27: Another, more controversial, American Geel
Visiting Chicago's Jesus People, USA
This is part 27 of a series. To go back to the very beginning, start with part one. To go back to the start of this section, start with part fifteen.
There’s another residential community in North America that helped grow my interest in Geel from an NPR story I vaguely recalled to someplace I needed to actually visit.
The Jesus People (aka JPUSA and Juhpoozah) are a Christian commune that’s still going from the hippie movement. JPUSA isn’t its own denomination; it’s aligned with the Evangelical Covenant Church. They started out traveled around the US in a bus. It broke down in Chicago1 and they stayed. Eventually they bought a hotel that had turned into a dilapidated SRO, The Chelsea Hotel.
JPUSA agreed to keep the existing tenants, who were consolidated onto the top three floors of the building as it was renovated. I had the impression that the tenants didn’t fight being shuffled around the building, since their previous landlord hadn’t reliably provided heat or hot water. Most of them had fled the building in the years of neglect between 1985 and 1990. Those top three floors now serve as housing for low-income seniors, Friendly Towers. They have access to support services on-site and have their own dining room. The lounge has a gorgeous view over the lake. The Chelsea Hotel became Chicago’s first private retirement hotel in 1967, so it’s keeping with tradition.
There are 360 rooms in the ten story building. In the JPUSA portion of the building, two people share each room, either as a couple or as roommates. Children are given rooms near their parents, either with a sibling or another kid around the same age. Rooms are about 12×12’, including a small private bathroom. People get creative, customizing their rooms to make the most of their space and show their personality. This is less crowded than it used to be, when entire families occupied each ‘studio apartment.’ That was the norm both when JPUSA first moved in and during the heyday when the hotel first opened.
JPUSA restored each room and provided each floor with a shared lounge space and kitchen. The ground floor contains shops and common spaces. They restored the garden and added a playground.
The Chelsea Hotel has a very different vibe than another grand old residential hotel a few blocks away. The Lawrence House is a luxury micro-apartment community, part of Flats Life’s offerings.2 Their units promise community and rent for twice the price of Friendly Towers. I can’t compare the cost of staying with JPUSA, since there is no cost for guests or residents. I discovered The Lawrence House when I popped into their coffee shop to escape the weather. I could not help but notice that it was a parallel (corporate hipster) universe version of JPUSA’s primary building.
The businesses and charities of JPUSA
JPUSA has a leadership council rather than a single charismatic leader. When I visited in 2018, there had been a lot of changes and they anticipated more as older members stepped aside to ensure younger people had a voice in running the commune.
The Jesus People have a lot going on. They have the retirement community, Friendly Towers. They have shelters for those without housing. They have a soup kitchen and a food pantry. They have a free store. They have a drop-in center. They provide transitional housing for women and children. They run a private high school for members.
They’ve had other programs over the years, like a daycare, elementary school, and an after-school program. They organized the Cornerstone Music Festival until 2012.
These programs are funded by a mix of grants (including government funding), donations, and income from their businesses.
In the early days, at night they’d clear away the tables in the dining rooms so anyone who needed shelter could bed down on cots. Everyone was welcome to come at meal times and eat with them. Now they have separate buildings to serve people. These changes came about both because of regulations and grant requirements and in response to problems. There’s also the way things tend to formalize and expand over time and JPUSA has been around for over 50 years.
The traveling band and mobile ministry began setting down roots decades ago, but they remain music oriented and their businesses reflect this. They have a recording studio, graphic design company, record shop, screen printing studio, skate shop, and coffee shop. As a group that owns and maintains several buildings, they also have a roofing and siding supply and a woodworking shop.
They’ve had a number of businesses to raise money over the years. They’ve done whatever would bring in cash to keep things running: planting trees, washing windows, cleaning carpets, electrical repairs, building porches, and painting houses. They had a moving company, a tent making business, and a gift shop.
JPUSA is one of the largest employers of people in their neighborhood. When I was there, they had over 60 employees who weren’t commune members. They don’t prioritize hiring Christians. They do prioritize hiring people who are or have been part of their programs. This means a lot of the staff at their shelter have stayed there and people running the soup kitchen have eaten there.
While none of the commune members drink or do drugs, their ties with the Chicago music scene mean they know what’s going on. They’re unflappable and non judgemental.
They had a liberal arts degree level of familiarity with preferred pronouns, sex worker politics, and feminism. Some community members are formerly homeless. Some have dealt with substance abuse. Some struggle with mental health issues.
Just like my family and neighbors in Ocean Grove, no one at JPUSA cared that I’m a queer, divorced, atheist. They matched my tone – if none of these things is a problem for me, then it’s not a problem for them.
