started eating. It was wonderful to have a home-cooked meal again. Still no one spoke. It was so hushed; I could hear the older woman next to me chewing her food. Then two sisters got up and started removing empty plates, replacing them with a dessert. As people finished their meal, one by one, they left the table.
The room was stark and undecorated. No pictures, knick-knacks or ornaments. Large posters with handwritten Bible verses hung on the walls. I wished I had a camera. It seemed I was in another land, another era, it was so removed from anything I had ever experienced before.
After the meal a few of the women helped clean up. There was no hot running tap water, but big pots of water were already steaming on a camping stove. ‘Would you like to wash? There is a gathering at eight?’ a sister asked me. I nodded.
I was given a bucket one-third full of hot water and shown the bathroom. ‘We take bucket baths,’ a sister said to me. She showed me the scoop to pour the water over myself. It felt good to wash off the New York grime. I put my new maroon skirt back on. Soundlessly, at eight o’ clock we filed back downstairs to the dining area. The tables had been moved to one side, the buckets lined the walls and there was neither food nor dishes in sight. The men sat on the floor in a big circle and we girls and women sat behind them in an outer circle. I peeped around. Everyone’s head was bowed. They all had a pocket-sized Bible in their laps.
At last someone spoke. It was the older man I had seen in the park earlier that morning. He’s definitely the alpha male of this pack, I mused to myself. And I was right. It was only years later that I learned his real name. In my early days with the Church I just knew him as Brother Evangelist.
‘Let us give thanks,’ he said. Everyone started clapping and some raised their hands. ‘Does anyone have a song?’ he asked. One of the men raised a hand and mentioned a Psalm number. Everyone turned to the place in their Bibles. Then the singing started. Some of the women sang in harmony. It was very beautiful and moving. Something opened in my core and I started to cry. They all seemed so pure. It was a holy experience. We sang Psalm after Psalm. In all the places where God or the Lord were mentioned they inserted Hebrew names. It seemed like something straight out of the Bible, the way church used to be thousands of years ago.
I felt something stirring deep inside me. The last few years of my life had been so traumatic. I was so damaged but here I felt calm. Peaceful. Safe. Secure. I wanted to be a Sister too. I wanted to be pure like them, to be holy and upright. I wanted to be part of their church.
I can’t really remember much about the next few days except that I cried a lot. It felt as if a dam wall had broken. I didn’t know where all the tears came from, they just kept coming. It was like they were washing me clean. I decided to stay with these people for as long as I could. I wanted to learn all they had to teach.
6
Although I was keen to learn as much as I could about the Church, it was all kind of shrouded in mystery. Nobody could explain in any detail who had started this radical, breakaway sect. I don’t think anyone knew for sure. It seemed as though there was no hard-and-fast knowledge about the Church’s origins – they were just a bunch of travelling Christians; they talked about themselves as brothers and sisters, pilgrims and strangers.
The way I understood it, they were a group of people who had forsaken everything, separated themselves from the world and were living by faith. I didn’t really know how they’d come about. From what I could gather they kind of originated during the Sixties and early Seventies.
It may sound odd to have spent so much time in the Church, yet to know so little but now, looking back on it, I think that’s the way Brother Evangelist wanted it. He was a man of mystery, very secretive. I suspect that’s how he had to be. It was only years later that I learned that the dignified Brother Evangelist was the founder and his real name was Jim Roberts.
There were many young people in the group. They were encouraged to drop out of college, turn their backs on their families, cutting them out of their lives entirely. Before I joined there had been quite a few cases where parents kidnapped their kids out of the group and tried to have them ‘deprogrammed’. As a result, there was a high level of secrecy – in many cases families were viewed as the enemy and we went out of our way to avoid them. There was also always this vague fear that the authorities might get wind of where we were staying and raid our camp. I think this was one of the reasons the group was so nomadic. We never stayed in one place for too long.
I never could tell how many people belonged to the Church because we were never all in one place at the same time. The numbers fluctuated because people came and went, but I’d say there was a core group of less than 100.
When I joined the group nobody gave me detailed explanations of their beliefs and practices. I was just given studies on things like discipleship and a woman’s place. It was all based on the Bible. Questions were discouraged. Things were as they were, and if you wanted to be a member of the group you accepted these rules.
In commentaries I’ve read on the Internet I’ve always found it offensive when people say that the group ‘brainwashes’ its new members. In the scriptures it talks about being washed by the water of the word. I think, when one becomes a Christian, that there is a kind of washing that happens – we wash things because they are dirty.
‘Brainwashing’ is a bit of a derogatory word; it implies that you don’t have a mind of your own. However, I have to concede that, in a sense, we were brainwashed. But, in another sense, for some of us there were things in our minds and hearts and pasts that we needed to have washed away. That was certainly the case with me.
Generally, people in the group didn’t talk about where they came from – it was a taboo topic; you weren’t meant to disclose any information about your background. We were all hiding from our ‘flesh relations’, so nobody really spoke much about their past.
There wasn’t much talking at all, really. That quietness I’d noticed on that first evening and found so peaceful was the norm. The scriptures talk about abstaining from foolish jesting and minding your own business – so we were discouraged from sitting around and talking. If there was conversation it was more often in the form of testimonies in which we shared what God had done for us. Idle chatter was frowned upon.
Shortly after my decision to ‘join the Church’ I was sent on the road with Brother Thomas. We went on a tedious journey together, hitchhiking all the way across America. It was a very strange trip, indeed, as we hardly spoke at all.
While we were on the road, I called my mom from a public phone box. I told her I was travelling with a bunch of believers. Christians. I explained that I was cancelling my trip to the UK so I could stay and learn from them until my visa ran out. Then, God willing, I would return home to South Africa. Although Mom sounded disappointed, she said nothing to either dissuade or encourage me. I was thankful that the money I’d deposited in the phone ran out quickly, bringing our stilted conversation to an end.
But remembering her last words of warning to me on the PE station platform, I posted her the following letter-epistle a few days later to put her mind at rest. Reading it now, I find it fascinating to see what a profound effect my interactions with the group had on my style of writing.
June 1983
Dear Mom
My phone call yesterday must have been a bit strange to you, especially as I have been writing to Ruby to save, save, save – sorry, Ruby, to let you down. This decision has had a lot of thought, tears, prayers and searching of the scriptures and I now feel certain that it is what Adonai (the Lord) wants. I have learnt what a woman’s place is and find great peace, joy, comfort and
