Roberts Group | Brethren | Garbage Eaters

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This group does not have a formal name. However, in the media it is often referred to “The Brethren,” or as ‘The Roberts Group’ after its founder and leader, Jim Roberts.

Unofficially, members refer to themselves or to their movement as:

• The Brethren
• The Brothers and Sisters
• The Church

The media, researchers, and family and friends of those who have joined the group also refer to it as:

• The Roberts Group
  After its founder, Jim Roberts, a reclusive man referred to by members as “The Elder.”
• The Garbage Eaters
  Called thus by the media and researchers because members eschew work in favor of foraging for food in garbage dumpsters

Apologetics Index refers to this movement as The Roberts Group, in reference to its founder and leader.

The group is a cult, both sociologically and theologically. Theologically, the Roberts Group is a cult of Christianity – by virtue of the fact that its teachings and practices run counter to those of orthodox Christianity.

They believe they are the only “true” church in America, the end-times remnant of the church inspired by Jesus Christ and advanced by 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 wicked Babylon, its established churches little more than houses of deceit.

Their leader is Jim Roberts, a one-time Marine and Pentecostal preacher from Kentucky who established the group in 1971. He is known to members as “the Elder” or “Brother Evangelist.” He does not claim to be a deity, but is without question their all-powerful leader. He does not live extravagantly and there are no signs of the excesses of some other gurus: no fleet of Rolls Royces, no armed bodyguards, no public-relations apparatus churning out pro-Roberts spin. In fact, his behavior is downright Victorian. But important decisions — where members will roam next; whether and whom they will marry — all flow from him. Dissent is not tolerated and violators face excommunication, equated with losing one’s soul.

Members typically are idealistic youths plucked from college campuses all over America, from Harvard to Humboldt State on Califor-nia’s foggy north coast. They forsake all: family, material possessions, promising futures. In their wake, inevitably, are grieving, bewildered families. - Source: In the shadows, San Diego Union-Tribune, USA, Nov. 10, 1997 /cite>

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Roberts Group | Brethren | Garbage Eaters – Research Resources

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