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Eh, I don't know. I'm friends with several people who grew up in this cult, two of whom are still peripheral to it because their families are still involved. The cult definitely has a lot of weird and sketchy takes. And the leader definitely has a lot of sketchy stuff (particularly in the past) around younger male members, though there seems to be an attitude around it among the Fellowship people that the allegations aren't black and white -- these people aren't thinking of what has happened as sex trafficking or grooming. For my friends who are still peripheral? Their experience is primarily of a loving community (with some definite weird crap and skeletons in the closet). They're well-educated and fairly skilled in their fields, and while they have some strange (primarily Buddhist and Sufi-inspired, plus some more niche California-original stuff) beliefs, they don't push those beliefs on people. They do understand that Fellowship is a cult, though as far as cults go it's on the less-nuts end, and they have a murky relationship with that fact. Lots of people who live in the Fellowship community in Oregon House aren't actually members, as well -- this particular cult doesn't try to separate its followers from the world. So when I read this, the hiring stuff looks sketchy, but it's not uncommon at all. The wine procurement, as others have noted, appears not to be clear-cut as the winery is owned by a former member of the cult, and not the cult itself or current members -- it should be looked-into but may be above board. The firing? It should be investigated, sure, but he (as a contractor) was stirring up trouble in a team because a lot of team members were either members or peripheral to (and in my experience, the latter tends to be more common for tech people) the Fellowship community in Oregon House where the cult leader has pretty likely done some very bad stuff. But have the people on that team participated in the bad stuff? The author assumes it, but I don't think that's a good default assumption. I'd assume basically all of these people were raised in the community, and that many or most are not actively involved in the cult itself, because that seems to be the standard story there. I'm not saying Fellowship isn't sketchy, or that the allegations shouldn't be investigated. I just think there's a wide spectrum of cults (including some that self-describe as cults and are totally voluntary and don't brainwash -- if you meet enough people in the Bay Area you'll eventually stumble on some), and that this one is closer to the level of sketch you'd expect in a small-town evangelical church with some skeletons than something like Jim Jones, etc. |