Harrison Hill - The Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps

Summary

Podcast Summary: Trust Me — "Harrison Hill: The Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps"

Date: April 8, 2026
Hosts: Lola Blanc & Meagan Elizabeth
Guest: Harrison Hill, author of "The Oracle’s Daughter"

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the rise and fall of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC), a little-known American cult led by Lila Green (later known as Deborah). Through in-depth conversation with journalist and author Harrison Hill, who wrote The Oracle’s Daughter, listeners are given unique insights into the cult’s origins, its charismatic and complicated leader, the mechanisms of manipulation and control, and the incredible resilience of survivors, especially Lila’s daughter, Sarah. The story is interwoven with broader reflections on American spirituality, cult psychology, and the era’s shifting religious landscapes.

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Key Discussion Points

1. How the Story Began

• Harrison’s Entry Point
  • Harrison learned about the cult via a chance encounter: his brother’s neighbor in Brooklyn, Sarah Green, revealed she’d been raised in a cult run by her mother ([09:00]).
  • “It all began with a flood in an apartment.” — Harrison Hill (09:38)
  • This led to years of interviews and ultimately, his book.

2. Lila Green — Origins of a Cult Leader

• Early Life & Personality ([10:00]–[12:00])
  • Lila was an overachiever: treasurer of her school class, vice president, book lover.
  • Had a tumultuous family life—poverty, absentee father, mother working long hours, and a younger brother who died tragically.
  • Her brother’s death was a turning point: “The loss of her brother was the black hole of her life. Everything circled around that point of gravity.” — Harrison Hill (23:45)
• Path to Counterculture & Commune Experience
  • Joined the Bear Tribe, a “back to the land” hippie commune in Northern California, seeking meaning and healing.

3. The American Spiritual Landscape (1960s–70s)

• Era of Transition & Spiritual Seeking ([13:07]–[15:30])
  • Post-WWII stability gave way to an era when young Americans sought intense, embodied faiths.
  • “The counterculture affected all parts of American society... Christianity was not immune.” — Harrison Hill (13:29)
• Hippie to Christian Pipeline
  • Many went from radical free love to intense Christian groups: “To me it’s all a different expression of the same impulse... People who feel things in an extreme way, they’re looking for extreme expression.” — Harrison Hill (15:53)

4. The Forming of ACMTC: From Free Love to Aggressive Christianity

• Partnership with Jim Green
  • Initially clashed, but fell into an intense personal and spiritual partnership after Lila cared for Jim during an illness ([16:33]–[17:54]).
• Birth of a Prophet & “Spiritual Births” Rituals
  • Lila began to experience intense visions, acting out spiritual "births" — writhing and giving birth to "spiritual soldiers" ([18:23]–[20:00]).
  • “She would get down on the floor, moaning and grunting and screaming as if she were a woman in labor. And she would, quote, unquote, give birth to spiritual soldiers.” — Harrison Hill (18:45)
  • Parallels with Ann Lee, the Shaker leader—both women re-imagined themselves as conduits for spiritual renewal ([20:00]–[22:34]).
• Charismatic Authority
  • Lila sincerely believed in her powers—her self-conviction drove others’ devotion: “She sincerely believed what she was saying... in her mind, she was doing tremendous good.” — Harrison Hill (19:06)

5. The Group’s Evolution: Control, Abuse & Isolation

• Name Changes & New Identities
  • Lila renames herself ‘Deborah,’ tells others to adopt new, often harsh names (e.g., Despised, Forsaken) to mark spiritual rebirth ([32:51]–[33:50]).
    • “Imagine your new name is Despised.” — Lola Blanc (48:01)
• Community Dynamics and Growth ([28:52]–[30:42])
  • Early recruitment through personal connections, radio shows, and meals; group never exceeded 50 people but was highly cohesive.
• Escalating Control
  • All relationships not "oriented" toward the leaders deemed evil—known as “spiritual adultery.”
  • “If you were nice to your children… you were guilty of spiritual adultery.” — Harrison Hill (31:00)
• Punishments and Abuse
  • From vegan starvation diets to denial of medical care and physical punishments (whippings, isolation, humiliation rituals).
  • “The punishments were so bad... like medieval.” — Megan Elizabeth (37:39–37:43)
• Child Abuse & Trafficking
  • Obsession with creating an army of child followers led to extreme, sometimes criminal, actions—including child trafficking attempts ([34:52]–[36:42]).

6. Cult Psychology & Societal Blind Spots

• Normalization of Extreme Behavior ([38:25]–[38:41])
  • Abuse escalated gradually; what once seemed unthinkable became normalized over time.
  • “It never happens overnight, which I think is important to note about groups like this.” — Megan Elizabeth (38:29)
• Law Enforcement Hesitation
  • Post-Waco anxiety made authorities hesitant to intervene, letting reported abuse linger.
  • “The American justice system… feels really reluctant to interfere when religion is a factor.” — Harrison Hill (44:53)

7. Resilience, Escape, and Aftermath

• Sarah’s Escape ([39:56]–[42:38])
  • Lila/Deborah’s daughter Sarah managed to escape thanks to her memories of the outside world and innate resilience.
  • “She just happened to be really good at holding onto a part of herself that a lot of people gave away.” — Harrison Hill (41:17)
• Recovery & Meaning-Making for Survivors ([49:15]–[50:14])
  • Many survivors struggled but found ways to rebuild, with Sarah channeling her energy into marathon running and family.
  • “I hope the book can feel like a kind of… meaning-making device, taking things that happened that were really tough and making hopefully something beautiful out of them.” — Harrison Hill (51:35)

8. Cults Then and Now: The Digital Age

• Broader Implications & Modern Cults ([52:25]–[54:56])
  • Periods of instability foster cultish thinking; internet creates new kinds of ideological cohesion even without physical proximity.
  • “You can have a kind of isolation that’s physically diffuse… but they are in a kind of cultish relationship with each other.” — Harrison Hill (52:47)
  • Online cults can function like in-person ones, sometimes with people never meeting the leader.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Kind of biblical.” — Megan Elizabeth, on Harrison’s introduction to Sarah Green via a flood (09:41)
• “The counterculture affected every part of American society… Christianity was not immune.” — Harrison Hill (13:29)
• “She would get down on the floor, moaning… screaming as if she were a woman in labor… giving birth to spiritual soldiers.” — Harrison Hill (18:45)
• “By decrying sexuality, they were really focusing on it.” — Harrison Hill (32:01)
• “Imagine your new name is Despised.” — Lola Blanc (48:01)
• “We will truly see whatever we were looking for.” — Megan Elizabeth, on confirmation bias in cults (28:20)
• “It never happens overnight, which I think is important to note about groups like this.” — Megan Elizabeth (38:29)
• “I hope the book… can be a win for them… a meaning-making device.” — Harrison Hill (51:35)
• “You can have a kind of isolation that’s physically diffuse, but they are in a kind of cultish relationship.” — Harrison Hill (52:47)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Topic | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 09:00 | How Harrison first learned about the cult | | 10:04 | Lila Green’s background, family life, and personality | | 13:07 | American spiritual landscape — hippies, Christianity, cult formation | | 16:26 | Jim and Lila’s relationship, spiritual births, and merging of spiritual revelations | | 18:23 | Rituals, Ann Lee, Shaker parallels | | 28:52 | How the group attracted followers, early recruitment strategies | | 31:00 | Nature of control: “spiritual adultery” and cutting off normal family bonds | | 32:51 | Name changes — Lila becomes Deborah, group becomes ACMTC | | 34:52 | Obsession with children, kidnapping attempts, child trafficking | | 37:39 | Escalation of punishments for members | | 39:56 | Sarah’s story: growing up in and escaping the cult | | 43:33 | Law enforcement and the impact of the Waco siege | | 49:15 | Recovery and meaning-making after leaving the group | | 52:25 | Are we entering a new age of cults? The impact of online groupthink |

