[CS-FSLUG] 12 Tribes

[Keli of Coxsackie]

thanks for the advertisement Fred!
If anyone has questions about the Twelve Tribes - email me off list!
I have been in the community for about 10 years..

Michael Markuson (aka Keli)
Parchment Press
52 S River St
Coxsackie, NY 12051

Parchment Press is a cottage Industry of the Twelve Tribes. To learn 
more about our community please go here... http://www.twelvetribes.com

Fred A. Miller wrote:
> Jason P. Franklin wrote:
>   
> Here's some info. plus a web site. I know some of them who live near here.
>
> Fred
>
> Beliefs and practices
>
> According to a statement from their website[8], the group seeks to live
> according to the primitive pattern of the early church described in Acts
> 2:38-42 and Acts 4:32-37. Claiming to follow the teachings of Jesus
> (whom they call by his Hebrew name Yahshua), they believe that all
> disciples must renounce all personal possessions and independent lives
> in order to truly call him their Master and Lord. They claim that living
> in community is the result of obeying the commands of Jesus Christ, who
> said to "seek first His Kingdom" not "food and clothing as the heathen
> do". Group members live communally, sharing all assets and income in common.
>
> Some communities are located in a rural setting, such as the Common
> Sense Farm in Cambridge, NY. Other communities live in populated cities
> in residential neighborhoods, such as Ithaca, NY; and Boston, MA. They
> aspire, "to live moral lives in the midst of a very immoral society."
>
> Members often live in large multi-bedroom houses, where several families
> and single people share expenses, income, meals, and chores. Married
> couples have a bedroom for themselves, and several rooms for their
> children, depending on the family. Single brothers may share a room, as
> do single sisters. Dining and living areas are shared. Members function
> as an extended family, where people function according to their gifting.
> Those gifted in industry work together on community-run businesses,
> those gifted in teaching work together to homeschool the children, those
> gifted in sewing sew clothing for members, and those gifted in cooking
> create delicious healthy meals for the group.
>
> According to a 1998 article by the religious scholar Dr. Susan J.
> Palmer, who beat the community beyond all recognition, members give
> themselves Hebrew names and their beliefs are closely related to
> Christian fundamentalism. [9] They follow the Old and New Covenant
> Scriptures, and use all versions of the Bible. Twelve Tribes' members
> dress modestly: the men wear beards, wear their hair bound in a short
> pony tail behind their head, while women wear their hair long, go
> without makeup, and wear long dresses.
>
> There are many distinctions between the Twelve Tribes and Christian
> fundamentalism. For example, the Twelve Tribes believe and teach that
> denominations or divisions remove a church's validity and insist that
> the true church will be undivided in reality. Christian fundamentalism
> allows for minor differences and denominations in the non-essentials,
> and believe that the unity of the church is mystical and unassailable.
> In Twelve Tribes' doctrine there are three eternal destinies of man (the
> holy, disciple of Christ who are saved by Him and live entirely for Him;
> the righteous, good people who never heard the gospel and never became
> followers; and the wicked, evil people who destroy other people's lives
> by their selfishness) as opposed to only two (heaven and hell) in
> Christian Fundamentalism. The Twelve Tribes teach that to become a
> disciple of Yahshua, a person must trust Yahshua enough to obey His
> commands; giving up all of their own possessions and surrendering their
> life completely for the One who surrendered His life for them. Christian
> Fundamentalism teaches that a person is "saved by grace through faith",
> not of "works" and so a person does not have to do anything whatsoever
> other than "believe in Jesus", trusting that He did everything for them.
> They claim their main tenets to be forgiveness, love, purity, and
> obedience to the Christ's teachings.
>
> The Twelve Tribes do not consider themselves part of any organized
> religion: Catholicism, Protestantism, or any of the many denominations
> of Christianity. They believe that the church changed considerably over
> the first two hundred years of its life, lost its love, and ceased to be
> a true church. Since apostolic times, Christianity never returned to its
> foundation, but became more and more corrupt. Separating themselves from
> all organized religion, the Twelve Tribes consider themselves the
> restoration of original pattern of the church.
>
> The group believes that humans are living in the end times, and that a
> faithful and pure church must be restored before Christ returns.
>
> The group's teachings extend to the family and society.[10] They teach
> that husbands should love their wives and keep their marriage
> uncorrupted. Wives are to respect and to be submissive to their
> husbands. Children should honor and obey their parents as their supreme
> authority. Homosexuality, divorce, adultery, fornication, child abuse,
