Into this scene come two bearded young men clutching Bibles, amblingas if in slow motion. They are scruffy -- not so unusual in grunge-hipSeattle -- but they seem out of place, from another time. They wear darkknee-length tunics over long pants and billed caps tight about their heads.They seem fatigued and emotionless.
But they are obviously on a mission. This time it's to engage a teen-ageboy in intense discussion, passing around a Bible, exhorting him,presumably, to a higher path. On another day, they sit on a bench, stareblankly ahead and then read Bibles held close to their noses. And theypray, hands balled into fists pressed to their temples. When someonesays "hello" to one of them, he looks away nervously. They get up, headto a busy sidewalk and drift away, like leaves in a stream.
These two young men are members of one of the most secretive religiousgroups in America, an underground band of nomadic Christians hewingto a radically literal interpretation of the King James Version of the Bible.They do not claim a formal name, other than perhaps "the Church."Informally they are known as the Brothers, the Brothers and Sisters, orthe Brethren. They believe they are the only "true" church in America, theend-times remnant of the church inspired by Jesus Christ and advancedby his earliest disciples.
They assiduously avoid the police, their parents and the media. To them,the world -- and especially the United States -- is a hopelessly wickedBabylon, its established churches little more than houses of deceit.
Their leader is Jim Roberts, a one-time Marine and Pentecostal preacherfrom Kentucky who established the group in 1971. He is known tomembers as "the Elder" or "Brother Evangelist." He does not claim to bea deity, but is without question their all-powerful leader. He does not liveextravagantly and there are no signs of the excesses of some other gurus:no fleet of Rolls Royces, no armed bodyguards, no public-relationsapparatus churning out pro-Roberts spin. In fact, his behavior isdownright Victorian. But important decisions -- where members willroam next; whether and whom they will marry -- all flow from him.Dissent is not tolerated and violators face excommunication, equated withlosing one's soul.
Members typically are idealistic youths plucked from college campusesall over America, from Harvard to Humboldt State on Califor-nia's foggynorth coast. They forsake all: family, material possessions, promisingfutures. In their wake, inevitably, are grieving, bewildered families.
Some join at a time of vulnerability.
Don Busweiler, 27, was shattered after breaking up with his girfriend. InJune 1995, he gave up all he had to join the Brothers, and that was quitea lot -- a Miami Beach clothing store called Animal Farm and the Pervertclothing line. He and his thriving South Beach business had been featuredin several magazines, including Rolling Stone.
His mother, Gloria Poffenbarger, of Long Island, has searched for him,but "it's like looking for a needle in a haystack."
Other recruits think joining is fate fulfilled.
Jay Johnson, 30, dropped out of the Rhode Island School of Design nineyears ago to become a Brother. In his last phone call to his mother,Henrietta Johnson, he related that finding a sleeping bag confirmed to himthat becoming a traveling Brother was his destiny.
Like other parents, Henrietta Johnson, of Roxbury, Conn., began adisappointing quest to find her son. She spotted him once, in Oregon, butwhen he saw her "he just turned around on his bicycle and pedaled off."
Today she'd settle for a call or a letter.
With families out of the way, Brothers and Sisters devote themselves totheir new lives. It is not an easy path. They live celibately and by faith,rejecting not only material comforts, but basics like medical care.
They are expert scroungers, collecting mountains of edible food andsupplies from places where most Americans discard things: Dumpsters,supermarket loading docks, restaurant trash bins. The media has usedthis practice to brand the group as the "Garbage Eaters," somethingex-members and parents alike say is offensive and inaccurate.
"We do get a lot of our sustenance out of garbage cans but we do not eatgarbage," says an ex-Brother known as Ger, who lives in Portland, Ore.Other ex-members say they were amazed at the sheer bulk of edible farethis nation thows away daily.
Ascetic and sincere, they envision themselves as direct descendants ofthe earliest Christians, a role they practice daily.
"In meeting them, in some ways it's like walking into the Old Testament,"says Stan Avery, an ex-Brother who lives in coastal Oregon and helpsformer members re-enter society. Avery thinks the group has"remarkable flaws and remarkable attributes," and admires many of theactive members. "Most of the people in the group, if you met them you'dsay to yourself, 'If these people aren't of God, I give up.' "
The trick is meeting them.
