker 1: I found one story from a student, actually the student
Speaker 1: who was the author of that article in the Chattanooga
Speaker 1: I quote earlier, who talks about like the process of
Speaker 1: being like recruited and forced to drop out of college
Speaker 1: by these people. Quote they believe that anything in the
Speaker 1: outside world was evil, And they drove me to Chattanooga
Speaker 1: State where I was attending to withdraw me. When I
Speaker 1: told my counselor what I was doing, he just shook
Speaker 1: his head. I told him I found Jesus and these
Speaker 1: people loved me and were going to take care of me.
Speaker 1: So they have they build over the years, like a
Speaker 1: pretty steady process for like disenrolling kids from college when
Speaker 1: they when they convert them, like it's enough of a
Speaker 1: thing that like not only dose schools try to ban
Speaker 1: their students from going to this cafe, but like everyone
Speaker 1: who works their nose, like, oh shit, we lost another
Speaker 1: one to the fucking cult.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy eight things come to a head,
Speaker 1: because that's the Jonestown year, right, Congress, when Leo Ryan
Speaker 1: and several other people are gunned down in the jungle
Speaker 1: by a cult. The cult then commits mass suicide. This
Speaker 1: makes a lot of people very unhappy, really freaks out
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the golden era to have a cult was,
Speaker 3: you know, was like sixty seven to seventy eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly with.
Speaker 3: The little bit Yeah the Manson blit, but you could
Speaker 3: still get away with a lot.
Speaker 1: In this effen Yeah. Yeah, this puts an end to that, right,
Speaker 1: This launches what Spriggs would later call anti cult hysteria
Speaker 1: in the United States. He says that, like it's a
Speaker 1: bad thing. Yeah, I don't feel like it's hysteria. This
Speaker 1: is like clear evidence, you know, Jonestown was clear evidence
Speaker 1: of a problem. Yeah. So by this point, Jeans Spring Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like one hundred and seventy was like a lot
Speaker 1: of people are dead now, a little more than a scare.
Speaker 1: They shot a congressman. That's so wild. I imagine if
Speaker 1: that happened today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they like ran, oh my god, helicopters, there was action.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, like I cannot believe that that happened. Still, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can, obviously, but it's yeah, it's it's so specific
Speaker 3: and in a lot of ways, Jill's like destined to
Speaker 3: be born of this country, even though it didn't happen here.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the most unbelievable thing about it is
Speaker 1: that a congress person actually did something right, like heroically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty heroically. Yeah. So, by this point, Jean Spriggs had
Speaker 1: developed a new name for his cult, the Twelve Tribes,
Speaker 1: so named in honor of the fact that he was
Speaker 1: one of the first guys in the Christian fringe to
Speaker 1: start incorporating Judaism into his Christian cult right, and this
Speaker 1: is a very common thing. Now you might not think
Speaker 1: about it that way, but if you've ever seen, if
Speaker 1: you've been to one of these far right gatherings where
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of religious right people and someone
Speaker 1: will bring like a show far which is like a
Speaker 1: horn made out of like an animal horn that you
Speaker 1: blow into that's like comes from Jewish religious observances, right,
Speaker 1: that like some Christians have reincorporated back into Evangelicalism, I
Speaker 1: think because a chofar looks cool and they want But yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like kind of the first guy to do this
Speaker 1: in a big way in the Christian right. And he's
Speaker 1: more extensive than this. He brings the show far in.
