The Twelve Tribes
By Jade Justice
On first glance, The Twelve Tribes appear to be a peace-loving group of hippies who farm their own organic food and practice a religion that’s just a “back to basics” interpretation of Christianity. There’s a certain charm to the way they embrace a simple life free of the materialism and omnipresent screens of the modern world. The fact that the organization sustains itself in part through cooperative efforts like their member-run restaurants seems pretty noble, too. So why are there so many people who want to shut these hippies down?
A closer look at The Twelve Tribes reveals components of their pre-modern philosophy that have brought them controversy over the years. One element of their faith is an aversion to modern medicine, which many outsiders view as irresponsible and dangerous. This practice has led to accusations that the group has harmed its own members and may even be a warning sign that they’re a destructive cult.
The case of The Twelve Tribes raises questions about freedom of religion and individual liberty. Are these people being unfairly harassed for their beliefs? Is there any other evidence The Twelve Tribes are not what they seem and are really a destructive cult? The answers to these questions become less ambiguous when recent incidents of the broader world poking around The Twelve Tribes come into focus.
The Twelve Tribes on one of their farms.
If this group is not a cult, why was a former elder murdered by an active member after speaking out against The Twelve Tribes? Why are their properties being investigated for human remains? These don’t seem like the kind of questions that arise from benign religious groups.
How did a group that sells itself as peaceful and family oriented become the target of such serious investigations? A good place to start is with a closer inspection of the ideas that form the foundation of the collective.
The Twelve Tribes describes itself initially as a self-governing nation where they live like ancient disciples, but they don’t lead with their ideology. According to the group’s own website: “The Twelve Tribes is an emerging spiritual nation. We are a confederation of twelve self-governing tribes, made up of self-governing communities. By community, we mean families and single people who live together in homes and on farms. We are disciples of the Son of God, whom we call by His Hebrew name Yahshua. We follow the Old and New Testament Scriptures and live like the early disciples in Acts chapters 2 and 4. With all of our hearts, we want to do our Father's will, which is to love one another and be a light to the nations; so that they could see our life of love and know how much their Creator loves them.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has a different take. They describe the Twelve Tribes as: “A Christian fundamentalist cult…” The law center warns that on first impression The Twelve Tribes communes and hippie restaurants can be charming and quaint, but behind that gentle exterior is a dangerous authoritarian group with a host of reprehensible ideas. Inside the supposedly peaceful group’s doctrine are teachings of slavery being a “marvelous opportunity” for Black people and that homosexuals deserve death for their sin against God.
When the social ideas of The Twelve Tribes are given some scrutiny, it becomes clear that these hippies are racist, homophobic, sexist, and believes in “spare the rod, spoil the child” resulting in child abuse claims. Other collective ideas about raising children have produced egregious examples of broken child labor laws. These are the philosophies the group embraces while maintaining the belief that everything outside of the community is evil.
If you do not live and believe the way management dictates, prepare to burn in Satan’s lake of fire. This kind of absolute system where members are convinced leaving will result in being tortured for eternity has been a successful means of retaining members in many cultic religious groups.
Still, having a few reprehensible ideas and the threat of eternal damnation does not necessarily make a faith organization a cult. To make that kind of determination it’s best to look at the full picture of the community, starting with its origins.
Elbert Spriggs showing a smile.
The Twelve Tribes was founded in Tennessee in 1972 by Elbert Eugene Spriggs, Jr. and his fourth wife, Marsha. Elbert was a former teacher and carnival worker with uniquely toxic views regarding spirituality and a woman’s place in the world. Mr. Spriggs presented himself as a family man and would convince other families to live by his own values, but a former member of The Twelve Tribes has discovered that Spriggs abandoned his previous wife who was suffering from polio, leaving her to raise his own small child. That was the kind of moral compass Spriggs’ was using when he founded his collective.
The Twelve Tribes original headquarters were in Chattanooga at a home Spriggs called The Vine House. This is where he and Marsha hosted Bible studies and other gatherings. As the church picked up more followers, The Twelve Tribes opened three more houses on the same street. By this time Spriggs was known to followers by his Hebrew name, “Yoneq” or “The Anointed One”. Elbert and Marsha then opened up the groups first business. This was a restaurant called The Yellow Deli.
