A.k.a. Shane Broussard (original name)
We’ve had some opportunities to cover the depraved insanity known as the Miracle Mineral Supplement and the organization promoting it, the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing – as well as the product’s inventor, the unfathomably delusional and Jim Humble – before. But the product remains somewhat popular in certain circles (after all, Trump arguably endorsed it at one point). What kinds of cartoonish huckster or cartoonishly reality-deprived dingbats are pushing it?
Well, at least some of those reality-depraved dingbats are people like Shane Hawkins. Hawkins is a “Genesis II Church Reverend” who arranges “sacramental classes” where people can learn, for a fee (a $500 cash “donation” to the church), the “chemistry of chlorine dioxide solution.” Said fee also includes a one-year church membership, a “Reverend Certificate” (yes, the whole thing seems to be some kind of MLM scheme), the ability to “restore health from 95% of the diseases of mankind,” plus drinks and snacks. Health authorities have tended to be less than impressed, and such sacramental classes have a certain tendency to run into trouble with the venues in which they are supposed to be held when owners of the venues learn what is actually going to take place. Proponents like Hawkins of course chalk such cancellations up to “religious persecution” (though officially “non-religious” the church consistently use religious titles and terminology to make the ‘religious persecution’ gambit available and to avoid troubles with authorities reluctant to engage with anything religious). So when Hawkins learned about how the Harris County Attorney was trying to prohibit sales of MMS after one of his events at the Ramada Houston Intercontinental Airport East, Hawkins was clear: “You mean trying to violate my religious freedoms? That’s all I’m going to say about it. We don’t do interviews – the Archbishop has told us not to do interviews with the press because you guys have always twisted our words and made us look in a negative light, no matter what we say.” Yes, quoting anything Hawkins says verbatim does indeed make him come across as a loon.
That quote was for the media. Hawkins’s official response to the County Attorney was “i:man, Shane, accept for value your complaint…i:man, Shane, will settle the matter, on the private side, with any man or woman who verifies that I have done wrong, injury or harm to said man or woman.” There’s a bit to unpack there but nothing is anything but clinically insane. And no, it didn’t work.
Hawkins’s background is also colorful. Prior to establishing “Chapter 119” of the Genesis II Church, Hawkins – originally Broussard – was a member of the polygamous cult the House of Yahweh, which was founded in a West Texas trailer park by ex-Abilene police officer Bill Hawkins (later “Yisrayl Hawkins”), and which we have, indeed, covered before. Among Yisrayl Hawkins’s numerous whims was ordering all his followers to change their surnames to ‘Hawkins’, hence ‘Shane Hawkins’. As member of the cult, Shane Hawkins was living meagerly in tenements on his leader’s 44-acre property for years, before switching to Humble’s cult instead – which is easy: all you need to do to become a “consecrated” bishop or health minister, and qualify to teach others how to use MMS, is to attend a seminar, usually held in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Vallarta.
A central tenet of the church is to drill it into the heads of their bishops that the Miracle Mineral Solution is not bleach (it is), and that MMS being bleach is just what the government wants sheeple to believe. Also members are “exempt” from “vaccinations, medications, X-rays, scans, mandatory voting, and health insurance mandated by a human government or authority.” So there.
Diagnosis: Nothing that falls out of his mouth is anything but unhinged at any level. Even among the set of people covered here, Hawkins stands out – and his House of Yahweh background strongly suggests that he is not primarily a fraud.
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