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Memorable Moments

• The dark but humorous banter regarding weird cult names (e.g., "Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps" is a bold label) ([10:13])
• “I would visit any cult for a day.” — Lola Blanc, reflecting on the paradoxical allure and horror of these groups ([57:41])
• The recognition that many survivors are, at their core, seekers of beauty and connection, not pathology ([49:15])

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Tone & Style Notes

• The episode blends journalistic rigor with warm, witty, and compassionate conversation, balancing dark subject matter with humor and empathy—demonstrating true survivor-centered storytelling.
• Both hosts and the guest dismantle sensationalism, focusing instead on the humanity of those who join, lead, and escape cults.

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Conclusion

This episode of Trust Me offers an intimate, deeply researched look at a rarely-discussed cult, the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, unpacking how American spiritual trends gave rise to such groups and how individuals—especially children—struggle and sometimes succeed at finding a path to freedom. The episode is essential listening for anyone interested in cult dynamics, religious psychology, and personal resilience.

Transcript

[Lola Blanc]

This is exactly right.

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[Harrison Hill]

Trust me.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Do you trust me?

[Harrison Hill]

Would I ever lead you astray?

[Lola Blanc]

Trust me.

[Harrison Hill]

This is the truth. The only truth.

[Megan Elizabeth]

If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't. Welcome to Trust Me, the podcast about cults. Extreme belief and manipulation from two separate spiritual soldiers who've actually experienced it.

[Lola Blanc]

I'm Lola Blanc. And I'm Megan Elizabeth. A spiritual soldier to my core.

[Megan Elizabeth]

To your core. This week, writer Harrison Hill joins us to discuss his new book, the Oracle's Daughter, which follows the rise and fall of a small cult called the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Court.

[Lola Blanc]

Whoa.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's quite a mouthful.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

He explains what the religious landscape in America looked like at the time we with the unrest of the 60s transitioning into a new Christianity movement, and how this group's leader, Lila Carter, who later became Deborah, began her spiritual journey on a commune called the Bear Tribe.

[Lola Blanc]

The Bear Tribe is something I would probably join. We'll discuss the beginning of Lila's own visions of giving birth to what she called spiritual soldiers, how her following grew, and the parallels between her and Shaker leader Ann Lee. We'll talk about how the group became more controlling and cruel over time, changing people's names to words like despised, using physical punishment on its members, and even kidnapping a baby. And finally, we'll touch on how Lila's daughter Sarah, the subject of Harrison's book, found her way out. Very inspiring story.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Lots to dive into before we do that diving, since we're professional divers.

[Lola Blanc]

Are we?

[Megan Elizabeth]

No. I literally moved in with my dad to avoid the diving program in my school. In middle school.

[Lola Blanc]

You mean like, like diving in the water?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, in Utah. My middle school had like a diving,

[Lola Blanc]

like, is this a Mormon thing? Like, you guys are going to have to live in the ocean?

[Megan Elizabeth]

No, it was just like the PE decided, like, all right, this quarter we're doing diving. And I was like, I'm not doing that. So I'm going to live with dad instead because I. Wow. That's how much I. Not a diver.

[Lola Blanc]

I Learned to dive in a swimming pool.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Well, yeah, this was a swimming pool as well.

[Lola Blanc]

It wasn't the ocean. There wasn't the ocean in Utah. Yeah, okay.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Anyway, we're not divers, but on this podcast sometimes we dive into stories.

[Lola Blanc]

I get what you're saying.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

And you're probably wondering what my cultiest thing is. You're probably wanting to dive right in.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Please let me dive.

[Lola Blanc]

Okay. Diving straight in this week, according to the New York Times and every other publication in the world, the founder of One Taste.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, that was mine.

[Lola Blanc]

Shit.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's okay, we'll share it. We'll share it.

[Lola Blanc]

Nicole. How do you say her last name? Daedone.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I don't know. Daedoni. Daedone.

[Lola Blanc]

She's going to nine years in prison.

[Megan Elizabeth]

She deserves it. She deserves it.

[Lola Blanc]

Also a hefty million upon million dollar fine. Um, we did do a rewind episode because we did speak to somebody who very much was a part of Onetaste. Her name was Alana Auerbach.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Auerbach again, another last name. I don't know how to say.

[Lola Blanc]

Why do last names need to be so hard? No one's ever said mine correctly. So like, I get it, but I'm sorry if we're butchering your name.

[Megan Elizabeth]

People call me Lola Blank. And by the way, if I mispronounce your name, you can call me Lola Blank anytime you want.

[Lola Blanc]

We care about mispronouncing names. Except for Nicole's. Yeah, she sucks.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Nicole didoo.

[Lola Blanc]

She really sucks. Until. Since we're sharing a cultius thing, tell the people a little bit what Nicole got herself into.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So for those who were not following this One Taste saga that's been going on for years, this was a self proclaimed like wellness and empowerment company. They had this technique called orgasmic meditation and they were trying to become as mainstream as yoga. All these celebrities participated in it.

[Lola Blanc]

Then it must be normal.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, of course Gwyneth Paltrow participated in it because how could she not? And it like, it involved stuff like group orgasm and was sort of like purporting to be this like female led, like feminist, like you know, women should have orgasms, they're good for you thing. But then of course they were forcing labor from their followers. Unpaid labor. She was coercing people in all kinds of ways and controlling their lives, as cult leaders tend to do. So she has finally been sentenced.

[Lola Blanc]

Yes. As well as her co accomplice, Churwitz.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Rachel Cherwitz. Yeah, they were also. I'm reading from thetimes.com an article written by Joshua Thurston called the Fall of One Taste Orgasm Meditation cult leader Nicole Dadon, or however you say it. It says they used abusive and manipulative tactics to gain control over some of the participants when they were unable to pay the fees for the courses. So they would force them to settle these debts by working without pay, including manual labor as well as sexual services.

[Lola Blanc]

Exactly.

[Megan Elizabeth]

In some cases, seven days a fucking week. It doesn't say fucking. I added the fucking.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. I mean, the sexual abuse is just built into the system under the guise of, like, orgasms for women. And then suddenly you're the vagina model that's supposed to be getting orgasms is just like, what the hell?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. Because the conceit of it is that someone else who has clothing on masturbates a woman. And so, like, you are expected to participate publicly in this, like, sexual ritual, which I'm sure. Well, I've actually spoken to at least one person who participated and had a great time, but not everybody is gonna have that experience.

[Lola Blanc]

You suggested that we go to it. When we first started this podcast in

[Megan Elizabeth]

the early, early days, I was like, yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

We were like, let's go look at it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Not for. As investigators.

[Lola Blanc]

Not to join it as investigative journalists,

[Megan Elizabeth]

which we turned out never to do.

[Lola Blanc]

Thank God, because I would have joined it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

You would have joined it for sure. I would have joined it.

