TWELVE TRIBES. The Twelve Tribes (previously known as the Northeast Kingdom Community Church because of its location in the northeast corner of Vermont, and later as the Messianic Communities) is a communal, millenarian Bible-based movement that emerged from the Jesus Movement in the 1970s counterculture of the United States. Many of the Christian sects that emerged from this movement, such as the Children of God (the Family), Shiloh, and Jesus People USA, developed communal patterns of living. The Twelve Tribes is one of the few Jesus groups that survived from this period without disbanding or being absorbed into the U.S. religious mainstream.

Elbert Eugene Spriggs (b. 1937) had worked as a personnel manager and former schoolteacher when he joined a charismatic church in Glendale, California, in 1971. When the church disbanded, he moved back to his hometown, Chattanooga, Tennessee, with his new wife, Marsha Ann Duval. There...