International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 3 2022 42
movement draws upon articles and blogs that reinforce
this message. For instance, one popular blog asserts
that
As all good totalitarians know it is mothers—
specifically, devoted and self-sacrificing
mothers—who gum up the works of statist
control in a society. Her crime is forging
bonds of love, the self-sacrificing kind that don’t
mix with big government schemes
(Morabito, 2016).
The fear that a secular-humanist worldview could
lead to an oppressive world government has been
disseminated since the 1980s (LaHaye, 1980
Campbell, 2017). While children are to be “trained
up” separate from the world, they are then expected
to work to influence the government system as they
grow older. Members of this movement believe that
they should support the State when it acts in a way
that the founders of their imagination—i.e., Christian
fundamentalists—would have wanted. Their belief is
not that they are chipping away at State authority, but
that their doctrines will refine the State and change to
meet what they see as the founders’ original vision.
Nonstate-Actor Challenges to State Authority and
Control
Both Twelve Tribes and Quiverfull have similar
conflicts with the State, but their specific strategies vary
somewhat. For example, both mount legal challenges
however, members of the Twelve Tribes also cross-
national borders to avoid government action.
Twelve Tribes
The Twelve Tribes have challenged the government
in various nation-states, including the United States,
Germany, Canada, Australia, Spain, and France. As
we demonstrate in the following content, the group’s
main strategies are passive resistance, international
migration, media campaigns, and legal challenges.
One strategy is to ignore or work around government
regulations concerning child labor, child abuse, and
compulsory education (Kent, 2010). Specific tactics
have included not registering births with local or
federal governments, hiding children from child
welfare, training children to lie to child-welfare
workers, refusing to answer questions, or providing
misinformation about identity or group membership. It
is important to note that members do not consider lying
to government officials wrong under all circumstances.
Their leader, Eugene Spriggs, noted,
...our definition of lying means the intentional
deception of those who have a right to know.
Are we obligated to tell the Devil the truth?
Do the courts have a right to know what you
know? Not telling the truth to someone
who doesn’t deserve to know the truth
isn’t lying. (Twelve Tribes, 2016a)
The current version of the group’s FAQ notes, “No, we
do not teach or encourage anyone to lie. This charge
is a serious distortion of our teachings and practices”
(Twelve Tribes, 2021d). That distortion, however, does
not contradict Sprigg’s definition of lying.
One of the most common and most effective tactics
the community has developed is to cross borders
when it or its members draw negative attention from
the State. In 2017, after German authorities seized
children living in its jurisdiction, the local Twelve
Tribes community moved to the Czech Republic
(Radio Prague International, 2017). They also change
jurisdictions to avoid court orders for particular
children. The group has a pattern of not registering
births or any information about the children with any
schools or organizations outside of the group (Kent,
2010).
Legal challenges to State authority have included
action against State actors who have taken custody of
members’ children. For example, four families from
the Twelve Tribes brought a case to the European
Court of Human Rights when the German government
took their children to protect them from physical abuse
(European Court of Human Rights, 2018). The families
argued that the German action violated European
rules to respect family and private life. However, the
Court found that the actions were necessary to protect
the children from abuse and were justified (European
Court of Human Rights, 2018). Social-media posts and
videos accompanied these efforts in court. Additionally,
interviews discussing the harm done to their children
by the government, such as Massive Police Raid at

ISSN: 2710-4028 DOI: https://doi.org/10.54208/0003 43
the Twelve Tribes Community in Klosterzimmern,
Germany and Diary of an Abused Child were published
and available on the Twelve Tribes website some of
those have now been removed.
Quiverfull
The Quiverfull movement utilizes some of the same
methods as those of the Twelve Tribes, but Quiverfull
also plays a longer, more political game by educating
their children in political debate and politics, and by
giving birth to enough children to gain greater political
influence (Crank, 2005). While having as many
children as possible is primarily a spiritual obligation
to members, growing their membership through
birth is also a way to fight back on what they perceive
as an encroaching State. As David Crank (2005), the
publisher of Unless the Lord magazine, noted in his
blog:
The population bust creates a very real
opportunity for segments of the population
willing to move counter to this trend. As
American Christians, most of us would
like to see our society and government change
in many ways. (Crank, 2005)
The way to do this, Crank continues, is to raise
children to impact the culture. He then provides the
following estimate of how the Christian population
could be increased. They note that if a family has 10
children per couple, in generation 1 there would be 10
children in generation 2, there would be 100 children
in generation 3, there would be 1,000 children and
in generation four there would be 10,000 children
(Crank, 2005).
Quiverfull parents tend to keep their children out
of public school to avoid secularism, and to deny
the government any opportunity to control them or
their parenting through such things as mandatory
attendance, vaccinations, or discussions with social
workers. In many cases, parents keep their children
entirely at home. Some Quiverfull families’ hold
church at home because of both perceived hostility to
their large families and incompatibility of beliefs. This
lack of interaction with formal institutions means that
children may have very little evidence that they were
born or spent their childhoods in the United States.
If children are not registered in school, and in some
cases are also home-birthed and home-churched, then
they are invisible to the State. Philosophies about and
approaches to birthing and raising children reflect
a long-term strategy that demonstrates Quiverfull’s
seriousness about challenging state control.
While Quiverfull families want to keep their children
withdrawn from interaction with the State and
community at large, they also very much want to
believe that adult males should be part of influential
government and political organizations. To them,
making alliances in the broader fundamentalist
community will help bring the entire nation to Christ
and allow them greater freedom to worship without
constraint.
Though children are kept out of most nongroup
activities, they participate in such groups as Generation
Joshua, TeenPact,6
1
and debate groups, which prepare
them for social roles (Butler, 2013). The emphasis of
many activities is on strong debating skills, so that
the Joshua Generation can convince others of the
superiority of their way of life, or at least win access to
political power.
Canada and the UK, have worked to pass legislation
further limiting the practice without banning it outright
(Naylor, 2018).
Within the United States, local, State, and federal law
enforcement and the judiciary have an obligation to
protect and intervene when children are in danger
(Guiora, 2010). In addition to the removal of children
from their families, civil lawsuits have been filed against
organization leaders and in some states within the
United States, minors may petition for emancipation7
from their parents (Guiora, 2010). In his discussion of
child endangerment in the FDLS community, Guiora
(2010) argued that, when it comes to the protection
of children, “the failure to protect the otherwise
unprotected reflects a fundamental law enforcement
and prosecutorial unwillingness to aggressively,
consistently and uniformly bring the wrongdoer before
6 The aim of Generation Joshua and TeenPact is to train children
to become conservative Christian leaders who can shape politics and
governance in the United States. Generation Joshua does this through GenJ
clubs, a civics curriculum, and leadership camps. TeenPact holds state classes
on leadership and Christianity.
7 See, for example, https://www.deseret.com/2007/4/6/20011469/
lost-boys-settle-lawsuit-against-uep