[Lola Blanc]

So, yeah, I'm glad we never went. I'm glad that they're being held accountable. Um. And I just feel so sorry for all these women whose body was used and what should have been a very empowering group.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Just like the time wasted, too. Sometimes I think about that. I'm just like the years of your life that is taken from you when you are exploited by people like this.

[Lola Blanc]

Yes.

[Megan Elizabeth]

There's so many other wonderful things people could be doing with their lives besides being exploited by fucking Nicole Dideroo. So I'm glad she's finally facing some consequence for her actions.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. Well, do you know who is giving nobody orgasms?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Pray tell, who?

[Lola Blanc]

Ann Lee. A shaker that we're gonna get to in this podcast.

[Megan Elizabeth]

That's right. Because the leader of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps modeled herself after Ann Lee. And you'll get to hear all about that.

[Lola Blanc]

Shall we talk to Harrison?

[Megan Elizabeth]

Let's do it. Welcome Harrison Hill to Trust Me. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[Harrison Hill]

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so looking forward to this conversation.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Me too. Your writing is so literary and gripping for something that is journalism. Like, I feel like normally when I read a book about something from a journalistic point of view, it can be quite dry. I shouldn't say normally. Sometimes it can be quite dry. But it was so, like, gripping, the way you. You're. You're a really beautiful writer. So I just want to say that.

[Harrison Hill]

Thank you.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So the book I'm referring to is the Oracle's the Rise and Fall of an American Cult. And so, of course, we must first ask you, what drew you to this topic.

[Harrison Hill]

The story began for me back in 2018, actually, when my younger brother and his wife moved to an apartment in Brooklyn, New York, which is where I myself live, and their apartment flooded one day, and this woman across the hallway from them came by and was like, let me help clean up. And she did. And so in the weeks following that, they, of course, became friendly and, you know, just got to know each other. And then eventually this woman revealed that she'd grown up in a cult and that it was a cult run by her mother. And they, of course, my brother and his wife were like, whoa, that's wild. We know somebody who's a writer who's always looking for interesting stories. We should introduce you to him. And that, of course, was me. And the woman, of course, was Sarah Greene. So we had our first interview back in 2019. But, yeah, it all began with a flood in an apartment.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Wow.

[Lola Blanc]

Kind of biblical.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Very serendipitous way to get a story. All right, well, talk to us about Lila Green, who later became Deborah. But let's start with calling her Lila, because that was her birth name.

[Harrison Hill]

Sure.

[Megan Elizabeth]

What was her early life like? She was kind of an overachiever initially. Right. And we're talking about the leader here.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. So the group in question is a group called the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps. I mean, it's quite a mouthful whenever I say it. People's eyes kind of expand as I get to the end of the phrase.

[Megan Elizabeth]

The word aggressive, including that in the title is a bold move.

[Harrison Hill]

Right. It's not ambiguous what their vibe is.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Harrison Hill]

So anyways, the leaders of the group were these people, Jim and Lila Greene. And Lila was really the kind of spiritual head of the group. She was the real, real person at the top. But before she was a cult leader, before she was, you know, being tried for all these various horrific crimes, she was just a young woman in West Sacramento growing up in a very poor family. Her parents divorced when she was young. Her father was an alcoholic. Her mom worked as an almond As a. She worked at an almond processing facility. You know, just a lot of poverty and difficult in her early life. Her younger brother died when she was in her early 20s. And this for her was just this, like, incredibly cataclysmic event for her. She just was just completely thrown. And up to that point, she'd been something of a hippie and was like, I've got to start over. I've got to do something new. And so what that meant in practice for her was that she joined a back to the land commune called the Bear Tribe, which was located about an hour outside of Sacramento. This is in the early 1970s. Sorry if I didn't mention that earlier. And yeah, she just fell in with these group of people doing all this wild stuff out in the woods.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I'm gonna pause you for a second.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, please.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, sorry. Let's go back in time a little bit.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, I mean. Well, first of all, I just wanna say, like, she sounds like when she was in high school and before she joined the Bear Tribe, which we need to do an episode on the Bear Tribe that was fascinating.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It seems like she was a very.

[Lola Blanc]

I would imagine her going into women's studies, like the top of her class, like the treasurer, like a type A personality.

[Harrison Hill]

I mean, she literally was the treasurer of her. Of maybe her junior high school class. That's very apt. Yeah. And she was a girl's vice president of her high school. She was a real. A real achiever. I mean, she was a very, very smart young woman who would read Edgar Allan Poe to her younger siblings. She's a beautiful writer. And in this kind of wild way, the mailings that she made in this cult were very well written, even though they were kind of insane.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I did notice that.

[Lola Blanc]

I was like, that's crazy. But it's well written.

[Harrison Hill]

It's well written. Yeah. So, yeah, as a young woman, her mom is off working at this almond processing facility. Her dad is off somewhere else, and so she's responsible for taking care of the kids. And she was very diligent, very type A, as you were saying earlier, Megan. But she gets to college and then it's the late 60s, it's the early 70s, she's sort of letting free. And so she had this real change in perspective, as a lot of young people at the time did. But for her, she was just a woman who'd always felt things incredibly deeply. Whatever she was doing, she was doing to the nth degree. And so when she was a kid, that meant she was being very accomplished in school. When she was a hippie, that meant she was being a full bore hippie. And when she was a cult leader, she was a full bore cult leader.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Committing to everything.

[Harrison Hill]

Committed. Yes.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Can you just talk a little bit about. I mean, we obviously all know that a bunch of people joined cults in the 60s and 70s, but can you talk a little bit about that era and how it connects to Christianity? Because that's something we've talked about quite a bit on here and how it seems so contradictory that they were so linked at that time, but yet they were right.

[Harrison Hill]

Well, so, I mean, the most, I would start from a very big picture lens to say that, you know, as I'm sure many of your listeners know, cults often emerge out of periods of great transition or social instability. People are looking for security, they're looking for some kind of spiritual comfort. And if someone knocks on your door and they're like waving little flyers and your life is sort of unstable, you're much more likely to follow them. As to the connection with Christianity. Yeah. So the counterculture, it affected all parts of American society. It just seeped into every, every little nook and cranny. And American Christianity was not immune to that. There were parts of the church that really took on a kind of hippie ish sensibility. And in many ways it was sometimes it was kind of funny. Like there was one person who talked about how hippies would sort of coyly refer to this one verse as they would quote Genesis and say, you know, Genesis says let the earth bring forth grass. And they would use that as a kind of justification for smoking marijuana. Or there was a bumper sticker I found where it turned the anti war slogan, hell no, we won't go. They turned it into a kind of proselytizing phrase. It would be hell no, we won't go. So some of it was really funny and some of it I think was really sincere and frankly kind of beautiful because, you know, American Christianity at the time had been, I mean, just to paint in extremely broad strokes, there'd been, you know, coming out of World War II, people wanted stability and American Christianity reflected that. And so the children of the people who'd been in World War II were really wanting something different. And in terms of Christianity, what they wanted was a more embodied, more emotionally connected kind of faith. What that meant was that in terms of doctrine, things could get a little hazy. They weren't so focused on like, exactly what is the theology. It was more about feeling, it was

[Lola Blanc]

more about emotion, it was more vibes

[Harrison Hill]

it was more vibes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Hippie stuff was vibes and Christianity was vibes.

