[djohnson(XLCmember)]

Hope I am not suggesting that the LCS is the one and only factor contributing to the unhealthy behavior of many who grew up in it. My question is more nuanced than that i.e. what role did it play? Of all the factors how big is the LCS factor?

I happen to think this is an important question because the LCS is not like many other churches i.e. it is primarily a sub culture complete with their own mode of dress, language, habits, mores, customs, etc. and pride themselves in being separatists as it were. They are more or less like an Amish community. If someone comes out of the Amish community certainly one would not need to be a rocket scientist to deduce that the community in which they were born and breed had a tremendous effect on their behaviors. What effect is the question.

Like the Amish my observation of the LCS is that of all the influencing factors in a child's life the biggest and most powerful was the group itself. Not the family, not the parents, not the schools they went to, not their neighborhood, etc but the LCS. It dominated their lives and was/is the prism through which they see all else.