by Ray Black
On imprisonment, Ben Yahweh demanded that he be allowed access to sacred texts and literature of the Nation of Yahweh. That he was not allowed to read such texts was, he claimed, a denial of his religious freedom. The authorities disagreed, arguing that these were dangerous, criminal and racist documents, and if circulated within the prison could threaten prison security.
Ben Yahweh’s followers consider the government entirely corrupt, and guilty of tampering with evidence and providing untruthful reports. They see his conviction and punishment as reminiscent of that of the white Christ, and they draw parallels between Judas and Robert Rozier, who betrayed their black Christ for a reduced sentence himself. Rozier, who was released after serving time for four murders (having actually admitted to seven) and placed on a witness protection programme, committed cheque fraud and consequently his new identity was revealed. He now, justifiably, fears for his life.
The future of the Temple of Love is uncertain, but Ben Yahweh’s followers await his release. Once a week, from within the prison walls, he sends a three-minute message to his followers on the outside. The message, which he sends via telephone from the prison cafeteria, is broadcast as a voice-over against the backdrop of a still portrait of him and is a feature of a weekly 30-minute programme which is aired in most of the US’s main cities. The programme also includes advertisements for texts and tapes to educate his followers.
Section Three: Cause For Concern?
Twelve Tribes
Messianic Communities
The Twelve Tribes began as an essentially well-meaning, religious group, but over time evolved into a far more sinister organization, responsible for the devastation of many lives. The founder, Elbert Eugene Spriggs, believed, or at least preached to his followers, that he had a direct link to God. Those who accepted this as the truth were in a very vulnerable position.
ELBERT EUGENE SPRIGGS
Elbert Eugene Spriggs was born in East Ridge, Tennessee on 18 May, 1937. He married in 1957, but was divorced three years later, and thus entered the ’60s at a turbulent time in his life. He married again in 1962, and had a son, but this marriage lasted only three years longer than the previous one. During the last couple of years of the marriage, Spriggs’s father died, and the young man was thrown into turmoil.
Only a year after his second divorce, Spriggs married for a third time. During the past few years he had been employed in a number of different jobs, including a stint in the Army, and now found himself working in a carnival. It was while working there that Spriggs claims the Lord spoke to him for the first time, asking him, ‘Is this what I created you for?’ He witnessed sin first hand, and decided to leave in order to find a life in which he could avoid it.
Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the assassination of their president, many other young Americans were equally unsettled at this time, and began to question the customs and principles of their society. To help them in their search for answers, many turned to religion. Elbert Eugene Spriggs was amongst them.
CALIFORNIA
Spriggs travelled to California, where he became involved with the Jesus Movement. His family had always been religious and he had been raised religiously, often going to church three times a week as a child, but his encounter with this group, also known as the Jesus People Revival, stimulated him more than he had ever been before. He realized the need for Jesus in his empty life, and committed to Christ on a beach in Carpenteria. By this time, his third marriage had failed.
With his devotion to Jesus Christ reaffirmed, Spriggs began working with the homeless at the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission but after only a short time he left to preach his Christian beliefs around the country. While doing this, he met Marsha Ann Duvall, who was to be his fourth wife. She became a Christian and they married in 1972. They moved back to Tennessee together, and settled in Chattanooga.
In the years which followed, Spriggs spent his time preaching the word of God to teenagers in the local areas, and encouraged many of them to turn to Christ themselves. He had soon drawn in enough young people to begin his own church group, which he called the ‘Light Brigade’, aimed specifically at teens. Spriggs acquired a house on Vine Street in which to hold prayer meetings and before long, many of the young people had actually moved in, and were living communally at the house.
Young people from all walks of life were welcome at the Vine Street house. Race, class and culture were of no consequence to Spriggs, but as a result he was becoming the target of much criticism from the local churches. He therefore began to turn away from these established religions, whose commitment to Jesus he had already begun to question. He felt that the churches did not hold the Gospel in the high regard which it deserved, and was particularly disgusted on one occasion when he learned that his church service had been cancelled due to the Superbowl.
VINE COMMUNITY CHURCH
He therefore established his own church at the house, and named it the ‘Vine Community Church’. Followers began to worship there instead of at the hypocritical churches. Spriggs’s congregation became quite active, and embarked on fund-raising and business enterprises to spread their word and raise money for the Vine Community Church. One such business enterprise was the establishment of a chain of restaurants called ‘Yellow Deli’, throughout Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Their menu included a dish entitled ‘Fruit of the Spirit’, with the subheading – ‘Why don’t you ask us?’.
These activities were drawing unwelcome attention from the established churches, who felt that Spriggs had gone over the top with his restaurants and businesses, and worried about the lifestyle at Vine Street. In 1976, when Spriggs opened an even larger restaurant named ‘Areopagus’, where all Christians were encouraged to meet for support and fellowship, and ordained a follower there, the churches really questioned his ability. Added to this, there was growing nationwide concern about the emergence of cults. With its strange practices, and the intense focus on Spriggs as its leader, the Vine Community Church became a target. Members of other Christian groups were advised to avoid Spriggs and the Vine followers, and not to eat in any of the Yellow Deli restaurants.