Speaker 1: He also brings back bar mitzvahs, like kids in his
Speaker 1: cults celebrate have their bar mitzvahs and bot mitzvahs, And this,
Speaker 1: you know, is interesting. It's certainly going to play into
Speaker 1: ways in which other far right like religious cults are
Speaker 1: going to move in the future. But it makes them
Speaker 1: seem more alien to the normies of Chattanooga, who by
Speaker 1: this point are in kind of a full blown panic
Speaker 1: that the next jonestown might be in their backyard. Another
Speaker 1: thing that makes them seem ainly into the normies is
Speaker 1: that by the late seventies, Spriggs had decided that separation
Speaker 1: was the critical precondition for his cult to reach the
Speaker 1: potential that God had set for them. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote from that write up by vcu here. Twelve
Speaker 1: Tribes has concluded that adherence to a natural law standard
Speaker 1: will not be sufficient to create the conditions for the
Speaker 1: return of the Messiah. Separation is critical for the Twelve
Speaker 1: Tribes because the absolute values of natural law are being
Speaker 1: lost in contemporary society. The Twelve Tribes opposed the rise
Speaker 1: of a multicultural global social order a single world government
Speaker 1: in world religion. The former revitalizes values. The latter undermines
Speaker 1: and compromises the values of natural law and promotes rampant
Speaker 1: materialism and acquisitiveness, feminism, the devise of the traditional patriarchal family,
Speaker 1: and the legitimation of gay marriage. The return of the
Speaker 1: Messiah is contingent on the gathering of a faithful remnant
Speaker 1: and the Church being restored in its original form. To
Speaker 1: pave the way for the millennium, the movement must expand
Speaker 1: from its present nine to twelve Tribes each of which
Speaker 1: must grow to at least twelve hundred members, thus creating
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty four thousand faithful who will be
Speaker 1: included in God's millennial kingdom. Now, a lot of that's
Speaker 1: very modern. Gene as a trailblazer in some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. I've seen it claim that Gene's particular eschatology,
Speaker 1: he didn't just need one hundred and forty four thousand
Speaker 1: faithful to prepare for the way of the Messiah, but
Speaker 1: he had to build an army of one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty four thousand male virgins and tall order, yeah, tall,
Speaker 1: tall order. It is at this point I should also
Speaker 1: note that, according to the Church, Gene was a scout
Speaker 1: master at one point. They brag about this a lot.
Speaker 1: So you hear about a scout master trying to get
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty four thousand male virgins together. That's
Speaker 1: not a happy story, right now, that's going to end bad.
Speaker 1: That is rough. Yeah. Yeah, Also too many male virgins,
Speaker 1: like nothing good can happen with all that, all that pentemic.
Speaker 3: Then you need like one hundred and forty four thousand
Speaker 3: male non virgins order to have.
Speaker 1: To counteract it. Yeah, So to stop it from exploding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Jane decided it was probably wise if his cult
Speaker 1: branched out and started picking up property and members in
Speaker 1: another state where they might be more welcome. Right, this
Speaker 1: is fine cult logic. It's the kind of savvy maneuvering
Speaker 1: that made scientology great. But Spriggs underestimated the degree to
Speaker 1: which small towns Americans get scared based on news stories
Speaker 1: that they kind of skimmed. He also made the mistake
Speaker 1: of having the mission to Vermont led by one of
Speaker 1: his longest serving members, a guy named David Jones. David
Speaker 1: had joined the Twelve Tribes back in nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: as a traumatized Vietnam veteran fresh from the war. He'd
Speaker 1: become one of Jane's most trusted lieutenants. Unfortunately, his last
Speaker 1: name was Jones, and the provincial residence of Island Pond, Vermont,
Speaker 1: started like as soon as they hear a guy named
Speaker 1: Jones has moved here with his like weird religious congregation,
Speaker 1: They're like, he has to be related to Jim Jones.
Speaker 3: You can't google it. Yeah, it's like there's no You're
Speaker 3: just gonna take it on. Take it on. Toys value
Speaker 3: that he's not.
Speaker 1: It's like it is funny, Like it would be one
Speaker 1: thing if he had like some very complicated, rare last name,
Speaker 1: but being like they're both Joneses. Yeah, there's probably fucking
Speaker 1: forty Joneses in town. What are you talking about, you
Speaker 1: fucking small town maniacs. Like they're right to be concerned
Speaker 1: about this people, but they're still there's still dummies. So
Speaker 1: from the beginning, the Twelve Tribes attracted eyeballs in Vermont.
Speaker 1: Now the reason for this is dumb obviously, like that
Speaker 1: they think this guy is related to Jim Jones. But
Speaker 1: they ought to be watching these people because there are
Speaker 1: absolutely good reasons to be monitoring the Twelve Tribes. They
Speaker 1: just have nothing to do with Jonestown.
