Review
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Title: Wineskin: Freakin’ Jesus in the ’60s and ’70s: A Memoir
Author: Michael Hicks
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Memoir
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: 208
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 978-1560854531
Price: 19.95
Reviewed by Heather Harris Bergevin for the Association of Mormon Letters
When I was a little girl growing up in S.C., my parents often needed to comfort me surrounding religious conflicts at school. Being one of less than fifteen or twenty Mormon kids in an Air Force Town of around a hundred thousand people, odds were that at some point, one of the varied religions in my Bible Belt community was going to hold a fireside of sorts, and odds were even better that when they did so, they would be carefully warning their children about any cults or cultlike activity that were happening in the area. And, well, we were Mormon. I had to get comfortable with this major difference early on. I remember going to my parents when I was in middle school, complaining that one of my classmates had said we were in a Cult. “We are,” said my dad, then bishop in our ward. “The definition of being in a cult is that we follow a living prophet. We fit that definition. The question is whether we’re going to be a good one or a bad one.” I remember laughing and getting more comfortable with that particular “C” word earlier than most. If you’ve grown up in the “morridor” of LDS dominant states, where a lot of kids, if not almost all of them, in your elementary school, were LDS, and where you were encouraged by your faithful parents to not play with the kids who weren’t LDS (the opposite experience from my own, where kids would find out I was Mormon and turn away to never speak to me again), I encourage you to lean into those experiences while we talk about this fascinating and amazing book.
Michael Hicks has lived a Seeker’s life. Music has always been his passion, but Christ his goal in all things. And, like many of those of us who are seekers, he’s found a bunch of variations and options in his journey.
In Michael’s case, this included not one but several different cults, including our own. The question, in all of those cases, has been whether they would be, as my father encouraged me to notice, good or bad ones. We’re always told that “by their fruits, ye shall know them,” and absolutely, this applies to Hick’s story as well! He begins in a Pentecostal household, where singing, shaking, rolling on floors, and speaking in tongues is culturally common in their religious practice and where the sect individually caused more insular groupings, which eventually became an unhealthy, cultlike appearance. He progressed in his late teens to helping found and foment the Wineskins group, which was just a bunch of seekers like himself, enjoying music and teaching about Jesus.
And here’s the catch you learn if you work to study group psychology, and in specific, how groups like these organize: No cult begins as a cult. No group collects new members or works together to create something with the intent of evil, even if some amongst the group are not on the side of the angels. Groups collect individuals who are seeking good. Movements collect those who are wanting to work for good in our society, to claim and change those things which are not healthy. We know this. We’ve seen it recently, repeated over and over again in our own political landscape. Nobody begins, in a group, by joining the day that they form an insurrection. Radicalization happens gradually. Nobody joins a cult: they join a congregation, or a movement, or even a religious institution, but there has to be trust foundationally there that the goal is for good.
Michael’s earlier group, Wineskins, began as a group of seekers who just wanted to get closer to Christ. Later, he’s baptized a member of the church and meets, in his ward, a nice couple who are teaching Sunday School. These aren’t places where we expect dangerous, mind-control things to be happening! Nevertheless, as the Sunday school bonus study group gets into more and more fundamentalist doctrine, the teacher, Anne, emerges as its proto-guru. Slowly, they continue studying, and she begins her strange ascent to prophet-god, reintroducing polyandry and with many visions of the eternities.
Nobody looks for a prophet who is mentally ill or who will cause dangerous things to happen to them. Nobody stays in an abusive relationship because it’s fun…in fact, very rarely will somebody enter into a relationship, whether with an individual or with a group professing to speak for or with God, where they see they are in danger. The dangerous part happens very gradually, as all abusive relationships do. There are proven standard practices that those who are abusers use, whether you call them narcissistic or sociopathic manipulators. There are distinct patterns to cultlike practices, whether it is of a cult of one, such as in an abusive relationship in a home or family, or that of thousands of followers of a charismatic leader. First, there is love-bombing. Having found a new supply, the “leader/lover” pours all of their charisma, kindness, love, and most of all, attention, into the new person/supplier. What the individual supplies is always something useful to the leader– in Michael’s case, his good looks, talent for music, and his inherent kindness, which drew more people to him. In many instances, the leader will almost morph chameleonlike into whatever the target is most in need of finding: they will temporarily become the best partner, the kindest person, even a mirror image of the target’s likes, dislikes, dreams, and desires. Anne does all of this when taking Michael on as her target. Once he realizes that she might not be best for him and tries to get away, she doubles down on her possession of him, including claiming him as a husband and lover, despite already being married.
We tend to hate that C word, but it happens all around us. Lululemon? Cultlike practices! NXIVM? Cuuuuult. Qanon? Most definitely qualifies. So does Gottard Quiverful Movement.
So do we.
Again, the question is about agency and thought control. Good group or bad group. Good cult or bad?
Rule Number 2 that I’ve found with cults: All cults are sex cults, in some way, eventually. They’re either about who can have sex with whom, about having all the sex possible, or about restricting it to certain groupings that the leader demands. Often this includes the leader, in this case, Anne, having all the sex with whomever they like, ahem, I mean whomever god demands. Things get more and more intense with the sex sect within a sect until Michael goes on, and returns from his mission, provoking lasting changes in his thinking and relationship with all the leadership in his life.
Ya’ll, this book is a wild ride, and there are so very many stories involved. I’ll spoil the ending, that Michael Hicks is a talented musician and composer, whose music you should check out as well! But, while checking it out, definitely be informed that Hicks did not, indeed, have a plain, vanilla ride through the ’60s and ’70s, and learn from the many and varied experiences (some bringing him closer to his goal of seeking God, and some not) as you go along.
If you are interested in learning how group psychology works and cults in specific, Steve Hassan is a great reference. His B.I.T.E. model theory helps in determining if you are in safe relationships and groups, and his concepts of locus of control are spectacular in dealing with helping clean out your own mind from groupthink. As that becomes more and more critical in these latter days, learning from those who have escaped dangerous situations, like Michael Hicks, becomes more apropos to making sure that we, and our families, are likewise using safe practices in both our home and religious lives.
Who will like to read Wineskin: Anybody who experienced the sixties and seventies, anybody who has found themself likewise in a precarious position, or, frankly, anybody who likes a good memoir with some adventure twists. Much like in the sixties, so much happens in the book that you might not be able to remember it all, but you will know at the end that it was a wild ride.
Happy Reading-HB