All Who Believed: A Memoir of Life in the Twelve Tribes by Tamara Mathieu 4++ stars

[Karin]

This is a strong writing debut by Mathieu who spent 14 years as part of the Twelve Tribes from 2000 to 2014. Although all memoirs like this are the testimony of only one person (I started taking them with a huge grain of salt after reading my dad's), it's more balanced than some of the crazy stories out there, especially some of the Youtube videos. In addition, it's possible to check the group's teachings by finding their publications and reading them yourself; those alone are enough to give pause.

I'll be honest, I always check when people cry out the word "cult" because I've seen it applied to grouts that aren't, just merely not teaching the normal Christian theologies. She does make long enough quotes from their doctrinal literature to get an idea of what they are saying so it's not just a line or two pulled out of context. There are significant red flags with this group, so even though there are obviously women and families who are happy there and Mathieu didn't live in every community (she pointed out that she enjoyed one of them a great deal more then others), it's clear that there is enough fire underneath the smoke of stories about this group to make me steer clear.

If you'd like to know more about this group and what the red flags are, I highly recommend reading this book.