It didn’t take long for other faith communities in Chattanooga to grow concerned about The Twelve Tribes and its leader. Deans from the former Tennessee Temple University, Covenant College, and Bryan College forbade students from even setting foot in the deli.
Spriggs’ reputation in Tennessee worsened as his church grew in size, which made a change of venue necessary to keep the operation running. In 1979, hundreds of members left Chattanooga for rural Vermont as anti-cult sentiment was roiling around the country. At the time of this migration, Spriggs’ message of peace and love was being contradicted by former members who had gone public with accusations of child abuse.
Spriggs’ own sister had visited one of the church’s homes and reported that the children inside did not look healthy, and the communal living quarters were overcrowded. This kind of neglect was justified through interpretations of the ambiguously simple scripture Spriggs came up with regards to family order.
It’s useful to observe the operation’s codes as more and more families were growing in the group and experiencing the isolation that came with belonging to The Twelve Tribes. Members followed Spriggs totally as they moved further away from the society that their leader denounced for violating God’s natural law. Spriggs’ faith had all kinds of rules for families that became the basis for abuse serious enough that the authorities eventually stepped in, but they start with the “time-honored ideals of the hardworking man, the submissive wife, and the respectful children.”
The impact of codes family’s have to follow in Spriggs’ world will come into relief as more former members speak out. Before we get there, however, it’s worth taking a look at how the journey begins for a new convert to “the community.”
Group photo of one of the clusters of The Twelve Tribes.
When a new member joins The Twelve Tribes, they surrender all of their worldly goods: money, property, phones, even the names they were born with. They believe if you forsake everything you had in your former life and live in the community, Yahshua (more commonly known as Jesus) will bless you with a house, brothers and sisters, mothers and children and eventually eternal life.
The need to surrender assets could be a situation where a new recruit’s funds are liquidated into the church’s purse, which is the sort of thing a cult will ask of its members when they downsize their lives upon entry. Phones aren’t something a leader like Spriggs would be crazy about members having access to either. The boss in this kind of organization will almost always take away the means of communicating with former loved ones. The Twelve Tribes take this concept to its extremes. Members are told to cut themselves off from the world they came from completely including from radio, television, books, and the internet. This gives new members more time to devote to Spriggs’ teachings when they show up on the scene.
The new Hebrew names given to followers also serve a purpose. This practice worms its way into the user manual in different kinds of cults now and then for the benefit of individuals like Elbert Spriggs. It seems to be something of a tool in scrambling someone’s identity. It’s useful for Spriggs too, that members not being identifiable by the names they were born with makes them harder to be discovered by concerned loved ones on the outside. The name change also helps along the process of transitioning from an old way of thinking into an absolute belief system. In Spriggs’ organization the process of surrendering all to the system is explained in scripture through likes like, “Every believer is called to forsake everything he has for Yahshua, for his message and his kingdom. A new culture, a peculiar new nation thus emerges…”
Once a member has given up their old identity in The Twelve Tribes, they learn that Spriggs’ destiny is to restore the ancient Twelve Tribes of Israel and produce an army of 144,000 holy and righteous people to pave the way for the second coming of Christ. This is the sort of fate only a malignant narcissist would dictate for themselves. That level of fantastic self-aggrandizing might seem like a red flag for new members, but these people are likely already brainwashed so it instead has the effect of reinforcing the idea that Spriggs has the authority to claim his faith is the “one true way.” It’s a classic cult leader tactic to tell members you know everything about the path of righteousness because God made you very important. Spriggs convinced more and more people to abandon society and join his faith with his story and the church continued to expand exponentially as it became a global institution.
Today, The Twelve Tribes have farms, restaurants, and stores in New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri and California. Outside of the U.S. you can find them in France, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Japan, and Mexico. That’s quite an upgrade from Chattanooga.
