HEADS AND HANDMAIDS?:

To be absolutely clear: People of Praise is not an inspiration for The Handmaid's Tale, and the group does not practice sexual slavery or any of the other dystopian practices Atwood wrote about in her novel. But the argument over whether or not the two are connected reflects the deeply contentious atmosphere in which Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court will occur -- and the immense symbolic weight The Handmaid's Tale carries in American popular culture.

Two coincidences led to the idea that there is a People of Praise-Handmaid's Tale connection. The first coincidence is that the People of Praise once had a religious rank called "handmaid." As reported by the New York Times in 2017, People of Praise members are all accountable to a personal adviser. Those advisers offer guidance on major life decisions, including, per the Times, "whom to date or marry, where to live, whether to take a job or buy a home, and how to raise children." And these advisers used to be called "heads" when they were men and "handmaids" when they were women. They have since been renamed "leaders."

The second coincidence is that when Margaret Atwood explained her Handmaid's Tale inspirations to the New York Times in 1987, she described one of them as "a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids." Atwood did not at the time name the sect, so when her quote resurfaced in 2020, it was very easy for some readers to think, Well, People of Praise is a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect that calls the women handmaids, so there you go. Accordingly, on September 21, Newsweek reported that People of Praise was one of Atwood's inspirations for The Handmaid's Tale.

Asked about her inspiration for The Handmaid's Tale by Politico as the controversy heated up, Atwood said she wasn't sure which group she was talking about in 1987. Her archive of work and research is at the University of Toronto, where she can't currently access it due to Covid-19 restrictions. But she's on the record as going through her Handmaid's Tale archives for journalists plenty of times in the past, and during those interviews, she's always cited People of Hope, a different Catholic charismatic spinoff that calls women handmaids.

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