[Lola Blanc]

But definitely like hippie. Bear Tribe pipeline to Christianity is something that is so fascinating to me because it is sometimes a leap and. But so many people were willing to take it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, so many people went from free love to highly controlled Christian groups, which is really fascinating.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah, yeah. To me it's all kind of a different expression of the same impulse, like. So I think that the basic kind of aquifer of all this is the same body of water. How it comes out is quite different and sometimes like dramatically different. But for people who feel things in an extreme way, they're looking for extreme expression.

[Lola Blanc]

When they're at the Bear Tribe, a man named Jim comes along, and at the Bear Tribe, they're kind of just out in the wilderness, like beating drums,

[Megan Elizabeth]

pretending to be Native American.

[Lola Blanc]

Pretending to be Native American. Jim and her. I want to call her Lila.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, we're calling her Lilah for now.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Jim and Lila at first are like, they're not getting along well, not too much.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Well, Jim seemed crazy at first, right? Jim seemed like he was gonna be the one who was sending people off the loopy deep end.

[Harrison Hill]

Yes.

[Megan Elizabeth]

What changed?

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah, what changed? Well, they would say that God intervened. I think what's also true is that Jim got very ill, which is, you know, for someone living in a back to land commune, is not exactly shocking. There's not a lot of sanitation that happens in a place like that. And so he came down with something, perhaps hepatitis. And Lila, who had previously been just like totally at odds with him because they were both very intense people and there was a kind of competition in their intensity. Anyways, he got sick and she felt called to sort of take care of him. She had previously stolen something from his tent and Jim had forgiven her and that had like warmed some of the ice between them. But as a result of her taking care of him, she one night was called by God to go to his teepee and strip naked and give herself to him. And so as a result of that, they were pretty permanently a couple since then.

[Megan Elizabeth]

God definitely told her to do that

[Harrison Hill]

and still are together to this day.

[Lola Blanc]

Two things to that. I mean, one thing, when she stole food from Jem's tent, he didn't know it was her and he beat the shit out of a one armed man that he thought did it. So we have a little bit of a look into Jem's personality. And then number two, she was topless a lot. Like, this was a woman who was just like, I'll be topless.

[Megan Elizabeth]

But again. And the setting is they are pretending to be tribal people.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I found the period where they leave that particular group and before they start the cult interesting because it seems like their lives just get really small. And she starts kind of feeling. Feeling crazy and stir crazy. Trapped. And her response to feeling trapped was then to start having these sort of visions.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. So the way it began is that she started to feel called by God, that he wanted her to start raising up an army, that the world was going to end soon, and that she needed to produce spiritual soldiers who would help hasten the end of the world. And so what that literally meant was she would become sort of. She would feel the presence of God. She would get down on the floor, she would start moaning and grunting and screaming as if she were a woman in labor. And she would, quote, unquote, give birth to spiritual soldiers, which, you know, there was nothing there physically, but she said there were thousands of spirits that, you know, over the years came out of her, and those spirits kind of went over the world and brought forth God's will. And so that was one of the first kind of rituals that she was engaged with. A very interesting thing about her is that sometimes people ask me, like, you know, how could she trick people into following her and all that kind of thing? And then. But to her, I mean, my reading of it at least, is that she wasn't tricking anybody. She was. She sincerely believed what she was saying. This was a very heartfelt belief in her singular connection to God. And there's something about that that makes it even more tragic to me that she. It wasn't sort of nefarious in her own mind. In her own mind, she was doing

[Megan Elizabeth]

tremendous good in the right. As I was first reading, the first scene, sort of where you set up that she's having these spiritual births or whatever. Of course, the first image that came to my mind was the movie the Testament of Ann Lee. And like, three pages later, you start talking about Ann Lee. Fascinating women, both of them. And the connections between them are so fascinating. Briefly, can you just tell us who Anne Lee is? Because a lot of people might not know.

[Harrison Hill]

Absolutely. I mean, I'd love to sort of go a little bit broader as well, if that's okay with you all. Just to sort of give a general sense of this book. This book is about this woman, Sarah, who escaped her Mother Lyon cult. It's also about the rise and fall of this cult, but it's also about much more than that it's about American history and American religious history and how this one group kind of manifest and acted as a kind of petri dish. It showed the broader sweep of American religious history was kind of manifest in this group. And so for me, what was important in this telling the story was to make it clear that this isn't just a story of one group. It's about the US More broadly. And so you mentioned the Anlee and the Shakers. So this was this group of religious dissidents that came over from England in the late 18th century. And they're one of the groups that's profiled in this book. I bring in sort of case studies of some kind of religious movements throughout the book to just sort of demonstrate how the cult in my book is in fact, on this continuum that contains other cults or religious groups throughout American history. But the Shakers are an especially interesting example. And I'm sure many of your listeners and viewers saw the Testament of Ann Lee. I myself saw it. It's a very generally accurate rendering of this woman, Ann Lee's life. So Ann Lee was born in the 18th century. She had several children who died. All of them died. She had a lot of really horrible experience with childbirth. As a young woman. She'd been able to see and perhaps even hear her parents as they were having sex in this sort of squalid shack where they lived. So the result of all of this was that she had a very. She was very against sex, really. I mean, sex was. For her. There was just so much wrong with the world was manifest in sex. And so, just to make it all summarize it much, much more cleanly, like, she founded this group, this group of people called the Shakers, that would shake to manifest God's presence in their lives. And they were celibate, and they built a number of villages in America. And those villages have really dwindled since the 19th century for reasons I probably don't even have to explain. You know, if you're a celebrate, you're not having a lot, and you might

[Lola Blanc]

be having a lot of spiritual children. True.

[Harrison Hill]

Exactly. Thank you. Yes, it's very, very true. But, yeah, but no, Lila, in this group, she was. She was sort of obsessed with Ann Lee. She became convinced that she herself was a kind of second coming of Ann Lee. I think that there was maybe an element of. I mean, she was sort of like a fan, you know, she was like. She was like an Ann Lee Stan. She was like, I love her. I love her vibe, you know, an Anne Stan and so, yeah, an Anne Stan. Exactly. And so the group, the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, they would do these shaker dances and these shaker rituals, and they even had a shake. They had a restaurant for a little while they called Shaker Square. They made shaker boxes and shaker furniture and all that kind of stuff. They kind of left it behind somewhat after a kind of brief foray into it. But for me, it was all part of this broader context, this idea that this isn't just one group. This is a group that. I always think of them as a kind of Forrest Gump of American religious history. Like, they. There's an element of them that's always popping up. You know, we always can see them in all these different ways.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Interesting, you bringing up Ann Lee losing all those babies. Did Lila's behavior begin to change after she lost her brother? Do we think that's a contributor to the shift?

[Harrison Hill]

I mean, I. Obviously, I. Obviously, I can't speak for her, but as an outside observer observing her life, I mean, absolutely. I would say that I think that the loss of her brother was the. I don't know, the kind of black hole of her life. Everything circled around that point of gravity.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's fascinating because so much of the time, that type of loss can be the thing that sends people into cults. But then the rare personality type is that's the thing that I guess leads them to start one. You gotta find meaning somehow.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So how did she trans. She starts having these spiritual births and making these, like, big sounds and these big movements and, you know, she's literally giving birth. She's giving birth.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

That's how I pictured it.

[Harrison Hill]

Oh, you should have seen me. You should see me. When I was recording the audiobook, I was like, I feel like this cool. I'm like, who? Who, Who? FA la la. I mean, it was, like, wacky.

[Megan Elizabeth]

That's great.