Speaker 3: That's another just classic American story where it's like, you
Speaker 3: have good reason to be concerned about this, and it
Speaker 3: just so happens that the reason you are concerned is
Speaker 3: not the right one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you picked the wrong one. And the good reason
Speaker 1: to do this is the fact that by the late seventies,
Speaker 1: Jeane had built his entire religious philosophy. Philosophy this is
Speaker 1: like the core of what he actually is teaching in
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tribes now around beating the shit out of kids.
Speaker 1: Like right, This starts off as sort of this, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going back to the original Christianity, and over the
Speaker 1: first decade or so it exists, he kind of builds
Speaker 1: this religious philosophy where he decides the chief problems of
Speaker 1: the world are all caused by disobedience to God's law,
Speaker 1: and so the only way to correct that is to
Speaker 1: raise up a new generation of kids by absolutely beating
Speaker 1: the piss out of them. And that is going to
Speaker 1: be That is the Twelve Tribes, right. It is the
Speaker 1: let's hit the shit out of kids cult. Terrible way
Speaker 1: to go to ads, but here they are. We're back now.
Speaker 1: By this point in the story, Gene has also taken
Speaker 1: a new name for himself and the tradition of most
Speaker 1: great cult leaders, Yonick, which Hebrew comes from the Bible.
Speaker 1: His followers called him an apostle, and there's debate from
Speaker 1: former members as to whether or not yon Neck was
Speaker 1: all powerful or just a major source of charismatic authority,
Speaker 1: but he certainly was not the only source of prophetic
Speaker 1: revelations for the group. It does seem fair, though, to
Speaker 1: say that Yonick set the tone and focus for the
Speaker 1: church and that his primary concern was children. In the
Speaker 1: early days, Spriggs had claimed his goal was to bring
Speaker 1: kids on the fringe, counterculture types who had like dropped
Speaker 1: out of the Middle America Christianity of their parents back
Speaker 1: to God. But now in the mid to late seventies,
Speaker 1: late seventies, early eighties, he starts to claim having a
Speaker 1: different goal, which is to build a church that it
Speaker 1: would be impossible for children to leave. Right like that
Speaker 1: is his He goes from I want to bring kids
Speaker 1: back to the church to I want to break their
Speaker 1: little minds in such a way that they never disobey
Speaker 1: their parents, that they never leave us. You know, now,
Speaker 1: part of how he does this is isolation. He starts
Speaker 1: mandating church kids are not even allowed to be born
Speaker 1: outside of the compounds. Right, you can't go to a
Speaker 1: hospital to have your kids. You certainly can't have them
Speaker 1: educated in public schools. They're never going to work a
Speaker 1: job on their own. They'll be apprenticed within church businesses.
Speaker 1: We have created our own parallel society so that they
Speaker 1: can't escape and to make any kind of deviation impossible.
Speaker 1: Spriggs devoted his biblical knowledge to creating a protocol of
Speaker 1: rigorous abuse described in his brochure. When the spanking stopped,
Speaker 1: all hell broke loose.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, solid name there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote a description of this pamphlet from
Speaker 1: an excellent article in Pacific Standard magazine. It cites Proverbs
Speaker 1: thirteen twenty four. He who spares his rod hates his son,
Speaker 1: but he who loves disciplines him promptly to make the
Speaker 1: following argument. If you love your child, and you, if
Speaker 1: you love your child, you will take up the rod
Speaker 1: and discipline him when he's disobedient. It's not optional, it's
Speaker 1: a command. The tribes argue that progressive child bearing practices
Speaker 1: such as timeouts, are taking away treats or screen time,
Speaker 1: have resulted in a spike in juvenile violence and crime.
Speaker 1: The only way to reverse this trend, the tribes contends,
Speaker 1: is by using the proverbial rod early, often, and hard
Speaker 1: enough to leave marx. According to former and current tribes
Speaker 1: leaders I spoke with, infants raised in the tribes are
Speaker 1: hit with balloon sticks, thin wooden rods used to keep
Speaker 1: balloons from floating away for offenses as minor as resisting
Speaker 1: a diaper change or throwing a bottle. Older children are
Speaker 1: whipped with bamboo canes. Children are driven by their natural
Speaker 1: innate nature to do what is wrong. The group's teaching state,
Speaker 1: it is better to go to heaven with welts than
Speaker 1: go to hell without weltz. That's Gene Spriggs right there.
