Talk:Twelve Tribes communities

Odd reference formatting

What is with the odd reference formatting? Why is <ref></ref> not being used??? Cirt (talk) 01:32, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The article predates that system, editors like myself have preferred retaining it rather than messing with it... or have been to lazy to update it (me especially) Weaponbb7 (talk) 03:38, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I reformatted it. As a side note, the article is horribly in need of a cleanup, it suffers from POV, possible COI, and way, way way, too much use of primary sources and non-independent sources. Cirt (talk) 20:31, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced, moved from article to talk page

Origins and History

The origins of the Twelve Tribes movement can be traced to small meetings held in the home of Elbert Eugene Spriggs and his wife Marsha in the early 1970s in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1972, the Spriggs began a ministry for teenagers called the "Light Brigade." Around this time, members of the "Light Brigade." THe Brigade began to live communally while operating the first Yellow Deli which served three primary functions: creating revenue for the group, evangelism, and mentoring new congregants. . Until this time, Spriggs' group had not been a separate denomination, instead affiliating itself with several different local churches and denominations. However, this changed after Spriggs went to church one Sunday only to find the service cancelled due to the Super Bowl. The group then began having their own meetings on Sunday in a park, began calling themselves the "Vine Community Church". The Church grew with several over churches started in Dalton and Trenton, Georgia, Mentone, Alabama, and Dayton, Tennessee as well as a second in downtown Chattanooga. The Areopagus, in 1978 opened with a stage, loft seating, offices, and a recording studio. Rewritten with sourcesWeaponbb7 (talk) 20:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

During this period, the church came under suspicion by mainstream Christian groups and anti-cult groups. This opposition resulted in a series of attempted deprogrammings of Twelve Tribes members. expanded/rewritten with sources Weaponbb7 (talk) 20:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Around the time the climate turned negative in the South, Spriggs was invited by a group of disenchanted Christians in Vermont to bring a demonstration of the life they had seen down south to their northern township. The entire community in the south sold their businesses and homes and moved their base of operations to Island Pond, Vermont in 1978 through 79 calling themselves The Northeast Kingdom Community Church. (That area of Northeastern Vermont is called the Northeast Kingdom.) Rewritten with sourcesWeaponbb7 (talk) 20:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The community in Island Pond grew in size. Two German men joined the group, but their visas expired. In response, the group sent members to return to Europe and seek a place for a community. They wandered for a year, seeking a home, calling themselves the "Little Flock". Eventually, a woman named Tabitha offered a chateau, which became the first community in Europe. The chateau in Sus, France is called "Tabitha's Place". The group continued to grow during the 1980s and 1990s, opening branches in several different countries, including Canada, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina, and the United Kingdom. Weaponbb7 (talk) 16:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Around the turn of the century, the communities in the United States spread from New England to the West Coast and to the South. Many of the original members from the Southern United States returned to their home states to begin communities in Chattanooga, Savannah, Georgia, Brunswick, Georgia, and Asheville, North Carolina. Then in April, 2008, the community in Chattanooga opened a new Yellow Deli, nearly 30 years after leaving the city.Weaponbb7 (talk) 02:48, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Beliefs and practices

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 differences and denominations in the non-essentials, and believe that the unity of the church is mystical, unseen, and unassailable.

The Twelve Tribes do not consider themselves part of any organized religion as such they do not view themselves as belonging to Catholicism, or any of the Protestant 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. They believe that since apostolic times, Christianity never returned to its foundation, but became more and more corrupt. Separating themselves from all other organized religions, the Twelve Tribes consider themselves to be the beginning of 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. Wives are to respect and to be submissive to their husbands, while husbands should love and cherish his wife above all earthly things. Children should honor and obey their parents as their supreme authority. Homosexuality, sodomy, divorce, adultery, fornication, child abuse, gambling, alcohol, drugs, and pornography are all viewed by the Group to be sinful activities, which are given up when a person becomes a disciple. Respect, hospitality, and hope are extended to all people, regardless of past incidents.

Controversies

The group has garnered controversy since their beginnings in the 1970s. Accusations by the anti-cult movement and Apostates have caused incidents of vandalism on property owned by the group and assaults on members.

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, collected information from ex-members and provided this information to media and government agencies. 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 as the raid was unconstitutional.

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. The Twelve Tribes encourages use of the Hebrew language, as a large number of member were Jewish or of Jewish background.

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Unsourced, moved from article to talk page. Cirt (talk) 20:34, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

can't find independent source for much of the third paragraph in history, but seems Written specifcally by the Tribes leaving out for now. Weaponbb7 (talk) 17:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

• cant find anything for much of the fourth Paragraph Weaponbb7 (talk) 02:48, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Reviving old talk page subject For Proposed Restructuring of Page Article

1. Neutral Introduction

  a. use logo of Crown with 12 stars, the TT would proably be happy to provide fair use
  b. Include estimated membership (why this is currently stuck in the middle of the page idk)

2. Undisputed History

   a. Spriggs moves to Chattanooga
   b. light brigade
   c. Yellow Deli
   d. sychism with local churches
   e. Anti-cult movement alleges brainwashing and conducts deprogramming 
   f. Move to Vermont.
   g. Island pond raid (Neutral three sentences expand in Controversy section )
   h. planting of world wide communities 
   i. Steve wooten (Neutral One liner expand in Controversy section )
   j 2001 Child labor controversy(Neutral One liner expand in Controversy section )
   k. Return to Chattanooga

