Acquire Today Without A Prayer: The Death Of Lucas Leonard And How One Church Became A Cult Depicted By Susan Ashline Disseminated As EReader Version

dont recall hearing about this case in the news, It is shocking what was allowed to happen, I was surprised that Tiffanie managed to get to such a high level of church leadership because a lot of conservative Christians are against female preachers.
From what I remember learning about cults in grad school, cult leaders tend to be charismatic men, But mind control is definitely a big part of a cult, Its sad that Luke never had a chance to leave the church, I hope that those involved can heal and move on with their lives, And Tiffanie and Sarah should rot in prison forever! Very thorough reporting of a tragic event, Clearly well researched account of the dangers of cults, if that sounds interesting to you then I recommend it! This book was truly horrifying.
I found myself hoping that everyone would turn their backs on selfproclaimed pastor Tiffany and her crazy mind control tactics.
The Irwin family abused their constituents financially and psychologically and eventually physically with no thought for anyones feelings, They were making a very good income by Tiffanie saying God told her people needed to give money while the people giving the money were barely getting by.
Having met all the members charged and later convicted of these crimes I can say the only one truly nuts was Tiffanie, and this book proves just that.
She constantly tried to control everyone and everything around her by threats of the wrath of God, The girl didnt have a godly bone in her whole body, Truth be told, shes probably still controlling everything for the women shes housed with in state prison, She should have been separated from the rest so maybe they would have a chance to get out of the Tiffanie cult.
Such a sad and disturbing/sick book Recommended by someone who knew one of the victims after this tragedy occurred, I persevered through a very uncomfortable and at times aggravating read.
Ashline provides contextual history of this locally and nationally infamous family and how they came to be involved in the fatal beating of their teenaged boys based on interviews with people who knew them, and that was an interesting start to the book.
Once they joined the Word of Life "Church" in the narrative, she relies on copious transcripts of and actual recordings of the indoctrination of the "church" members and the horrific antics of the cult leaders.
This part was grueling, aggravating, and awful, and I almost quit reading several times but wanted to find out what happened that night and what the consequences were, and I was afraid I'd miss something important, but really, it was just repetitive verbal abuse and manipulation tactics that lasted for hours on end and it was almost as defeating for the reader to read it as it was to have had to listen to the beratement as a "church member.
" However, once the beating was over and law enforcement and first responders stepped in, I couldn't put it down, and that's why this getsfor me.


I do know about cults and their methodology, I learned about it in a fullsemester class in college called "The Sociology of Cults," and for freereading pleasure I read sitelinkHelter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders and a book about Jim Jones and I'll throw in sitelinkEducated on this topic, too, so I have strong background knowledge.
If you are new to cults, maybe it's important to read the first half of this book, but I actually recommend skipping most of the first half of the book after Ashline tells you that Sarah moved in to the Leonard's housethe end of the first part.

It would suffice to sum it up here:
Sarah was hysterical and verbally abusive and a total zealous nutjob who was on a constant witch hunt in the household, consecrating, exorcising demons, berating and emasculating all males in the home, and the rest of the Leonards who actually had legal ownership of the home had zero boundaries or spines because they were brainwashed and in a stupor of inaction the entire time.
A trashy, coddled, petulant daughter of a JimJones type cult leader grows up to take over the congregation and employs every tactic in the book to maintain control of the cult, to the utter detriment of her followers, and then one night.
. Pick up the book from this point, here, Really, everything before that is tedious, horrendous recordings transcribed of abuse that causes the reader to suffer the monotony of listening to such a person spew garbage out of her mouth for hours on end.
. . not pleasant! Go with my summary instead!

So continue with the night that was the culmination of the tragedy that had been brewing foryears, and enjoy the rest of the book.


It was beneficial to me, in a sad way, to see that this crap can and does happen right here in my own backyard, that our own, local people sit around and do nothing while animals, children, and even adults are systematically abused and denied the right to live, grow, and practically breathe.
It's not like everyone was shocked that such a thing happened, . . everyone was kind of just waiting for it to get to that point while NO ONE intervened, As with the experience of reading sitelinkEducated, you start to question our society's tenet that we have the right to religious freedom.
Because a lot of abuse of children happens under this umbrella,

So it is a fascinating story but a difficult read actually arduous, not just emotionally difficult,
I think I enjoyed the second half of the book so much more because there were intelligent, strong, takecharge, educated people saying understandable and logical things and getting the prosecution/treatment job done, which was a refreshing change after being mired in garbage and trash and lack of logic for so long in the first part.
I'd recommend it to locals with advice to skip over a third of it, but if you aren't local, some other books about cults would be more interesting, writingwise.



In October, a vehicle arrived at an emergency room in central New York with a severely beaten young man inside.
Lucas Leonard had died before he was brought to the hospital by family members and those in his church community.
Hospital employees knew right away that something was off about the stories they were told, so they called the police.
The facts that emerged were shocking and frightening: the fatal beating of Lucas occurred at the hands of his parents, sister and others in his church.
In WITHOUT A PRAYER, journalist Susan Ashline tells the story of the Word of Life Christian Church in Chadwicks, New York, and how it grew increasingly controlling, dangerous and eventually violent.


The church, originally founded and led by Pastor Jerry Irwin, was a conservative Biblebased congregation, It opened its doors in a former school building, hopeful to fill all the seats in the large sanctuary, Bruce and Deborah Leonard, along with their three children from previous marriages and four together, were there just about from the start and were one of the most devoted families.
The Leonard kids were mostly educated in the churchs school, as the church was the center of their lives, Over the years, the Irwin family became more and more godlike in their power and authority, controlling the Leonards in a variety of ways.


After the frankly bizarre death of Jerry, his daughter Tiffanie became the Pastor of the church, With her ascension, the culture at Word of Life became even more extreme, Believed by her flock to be a prophet of God, Tiffanies sermons stretched out for hours, and she began publicly humiliating her congregants and pitting them against each other.
She was supported by her mother and often flanked by her two brothers, who physically intimidated those in the church.


Ashline does a great job describing the slow, and then incredibly rapid, Word of Life transformation from a church to a cult.
Because the Irwins documented everything they did, she was able to draw from hours and hours of videos, text messages, journals and more.
These same resources helped the police and lawyers understand what led to Lucas fatal beating and the nearfatal beating of his younger brother, Christopher.


WITHOUT A PRAYER is terrifying stuff, and Ashlines clear journalistic narrative style never gets in the way of the story she is telling.
There are a lot of characters here and a great deal of action, not to mention the steadily increasing tension that is key to the events.
Ashline has control of it all, resulting in a fascinating, heartbreaking and fraught pageturner, The moments in which the book slows down or becomes repetitive are few and far between, More exploration of the distinction between churches and cults wouldve been useful, Still, because Lucas is kept at the center of the book, it remains cogent and cohesive,

In the U, S. , religion is both foundational to identity when it is ones own and suspect when it belongs to someone from another tradition.
The story of the Word of Life Christian Church is so compelling because it seems at once familiar enough and yet totally other.
How can something as normal and even comforting as a faith community act so horrifically, with such hatred and violence Ashline avoids easy

judgments in favor of letting the story unfold and the evidence speak for itself.


Overall, WITHOUT A PRAYER is a powerful and absorbing contribution to the libraries of true crime, sociology and longform journalism.


ed by Sarah Rachel Egelman,