Speaker 3: My god, I can't yeah, like, I can't imagine how
Speaker 3: they reconcile when kids eventually obviously leave the church, Like,
Speaker 3: there must be there must be. I'm not mass defection,
Speaker 3: but there must be defection.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Later on at this stage, again, it's all first
Speaker 1: generation converts having kids, right, and the kids can't oh
Speaker 1: hieve you know, sure, sure, sure, and they're trying. This
Speaker 1: is largely being enforced so that that first generation of
Speaker 1: kids raised within the cult can't leave, right, That's what
Speaker 1: Springs wants to set up. Spanking is a technical endeavor
Speaker 1: within the Twelve tribes. There is arcana around it, right,
Speaker 1: depending on the era and the geographic region. They seem
Speaker 1: to prefer using these balloon sticks or bamboo sticks, but
Speaker 1: they also for certain things prescribed whipping kids with resin
Speaker 1: tipped whips. I don't even know where you get those, like,
Speaker 1: probably have to get a whip and just tip it
Speaker 1: and resin yourself today. This is all described in detail
Speaker 1: in their three hundred and forty eight page Child Training Manual,
Speaker 1: all of which is based on Spriggs's teachings.
Speaker 2: Is it straight up called Child Training Manual? Does it have.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what it's called. You can find it online.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been reading a bit of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: It includes the fact that children as young as six
Speaker 1: months old should be spanked for deviations from proper behavior,
Speaker 1: particularly wilfulness. An infant wriggling during a diaper change is
Speaker 1: specifically listed as in need of a physical punishment. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, you know the thing that every infant does,
Speaker 1: which is what he's saying. Right, Children are inherently disobedient
Speaker 1: and touched by Satan, and you have to beat that
Speaker 1: out of them. Right. Quote. The pain received from the
Speaker 1: balloon stick is more humbling than harmful. There is no
Speaker 1: defense against it. The only way to stop the sting
Speaker 1: of the rod is to submit. That is exactly what
Speaker 1: the child will do, Submit to his parents' will and
Speaker 1: end his rebellion. Now that's fucked up and bad. It
Speaker 1: is responsible to acknowledge that like smacking kids around is
Speaker 1: not all that far from normal in the seventies, right,
Speaker 1: we are not talking about like that, I mean, it
Speaker 1: still happens today. Obviously, a lot of parents some form
Speaker 1: of physical coercion with their kids, and it's even more
Speaker 1: common back then.
Speaker 3: Well, and just like institutional corporal punishment, I mean, is
Speaker 3: not at all out of the norm.
Speaker 1: My elementary school in the nineties spanked me. You know,
Speaker 1: public elementary school is not in like a Catholic school
Speaker 1: or anything. This is in fucking Idabell, Oklahoma. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: smacking kids with rods is unfortunately yet not all that
Speaker 1: abnormal in this period. But the Twelve Tribes engaged in
Speaker 1: numerous and much more creative abuse tactics than this. He
Speaker 1: Spriggs spends a lot of his time thinking up new
Speaker 1: ways to abuse children and justify it with the Bible.
Speaker 1: One ex member who grew up in the church during
Speaker 1: the eighties were called a practice called scourging, in which
Speaker 1: a child is stripped, naked and beaten with a rod
Speaker 1: over every inch of their body. Yeah. Adults would also
Speaker 1: regularly withhold meals from small children as punishment. Starvation is
Speaker 1: a really common punishment for them. In some cases, food
Speaker 1: would be withheld for days at a time. Children were
Speaker 1: also locked alone in dark rooms for days at a
Speaker 1: time in response to crimes like stealing food from a refrigerator.
Speaker 3: And so this isn't getting out right because the kids
Speaker 3: are probably not in the school system, they're no longer
Speaker 3: in a church, so that no one knows.