3. Indisputable Beliefs/Practice/ (Focus on Verifiable Doctrine promoted, maybe criticism of doctrine)

  A. Beleifs 
    a. name of Yahshua ( sourced criticism of hebrew spelling and pronunciation permittable ) 
    b. Restored Isreael/ one true church (in just about every freepaper they publish)
    c. justification Communal living and common purse (Book of acts and Rich young ruler)
    d. end times belief 
    e. Shabbat and Sabbath on saturday 
  B. Practices
     a. Standard of Dress (Easily sourced in pratically every article ever written about them)
     b. taking of hebrew names
     c Kosher diet
     d. Israelli folk dancing
     e. Child rearing
     f. Rejection of negative influences (TV, Outside music, Perceived immorality )

4. Business/outreach

  A. Bussiness  
       a. Purpose To Provide income/serve as outreach
       c. List Notable operations (Boj Construction, Maté Factor, organic farms, Yellow deli, Commonsense Products,)
   B. Outreach
       a. Peacemaker bus
       b. Peacemaker Marine
       c. Events, (nicodemus by night, rap sessions, open forum, M night)

5. Criticism/controversy (Critical to remain sourced the only permitable acusation are sourced from credible article (not editorial) and repsonse to the critism can only come from official statement from TT such has found at http://www.twelvetribes.com/controversies/spoken-against.html

  a. Target of Anticult movemen/notable critics/Nierr
  b. ISland pond raid
  c. 2001 Cottage industry scandal
  d. Racism 
  e. Judaism
  f. homosexuality
  g. German Home Schooling
  h. Steve wooten incident
  

Suggestions are Welcome, need to Rewrite artilce is critical Weaponbb7 (talk) 16:50, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, there seems to be agreement to merge Yellow deli to this article.   Will Beback  talk  17:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Reviving Yellow Deli Merger Discussion

The article on Yellow Deli overlaps substantially with this one, and I propose merging that one into this one. Any objections? Will Beback talk 18:38, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

• No objections from me. Though the Yellow Deli article can technically stand on its own as an article about a popular Tennessee eatery, the overlap with this article (due to the fact that its sole owner and operator is the Twelve Tribes) is enough to justify a merge. Jaybird vt (talk) 21:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
  • the article is of such poor quality i dont know why its been allowed to standWeaponbb7 (talk) 00:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
    • You need to get out more often if you think this one is even in the bottom 10th of articles on Wikipedia! That's not to defend it's low quality; only to put it into context :-)RevelationDirect (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
• Count me in favor of merger. RevelationDirect (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Article merged: See old talk-page here

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was merge Twelve Tribes (New religious movement) -- Weaponbb7 (talk) 02:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

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Question about history

Hello Cirt and WeaponBB7. My name is Tim Kroehler, known in the community as Mevaser. I'm so thankful for the cleanup you all have done. I'm a member, and it has been hard to write from NPOV, especially with some writers that seem to be embittered themselves. I like your tone, and appreciate all the research you have done. If I can be of any help with resources, please let me know. I did have a few comments:

1. The section about the history of moving from Chattanooga to Island Pond has two references to us being "bankrupt" as a significant factor in our moving. It quotes Gary Gilbreath's article on Rick Ross' website. I don't dispute Gary saying it, but I think the wikipedia articles makes more of this quote than is real. At many times, we have "had no money" as we tend to run our communities that way. I have never heard of us talking about financial reasons for our move from Chattanooga to Island Pond, and the economy of IP was *far worse*, in rural VT, so it really didn't help the bank account. You can leave the reference to Gary's article, if desired, but I would change the wording to remove the suggestion that bankruptcy was a motivating factor. I would think that you would need some financial documentation to support this claim.

2. It would be really nice to have more about the Peacemaker buses, as these have been written about in High Times magazine and were a significant part of the Grateful Dead/Phish tour scenes.

• you would not happen to have a link to that somewhere would you?Weaponbb7 (talk) 23:05, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
  • I do not have a link nor a hardcopy of the HIgh Times magazine. Our copy was lost, unfortunately. There was another article by Relix magazine that had some pretty zany reporting of some of our beliefs, but had some other good things about the tour. I only have a hardcopy.

Again, I appreciate the work you've done. Tim Kroehler (talk) 16:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Tim nice of you to join us, i have been waiting for your input. I would like to put more in on the peacemakers busses and thanks for the tip on a source. that has been a real problem finding reliable sources. On some sources it has been largley conjecture with out fact checking or much facts really; so quite a few i took facts from very biased article and wove them in. While you have obivous Conflict of interest and it his highly recommend that you dont edit this article, however i do think you do have legitimate interest on how these are written. thank you for your points Weaponbb7 (talk) 17:29, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• I understand that this is a Wikipedia entry, not the Twelve Tribes website. I like NPOV and I've tried my best to present the good and the bad. Defining "neutral" hasn't been easy, because it has seemed to me that some people (not yourself) have wanted to make the entry read like a gossip column. It is not easy to find good third-party sources, I know. I'm glad for your work, and I'm happy to be a sideline resource. Feel free to reach out for resources.

Here's a few other news articles from significant publishers. I'm not necessarily saying that I agree with everything in them, but they are valuable, I think:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/27/AR2007062702855.html http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20070715/FEATURES/707150305 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E5DA173FF937A15754C0A9639C8B63 http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/valley-center/article_a68bc3cf-981d-5250-9525-e064a002bf1d.html

Someone in our group, I have heard, has a file of media articles about us. If you're interested, or if you have a specific need, I could try to get some of them. I'll try to get some good images of the Peacemaker and upload them.

Peace-

Tim Kroehler (talk) 05:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)