The Twelve Tribes

Movement·Founded 1972 CE·The community reports something over 2,000 members across communities in around a dozen countries. There is no external count.

Judaism → Christianity → The Twelve Tribes

The Twelve TribesArchiveJudge Mahady's 1984 opinion, published by the community itselfThe recordWorld Religions and Spirituality Project — Twelve Tribes

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Story of The Twelve Tribes

22 June 1984 — Island Pond.

Police took 112 children in a dawn raid. A district judge ordered them released the same day and called the warrant unlawful. The community tells the story every year; the state has not repeated the attempt.

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Where it is toldThe community's own retelling every June, and in the Vermont court record
Who appearsIsland Pond; 112 children; Judge Frank Mahady
What it teachesThe 1984 raid, which the community treats as its founding trial and the state treated as a warrant it could not defend
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

On 22 June 1984, 90 state troopers and 50 social workers arrived at Island Pond before dawn with a blanket warrant and removed 112 children. District Judge Frank Mahady held hearings the same day, ordered every child returned to their parents by evening on the ground that the warrant identified no specific child and no specific allegation, and a week later described the operation as a grossly unlawful scheme. No charges were brought. The community marks the anniversary, publishes the opinion, and treats the day as the proof that the state overreached — a reading Vermont officials have partly conceded and partly still contest, since the underlying concern about corporal punishment was not resolved by the warrant being bad.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

A grossly unlawful scheme.

Judge Frank Mahady, Vermont District Court, opinion of June 1984, on the Island Pond warrant

The 112 children were ordered returned to their parents the same day; no charges followed.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The mountain, and the fast, in court. Jainism · community Go deeper →
The first fitna. Islam Read it in full →
Chamkaur — forty against an army. Sikhism Read it in full →
State Shinto, and Yasukuni. Shinto · community Go deeper →
The indemnity. Haitian Vodou Read it in full →
Bijon Setu, 30 April 1982. Ananda Marga Read it in full →

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