Spriggs, who was increasingly disillusioned with the churches anyway, took this criticism very badly and responded by calling all churches the ‘whores of Babylon’. He cut any remaining ties with these institutions, and the Vine Community Church became more and more inward-looking. Spriggs’s beliefs were also becoming more extreme. He claimed that mainstream Christianity appeared to have renounced religion itself, and that the world outside of his own church was dark and evil. His followers must be protected from this outside world and therefore contact with families and friends who did not share the firm beliefs of the church was to be discontinued, or at the very least limited. These people were harmful and viewed as enemies.
THE NORTHEAST KINGDOM COMMUNITY CHURCH, ISLAND POND
With the Chattanooga society becoming increasingly suspicious and uneasy about the activities of the Vine Community Church, Spriggs decided it was time to leave. He had been offered a position as a pastor in northern Vermont, which he did not take, but which encouraged him to look to Vermont for the next stage of his mission. He settled in Island Pond, and his followers from Chattanooga began to join him in stages. The group adopted the new name, ‘The Northeast Kingdom Community Church’.
As they had done in Tennessee, Spriggs and his followers began setting up businesses in this new location. These were again used as both money-raising enterprises as well as for evangelical purposes.
But just as the group had met with disapproval and mistrust in Chattanooga, so the residents of Island Pond began to feel the same. Not only had a couple of hundred new people arrived in their small town, capable of upsetting the balance of the quiet and closely-knit community, but many religious leaders had been monitoring the practices of Elbert Eugene Spriggs, and word had spread that his church was unconventional and had been very unpopular in Chattanooga.
DISCIP
LINE
One of the most controversial practices employed by Spriggs and The Northeast Kingdom Community Church was their harsh discipline of children. Spriggs believed that it was God’s will for disobedient children to be physically punished and he neither made excuses for it, nor tried to hide it from the distressed residents of Island Pond. He told his followers that when disciplining a child, it was necessary to ‘bend his neck and bruise his ribs while he is young’.
The fundamental belief of the Twelve Tribes is in the return of ‘Yahshua’, the Messiah. Everything they practise is done in preparation for his coming and this is the reason they feel they must keep their children so pure and wholesome. Yahshua must have a following (The Body or The Bride) of perfect individuals, therefore children must be disciplined severely in order to keep them righteous. Children are to be punished the first time they commit sin or are disobedient to an adult. Their punishment is to be beaten with a wooden rod, intended to cleanse the conscience. Following their beating, the child is expected to thank whoever administered it, normally a parent, for correcting them, and certainly not to cry. The only rule which governs this punishment is that it be conducted out of love, and with self-control.
Children are not allowed to play with toys or invent their own games. They cannot watch television, or eat sweets. They are however, permitted to play with building blocks and practise with sewing kits. They are educated at home.
In spite of threats of violence made against them by the Island Pond locals, and even intervention by the State who raised issues regarding their treatment of children, Spriggs’s church did settle successfully in the area, and went about their primary objective of serving God peacefully. They believed themselves to be the restoration of the Messianic Jewish New Testament Community of the first century, God’s people on earth. They instituted a standardized dress code of loose-fitting clothes, and head-scarves for the women, and consequently became quite conspicuous and recognisable as a group. Spriggs decreed that, on entry into the community, all members had to give up their material possessions. He claimed that this was in pursuit of harmony – they had to live together equally, sharing everything they owned, as the Christian disciples had done before them.
By the early 1980s therefore, the now quite affluent Spriggs had acquired a lot of property and began to expand into New England, forming communities in Boston and Nova
Scotia, amongst other places. In keeping with the belief that they were the restoration of God’s people, they re-named the group ‘The Twelve Tribes’, representing Abraham and the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
CHILD ABUSE?
With the growing size and success of the group, knowledge of its treatment of children also became quite widespread and when stories of child abuse hit the headlines, the American public turned decidedly against the group. In 1983, Spriggs’s ‘deputy’, Eddie Wiseman, was charged with assault on a 13-year-old girl. He had reportedly whipped the girl for seven whole hours as a punishment for disobedience. Before the case could come to trial though, the girl’s father dropped all charges, retracted his first statement and refused to testify if brought to court.
In light of continued reports of suspected abuse, the State authorities raided the communities in 1984 and took more than 100 children away from the church. However, having acted illegally in doing so, the State was forced to return every child to their family within 24 hours. The warrant obtained for the raid on the group was declared ‘grossly unconstitutional’ by the judge in the case, and he was provided with no evidence to support the allegations of child abuse. It appeared that the group had just been targeted by their enemies, and that none of the charges were true. Spriggs saw the outcome as a triumph. But it neither satisfied nor appeased those who were still convinced that something very sinister was going on behind the closed doors of the Twelve Tribes.
