Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is back in the news thanks to reporters and liberal voices who imagine that the Catholic Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and a religious group to which she reportedly belongs, will bring about the dystopia portrayed in the book and the movie based on it. Newsweek went so far as to claim that the community, People of Praise, inspired Atwood’s book, later correcting itself to say that it is “a type of Christian religious group that served as inspiration” for her book.

The scare stories about People of Praise, a self-described “charismatic Christian community” made up of Catholics and various Protestants alike, allege that the group is “cult.” The strongest evidence the critics leveled against the group was that they actually used to call certain members “handmaids.” With that, has People of Praise served critics the case against itself on a silver platter?