Deadheads for the End Days

The New Yorker has a fascinating piece about an "Amish-style hippie group" that frequents Bob Dylan concerts and tries to recruit fans into their "quasi-Christian sect."  The recruiters are members of the Twelve Tribes.

John Clarke writes:

The Twelve Tribes member Aysh Harris told me that the effort to recruit fans of Dylan—who* he calls a modern-day prophet (“A lot of things he said back then are coming true now”)—has been a good experience, a success even. “Most people we meet out there are pretty satisfied with the life they’re living,” Harris said. “But some have shown an interest in Twelve Tribes. There are definitely pockets of Dylan fans who are at least curious.” For the interested, joining Twelve Tribes requires forsaking all material goods, living communally, and working without pay in one of the group’s cafés, stores, farms, or construction companies scattered across the United States.

In “Dylan: What Are You Thinking?,” an anonymous Twelve Tribes author ruminates on the music legend’s religious beliefs before claiming that Dylan’s prophetic anthems “touch the complex and deep longing of the soul for a real answer, for a solution to the problems we all face, and for some deep change of heart that will fix everything that’s wrong.” 

Those who followed Dylan in the 1980s will recall that the Grateful Dead often either shared a bill with Dylan or immediately followed his tour dates with their own. Thus, it was common to deal with the Deadhead community congregating in the parking lot on the day of Dylan's shows.

I was never recruited into a cult-like organization, but I was offered grilled-cheese sandwiches.

Clarke writes:

The original mission of the Twelve Tribes dates back to 1987, when the group started following the Grateful Dead with a band of musicians, singers, and dancers, offering emergency medical care in venue parking lots. They also provided a place for lost friends to meet, and helped people coming down from bad acid trips. The author James McCallister ran into Twelve Tribes at a Grateful Dead show in 1990. “I viewed their seemingly predatory behavior as a vile cancer on the scene,” he said. “The operation seemed like a bear trap set in otherwise peaceful woods, a trap designed to ensnare those in vulnerable psychological states.”

* - Since when does the New Yorker not care about the difference between "who" and "whom"?