Speaker 1: Some of it as being There are reports. There are
Speaker 1: reports in Chattanooga and soon after in Vermont, because like
Speaker 1: they have neighbors, people are like people can see them
Speaker 1: hitting kids in public, sometimes slapping them and shit. So
Speaker 1: this is not like totally a black box. One member
Speaker 1: later told the Denver Post the one time that I
Speaker 1: was locked in the dungeon, it wasn't a real dungeon,
Speaker 1: but it felt like it. I think it was for
Speaker 1: more than a day because we fasted every Friday, so
Speaker 1: I was used to starving, and it was longer than that,
Speaker 1: which is a gives you an idea of the bleakness
Speaker 1: of this, Like I was pretty used to starving, Like
Speaker 1: this was worse than normal starving. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: things that's interesting to me is Spriggs never has a kid.
Speaker 1: He does not have a child of his own in
Speaker 1: the cult. Sorry, he does have one boy, with his
Speaker 1: first wife, but he leaves when the kid's young, which
Speaker 1: for the best in this case, that kid really dodged
Speaker 1: a bullet by not having his dad. Yeah, not always
Speaker 1: a win to have your dad in your life, especially
Speaker 1: when it's it's the how to hit children to guy.
Speaker 3: That makes your issues with like dad abandonment even all
Speaker 3: the more difficult. Were Yeah, I just want him to
Speaker 3: love me, but I'm glad he didn't love me. It's
Speaker 3: very complicated.
Speaker 1: I want a dad to love me, maybe not this one. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's very real. So again, he has
Speaker 1: no child in the cult. And for what I can
Speaker 1: tell Spriggs is he seems to have kept some contact
Speaker 1: with his family and his old friends through like the
Speaker 1: late seventies, but by the close of the decade even
Speaker 1: his close relatives had started to grow increasingly like concerned
Speaker 1: with the violent tone that his faith had taken. His
Speaker 1: sister Joyce talked to the press and reported that, like
Speaker 1: you know, in the when he in the early seventies,
Speaker 1: when he starts ministering, when he starts like speaking to
Speaker 1: people doing these church services, I thought, well, maybe he
Speaker 1: started to figure his life out. This is like, you know,
Speaker 1: good for him, probably a positive turn. But by the
Speaker 1: end of the seventies, December of seventy nine, she was like,
Speaker 1: I think he's gotten very negative. And she mentions this
Speaker 1: to him. She like goes to Eugene, She's like, I
Speaker 1: think the stuff you're talking about is like really aggressive
Speaker 1: and it's kind of scaring me. And he just says,
Speaker 1: you know, all I'm doing is following the scripture, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't argue with this. You can't argue with me
Speaker 1: because this is all the Bible. Now. We will talk
Speaker 1: more about this in part two, but it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that while the Twelve Tribes's attitude on child abuse is extreme,
Speaker 1: it does not grow up in isolation. The Jesus Movement
Speaker 1: started out with serious countercultural elements, but it also fed
Speaker 1: directly into the birth of the religious right, which helped
Speaker 1: to unseat Jimmy Carter and became a major engine behind
Speaker 1: Reaganism and the revived cultural conservatism that followed. When I
Speaker 1: read about Spriggs's teachings here, I think about a book
Speaker 1: called To Train Up a Child, which is a nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four parenting advice book self published by Mike and
Speaker 1: Debbie Pearl. If you recall our episodes on the Duggers
Speaker 1: and the organization behind them. The Institute of Basic Life
Speaker 1: Principles the IBLP endorses this book. Right to Train Up
Speaker 1: a Child is common among homeschooling families. It was for
Speaker 1: years the standard book in the Christian far right about
Speaker 1: how to raise kids. I have multiple friends who were
Speaker 1: raised according to its teachings. If you knew any people
Speaker 1: who were like quiverful kids, this book was a presence
Speaker 1: in their house and childhood. And one of the things, like,
Speaker 1: among other things, the book says that like you need
Speaker 1: to kind of as Spriggs taught, you have to be
Speaker 1: constantly using some form of negative physical reinforcement on your kids.