[Harrison Hill]

So, yes, buy the audiobook and you can hear me do it again.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Which, by the way, she was very anti Christianity until she, like, had this awakening. And, yes, also fascinating. And just another example of how, like, the beliefs actually don't really matter. It's more about what people are looking for in that moment.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. The question of. The question of being anti Christianity, to me is part of what's most fascinating about this group because they viewed themselves as 100% Christians and regular Christians as what they called 10% Christians. And their chief enemy was not just, like, the secular world. It was, quote, unquote, mainstream Christians. Those were enemy number one because they were practicing faith, but they were doing it in a kind of diluted, fake way.

[Lola Blanc]

I will bring that back to my growing up experience with the two by twos. The Christian who were not taking it as seriously as us were way more scary and harmful. So very understandable that world.

[Megan Elizabeth]

To me, the smaller the differences, the more that we hate them.

[Harrison Hill]

Right? So true. So true.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So how does this start to transition into her being like, no, I'm literally a prophet and people should follow me. Jim is just cool with it. Jim's like, yes, you are.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. So Jim is a very interesting part of this because he was, you know, wild when he was in the bear tribe. He was, you know, cutting his arms and raising his blood to the moon, you know, doing all these wild things. He converts with Lila to Christianity, and he really believes that she's a prophet, too. And that belief is held so sincerely that he really kind of subjugates himself to her. You know, in a funny way, it's this, like, very feminist marriage. A real, real. Like, real expression of this kind of equality. I mean, that's part of what's so interesting about this group, that there are elements of it that are radical to the left and radical to the right, and it's all mashed up here. Anyways, he was just sort of following her and really believed her. And how did she become who she became from there? I mean, I think it's all just the sort of slow dialing up. If the death of her brother was the. I don't know. Turning the record player on now. We're just slowly turning the volume up, I think, you know, she just kept on having visions. She kept having. She just got farther and farther away from the outside world, farther and farther from external perspectives who could push back against her. And so she was just sort of free to kind of riff on her own what I would call mania.

[Lola Blanc]

And as you were saying earlier, the outside world is just serving her so many experiences that reflect back to her that she's on the right track. I feel like you are correct. It is the Forrest Gump of, like, everything kind of aligning and happening in this interesting timeframe. Like, right as she's amping all of this up, a volcano goes off and covers the whole sky.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's raining ash.

[Lola Blanc]

It's raining ash. It's dark. It's like a prophecy in the Bible is coming true. So, like, she is like, I told you so.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. So this is Mount St. Helens, which erupted in, I'm forgetting, in 1980. 81. Early. Early 1980s. Yeah. And so this is just as the Ministry is sort of getting going and. Yeah, what is a volcano if not evidence that, you know, Satan is on the move and the demons are spewing outward? And that also has a really interesting parallel to the Shakers, where there was wildfires in Canada, caused the sky to go really dark at one point when the group was in its early years. And that, to Ann Lee, was the signal that they needed to take their message farther out into the world. So I love this idea that, like, the outside world, you can. What do they say? You find what you're looking for? They're looking for signs, and so they find them.

[Lola Blanc]

It's so apt for today, too, because I just saw something in social media a week ago where it was like, the sky is black in a war zone when it should be sunny. This is a sign of the prophecy. And it's like, yeah, you just blew

[Megan Elizabeth]

a sign of a war.

[Lola Blanc]

You just blew it up. But there's dust everywhere.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I mean, such is the nature of humanity. I hate it so much. We will truly see whatever we were looking for.

[Lola Blanc]

Yes, yes. Really shitty time for the volcano. Honestly wish it hadn't happened because it seemed to really amp her family up too, where they were like, damn, she's real.

[Harrison Hill]

I would say it was sort of a. It was more a quarter of sort of. What would they say, correlation rather than causation? I think it was just sort of confirmation. It just was going on in the background. She wasn't like, this volcano went off and like, wow, next level, let's go. It was all just part of this intensification that was going on.

[Megan Elizabeth]

How did they start actually gaining followers? That's always the part that's so interesting to me. I'm like, how are you marketing this to people?

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah, well, it just was like, one by one. So the very first members were a man and a woman named Maura and Steve. Maura had been close friends with Lila back around the time when Lila's brother died, and so they'd kind of bonded over the death of the brother. Maura had gone off and gotten married to this man, Steve. And after Jim and Lila had converted, they'd gotten back in touch with Maura, and that had led to the resuscitation of their friendship. Steve kind of probably had a bit of a crush on Lila. I mean, both Lila and Jim, extraordinarily beautiful, physically beautiful. They just were very striking. And so I think that's actually part of their appeal. So, yeah, Steve has a bit of A crush on Lila, maybe, and more as a real seeker type. And they sort of start going to these ministry meetings that the Greens start having. And it's just very, very slow. Just people, you know, word spreading little bit by little bit. They got a radio show. They got a show on Christian radio. So some people came through that they would put flyers around town. They would give people free meals. I mean, you're hungry, and someone's saying, here, have. Have some soup. And, you know, you can listen to the sermon. It's like, okay, well, I won't listen to the sermon. I'll have the soup. But then, you know, it's in the background, okay, whatever. I'll come for dinner tomorrow. Why not? Blah, blah, blah. And it can really kind of build from there. I mean, I think it's sort of. It's like the prototypical story of how people join these clubs. It's just one by one, one by one. And a lot of people didn't say. A lot of people were like, no, I don't want to beat my children. I don't think that's great. But others did. I mean, the force of her charisma was so strong that she was able to really draw people in. I mean, she was never. The group was never more than like 30, 40, 50 people, max. It wasn't, like, hugely successful, but it was successful enough.

[Megan Elizabeth]

But so many groups start out at that size and do balloon up. So, like, those early days are always super interesting to me. Some of the abuse stuff with the kids and with the adults, that was surely not present in the beginning, right?

[Harrison Hill]

Correct. Yeah. I won't say too much because I hope people will check out the book. But a lot unfolds from the stuff that we're talking about, which is really the beginnings. But, yeah, the group, as you know, shockingly, there were a lot of abuses that ended up happening in the later years of this story. And at the very beginning, no, there was no. There were no whippings, that kind of thing. But what there was was this general ethos of any relationship that is not oriented towards the group or towards Lila and Jim, that relationship is evil. And that even extended to relationships between spouses and relationships between parents and children. So if you were, say, a guy married to a woman in the group and you're showing affection for your wife, you're saying, oh, let me get you another, you know, baked potato at dinner, whatever, that was evidence that you were guilty of what they called spiritual adultery in the group. You were cheating on God with your earthly husband. Same Thing. If you were nice to your children, if you were saying, you know, here, let me. Let me comb your hair. No, no. You were guilty of spiritual adultery. You were cheating on God with your child.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Horrible.

[Harrison Hill]

I mean, it just speaks to how there's this weird sexual energy is really at the core of the group, largely because, you know, it was just sort of like, by decrying sexuality, they were really focusing on it. It was part of what was so strange about it. Anyways, that's sort of where the abuse began. Yeah. Start small and balloons from there.

[Lola Blanc]

So the spiritual affair is like, you're supposed to be partnered with God and that's your outlet for everything.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah, pretty much like when people are

[Megan Elizabeth]

married to Jesus, that kind of vibe,

[Harrison Hill]

I think it's sort of. Yeah, sort of. It's hard to kind of pin down. Because I think it was hard for them to pin down. You know, some of these groups. Some of the groups believe they're kind of like. I think. Think I know what you're saying. But, like, what she was saying was always kind of morphing, and it was always sort of what this was. The convenient thing about being a prophet is that you can always get new information.

