The Oracle’s Daughter: Harrison Hill on the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (Part 1)

About this episode

Harrison Hill discusses his book and the rise and fall of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, exploring the dynamics of cult involvement and control.

This episode is sponsored by Betterhelp. In this episode, Harrison Hill joins us to discuss his book The Oracle’s Daughter and the rise and fall of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC), a group that began as Free Love Ministries and spiraled into an intensely controlling Christian cult. He explains how founders Jim and Deborah Green evolved from 1960s hippies into charismatic leaders, built a world of early-morning prayer, deliverance/exorcisms, relentless meetings, and total obedience, and drew people in with a mix of housing, food, work, and spiritual certainty. Harrison also traces the stories of the women at the center of the book: Deborah Green, her daughter Sarah, and Maura Schmierer, whose slow movement into the group shows how cult involvement often happens in small, incremental steps rather than one dramatic leap. He describes the group’s use of “God’s army” rhetoric, demon-based explanations for ordinary feelings like fatigue, the deliberate cutting off of “blood ties,” and the way family bonds were treated as a threat to the movement’s authority. You’ll definitely wanna stay tuned for Part 2 of our convo. Be sure to pick up his book, The Oracle’s…

People in this episode

Hosts: Sarah Edmondson, Anthony “Nippy” Ames

Guest: Harrison Hill

Topics covered

• cult dynamics
• Christianity
• coercive control
• emotional abuse
• spiritual abuse
• family separation
• incremental involvement

Keywords

• Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps
• cult
• coercive control
• emotional abuse
• spiritual abuse
• family separation
• The Oracle’s Daughter

Sponsors

Betterhelp

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, Free Love Ministries

Books & works: The Oracle’s Daughter

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