Speaker 1: And it includes like sadistic shit like spanking your kids
Speaker 1: like long enough to break their will. Right. It's not
Speaker 1: just like I'm not saying this is okay. But it's
Speaker 1: not just saying like, okay, you know you did a
Speaker 1: bad thing, so I'm going to, like, you know, spank
Speaker 1: you five times in the butt or something. It's like
Speaker 1: you have to spank them until they stop being willful,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, because there's I mean, it's by no means
Speaker 3: is this an excuse, But like I know that there
Speaker 3: were people who who would spank their kids because they
Speaker 3: thought that that's a thing that they you know, like
Speaker 3: like like my parents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty normal practice, yeah, right.
Speaker 3: That they had to do, but they do it in
Speaker 3: passing and it was like more of an esthetic and
Speaker 3: like scary thing. And again this is not a justification
Speaker 3: of those things, but this idea that you then take
Speaker 3: that to another level, which is like you do it
Speaker 3: with will and you do it to like break will
Speaker 3: is the first one is terrifying. But like that's just
Speaker 3: it's hard to even wrap fully wrap your head around.
Speaker 3: It's difficult.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's we'll talk about it more one of
Speaker 1: these days if you want to hear what we do.
Speaker 1: Get into more of this in the Dugger episodes. It
Speaker 1: is worth noting here though. I bring this up to
Speaker 1: say that, like Gene Spriggs is a trailblazer in child abuse,
Speaker 1: but he's not a lonely one. Right ideas close to
Speaker 1: the ones he promulgated are absolutely the norm among the
Speaker 1: religious right in the United States today. His cult has
Speaker 1: stayed fringe, but his child beating tactics did not. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when you build a church around slapping, the absolute shit
Speaker 1: out of small kids. Eventually someone's going to spot your
Speaker 1: members slapping the shit out of small children. By nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, several members had fled and taken stories to
Speaker 1: local Chattanooga papers. Allegations of abuse based on the fact
Speaker 1: that cult members absolutely were hitting kids had also gone
Speaker 1: the old timey equivalent of viral. This problem followed the
Speaker 1: branch of the church, two hundred members strong, that had
Speaker 1: moved to Vermont. By all accounts, Spriggs maintained tight control
Speaker 1: of this breakaway segment, not breakaway, but of this like
Speaker 1: expansion of his church, writing regular letters to David Jones
Speaker 1: encouraging him to ensure that children on the new properties
Speaker 1: were being beaten often enough. Quote, if one is overly
Speaker 1: concerned about his son receiving blue marks, you know that
Speaker 1: he hates his son and hates the word of God.
Speaker 1: Blue marks are Spriggs's turn for bruises, and he speaks
Speaker 1: of them as a positive thing. Right, Like, you're not
Speaker 1: being a good parent if your kids don't have blue marks.
Speaker 1: If you're not bruising them, you're not doing it hard enough, right,
Speaker 1: That's what he's saying here. He's just being a little
Speaker 1: bit more kind of biblical whimsy about it. This is
Speaker 1: a frequent euphemism used by church leadership. A reporter for
Speaker 1: Pacific Standard magazine writes more on this topic based on
Speaker 1: interviews with former church members. I remember constant Weltz on
Speaker 1: my hands, thighs and butt. A woman who was raised
Speaker 1: and the tribes told me. Children are expected to obey
Speaker 1: on the first command without talking back or complaining. They
Speaker 1: are not allowed toys or bikes, and cannot engage in
Speaker 1: fantasy play. They read only the Bible in the group's dogma.
Speaker 1: The former members I spoke to claimed most children were
Speaker 1: beaten multiple times a day for transgressions as an ocuus
Speaker 1: as forgetting to raise their hands at the dinner table,
Speaker 1: and dissipation, the group's term for horse play. Responding to
Speaker 1: these descriptions, a current leader of their California communities, Wade Skinner,
Speaker 1: echoed the brochure I read in Blue Blinds. That wouldn't
Speaker 1: be how we portray our life, he said, But we
Speaker 1: do believe that if you love your child, you will
Speaker 1: be diligent to discipline them, and if you hate them,
Speaker 1: you will withhold the rod. Cool guys love to see it.