"They are the most obscure and unobtainable group in America," Averysays. "There have been innumerable cases of private investigators (hiredby families) scouring the country trying to find them and not gettinganything."
Ex-members say there are about 10 "cells" of Brothers and Sisters,typically of 10 or fewer members, scattered in moving "camps" acrossthe United States, with occasional forays into Canada and Mexico.These may be camps in the woods, or houses under renovation orbig-city apartments. Resourceful Brothers sometimes find appropriatehousing by identifying dormant houses, then tracking down the owners byscouring county property records. Sometimes, sympathetic landlords letthe group live on their property in exchange for keeping watch and doingchores.
Cross-country communication is furtive and labyrinthine; senior Brotherscontact Roberts through a network of general-delivery mail drops andpre-determined pay phones. (Roberts reportedly used New York Cityas his base earlier this year. Ex-members say New York appeals toRoberts because it is easy to blend in there, and because of the city'slarge Hasidic population; the group admires Orthodox Jews, whom theybelieve will be reconciled with Jesus in the final days.)
Letters home from new recruits typically are postmarked in cities nevervisited by the recruit, but mailed instead by Brothers intent on throwingparents and private investigators off the scent.
Intrusions, especially by worldly institutions such as the media, areunwanted.
"The media persecute us," says Joseph, a thirty-something Brothertracked down on Broadway in Seattle's Capitol Hill district. A reporternotes that persecution followed the earliest Christians.
"And we'll be persecuted to the very end," Joseph retorts.
Tears well in Judy Wilcox's eyes as she explains why she is a carefulstudent of the Scriptures.
"I want to know what took our son away," she says on the deck of herhome overlooking the lush wheat fields of Montana's Gallatin Valley.
Bart Wilcox was an athletic, idealistic, straight-A student who did notdrink and who participated in high school track and football.
"We're a tight family," Judy says, "and he was always such a caring,giving son. If they can pull him away from his family, everybody isvulnerable."
Bart, raised Protestant, was recruited on the steps of a Seattle church sixyears ago while on break from the University of Idaho in Moscow,where he was in the Tau Kappa Epsilon house.
Something appealed to him -- something so powerful that he wouldforsake his family and all of his possessions.
Today, all that his parents and two sisters have to remind them of him areold photos, some letters, plus a box of books and clothes passed alongby his roommates.
Judy and her husband, Larry, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, havethese things in a room kept ready for Bart's hoped-for return.
It is a sad task, explaining their loss, and difficult to discuss Bart for anylength of time without having to battle their emotions.
Larry tries to be methodical, analytical. Unlike Judy, he does not scourthe Scriptures for answers.
"I don't think it's a religious issue," he explains. "It's a mind-control issue.When you can take a whole bunch of men that are 18 to 26 and keepthem celibate, you've got them by the brain. And if you don't believe meyou can ask the Army Training Command."
Is it any comfort to Judy that her son thinks he's living a virtuous life?
"I'm not comforted by what he's doing," she says. "I know he's not outthere doing drugs or stealing things. But I do think he's leading adestructive lifestyle."
"They only recruit good kids," says Larry. "I'm sad they're encouragingpeople to leave their families, leave their wives, leave their children. Itignores what Jesus said -- 'you just have to love me, believe in me.' It's afree gift."
The full measure of the forces that converged to create the Elder and hisrigid doctrine may be known only to Jim Roberts. But snapshots of hispast suggest that he was shaped by a dogmatic belief system temperedby feelings of rejection and persecution.
Roberts was born into fierce Christian fundamentalism in the South.According to news reports in the 1970s, his native discipline wastempered in the Marines. A failed romance as a young man may haveembittered him for life. And for the past quarter-century or so, he haslived in a nomadic state of paranoia, a trait likely born of the anti-cultfervor of the mid-1970s, when police and cult deprogrammers targetedhis roving flock.
The beginnings, however, appear to have been ordinary and uneventful.
Roberts was born in Paris, Tenn., on June 15, 1939, and grew up in thewestern Kentucky river town of Paducah, the son of a part-timePentecostal preacher. He took to preaching himself, perhaps as young as15, and worked hard at his studies, after-school jobs and the track team.
He graduated in 1958 from Tilghman High School, 258th out of 269seniors, news reports say.