Accusations of child abuse are registered frequently against the group, and include allegations of both beatings and paedophilia. Yet, the charges are always dropped before the cases come to court. Ex-members of the group vehemently denounce the practices of Spriggs and claim that the abuse within the community is widespread.
NEGLECT
Charges of abuse by neglect are also regularly reported. One baby, suffering from spinal meningitis, was diagnosed by the group’s improvised health facility as having an ear infection. The infant died as a result of insufficient treatment. Several babies are known to have died at the community, one of which was aged eight months but weighed a mere 13kg, and are buried in unmarked graves. Most of the babies in these graves were stillborn – an apparently common occurrence at the Twelve Tribes.
Authorities also investigated the case of one young mother who endured labour for five days before it was eventually decided that she should be taken to hospital. By the time she reached the hospital, the baby had died inside her. No charges were pressed.
Serious childhood illnesses such as whooping cough and hepatitis have also gone undetected and therefore untreated, leading to death. One couple who did receive a prison term for causing the death of their son were Michael Ginhoux and Dagmar Zoller, whose 19-month-old son died of malnutrition and a curable heart disorder.
Zeb Wiseman, the son of Eddie Wiseman, eventually left the group and spoke out about
the death of his mother within the Twelve Tribes. She had been suffering from uterine cancer but was denied medical care, and had died a drawn-out and painful death. The young Zeb was beaten, locked up, and told that his mother had died because she was a sinner, and because she had once voiced her disapproval of the apostle Spriggs.
Also accused of practising child labour, Spriggs does confirm that children are asked to assist their parents in the factories and the farms from a young age, yet he claims that the group is not in violation of any child labour laws. The group formerly supplied furniture to Robert Redford’s Sundance mail order catalogue, but this range has since been cancelled. Estée Lauder also pulled a huge contract from them when they discovered that children were being used to help make their products.
No amount of negative media attention has yet brought down the Twelve Tribes or Eugene Elbert Spriggs, and the group continues to grow. There are currently more than 25 communities across the world, mainly in the US, but also in England, France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and Canada. Across these nine countries there are an approximate 2,500 members – it is estimated that half of this number are children under 15 years old.
Falun Gong
The Practice of the Wheel of the Dharma
By the end of the 1990s, a decade which had witnessed the mass suicides of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and the attempt by the Aum Supreme Truth in Tokyo to kill thousands of commuters in a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, there was a climate of fear and suspicion surrounding spiritual or religious movements with large groups of followers. As a result of this paranoia, the government in China decided to launch a crackdown on various spiritual groups, and amongst those targeted was the Falun Gong. Meaning ‘The practice of the wheel of Dharma’, Falun Gong (originally named Falun Dafa but renamed after this practice), was reported by the Chinese government to have two million members. This figure was perhaps an attempt by the government to play down the actual membership, for the Falun Gong movement itself claimed to have over 100 million.
The Falun Gong’s response to this move by the Chinese government was to hold a silent and peaceful protest in front of the Communist Party headquarters in Beijing. Ten thousand of its members participated in this demonstration on April 25, 1999. Yet, instead of reassuring the Chinese authorities of the harmless intentions of the group, the silent protest threw the government into an even greater panic. Both the size of the assembled group, and the fact that they had been leaked no details of it by the Chinese intelligence services, terrified them. To them, it demonstrated a frightening level of secrecy and organization within the movement and so they concentrated their efforts against it with a renewed vigour.
<
br /> OUTLAWED
The Falun Gong movement was outlawed in July 1999, and its members were discriminated against. Some members had their properties broken into by the police and their possessions taken, and others were denied the retirement pension to which they were entitled. Some were simply harassed on the street, or as they performed their group exercises in public. Falun Gong claims that some members simply disappeared and were never seen again, or were taken to prison and labour camps on fictitious charges and never released. Chinese lawyers were not allowed to defend the members of the Falun Gong unless agreed with the government, and no international legal representation was permitted. They were accused of fraud and deception and of posing a threat not only to the government but to the very foundation of Chinese society.
The Falun Gong was branded a ‘cult’ by the Chinese government, and even held responsible for the unsolved murders of many Chinese citizens. Consequently, an arrest warrant was issued for Li Hongzhi, the leader of this movement. The government accused him of carrying out these murders through his followers, by influencing them to commit the crimes. He was even accused of the deaths of 1,559 of the members themselves. Also wanted for the organization of ‘illegal’ demonstrations, Li Hongzhi fled to New York in 1996, and China has been pursuing America for his arrest and repatriation since.
INTERNATIONAL INVOLVEMENT
Not only has the US refused to deport Li Hongzhi, but they have condemned the Chinese government for its persecution of the Falun Gong and have passed resolutions which state that China should observe the UN Declaration of Human Rights and put a stop to the false imprisonment and abuse of the Falun Gong members. Yet the Chinese government maintains that the Falun Gong is a dangerous cult, and not the passive, inoffensive movement which America mistakenly perceives it to be. The government even claims that America’s pursuit of these resolutions is a direct attack on Chinese autonomy.