[Lola Blanc]

Correct.

[Harrison Hill]

You can pivot.

[Lola Blanc]

And when did she pivot into being Deborah?

[Harrison Hill]

So, yeah, so this is a big event in the book, which is sort of a kind of culmination of those early years and before things really explode, she decreed that some of her followers should take new names, as people in the Bible did, as people in just culture have often done sometimes to indicate a huge change or growth in someone's lives. Lila says, you know, we need biblical names. We need new names that indicate we are reborn. And some of the people took new names. Some of the people didn't. But Lila took the name Deborah, who's a female prophet from the Old Testament. And from then on, she was known

[Megan Elizabeth]

as Deborah, which is so funny to me because Deborah just seems like the lady at the potluck next door. Whereas Lila feels very, like, beautiful and biblical. I'm like, who chooses Debbie?

[Harrison Hill]

It's funny you say Debbie. She never. She never went by Debbie. It's funny. I never thought of that.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I mean, I just. I assume all Deborahs are Debbies, so. I don't know.

[Harrison Hill]

It's funny. I like the name Deborah. I like Debbie.

[Lola Blanc]

But Lila is, like, such a dope name.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Lila feels more mythical to me somehow.

[Harrison Hill]

It is a little mythical, yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Versus, like, grounded in, like, suburbia.

[Lola Blanc]

But interesting that for her, it was

[Megan Elizabeth]

like she was like. And now I am Deborah the Lord.

[Lola Blanc]

Yes.

[Harrison Hill]

Wild stuff.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And at that point, they also changed the name of the group.

[Harrison Hill]

Yes. At this point, it originally had. It had been called Free Love Ministries. And then they were like, nope, now we are the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So there from Free Love to Aggressive Training Corps is Wild acmtc.

[Harrison Hill]

You got it. That's it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Acmtc. Of course. Yeah, I love acmtc.

[Lola Blanc]

Gotta go join it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So basically, over time, things just start getting weirder and more controlling and she gets fixated on getting children. Can you explain this?

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. So she. Lila slash Deborah. Now we're going to refer to her as Deborah. She really predicted that there was going to be this thing called the Children of Nations. And it was going to be this huge group of children who were going to be soldiers on behalf of the group, and they were going to kind of be this children's army. And the problem was that they needed to get children. And so there were people in the group, women who had children, but they weren't having them at the rate that Deborah wanted them to have. And so she, according to one of the members in the group, she directed this woman to effectively try and kidnap a baby from the Mexico border. By this point, the group had fled to New Mexico because they'd run into all these legal troubles that you can read about in the book. But this alleged kidnapping did not come to pass. But what it did lead to was a just truly, truly shocking act of child trafficking that I'll sort of speak about in kind of vague terms. But. But what happened was that Deborah was so insistent on not only having children, but having children from all over the world, that she and the group conducted all these mission trips abroad. And some of that was about children, but some of that was just about spreading God's word. But when the group was in Uganda at one point, because they took mission trips all over the world, they got in touch with a woman who was pregnant. And, you know, long story short, the. That the woman was going to have. I'll just say that the baby ended up having a kind of lifelong association with the group in a way that unfolded in a way that was kind of, to me, just mind blowing.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Truly mind blowing. Horrendous. Like what was described in the book, what happened to that child is truly, like, it's tragic.

[Harrison Hill]

I mean, it's totally tragic. Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

The group escalates in other ways as well. Like, it seems like people weren't really seeking medical treatment for a lot of things, and this ends in disaster. And a part of your book. And again, we won't give too much away. But what other ways? Were they just kind of accelerating?

[Harrison Hill]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it was. Accelerating is the right word. It just built and built and built. So, yes, medical treatment, they were really against medicine. A lot of people were denied. Were allegedly denied medication. And, you know, after surgeries, they didn't get pain medication, horrible things like that. They were also. They didn't get enough food. They were just always hungry. They were eating a largely vegan diet by the time, by, you know, the 2000s or so, just like alfalfa tea and okra and, you know, peanut butter and so on. And then just the. I mean, there's all sorts of, like, sort of physical things, like they're working harder, they're sleeping less. The punishments are more and more intense.

[Megan Elizabeth]

The punishments were so bad.

[Harrison Hill]

They're rough. They're pretty rough.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Like medieval.

[Harrison Hill]

Medieval, yeah, that's. That's. I should. I should remember that word. That's the right word. But I think the biggest kind of acceleration is there was a tolerance for this, is that people were so embedded in it that it became just so difficult for them to see that it was bad. And to me, that's sort of chilling because a lot of these people were pretty normal people, and in a lot of ways, and. And these are people who I got to know in the course of my reporting, and they struck me as totally normal in many ways. I mean, none of us are like, quote unquote normal, but, like, these are people who now live regular lives and such. But when they were in this group, they were party to or witnessed things that just kind of blow your mind. So I think that is the biggest acceleration.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, but that process is slow and happens step by step. And one thing is normalized and then the next thing is normalized. And it doesn't look that crazy compared to the previous thing. You know what I mean? Like, it never happens overnight, which I think is important to note about groups like this.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah, for sure.

[Megan Elizabeth]

But, yeah, some of the abuses were truly terrible.

[Lola Blanc]

Were they wearing a uniform towards the end of this?

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah, they were. They were wearing military uniforms a lot of the time. They had a couple different uniforms. I mean, I'll just say there's like a big arrest at the end of the book and at the time of the arrest. I mean, I looked at the police footage. Deborah is wearing this wild outfit. It's this kind of, in a weird way, kind of stunning white military get up where she has a long. A long skirt kind of button down white, white jacket and a beret. I mean, I'll actually tell your listeners. So this book began as an article I wrote for the cut back in 2021. And if your readers want to look up that article, they can see the photo of it.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Oh, I see the photo. Wait, I want to see it.

[Harrison Hill]

So, yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Oh my God.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Okay. Why does she look like Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

[Lola Blanc]

And she hates that woman.

[Harrison Hill]

Ruth Bader Gins work with different politics, very different. I mean, they would show up at the Undersherif's office near their, near their compound in just like complete head to toe, perfectly ironed, spotless military uniforms. They instructed the undersheriffs, they were like, you know, you will, you will address us as generals and we will, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Wow.

[Harrison Hill]

And so there was this real. I mean, again, it's like there's a confidence. It's like you can't make up. You can't fake that kind of confidence. I don't think. I think it's a confidence born out of a deeply deep conviction of certainty.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, right. Yeah. And so Sarah, throughout the book. So Sarah is Deborah's daughter.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I find her, Catherine, interesting because these are her parents, this is her whole life, this is her community. It's always interesting to me how people who are that deeply in the thick of the cult are able to get out.

[Harrison Hill]

Absolutely. I mean, that's sort of the central miracle of the book, in my opinion. So the book is called the Oracle's Daughter and the daughter in question is this woman, Sarah. So Sarah's parents were Jim and Lila. Deborah. She was a young kid when her mom started having visions, which is to say that she knew something of the real world before everything started to kind of fall apart. And I think that that was essential in her being able to imagine a life outside of the group. I think if she'd been born in it, it would have been another story because then it's like you have, you've never gone to the park, you've never gone to the movies, you've never had Lomaine, you know, you've never, you've never done the things.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, right. No reference.