Despite their roots as a traveling ministry, they’ve shifted their way of preaching. Like in Ocean Grove, they preach by living their lives as they do, being engaged community members, and making sure the door is open whenever someone is ready to walk through it.
References to God are baked into the American way of life – in the past week my banker discussed seeing signs from God, the woman ringing up my groceries blessed me, and my doorman gave me a full sermon. The folks at JPUSA were much more relaxed about it and always referenced faith as part of their life, without projecting or pushing it onto me. JPUSA isn’t here to save you. They’ll give you the chance to save yourself, if you want it. If not, they’re happy to offer you a cup of coffee, conversation, and a bed for the night.
The financial controversy
JPUSA really is a commune. Like Jesus and his disciples, they hold everything in common. They file their taxes like a monastery does. Like a monastery, their businesses exist to fund their religious work. I’d assumed church stuff would be tax exempt, since churches are tax exempt, but that’s not how the tax code actually works. Each member is taxed on their share of the net income as if it were a dividend. This encourages religious communes to spend the majority of their income on qualifying charitable endeavors and discourages them from establishing any sort of endowment. JPUSA does not have an endowment.
There are plenty of expenses. There are the basic expenses for each business. They have mortgages from purchasing and renovating properties. They have the cost of providing each community member with the necessities of life. There are the costs of running the shelters, the food bank, and other programs. The net income each member is taxed on (which they don’t receive in cash) is below the poverty line.
A 2001 Chicago Tribune article lambasted them for grossing $12.6 million and netting $2 million. The article made it seem like someone was getting rich, but I think the reporter misunderstood where the money was going. That $12.6 million seems very low to run several businesses, shelter 300 of the city’s residents, feed hundreds more people, and cover the basic needs of the commune members. How much does it take simply to maintain the buildings, pay the mortgages, keep the heat on, and make sure things are up to code? Two million net sounds like a lot, but it works out to under $11,500 a person – which, remember, was the gross income before they paid personal income taxes on that amount.
Once you’re part of JPUSA, everything you need is provided for. You’re provided with room and board. You have access to a free store for clothing, furnishings, and all sorts of other things. There are a wide range of community activities every week. Your kids are provided with day care and private schooling. There are cars to use. There are drivers to take you around if you can’t drive or want to carpool. You are given a job within the community and are provided with any necessary job training. Members are covered by Medicaid or Medicare, if they qualify. Others rely on free clinics.
There are also no retirement accounts or social security payments. Members of the community are given jobs according to their abilities, so as people’s abilities change they work fewer hours or less strenuous jobs. As people age, JPUSA is figuring out what retiring within the community looks like.
When members need cash, they can request it. They’re also allowed to (and often do) have side gigs or part-time jobs. Members with music backgrounds mostly work the sound boards for shows and work as roadies. This provides them with petty cash, funds to visit friends and family, and personal savings.
Commune members looked like anyone else in Chicago. Aging hippies. Young punks. Little kids. They have phones, watch TV, listen to secular music, and participate in the wider world.
The openness I experienced at JPUSA contributed with how odd I found my experience in Geel. At JPUSA when I asked about their finances, I was ushered over to chat with the person who took care of the accounting. They walked me through their finances, answering all my questions patiently and clearly. I was met with the same openness when discussing how JPUSA is largely viewed as a cult and is accused of abusing members.
Christianity Today did a series of articles critical of JPUSA in the 1990s. When the Chicago Tribune did its own exposee on the Jesus people in 2001, Christianity Today defended JPUSA based on the changes they’d made since the scandals of 1992.
These changes included making sure people understood exactly what they were getting into before they became full members of the commune and making it easier for members to leave the commune if they wished.
If it’s difficult to live as a family, it’s harder to live as an intentional community. If it’s difficult to live in an intentional community, it’s harder to live in a commune. When you’ve joined a commune – which means merging your assets and living largely outside of the monetary system – it’s inherently difficult to leave. Think of how difficult it is to get divorced and then imagine you share your finances with 300 other people and no one is paid in cash.
People I met who’d been there since the beginning said it was very difficult to leave in the early days. If you left you were basically ostracized. Given the current cultural obsession with boundaries and blocking ‘toxic’ friends and family, it seems like JPUSA was simply ahead of the cultural curve.
