International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 3 2022 40
also court cases and secondary accounts addressing
the behavior of the Twelve Tribes and the Quiverfull
movements. Further, given that the literature on group
violence, sexual abuse, and child abuse supports the
use of victim statements in research (Sheldon &Parent,
2002 Knapik et al., 2010 Parker, 2011 Spröber et
al., 2014 Alcantara et al., 2019), we have also drawn
upon former members’ statements and interviews,
particularly when group writings and statements
support those sources. After the collection phase, we
assessed the data for emergent themes. To ensure that
the case studies examined comparable components, we
devised a series of guiding questions, which we asked
across each case (George &Bennett, 2004).
The Twelve Tribes and the Quiverfull movement are
particularly interesting to us because they are examples
of religious groups for whom the struggle for control
of the body extends beyond members’ own bodies to
the bodies of their children. For the Twelve Tribes, the
control belongs to both the parents and the religious
community (The Twelve Tribes, 2014a, 2014c). For the
Quiverfull, the bodies of children belong exclusively to
the parents.
Nonstate Actor Understanding of the Role of the State
We begin our review of the non-State actors’ perception
of the role of the State by examining how the belief
systems of the Twelve Tribes and Quiverfull religious
movements have, at times, led each of them to challenge
the State’s right to protect children.
Twelve Tribes
The Twelve Tribes is a transnational religious
community whose members see the nation-state as a
place in which they reside rather than as an institution
that informs their identity (Twelve Tribes, 2021b).
Because members follow similar customs and work
routines throughout the world, the state in which they
reside at any given time does not strongly affect their way
of life. The community rules and ways of interacting,
working, and studying are the same in Germany or
Spain as in the United States or the Czech Republic
(Twelve Tribes, 2021b). The group’s challenges to
State power revolve principally around its treatment of
children. The Twelve Tribes does not reject the State’s
authority in general instead, the group contests where
the line between State and religion should be (Twelve
Tribes Media, 2008a). Followers do not object to being
under the State’s jurisdiction as long as that does not
expand into areas they believe should be outside of
State control.
The group’s belief that governments are overreaching
is evident in its child-training manuals (Twelve Tribes,
2014a 2014c). As Our Child Training Manual notes,
The governments of such nations as Sparta,
Hitler’s Germany, and communist Russia have
usurped the parents’ role, but today parental
authority is being undermined in the
USA through compulsory public education,
child advocacy agencies, and child-abuse laws.
Parents must not allow government to usurp
their authority in those areas in
which God holds the parents alone accountable
(Twelve Tribes, 2014c, p. 25).
Within the two child-training manuals, references to
the government occur 140 times. The manuals explain
not only how and why adults should strike children
with rods, but also why the government does not have
the right to interfere. Fundamentalist religious groups
commonly believe in corporal punishment of children.
Corporal punishment in general has been normalized
in many societies, including the United States (Ellison
&Bradshaw, 2009 Dodd, 2018). Although corporal
punishment is embedded specifically within culture
and tradition, it is also embedded within some religious
practices (Dodd, 2018), with Conservative Protestant
doctrine being a predictive factor of its use (Gershoff
et al., 1999 Ellison &Bradshaw, 2009). Ellison and
Bradshaw’s (2009) work further supports the findings of
Gershoff et al. (1999), which found that “Conservative
Protestant doctrine singles out corporal punishment as
crucial to effective parenting” (p. 315). What makes the
Twelve Tribes different from most other groups is the
scope and centrality of this belief to its way of life: Over
the past 10 years, it has become a central tenet of the
group’s blog posts and videos, and of founder Eugene
Spriggs’s sermons.
The Twelve Tribes’ written material sets forth the idea
that God gave children to a particular set of parents
intentionally, so there should be no State interference.