Speaker 1: The first serious trouble for the Twelve Tribes started in
Speaker 1: from in nineteen eighty three, when an elder named Eddie
Speaker 1: Wiseman whipped a child named Darlyn with a balloon stick
Speaker 1: from her shoulders to her ankles for kissing a boy.
Speaker 1: Darlin was thirteen years old, and he whips her badly
Speaker 1: enough that she's like bleeding.
Speaker 3: Do you know where in Vermont they landed?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we read the town name out a little earlier.
Speaker 1: I don't have it right in front of me here.
Speaker 3: I think it's I think it's Barton, which is like
Speaker 3: a wild it's like a still still, like a wild
Speaker 3: West town in Vermont.
Speaker 1: That one not Yeah, I I We've got it up there.
Speaker 1: We read it out earlier.
Speaker 2: People pond is it is it Island Pond, Vermont.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's Island.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's that area. Yeah, it's like a pretty
Speaker 3: I don't know you're familiarity. I lived.
Speaker 1: I know very little about Vermont.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is like people think of Vermont like it's
Speaker 3: kind of like the hippies thing. It's like they think
Speaker 3: of it like Burlington and hippies, and it's like yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it's like some of it is like libertarian wasteland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had definitely. We'll talk about Vermont and New
Speaker 1: Hampshire Libertarians more in one of these days. There's some
Speaker 1: fun stories up there that involve bears.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where I'm from. So I love it, I
Speaker 3: know it, and I love it in yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah. Her father sees Darlin bleeding from the back
Speaker 1: after this whipping and he's outraged, so he reports Wiseman
Speaker 1: to the authorities, who charge Wiseman with simple assault. But
Speaker 1: then something happens and her father drops the case. He claims, actually,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that bad. I was pressured by anti cult
Speaker 1: activists to exaggerate the abuse, so probably a very unpleasant
Speaker 1: story behind that. Authorities continue to investigate, in part because
Speaker 1: the Twelve Tribes had already been attracting concern for a while. Now.
Speaker 1: Investigating this cult is a really difficult job. The children
Speaker 1: who were believed to be victims were homeschooled, so they're
Speaker 1: not ever in front of teachers. They avoid modern medical care,
Speaker 1: so they're not ever in front of doctors. They very
Speaker 1: rarely leave cult property, which makes it pretty much impossible
Speaker 1: to build a case. Right. You can't get a warrant
Speaker 1: when you don't know the number of children or their
Speaker 1: names when you're just like, there's children there and we
Speaker 1: think they're being a Like, that's that's a tough legal
Speaker 1: situation to be in if you're if you're the people
Speaker 1: trying to like do something about this, right like they
Speaker 1: because you have a lot of rights obviously, especially on
Speaker 1: your own property. And yeah, it's it's tough, Like the
Speaker 1: actual like how to how to break into a situation
Speaker 1: like this is incredibly difficult when they have so successfully
Speaker 1: created an alternate world for themselves. It's it's rough.
Speaker 3: I never I never thought of that. That. Like one
Speaker 3: of the benefits quote heavy quote benefits of absolute sort
Speaker 3: of separatism is it makes it legally difficult to intervene
Speaker 3: because there's not the data that you need in order
Speaker 3: to create a case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fucked up, and it's going to be a
Speaker 1: real problem in this case. So what they decide to
Speaker 1: do with the authorities decided to do here is to
Speaker 1: summon seven cult leaders, including David Jones, to give basic
Speaker 1: information to the state on how many children live on
Speaker 1: the properties and what their names are. Jones and his
Speaker 1: family refuse to do this. They are jailed, but they're
Speaker 1: released in short orders three days later, though, an army
Speaker 1: of state troopers and social workers raids the Twelve Tribes's
Speaker 1: property with a mandate to do whatever is necessary to
Speaker 1: figure out how many kids are there and who they are.
