The Oracle’s Daughter: The Rise and Fall of an American Cult

Hill’s debut book is an unsettling tale of a uniquely extremist American religious movement—the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps (ACMTC), a faux-paramilitary, high-control religious cult flourishing in the relative anonymity of the Western U.S. What began in the early 1970s as a hippie reclamation of a more militant Christian message devolved into a fanatical fringe movement that chillingly echoes some of the same tenets held by current-day Christian Nationalists. Hill tells the story of ACMTC through three women: the founder, Lila/Deborah; Maura, an early acolyte; and Sarah, Deborah’s daughter. Over time, Deborah, the eponymous oracle, becomes the fulcrum of the movement, increasingly paranoid and certain of the encroaching evil of the world as both Maura and Sarah (as well as others, including children) suffer under her abusive punishments and psychosocial mistreatment. The power of groupthink pervades this narrative when, even years after horrific abuse and eventual escape from ACMTC, each struggles to fully articulate their experiences during legal proceedings against Deborah. Despite legal action, Deborah remains free while the psychic and physical wounds her movement inflicted live on.