Roberts joined the Marines in September 1958 and rose to sergeant.Some ex-members say he was a drill instructor; some privateinvestigators say he was in supply. He was honorably discharged in July1961.
In civilian life he worked as a beautician and managed a Chicago wigshop that catered to flight attendants. It was there that he was jilted by aGreek-American woman, and his life reportedly went topsy-turvy.
Whatever the cause, Roberts, like countless other Americans, droppedout in the mid-'60s, forging a deep distaste for American materialism. Heevidently roamed the country, hooking up with like-minded people in theWest. By 1971, he had assembled a small group who became thegroup's elders. Ex-members say the Brothers and Sisters began as aradical offshoot of the Jesus Movement that sprang up in those turbulenttimes.
"It started out as a legitimate movement, to meet the needs of people thatthe churches weren't meeting the needs of," says Mark Richard, whojoined in Berkeley at age 18 and spent the next seven years as a Brother.
But Roberts slowly "weaseled his way into control until next thing youknew he was running every aspect of your life. It just kind of got offtrack," says Richard, who lives in Iowa.
There were signposts along the way that signaled why he was drawn tosociety's fringes.
In the early '70s, police raided a Brothers-Sisters camp at Oregon StateUniversity in Corvallis, jailing everyone. "That had a very real, dramatic,galvanizing effect on Roberts," says ex-member Avery. "It cemented inhis mind that they (police) were the enemy."
In September 1975, a truck carrying 32 Brothers, Sisters and theirchildren overturned outside Fayetteville, Ark., killing a baby. Moretrouble came the next month when police staged a predawn raid at acamp near Tucson, Ariz., looking for a man who had dropped out ofpre-med studies at the University of Iowa to join the group. The man'sdistraught wife tracked him to Arizona, where she convinced authoritiesto issue a missing-person warrant. He was handed over to adeprogrammer.
Roberts imposed new restrictions, including a ban on communication withparents. "It wasn't his intention at first to be so hard-line," says AlanLarson, a former member now living in San Diego. But "after you getslapped upside the head a few times you start avoiding the personslapping you."
The rigid isolation continued, with shocked parents left to deal withabrupt separation.
In a Seattle coffeehouse in August 1996, Dale Hawkins, now 21, saidgoodbye to his mother, Dawn Todd, a public defender. "He told me hewas going to join this group of Brothers," she says, "but he wasn't goingto tell me where they were. I knew he had met these religious peoplewho were there 'witnessing' and repairing bikes but I didn't know thatthey were a cult."
Stunned, Todd urged her son to think critically and beware of theleader's motives. "He said, 'Oh, there's no leader.' And I said, 'Well,when you find out that that's not true, I want you to remember what I toldyou.' And that was pretty much it. We hugged each other goodbye and Ihaven't seen him since."
Last year, Patrick Rooney, a onetime competition skier with no evidentinterest in religion, dropped out of Humboldt State without a trace afterthe Brothers paid a visit to the area. His father, Charles "Mickey"Rooney, who lives near Boston, has made several trips West in search ofthe 23-year-old.
In July the senior Rooney went deep into the central Oregon wildernessto the Rainbow Family Gathering, a'60s-style back-to-the-earth annualfestival that the Brothers and Sisters sometimes frequent. He found theircamp -- a long-shot given the sheer size of the event -- but a Brotherasked him to leave.
Rooney made a simple request: "If you see Patrick, could you ask him tocall his mother?"
"I'll pray about it," the man said.
"I said, 'What does that mean?' And he said that meant if he saw Patrickhe would pray to determine if God decided it was the right time to tellhim that."
Rooney left without seeing his son, but with a taste of the Brothers'doctrine. "They believe they're a step above us all, that they're elite."
Jim Guerra gives parents hope. He got out.
Today, he teaches seventh-grade English and lives on a tree-lined streetin La Verne, a Los Angeles suburb, with his wife and their 4-year-olddaughter.
But in 1976 he seemed lost to the world. As a freshman at Harvard, hemet some Brothers who had dropped in on a student Bible studymeeting. Lured by their "highly appealing" call to forsake all worldlygoods and live by faith, he dropped out of school and hit the road,believing the Brothers' contention that the prestigious aura of Harvard "isan abomination in the sight of God."
