Snapshots of a Cult: “Bible Speaks” in Lenox 1976-1987

Carl Henry Stevens Jr and his “Bible Speaks” organization arrived in Lenox from Maine in 1976, forming a school and community headquartered in an array of buildings around Kemble Street (Springlawn mansion, Ventfort Hall and most of what is now Shakespeare & Company were all absorbed into the Bible Speaks community).
Within its first year there, Bible Speaks swelled the population of Lenox by 10%. And more converts kept joining all the time. Two years later, they accounted for 12% of the population. The majority worked at, went to school at, or lived on site in one of the Bible Speaks properties on or around its 88 acre campus. Lenox residents and officials became deeply concerned as the B.S. community, which paid no taxes, demanded more and more services at the expense of the town. They also found that, as a religious educational organization, under the Dover Amendment they could essentially do whatever they wanted with any structure, irrespective of zoning.

There were also widespread reports of family separation, psychological control, sexual improprieties and “brainwashing” by former members and their family members. This most famously culminated in a lawsuit by Elizabeth Dovydenas (heiress to the Target fortune) and her family, in which a federal judge accused Stevens of “an astonishing saga of clerical deceit, avarice and subjugation” and ordered him to sell the campus and return millions of dollars Dovydenas had been convinced to donate.
Stevens and many followers relocated from Lenox to Baltimore in 1987, where the movement became Greater Grace World Outreach. GCWO continues today as a network of Maryland mega-churches with missionaries on 5 continents.
Pastor Thomas Schaller is now head of the multi-national GGCO.

60 Minutes expose on the Pastor Carl and the Bible Speaks:

More info- International Cultic Studies Association: https://www.icsahome.com/groups/biblespeaks

*Photos courtesy of Berkshire Eagle / Associated Press. Intended as copyright Fair Use for educational purposes. I do not own this content.*

Author: Joe Durwin

Berkshire-based writer Joe Durwin's "These Mysterious Hills" has run on a semi-regular basis for over than a decade, first in the former Advocate Weekly (2004-2009) and iBerkshires.com (2010-2015), along with his local history column Sagas of the Shire. His work on lore and mysteries of the region has also been featured in Fate Magazine, Haunted Times, the North Adams Transcript, as well as William Shatner’s “Weird or What” on the SyFy Channel, Jeff Belanger's "New England Legends," MSG Films’ “Bennington Triangle,” and numerous other programs for public television and radio.

3 thoughts on “Snapshots of a Cult: “Bible Speaks” in Lenox 1976-1987”

  2. I used to work at Blantyre Castle in Lenox in the ’80s, many Bible Speaks people worked there. They seemed normal until one day one of the ladies snapped and screamed at us high school kids who were working there about some bible scripture and damnation or something like that. Heard lots of strange stories about that place growing up, I was glad to see they moved out of Lenox.

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