Members of The Twelve Tribes go off their reservations to travel to farmer’s markets and music festivals where they sell their goods and spread the gospel. The Yellow Deli has become a true a franchise as the group has spread, with many locations where they sell sandwiches, salads, soup, and drinks like coffee, natural sodas & juice. To Spriggs’s credit, the food they serve is organic and grown mostly on the groups many farms. The delis are usually located in or near college towns where the group introduces itself to the kind of impressionable young people experiencing life transitions that make for easy targets. They keep their prices reasonable as a means to draw in broke students looking for a deal.
An updated Yellow Deli.
Young people are also lured into The Twelve Tribes to work at the businesses they run. To increase productivity in recent years leadership has modernized and learned to utilize work exchange programs. On the internet, elders in the group have found workers through sites like HelpX, Couchsurfing, and WorkAway, where they were eventually banned.
As time has passed in The Twelve Tribes and their population has grown, more families have formed. There are many flaws in the way Spriggs chose to make his followers think, but it’s obvious that the way he thought children should be raised comes from a man vacant of empathy.
In the factories and farms The Twelve Tribes run, children start working alongside their parents as young as age six. The group will contest that the kids are working with family, so no child labor laws are being broken. This excuse that forced labor is akin to “chores” might fly out on the farm, but that’s not the only place kids are put to work. Estee Lauder worked with The Twelve Tribes “Common Sense” plant in Cambridge, NY until auditors grew concerned after an inspection turned up minors working in the factory. Robert Redford’s eco-friendly catalog company soon felt similarly to the auditors in New York when it was found that some of their products came from the group’s “Common Wealth” line, which children were working on too. There are many dubious businesses in the community’s name and child labor is a perennial concern.
Johnny Law visits The Twelve Tribes in the 70s over concerns about children.
Labor isn’t the only concern for children in The Twelve Tribes. Former members have also spoken out about the community’s views on discipline, including the belief children can be beaten several times per day. There is a 267-page child rearing manual that members are expected to follow and monthly training classes on the subject of keeping the kids in line. The community recommends using a thin rod, similar to a balloon stick, to exact punishment. Sometimes random adults will beat on children they aren’t related to if they feel the kid is out of line. Any member of Twelve Tribes can discipline any child. This comes from the belief that children do not belong to their parents but to God.
Concerns of abuse involving extremely young children have been voiced as well. A member who escaped the group said she witnessed an incident where a new mother holding a rod who was sitting at eye level with a small child young enough to be sitting in a highchair. The mother was holding a Spriggs-regulation balloon stick in her hand and whenever the child would put out its hand to touch the food in front of them, the mother would smack them on the hand with the stick. The woman who witnessed this said she spoke up when it happened, but she wasn’t able to convince the mother her behavior was out of line. She was scolded and told she hadn’t been in The Twelve Tribes long enough to speak up. Another former member has stated that toddlers are forced to get up at 5 a.m. and stand for one hour of prayer.
For children growing up in the collective, playing pretend is off limits because it means they are entering the “unseen realm” and are possessed by Satan. There’s also very little education going on in the group as labor takes precedent. The education the kids do receive includes biblical history, basic math, and enough English to read the Bible and other Spriggs approved teaching materials. Classroom tools outside what the community comes up with are banned. The entire school experience then abruptly ends at the age of 12, and the girls often don’t make it that far.
This image of a child growing up on a farm would be cuter if the field didn’t belong to The Twelve Tribes.
Young women in the group are trained to submit to their place in Spriggs’ world before they become adults. Around the age of 18 they are groomed to be married and told to start having children. One of the fundamental beliefs in the community is that women must do whatever men say. Birth control is out of the question. Women are also forced to give birth without any pain medication to atone for Eve’s original sin.
Members brought up in The Twelve Tribes who’ve exited the community have stated that the absence of education, social skills, and critical thinking made entering the real world difficult. Exiting is an uncomfortable process. When someone is asked to leave because they’re not fitting in, they are sometimes given a bus ticket and returned their clothes. If they decide to leave on their own accord, a member will only have the clothes on their back and are forced to depend on the kindness of strangers to get off the farm.