The manual states, “when we see a child receive what

ISSN: 2710-4028 DOI: https://doi.org/10.54208/0003 41
we consider mistreatment from such parents, we must
remember that God is in control and has chosen to
place the soul life of that child under those parents,
specifically” (Twelve Tribes, 2014c, p. 27). For the
group, cooperating with the State to remove a child is
to deny God’s sovereignty. In this regard, any State that
interferes with parents raising their children is moving
toward totalitarianism.
The Twelve Tribes’ belief on noninterference in
parental rights over children includes the idea that the
State should not compel education:
We refuse to send our children to undisciplined
school rooms where rebellion against parents,
teachers, human dignity, and freedom of
religion (which the Constitution protects)
prevails. Sexual permissiveness, drug abuse,
and anti-Christian philosophy are rampant.
We are commanded by our Lord and God not
to conform to the pattern of thinking and the
lifestyle of this world, but to be separate
from it (Rom 12:1-2). OUR CHILDREN
ARE ABSENT WITH CAUSE: The present
secular school systems can only deal with
mental and physical training, with no
means to train our children spiritually and
socially. (Twelve Tribes, 2021e)
Keeping them out of the public school system effectively
gives parents complete control over the children and
greatly reduces the possibility that authorities will
discover the abuse.
Quiverfull
The Quiverfull is also in conflict with the State over
the realms of child discipline and public schooling.
Although children, and at times women, may spend
their time in small religious circles, most adults
participate in the larger society. The Quiverfull belief
system overlaps with the patriarchal and Dominionist
movements4
1
but emphasizes childbirth and large
families (Harrison &Rowley, 2011). Members believe
that the father should have complete authority over
4 Dominionism is used to describe a belief by a subgroup of
conservative Christians that God calls upon Christians to take control of
political and social institutions. The principle draws on Genesis 1:28 (King
James Version, 1604), “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sear, and over the fowl of
the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
his household. Sermons and blogs such as The
Transformed Wife spread the message that a wife’s
submission is voluntary obedience to the Lord’s will
(Alexander, 2018). Women’s obedience to the male is a
matter of women’s choice in a political/legal sense, and
compulsory only in a religious sense. Paradoxically
perhaps, Quiverfull women perceive control over
children to be part of their religious freedom.
While those in the Quiverfull movement do not have
one set of manuals like the Twelve Tribes do, Quiverfull
members tend to rely on a few thought-leaders and
books. Some churches, particularly Independent
Fundamental Baptist churches, invite leaders in the
physical-discipline movement to demonstrate how
to use the rod effectively. For instance, churches
have paid Michael and Debbi Pearl to give seminars
on their book, To Train Up a Child. Some of these
are simply talks on how to discipline children (No
Greater Joy Ministries, 2013).5
1
Other presentations
use child-size dolls to give actual demonstrations
on the best way to beat a child. These guides are still
accessible online where critics have posted them
(MikePearlChildAubser, 2011 Titkemeyer, 2020).
Some members of the Quiverfull movement send
their children to fundamentalist Christian schools
generally, however, they educate children in the home
rather than in school facilities. They believe that such
schooling would be particularly dangerous for girls
who should “be trained up” to be “helpmates” to their
husbands. This patriarchal role is considered far more
important than the academic curriculum. Members
draw inspiration from authors such as R. C. Sproul,
who wrote of a mother who came to him worried that
her 9-year-old daughter could not read (Sproul, 2004).
In response, Sproul pointed out how much more
important it was that the girl got up each morning
and cared for her younger siblings. Yes, reading skills
were useful, but mothering skills were more so. This
belief means that, even as states have become more
tolerant of homeschooling, conflict can remain.
Like the Twelve Tribes, the Quiverfull believe that a
mother will help hold back an ever encroaching State
by disciplining and educating children correctly. The
5 The Pearl methods drew a great deal of attention when several
children whose parents looked to the Pearls for guidance died from abuse
(Eckholm, 2011). Although neither the Pearls nor Quiverfull leaders defend
these cases, they continue to resist any monitoring of homeschooled children
for signs of abuse.