Guerra tossed his glasses into a snowbank, having faith that God wouldgive him good sight if He willed it. For the next decade, Guerra trampedacross America, living in safe houses and wooded camps, hitting bigcities and college towns in search of new recruits: UMass. Penn State.University of Michigan. New York. Dallas. Cincinnati. Kansas City.Santa Barbara. Portland. Seattle. Even Juarez, Mexico.
"I'm the only man who's hitchhiked 100,000 miles and not seen thecountry," he says, alluding to his vision.
By quantitative standards, Guerra was a recruiting flop, drawing only tworecruits in 10 years. He comforted himself by noting that just eight peopleescaped the biblical flood on Noah's ark.
Asked how the group gets by, its members said: "We live by faith."
Where do you live? Quoting the Bible, Guerra said: "The foxes haveholes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere tolay his head."
Guerra conformed to the group norm, ending sentences with "Lordwilling" or "Praise God" and referring to Jesus as Yeshua and God asElohim. He suppressed his sense of humor and avoided chitchat,regarded as "vain babbling."
He also learned to keep his libido in check. They were often in thecompany of Sisters, but even social intercourse was discouraged. Sisterswore long, plain dresses, diverted their gaze to the ground and weremeek and servile, content to cook and sew for the Brothers.
Despite the sterile existence, Guerra managed to fall in love a couple oftimes. But Roberts strung him along, delaying an answer on whether hecould marry, even concocting love-triangle tensions, playing Guerra'saffections off two Sisters in a game Guerra believes was designed toscuttle his marriage hopes.
Roberts turned against marriage, ex-members say, because marriage andfamily threatened the order of things. Once members married, theirloyalties tended to shift from the group to their spouses. When babiescame along, member attention shifted yet further. By the late 1970s,Roberts virtually banned marriage, a move that has cost him in attrition.
Guilt, fear and intimidation drove the group, Guerra says. Several times inhis decade-long odyssey, Guerra would grab his few belongings in panicand scurry into the woods, or out the back doors of safe houses, toevade parents and police (he called them "centurions").
Guerra and others suffered health problems, which were to be cured byfaith, not modern medicine; he had a severe mite infection that plaguedhim for months. When one Brother became feverish and ill, there was notrip to the hospital. Untreated, he died of pneumonia, prompting Robertsto urge followers to dress warmly in winter -- hardly a potent weaponagainst bacterial infection.
Still, Guerra has fond memories -- the kindness of strangers and abracing sense of freedom -- chronicled in his book manuscript, writtensince he left the group. An excerpt:
"... we were delivered from the responsibilities and pressures that fullparticipation in the economic system of America create. No mortgage,because we turtled our homes on our backs. No medical insurance,because God was our Healer. No fear of being fired from our jobs andsuffering financial ruin, because we had not (sic)jobs and we werealready financially ruined!"
Their greatest fear: "drifting away from God and being cut off from HisChurch."
Guerra did drift away after taking to heart another Christian group'scriticism of Roberts' doctrine. He delved into the Bible and conductedlibrary research, eventually producing a 20-page list of contradictions tothe Brothers' doctrine. He took them to Roberts, who tried to escapeGuerra's intellectual dragnet by claiming he never taught the doctrine inquestion and by accusing Guerra of being prideful and arrogant.
Convinced he had been duped by a "paranoid megalomaniac," Guerraquit. Then, bucking a decade of training, he called his mother to say hewas coming home.
"Thank God," she said. "I was so worried about your soul."
The work of the Brothers and Sisters continues as the century draws to aclose.
On Broadway in Seattle, two bearded men -- one of them a Brother, theother an associate -- approach two teens waiting for their ride homeoutside Dick's Deluxe Burgers, where a loud orange sign touts"1/4-pound 100% Beef" burgers.
It is late afternoon in this festive neighborhood, its sidewalks filled withyoung people on foot, on bikes and on skateboards. At one end of thestreet is a community college. At the other are record stores, copy shops,cheap restaurants -- all the trappings of a modern world rejected by theBrothers and Sisters.
Do you read the Bible?
Yes, the teens reply.
Which books are their favorite? Psalms and Proverbs.
The men talk for 35 minutes.
Then, the boys' ride arrives. They pick up their skateboards, saygoodbye and hop into a car.
Bibles in hand, the two men mount their bikes and pedal off in the fadingdaylight.