A “Christian” Cult – Abuse, Murder, Madness

UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

Some notes while reading the Rolling Stone article on the Tyler Deaton cult. It’s a long piece, and I’ll give some highlights below, with a running commentary (the boldface is my own emphasis throughout).

They spent many hours discussing the Harry Potter books and films, which they approached with “a religious devotion,” according to [cult survivor] Herrington, whom they briefly resisted admitting to the group, because it would have broken the symmetry. The works “fueled our sense of being on a divine mission,” says Herrington. “One of their chief attractions was a sense of belonging to a secret club with exclusive access to knowledge and power. That was the root of our whole ideology.”

Such a Gnostic thrill of power is behind much of the heterodoxy in the Church today.

“In the years I was with him, things were constantly happening that I had to shrug away as being ‘the work of the Holy Spirit,'” says Herrington. “[Cult founder] Tyler [Deaton] would raise his voice and say, ‘Jesus!’ and the neighbor’s music would immediately stop. He would tell the birds to fly away and they would fly away. He would place curses on my appliances so they wouldn’t work.”

OK, that’s creepy. But cults are demonic and the presence of the preternatural should surprise no one.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.