Speaker 1: They find one hundred and twelve miners and they take
Speaker 1: them all away. It looks, you know, initially, as if
Speaker 1: maybe the authorities are going to do something to put
Speaker 1: an end to this. That is not what happened. While
Speaker 1: the parents of these kids wait nearby, prosecutors failed to
Speaker 1: get a court order to examine the children for signs
Speaker 1: of abuse. The district judge in this case complains that
Speaker 1: their warrant is too broad, in part because it does
Speaker 1: not name the children they want to search. All one
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve miners are ordered released in very short order,
Speaker 1: back to the waiting rods of their parents. David Jones
Speaker 1: gloated that this had all been the result of an
Speaker 1: unhinged small town mentality, claiming the furor had come to
Speaker 1: a head like a boil with no puss, which is
Speaker 1: a weird way to describe being, in his eyes, exonerated
Speaker 1: for child abuse. Like, yeah, we're just like one of
Speaker 1: those pusless boils. Yeah, Like what an odd what an
Speaker 1: odd turn of phrase. June twenty second the day the
Speaker 1: oil that you want, Yeah, yeah, where the boil you
Speaker 1: want to have? There's not a yeah, it's plus less.
Speaker 1: June twenty second is the day that the raid gets aborted,
Speaker 1: and this becomes the first religious holiday that the Twelfth
Speaker 1: tribes celebrate all to themselves. They start calling it the
Speaker 1: day of Deliverance. They'll do passover style meals right like
Speaker 1: they call it. They kind of make it into their
Speaker 1: passover right because it's the day that God miraculously extended
Speaker 1: his protection to them against the grasping hands of the state.
Speaker 1: Jene sprigs after this will only grow more convinced of
Speaker 1: the wisdom of his separation from society. Another thing that
Speaker 1: plays into this is what's happening at the same time
Speaker 1: as the AIDS crisis right is starting to kick off.
Speaker 1: This convinces him both that like of this kind of
Speaker 1: fallen nature of the modern world, that the only thing
Speaker 1: to do is separation, and it also convinces him that
Speaker 1: God's justice is being delivered against the unrighteous, even as
Speaker 1: his hand shields believers. He writes, at this time, when
Speaker 1: rental authority is rebelled against it opens the door to
Speaker 1: come against all constituted authority, honoring those who are over you,
Speaker 1: those who are honorable, especially parents. Releases a special hormone
Speaker 1: from your brain permeating your body that gives long life.
Speaker 1: If you don't do this, that hormone dries up and
Speaker 1: your bones dry up. The disobedient don't live long. The
Speaker 1: lifespan of a homosexual is about forty years. That's not
Speaker 1: because of aids. They die of a bad conscience, and
Speaker 1: like that's evil it is. I have to say, the
Speaker 1: idea that like obeying your parents releases a hormone that
Speaker 1: you die without is a pretty fun bit of pseudo
Speaker 1: science for a cult leader. That's a good one.
Speaker 3: Several people who's whose moms told them that if they like,
Speaker 3: if they you know, if they like cut their own
Speaker 3: hair or war makeup or whatever, it would like give
Speaker 3: them cancer leader in life. Yeah yeah, so I feel
Speaker 3: like that that that's a very common bit of parenting
Speaker 3: psychological warfare that they took to a whole other level.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, quite a new Yeah, a fancy an impressed
Speaker 1: of level. Yeah. So that's going to be all of
Speaker 1: it for part one. Here we we how do you
Speaker 1: feel in here? How we do an alex.
Speaker 3: That's dark man, it's a yeah, it's a I feel
Speaker 3: I feel heavy with darkness, and I hope that things
Speaker 3: go awry, but I bet that they won't. It seems
Speaker 3: like these are people who have staying power.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, speaking of staying power, you got any pluggables
Speaker 1: to plug?
Speaker 3: I would just love people to listen to. You Are Good,
Speaker 3: a feelings podcast about movies where we talk about uh
Speaker 3: feelings and therapy related things by talking about pop culture
Speaker 3: because it's too scary to do head on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very scary. You can find me at cooler Zone
Speaker 1: Media where you can get this podcast without ads. So
Speaker 1: do that and uh go to hell. I love you
Speaker 1: Take it.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
Speaker 2: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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