[Harrison Hill]

She likes Lomaine. That's why it came to mind. She, she. Yeah, so. So I think that was a big part of how she was able to escape because the book does open with her escaping in the middle of the night when she's 26 years old, running away in the middle of the New Mexico desert. It's a, it's a wild moment. She does manage to get out, but she knew something of what she was missing. I also think it was just a question of character. It's like, some of us are one way and some of us are another way. You know, some of us are good at basketball. Some of us are good at knitting. You know, like, she just happened to be really good at holding onto a part of herself that a lot of people gave away. And because she never chose to join the group, there was always a little bit of resistance. If she had been like, oh, yes, I want to go in, I think that there would have been maybe less resistance. But because she never chose, she just roped in, she was able to hold onto a little something else. I mean, there's more to it, but that's some of the stuff I'd mentioned.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's true. We rebel against our parents. And that makes sense. And also, I forgot that she actually was not born into it, that she. She witnessed the beginning of her mother having these spiritual births and being like, why is my mom making these crazy sounds in the basement that I used to play in? Like, I can imagine that would be a very jarring transition.

[Harrison Hill]

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. And an upsetting one because she had friends. I mean, this is a woman who just has an extraordinary zest for life. And I think that's part of why I wanted to write about her is that she's just. Just an incredible person. And so she. Yeah, she wanted to go to school. She wanted to take history class. She wanted to go play with her friends. I mean, she actually ran away from home for one night when she was a teenager and tried to enroll herself in high school. She missed that world so badly.

[Megan Elizabeth]

There's a moment in the book where you write about how there's someone who kind of becomes a whistleblower, but then it's like that person is kind of discredited. But they are ordered to produce, like, 12 children.

[Harrison Hill]

Yes.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And they just don't.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

But what's fascinating to. To us we were talking about earlier is, like, the justice system just was like, oh, whatever.

[Lola Blanc]

Like, it was like a Waco.

[Megan Elizabeth]

There was a post Waco thing going on.

[Lola Blanc]

Again, the, like, outside world events are kind of protecting them in real time.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. I mean, the fact that the abuse of children was allowed to go on as long as it did under the circumstances in which it progressed were, to me, I mean, that's the thing that makes your head explode. I hope reading it and certainly made my head explode while I was reporting and writing it. As to the Waco stuff.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Harrison Hill]

I mean, so, you know, the Waco disaster happens in the mid-90s, and law enforcement afterwards is kind of understandably spooked. They don't want to interfere with religious groups who are maybe a little bit different and have something bad happen and then be called in front of Congress to testify and get raked over the

[Megan Elizabeth]

coals because all those people were killed in Waco by the authorities because of this, like, cult showdown for youngsters who don't know.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

And you said something in your book I'd never read before, that one of the agents, when. When they were going to Waco to bust it up, one of the agents had, like, golf plans that afternoon. They were like, this will be easy. And. And it was not. So this man thought he was going to golf. 51 days later, they have basically burned down people inside of a house, and everyone's mad at them, and they don't want anything like that to happen again.

[Megan Elizabeth]

So, yeah, no one. They're like, I don't want to be the one in trouble for killing the people, Nicole.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. And there's a part of that impulse that I really respect. You know, I think that, like, freedom of religion is at the core of the idea of this country and is something that I think is, like, a very good thing. But the underbelly of it is that, like, the American justice system, to my eye at least, just feels really reluctant to interfere when religion is a factor. And so for acmtc, that meant that they were really able to function even when all this evidence came up, they were able to kind of continue operating. And yes, the thing. Again, the thing that just blows my mind is that, like, they were ordered to bring the children into the authorities at least one moment throughout the story, and they didn't. And then law enforcement kind of moved on.

[Megan Elizabeth]

They're like, well, they're probably fine. Like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Harrison Hill]

There's. There's like a. There's a phrase at the end of one of the documents I found that says, like, you know, the investigation was closed because they were unable to locate the children. And it's like. Yeah, that's the problem.

[Lola Blanc]

Right, right, exactly.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Harrison Hill]

So, I mean, and I. You know, it's like, very limited resources. This is big. Open wide spaces. It's tough. I get it. But I also think, you know, that failure led to extraordinary suffering.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

I'd never heard of this group. And same. It is so fascinating. I mean, it covers every single thing we see in cults to the ultimate degree. We've got death Destruction, abuse, court cases, all of it. And a female leader.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

And she really, really turns into something quite monstrous. It's very interesting to watch somebody go from a hippie to a prophet.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. An abusive, destructive, controlling prophet. Yeah. How many people were you able to actually speak to from the group?

[Harrison Hill]

All total. I spoke to about. There were about 200 interviews that I did over the course of researching this book. What was nice also is that even aside from the interviews, is that I had access to a lot of huge troves of documents. And so this group, as I mentioned, ran into a lot of legal trouble. And so there was a lot of stuff that former members or current members were required to say under oath. And so I got a bunch of people that way. The group documented its activities quite extensively. And so I was able to love it when they do that, get people's perspective from that. I know it's very helpful. I mean, it's very, very helpful for a reporter to be able to do that. But there was like a group of five or so former members who were, for me, the kind of core crew. There were others I spoke with, but it was a pretty contained group that were my, like, you know, week by week, sources.

[Megan Elizabeth]

There is a woman in the book, Mora, who underwent such intense punishment, isolation, separation from her children, humiliation, ritual, like just every fricking thing.

[Lola Blanc]

I. Yeah, they started giving them names, like, the people who are being punished, like forsaken, barren, Despised.

[Megan Elizabeth]

You're now called Despised. Imagine your new name is Despised, Like Jesus.

[Lola Blanc]

And they're being accused of things like spiritual adultery or whatever crime that only Deborah can see. Cause she's the prophet.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And spiritual adultery is literally like being nice to someone.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

That's insane.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Harrison Hill]

It's wild. It's just wild. Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

It seemed to have a lot of really kind, wonderful people in it. And to see them all get wrapped up in this is hard.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. Just the point of them being kind and wonderful, like, I just couldn't agree with you more. And that was actually something. Part of what I really enjoyed about this book is that, you know, getting to know people, getting, you know, any repertorial job is interesting because you get to meet people that you would never otherwise get to meet. But these folks, you know, they'd been through something really rough. And they were often, by definition, people who were looking for something beautiful and meaningful in their lives. And so if they managed to get out, I think a lot of them still hold on to that sense of trying to find and make something beautiful. And so when I would speak to them, I'd just be really moved by that impulse. And. Yeah, a strange kind of and beautiful kind of intimacy grows out of that connection. For sure.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah. Are they okay now? Are people okay?

[Harrison Hill]

I think they're sort of like provisional okays. I think they're okay in the way that they're okay in like a real world kind of way. Some parts of life are great and some parts of life are hard. I mean, I think that's true of anybody, obviously, no matter if they were in a cult or not. And I'll speak specifically of Sarah because the book is mostly like her journey. Growing up in the group, escaping and starting over is like the narrative is the central narrative thread for the book. And so she has really managed to rebuild a life, a new life on the outside of acmtc. She's still, you know, she went through an extraordinary amount of trauma, and so that's very much still with her. But she's really found very healthy ways to deal with it. But something I find really extraordinary is that she's just a huge runner. She's run like, I don't know, a couple dozen marathons or something. She's running one in London coming up, I think.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Amazing.