Today it’s different. They accept that relationships are meant to evolve and be flexible. While I was there, I attended a going away party for a couple who were leaving the commune, but keeping their jobs with JPUSA. They’d go from living entirely within the commune system to getting paychecks like regular employees and living in the neighborhood. Another member casually mentioned to me that she was thinking about leaving, because she loved working with kids. She no longer had the opportunity within JPUSA, since they merged their K-8 program with another religious school. JPUSA was still her family, she just thought that maybe she wanted a different job than they could provide. The woman who hosted me at JPUSA has since left the commune to move closer to her daughter, who left the commune as a young adult.
Few people join the commune these days in part because they almost discourage it. Now, people interested in joining the commune live there for a full year before taking any steps to transition to full membership. There’s no set timeline beyond that.
People who show up on the doorstep of a commune are often looking for something no real community can possibly live up to. Idealists turn into cynics and leave, sewing discord and bitterness. They want new members to understand just how hard it’s going to be, not just how amazing it might be.
Other controversies
If you google ‘Jesus People USA’ all the top results are exposees. They’re the kind of group that could use an SEO specialist to churn out positive news to push down the bad stuff, but they don’t. They discuss and debate how to live in community without shying away from the things they regret.
One morning over breakfast people were discussing a news article that came out. Instead of focusing on the project du jour to help house veterans, it highlighted The Scandal. Someone turned to me, “you Googled us, right?”
They don’t deny that they did many things wrong over the years. There’s no guidebook to life, to building an intentional community, to raising kids and running businesses and being people all living together.
I don’t know if the accusations are true or not. I don’t feel like I need to know. I’m not trying to minimize anyone’s suffering or deny the evil that exists in the world. It’s just that none of the allegations sound all that unusual to me.
Hearing about the scandals of JPUSA reminds me a lot of Miner’s classic story of the Nacirema. The proof listed for JPUSA being a cult all sound pretty routine. Anyone who’s been a member of a Christian church knows it’s normal for them to require counseling and approval before a minister will allow you to marry. Different denominations have different rules about dating, codified or not. It’s encouraged for church goers to talk over major life decisions — from having a child to switching careers — with your minister and other church leadership. If you push the rules too far, people will keep their distance and even push you out of the community. That’s part of every religion I know of.
The abuse allegations sound all too familiar. Being told what to do by an authority figure. Kids being left unsupervised. Sexual misconduct. The toll of drug addiction and mental illness. Feeling isolated and alone, like you don’t belong. These things happen in every community. Despite how JPUSA members have tried to live their lives differently, they’ve been unable to escape the same behavioral patterns and ugly behavior that can be found everywhere in America.
In my time researching the history of care work, I’ve come across programs with the intended goal of systematically destroying cultures and breaking people down to make them easy to control. Some current policies and programs have their roots in intentionally racist and eugenicist policies. That’s not what’s going on at JPUSA. There is no system in place to break down people’s sense of self, remake them, and then exploit their labor, like there was in residential schools and many curative asylums.
People have very different opinions about what justice and reconciliation look like. Just like they have different ideas about how to raise kids, run a business, support each other, and live a life. I have no doubt that harm was done. The question for me is: is the potential for harm within JPUSA greater than for people living outside of JPUSA?
The whole conversation about The Scandal started over breakfast because a few people from JPUSA were leading a project to provide veterans with housing. Were the people bringing up these allegations concerned about veterans being abused or harmed in some way? Is anyone being protected by preventing JPUSA from providing housing for people currently without housing?
Past allegations of harm by JPUSA are being used to impede their work, even when the allegations are irrelevant to the current project. Ultimately, they view JPUSA as a bunch of Jesus freaks and they aren’t going to be okay with anything they do. This is nothing new. The Jesus People is an example of a group of outsiders reclaiming the derogatory name they were given.
A 1990 thesis on JPUSA, which predates public accusations against JPUSA, outlines their practice of equality and community justice:
“all people in the community are acknowledged to be under the same biblical rule, and are therefore morally equal. Thus, the council is morally responsible to the entire community. Moral deviations of council members are not tolerated to any greater extent than they would be with any other member. Members questioned on this issue point to the case of the founder and first elder, who was ejected from the group for persistent moral improprieties. Indeed, the cumbrous nature of the governing system is viewed as an asset, as it prevents the excessive concentration of power into the hands of any one person.
Mutual accountability appears in the community in another form as well. This is a somewhat less codified system of mutual moral accountability. As mentioned previously, members seldom do things alone. This is not only due to the desire for fellowship, but also in order to keep from falling into tempting or compromising situations. Going about business alone, especially if one is in an unmarried state, is considered to be tempting fate or even to be leaving oneself open to temptation by a personal Satan. Members who do "fall into sin" are encouraged to confess their sin to their brothers or sisters, either to someone considered to be a spiritual equal, such as a prayer partner, or to a person considered to be more spiritually advanced, such as a family head.
