“I’m an insider,” I joked, “I know the guy with the beard and the pony-tail.”
My friend, a member of the Twelve Tribes Community, laughed heartily.
I’ll bet you also know the girl with the long hair– the one who wears skirts,” she giggled.
Together, we were poking fun of the relatively monochromatic appearance of Twelve Tribes members. Everyone in this religious intentional community dresses in more or less the same fashion. To many people, this makes them a cult. To me, it makes them no different than Hassidic Jews, Catholic priests, or Amish people. The members of the community follow a specific, voluntary lifestyle based on a religious model.
The “intentional community” lifestyle, within which people choose to live in tight-knit communities, is far from alien to me. I spent a year of my own early adulthood living in a secular “ecovillage”– a network of independent families and individuals who shared a car, bulk-ordered organic food, and shared solar panels and garden chores. Although lonely and sometimes overly idealistic, nothing about the ecovillage I inhabited was cult-like.
Twelve Tribes differs from the intentional community I lived in– most notably, in its religious affiliation. The group, which started in the 1970s, follows ia simple lifestyle that meshes the conservative values of Christian communities with the earth-loving, utopian ideals of hippies. They have all the energy and color of old-school communes, minus the drug use and promiscuity that dominated the radical movements of the 60s and 70s. For those who desire the best of both worlds, this can seem like a perfect situation.
Having attended a fair share of Twelve Tribes sabbath services, and after speaking intimately with several members of the group, I can honestly say that I see no indication that the Twelve Tribes is a cult. The members of the community are not held against their will, brainwashed, prohibited from communicating with outsiders, or encouraged to follow a human leader. They live a simple, cooperative, and (above all) voluntary lifestyle that works for them.
Twelve Tribes’ income-sharing choices make them particularly controversial. Those eager to throw around the C-word claim that the practice strips members of autonymy, but my own experience says otherwise. A person who willingly enters an income-sharing group does so in the same way that a church member might tithe to his congregation, or that one spouse might share income with another. The community clearly states that this is a choice that they make out of personal preference– the desire to be all for one and one for all. Members who choose to leave are given the resources necessary to do so and are helped to their feet in the “outside world.”
Child labor, another major talking-point regarding Twelve Tribes communities, also baffles me as a source of controversy. Although children in Twelve Tribes participate in their parents’ home businesses– doing things like pouring candles and helping in the kitchen– I have also seen them singing, dancing, and playing hide-and-seek just like “normal” children. A sixteen-year-old member of the community fondly recalled the experience of learning to ride a bike, then spoke proudly of his success as a waiter at the communally owned restaurant. One desperate lawsuit attempted to press charges against the group for child labor, suing the group for letting a 9-year-old push a wheelbarrow and a 15-year-old change a lightbulb.
I routinely allow my three-year-old daughter to “work” by throwing away trash and by helping me sort laundry. I even “enslave” her by encouraging her to volunteer with me at a nursing home and animal shelter, and by encouraging her in an art project to raise money for tsunami victims. If I were a member of Twelve Tribes, would this be a crime?
According to one Twelve Tribes member, it would. Members of the community have to walk a fine line to avoid legal trouble for homeschooling, mild spankings, and other choices that are controversial but far from insane.
“If you define a cult as religious people living together, and dressing similarly, we’re a cult. But by that definition, nuns and Mennonites are cults, too.”
When I asked about brainwashing– well aware that no one in the community was being held against his will– the same member responded, “We influence people, sure. So do schools and churches all over the country.”
My opinions will always differ from Twelve Tribes. I know that I will never want to live in a Twelve Tribes community, and that their communities don’t particularly want me as a member. Not only do I not believe in a personal god or in a messiah, but I also engage in behaviors that the community frowns upon. I date people of the same gender as me. I like wearing blue jeans. I drink occasionally. I see no moral problem with protected premarital sex.
Nevertheless, I’ll raise a glass of yerba mate to the Twelve Tribes member who says that he’s glad to see diversity in friends of the community. As long as Twelve Tribes continues to defend my right to my own lifestyle choices, I will defend theirs. I am proud to live in a country that values religious diversity and religious freedom– even among religions that march to a different drummer.