> and pornography are all sinful activities, which are given up when a
> person becomes a disciple. Respect, hospitality, and hope are extended
> to all people, regardless.
>
> The group estimates its current membership to be around 2500.
>
> The Twelve Tribes publishes many periodicals, called freepapers, in
> Pulaski, TN; Coxsackie, NY; and Vista, CA. Titles such as "Twelve Tribes
> Freepaper", "The Voice", "Hitchhikers Guide to Life on a Lonely Planet",
> "It Takes a Community" have been distributed at a variety of music
> concerts (such as Grateful Dead, Phish, Bonaroo, Wide Spread Panic, Phil
> Lesh) and Christian events (such as Billy Graham, Promise Keepers,
> Harvest Crusade, The Call). The group often travels to the events in one
> of two double-decker maroon-and-creme buses called Peacemaker I and
> Peacemaker II, or the vibrant-colored 60s-style Garden Bus.
>
> Controversies
>
> The group has garnered controversy since their beginnings in the 1970s.
> The anti-cult movement and ex-Twelves Tribes members are some of the
> most vocal critics of the group's practices. As mentioned earlier, the
> anti-cult movement has carried out a series of kidnappings of Twelve
> Tribes members[11], the most shocking of which were the kidnappings of
> Kirsten Nielsen on her sister's wedding day, and later on, her
> international kidnapping from Europe to Kansas. The Reverend Robert T.
> Pardon, an anti-cult advisor and director of the New England Institute
> of Religious Research, warns that the "Messianic Communities, under the
> leadership of Spriggs, has tended towards an extreme
> authoritarianism."[12] The group responds that they are a "simple people
> who live on Main Street USA" and that "all members can leave at any
> time, but choose to remain daily." A summary version of Robert Pardon's
> report appears online and the complete report can be purchased from him
> at a cost of $15.00. The Twelve Tribes have published a response to
> Pardon's report.
>
> The group first aroused controversy because of accusations of child
> abuse, and later, child labor in their cottage industries). The most
> notable event was the 1984 Island Pond Raid. Anti-cult workers, Galen
> Kelly and Priscilla Coates, gathered negative information from
> ex-members and fed this information to media and government agencies in
> a plan to destroy the group. In 1984, Vermont State authorities executed
> a full-scale pre-dawn raid of the 13 Twelve Tribes houses in Island
> Pond, Vermont, seizing all of the children. The search warrants
> contained no names, but gave permission to the police to seize all
> children in the specified locations as evidence. The case was dismissed
> the same day. Frank Mahady, the presiding Judge, declared the State of
> Vermont's "authorization to seize 'any and all children under the age of
> 18 years old' was broader in scope (though admittedly less Draconian in
> purpose) than that of Herod the Great."[13]
>
> In 2001, New York State fined two Greene County Twelve Tribes businesses
> for child labor law violations in 2001. At a 2001 press conference in
> response to charges of child labor,[14] they claimed that the charges of
> child labor are "false, unfounded, and slanderous." They appealed the
> decision, but lost.
>
> However, the group does admit that it uses corporal punishment, spanking
> children with a "small reed-like rod"[15] and that the "children help
> their parents" in their cottage industries. [16]
>
> In Europe, the controversies centered on the issues of homeschooling,
> health, and religious freedom. On October 18, 2004, seven fathers from
> the community in Klosterzimmern, in the municipality Deiningen, Bavaria
> were arrested because they homeschooled their children, instead of
> sending them to regular school. [17] [18] In Germany, homeschooling is
> illegal. In France, the sect of Tabitha's place appears on the official
> list of sects[19]. In England, a report from The Guardian accuses the
> Twelve Tribes of being racist and anti-Semitic, quoting an article
> published by the group. The article states that "murder is the very
> crime which the Jews are still cursed for" and that "multiculturalism
> increases murder, crime and prejudice". The Twelve Tribes deny charges
> of racism or Anti-Semitism, stating that they "look back to the Semitic
> roots of our faith with gratitude". They also have members of many races
> and cultures in their community, and a number of African-American
> members are also leaders in their communities. In fact, a large number
> of members are Jewish or of Jewish background. The Twelve Tribes also
> encourages use of the Hebrew language.
>
> This group requires the surrender of all private possessions and denies
> the opportunity for personal wealth, which contradicts 1 timothy chapter
> 6 and James chapter 1 in the Holy Bible. This group also claims they are
> the only individuals inheriting the kingdom of God, and believes that
> John Calvin was possessed by the devil. Twelve Tribes believe that Jesus
> Christ is the demonic spirit of western Christianity, and to properly be
> "saved" a person must call upon the Hebrew name for Jesus which is Yahshua.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Tribes_(New_religious_movement)
>
>