Occasionally, a sin will become widespread enough to require a special meeting, generally held after the Tuesday night group meeting or "community gathering" (see below). After the group meeting, the issue is confronted.”
It’s easy to imagine not being satisfied by this procedure if I had been wronged by someone in the commune. I also know that doing my best to do the right thing has not prevented me from hurting people I care about.
Mutual aid and charity
In the early days, what JPUSA did was more oriented towards mutual aid. There were few divisions between members and recipients of aid. In order for JPUSA to continue their work and expand it to better meet the needs of the wider community, they needed to conform with the regulations and requirements of various government agencies.
Chicago had a history with the Catholic Worker movement that paved the way for a group like JPUSA to be accepted by government forces as a partner. By working with the City of Chicago and understanding IRS guidelines to structure their organization properly, JPUSA has become a sustainable, adaptable organization. The community has stayed true to their values while changing with the times. A lot has changed in 50 years.
The government does not have policies for mutual aid, they have policies for charity. JPUSA has worked to minimize the divide between commune members, program participants, and general community members.
JPUSA is home to many people who have lived nontraditional lives before joining. That includes people who are neurodivergent, mad, and who have been unhoused. The struggles of the deemed charity recipients are ones many of the deemed charity providers are intimately familiar with.
A thesis on JPUSA provides:
"What kind of person joins Jesus People USA?" The commune contains a tremendous diversity of people coming from all walks of life. Occasionally reasons are given such as escape from parental abuse, or parents sending the children to the commune because they are incorrigible at home, or the witness of friends; however, such specific reasons are as numerous as the members. Closer examination reveals that most of the members come from backgrounds that contain one or more of the following characteristics:
1. A past involvement with drugs and alcohol, frequently with overtones of the occult, a libertine lifestyle, alienation, and desperation…
2. A fairly recent conversion experience (or sudden, radical rediscovery of the remnants of one's traditional faith) soon before encountering the group for the first time. The commune then offers an avenue to deepen this burgeoning faith or to keep oneself from falling into temptation and backsliding…
3. An interest in "community" and communal living. This interest is intriguing in that many of the older members give the impression of either taking communal life somewhat for granted or viewing it largely as a means to an end, while some of the younger members, especially those who are already practicing Christians, are attracted primarily because of the communal nature of the group…
4. A wandering, searching nature;...
5. An artistic nature. While this almost never came up in testimonials or interviews as a reason for joining, one cannot help but be struck by the number of artists, craftspersons, and musicians that the group attracts. The commune possesses a Christian rock and roll group, an Irish folk group, and a gospel choir, each of which has been or is in the process of producing records; several amateur musical groups are present as well. Members, artists or not, also show a predilection for films, poetry, and classical literature; music is almost continuously present in the commune through persons with portable tape players.
6. A desire to make an active Christian faith the centerpoint of one's existence and to submit the self to the will of God more fully. Often this is accompanied by a desire to serve the poor. In this case the person finds out about the Jesus People through their record albums, concerts, and magazine…
7. A strong desire to change certain behavior patterns considered by the individual and the group to be anti-biblical, destructive, or both. For example, about twenty-five of the commune's members have chronic anger problems, for which there is a support group. Similar support groups exist for a number of other subgroups, such as persons struggling with pornography fixations or homosexuality…
…many of the members come to the community for a variety of reasons. In this case, we see a desire to change parts of one's lifestyle, a conversion experience, a wandering nature, and perhaps most of all, a need for community.”
JPUSA will connect commune members and participants in their programs to mental health services. They’ll also cover the cost of treatment. The rules and standards for behavior people are held to aren’t arbitrary, nor are they enforced strictly in black-and-white.
While Friendly Towers is a separate facility from housing for JPUSA members, it’s in the same building and they share parts of the property. Residents of Friendly Towers are welcome to participate in JPUSA events. The minimum age for residents of Friendly Towers is 55 and plenty of the JPUSA members are now over 70.
All commune members are financially poor. If they were doing the same work for an unrelated business they would earn considerably more money. In certain ways they live a middle class lifestyle – they have financial stability, with all of their needs met. In terms of the social determinants of health they’re probably among the best off in the US.
I visited JPUSA back in 2018, when I was looking to uncover best practices for care work. It’s interesting to see that while Geel comes up in my notes, the way people with mental and physical disabilities lived within the commune and participated in their programs wasn’t something I zoomed in on. It was later, as I visited other projects and spoke to more people, that this aspect of JPUSA came to stand out as unique.
This borrows heavily from something I wrote back in 2018, shortly after my visit.