[Harrison Hill]

And so it's a really important way for her to just pound it out. And she also was able to start a new family. And I think that she got married and she had some kids and they're just sort of have allowed her to find meaning and beauty and all of that. And then to other people. Yeah, it's. People find their way to various degrees. And I think most of them, I mean, all the people I spoke to were together enough that they were able to talk to me about their experiences. So there's a bit of a sort of self selection thing going on there. But I do want to offer a little bit of hope, more than a little bit. I hope. The book talks about some really wild things that happen, but there is this element of, you know, you see people with extraordinary resilience pushing through, managing to start over. And to me, it's just like endlessly inspiring when I get really stuck in my own way of thinking about things and thinking. You can't break out of something, you know, I think like. Well, it would be much harder. Like, what I'm stuck in is a lot easier to get out of than like what Sarah or Maura was stuck in, you know, and it's very inspiring.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, true. And Mora had a. Had a big win. I mean, there are big wins for survivors in this book, which is really so great to read because that is not always the case.

[Harrison Hill]

Sure. And you know, I do honestly hope that my book can be a win for them. You know, I think that it's important to me that, you know, like you were saying, this group has not been covered. I mean, I've basically written everything about this group that's been out there. And that was part of why I wanted to write the book was because it was like I'm. I feel like I'm sort of breaking news. But I hope that the book can feel like a kind of, you know, a 280 page meaning making device, you know, taking things that happened that were really tough and making hopefully something beautiful out of them. And that can also be like just like literally useful to someone who's trying to deal with extremism in their own life.

[Lola Blanc]

You contextualize it in a way that makes it both micro and macro at the same time. And you know, you can really see how we got here, how we can get out of here. And it's a great book.

[Harrison Hill]

Oh, great.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And my final question is, do you think we are entering a new age of cults?

[Harrison Hill]

Oh, gosh. The question, I mean, I guess like from a historical point of view, like it would be like a categorical. Yes. Because I think that this is a period of tremendous instability, both political, environmental, economic, sociopolic. I mean, like every possible way.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Harrison Hill]

What that means with the Internet, I think is a really interesting question because to me, like, the idea of a cult is really defined by like physical isolation. But with the Internet you can have a kind of isolation that's physically diffuse. You know, people are not literally next to each other, but they are in a kind of cultish relationship with each other. I don't think that to me that would quite qualify as a cult, but I think that there's maybe a tremendous amount of Internet based cultishness going on and I can't see it changing a lot. That certainly hope it does.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. I'm curious, what would you all say?

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, 155 billion.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I mean, because many of those online cults do then become physical cults and.

[Harrison Hill]

Right, of course, yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Even the online ones often impact people the exact same way as the real life ones. It's not like there's a distinction in our brains. Once we have accepted that somebody is the ultimate authority over our lives and we have to listen to them, it's kind of irrelevant whether we're physically next to them or not. I mean, a lot of Our guests never met their leader of their groups. You know what I mean? But they still.

[Harrison Hill]

That's wild.

[Lola Blanc]

It has nothing to do with their devotion. Meeting the person doesn't matter.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I mean, it can be a thing that really pulls you in or whatever, but there were so many children of God outposts where nobody ever met that dude.

[Lola Blanc]

So many people who just saw them on screens or, like, heard their voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

It's. It's crazy.

[Lola Blanc]

And every group. Every group that I'm looking at right now, whether it's like a Pilates class, is getting so much crazier where it's really. Yes, yes, yes. Because everybody feels so insecure in every way.

[Megan Elizabeth]

We all feel so out of control.

[Lola Blanc]

We're so out of control that it's like, this is my Monday night Pilates class, and we all better be here because we have to be together. Because, like, it's just really. Yeah. It's. It's strange times. Strange times.

[Megan Elizabeth]

We all want to feel in control.

[Harrison Hill]

Yeah. It doesn't have to be a bad thing either. That's the. That's sort of the kind of most interesting part of this to me is that, like, Pilates class can be, like, really lovely, and maybe you have, like, a really wonderful community. It's only when it kind of tips into something different that it becomes destructive.

[Lola Blanc]

No, no. So far, so good. But, you know, like, although we've heard

[Megan Elizabeth]

about a lot of yoga classes, that did not go well.

[Harrison Hill]

Yes. Yes.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Great.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I can't wait to see which cults come up next.

[Harrison Hill]

Oh, boy. Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Where can people find you?

[Harrison Hill]

They can find me on Instagram @1harrisonhill. So that's henumber1h a r r I s o n h I l l TikTok is the same.

[Megan Elizabeth]

And the book title.

[Harrison Hill]

The book title is the Oracle's the Rise and Fall of an American cult comes out April 7th from Scribner. And hopefully it's got a little something for everybody in there, I think.

[Lola Blanc]

It sure does. It's a fascinating book. Thank you for writing it and thank you for being a guest.

[Harrison Hill]

Thanks to you both.

[Megan Elizabeth]

All right, and there we have it with Harrison. Go check out his book. Megan, we have two cults to ask about right now. The first one is, of course, the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps.

[Lola Blanc]

Thus, couldn't. Couldn't last an hour. I guess I could last two hours if I got to watch her do a spiritual birth.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I think the spiritual birth would be very compelling for a day. For sure.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah.

[Megan Elizabeth]

However, you did mention the original group that Lila, AKA Deborah, was a part of in the beginning, which is the bear tribe. And how you would maybe like that one.

[Lola Blanc]

Get me to the bear Tribe Yesterday. A lot of hot people cosplaying as nature people. It almost sounds like a reality show, like Love island or something. Does it? It's a little. Because it was just hot young people,

[Megan Elizabeth]

like, pretending to be Native American.

[Lola Blanc]

Yeah, that part.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Not that part.

[Lola Blanc]

But I will say you guys, to live like that, never waste any part of an animal. Be close to nature. Although I don't like camping, so who the fuck am I to say any of this? I don't know shit about shit. I wouldn't join the bear tribe.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I know. I'm like, could I actually picture you living off the land? Like, I don't think so.

[Lola Blanc]

No.

[Megan Elizabeth]

I think I could picture you on, like, a beautiful Joshua Tree home where you step outside once in a while. Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

Like, once a day, I'd go outside and be like, I am one with you. And then I'd go back into the air conditioner.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, that's so. Yeah.

[Lola Blanc]

I feel that I'm having delusions of me being in the bear tribe. It's absolutely false. I'm so sorry we wasted all of your time and me figuring out in real time that I wouldn't join either of these groups.

[Megan Elizabeth]

But you'd visit for a day. Yeah, same. I'd visit any cult for a day.

[Lola Blanc]

I. I would visit any cult for day. We need to go. Do we need to go do that? We need to go do an investigative undercover thing.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Lola Blanc]

You can wear a mustache. Okay. And I'll wear a hat. Okay. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Trust Me. We appreciate and love you so much. Rate us 5 stars if you feel the same way. And as always, remember to follow your gut. Watch out for red flags and never, ever trust me. Bye.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Bye. This. This has been an exactly right production.

[Lola Blanc]

Hosted by me, Lola Blanc, and me, Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Ji Ha Lee.

[Megan Elizabeth]

This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

[Lola Blanc]

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker is Patrick Cotner.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Our theme song was composed by Holly Amber Church.

[Lola Blanc]

Trust Me is executive produced by Karen Kilgarith, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.

[Megan Elizabeth]

You can find us on Instagram, ustmepodcast or on TikTok @trustmecol podcast.

[Lola Blanc]

Got your own story about cults, extreme belief or manipulation? Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail com.

[Megan Elizabeth]

Listen to Trust me on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.