What ended up making The Twelve Tribes widely labeled as a cult is the aforementioned rule that modern and outside medical care is not available to the members. Despite Spriggs’ idea that this came from The Bible, it’s not a concept that’s proscribed by any legitimate religion. It’s the kind of declaration only a person who doesn’t care about the safety of members in his congregation could make. The Twelve Tribes have justified the absence of care for the suffering in quotes like “if God wants them to live, he will save them” or that afflicted members “die because of unconfessed sins.” This belief system has resulted in a fifteen-month-old dying from whooping cough, a woman suffering to death from untreated cancer, and undoubtedly many other lives lost without proper care. One former member spoke of seeing a member who had begun to hemorrhage during labor. She was begrudgingly taken to an actual hospital when it looked like she was close to death, and there she was dumped on the sidewalk outside the ER. When this woman woke, a hospital staff member told her the baby had been stillborn.
A child be led away from collective.
Authorities have stepped in and intervened a number of times when issues like these have been exposed over the years. In 1984, state troopers and social workers in Vermont removed children from The Twelve Tribes community while searching for evidence of child abuse. The children were returned to their abusers based on a lack of cooperation from children and because the parents refused to provide their kids real names. In 2013, German officials raided a Twelve Tribes community after a hidden camera showed adults caning children. In that case, Germany is a country with anti-cult laws, and forty children between the ages of 18 months and 17 years old were removed and placed in foster care. According to an article published in 2018, The European Court of Human Rights upheld Germany’s decision and the children mercifully didn’t have to go back to their abusers. There have been reports of parental kidnappings in child custody disputes to get other kids away from The Twelve Tribes. In 2015, three people were arrested for kidnapping a family member who had joined the Twelve Tribes in an effort to deprogram them. This is one of the rare cases of the Ted Patrick method of deprogramming resulting in arrests in the last quarter century. It illustrates the kind of desperation some families feel in getting their loved ones away from this group.
The late Chen Czarnecki.
Recent news out of the community is quite troubling. In late 2019, a former elder from the Australian branch of The Twelve Tribes named Chen Czarnecki gave a controversial interview to A Current Affair. Czarnecki told the television program his concerns about the lack of medical care available to members and denounced their methods of disciplining children. Nine months later, Czarnecki died in a deliberately set house fire in New South Wales. A 17-year-old boy in The Twelve Tribes was later arrested and charged with murder, improperly interfering with a corpse, and malicious damage by fire. He is awaiting trial.
In February 2020, New South Wales detectives conducted raids on several of The Twelve Tribes properties, searching for human remains. With so many people without access to medicine, it seems inevitable some bodies are buried who succumbed to preventable illnesses. The investigation is ongoing.
In less concerning news, just this year leader Elbert Eugene Spriggs Jr. “Yoneq” exited this world for keeps. He died on January 11th at 83 from respiratory arrest. When elders have been asked what will happen without their leader, they have said that his death will not affect The Twelve Tribes, and that they will keep on preparing for Christ’s return.
When the leaders of coercive groups this big die, there’s often a contingency plan where someone has already been groomed to take over operations. Being that The Twelve Tribes is a well-oiled machine and making money is involved, expect policies to stay as they are. Fresh blood in management never seems to solve any of the human rights violations found in these kinds of groups. Sometimes when a leader dies without fulfilling the promise of their prophecy, it loses members or folds, but it’s more likely Spriggs’ death was just a speed bump and the community is already back to business as usual.
There is some hope that there will be more investigations like the one happening in Australia. If casualties of The Twelve Tribes medical plan are discovered on their farms, they might be key to dismantling an organization that has been abusing its members for decades.
There’s enough information to determine what kind of an organization The Twelve Tribes is and why it’s so dangerous. We’ll be keeping an eye out for news and hoping law enforcement agencies around the world have better luck cracking down on the community.
If you or a loved one needs help for leaving or recovering from a cult, please use the following resources:
Freedom of Mind Resource Center- www.freedomofmind.com
Spiritual Abuse Resources- www.spiritualabuseresources.com
