The Family International
The Family International is an American new religious movement founded in 1968 by David Brandt Berg. The group has gone under a number of different names since its inception, including Teens for Christ, The Children of God, The Family of Love, or simply The Family.
A British court case found the group to be an authoritarian cult that engaged in the systematic physical and sexual abuse of children, resulting in lasting trauma among survivors. The group has also been accused of targeting vulnerable people.
As of the 2010s, the group was still active and involved in missionary work internationally.
Overview
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "at its height" the Family movement had "tens of thousands of members, including River and Joaquin Phoenix, Rose McGowan, and Jeremy Spencer".TFI initially spread a message of salvation, apocalypticism, spiritual "revolution and happiness", and distrust of the outside world, which the members called The System. Like some other evangelical Christian groups, it "foretold the coming of a dictator called the anti-Christ, the rise of a brutal One World Government, and its eventual overthrow by Jesus Christ, in the Second Coming".
In 1976, TFI began a method of evangelism called Flirty Fishing that used sex to "show God's love and mercy" and win converts, resulting in controversy. TFI's founder and prophetic leader, David Berg—who adopted the name "Moses David" while in the Laurentides in Canada, and was also referred to "Father David" by members—gave himself the titles of "King", "The Last Endtime Prophet", "Moses", and "David".
Berg communicated with his followers via "Mo Letters"—letters of instruction and counsel on myriad spiritual and practical subjects—until his death in late 1994. After his death, his widow Karen Zerby became the leader of TFI, taking the titles of "Queen" and "Prophetess". Zerby married Steve Kelly, an assistant of Berg's whom Berg had handpicked as her "consort". Kelly took the title of "King Peter" and became the face of TFI, speaking in public more often than either Berg or Zerby. There have been multiple allegations of child sexual abuse made by past members, including against Zerby.
Berg preached a combination of traditional Christian evangelism, with elements popular with the counterculture of the 1960s. There was much "end-of-the-world imagery" found in the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, preaching of impending doom for America and the ineffectiveness of established churches. Berg "urged a return to the early Christian community described in the Bible's Book of Acts, in which believers lived together and shared all," resembling the communal living of late 1960s hippies.
History
The Children of God (1968–1977)
The founder of the movement, David Brandt Berg, was a former pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, an evangelical Protestant denomination. Berg started in 1968 as an evangelical preacher with a following of "born-again hippies" who gathered at a coffeehouse in Huntington Beach, in Orange County, California. In 1969, after having a revelation "that California would be hit by a major earthquake", he left Huntington Beach and "took his followers on the road".They would proselytize in the streets and distribute pamphlets. Leaders within The Children of God were referred to as The Chain. Members of COG founded communes, first called colonies, in various cities.
Around the end of 1969, about 200 members of the COG group established a 425-acre "colony" several miles from Thurber, Texas – a ghost town. This acreage was owned by the American Soul Clinic.
By 1971, the COG claimed that it had 4,000 members, mostly consisting of teenagers and people in early 20s. In November of 1971, COG's colony was evicted after a serious disagreement with American Soul Clinic's head Fred Jordan and other associates.
Berg communicated with his followers by writing letters. He published nearly 3,000 letters over a period of 24 years, referred to as the Mo Letters. In a letter written in January 1972, Berg stated that he was God's prophet for the contemporary world, attempting to further solidify his spiritual authority within the group. Berg's letters also contained public acknowledgement of his own failings and weaknesses, for example, he issued a Mo Letter entitled "My confession – I was an alcoholic!" relating his depression after some of his closest supporters quit in 1978.
In 1972, a Mo Letter reportedly entitled "Flee as a Bird to Your Mountain" was interpreted by some members, including Ruth Gordon, author of Children of Darkness about the cult, as a warning to leave America. "God was going to destroy the U.S.... and we had to get out." This, along with the pressure members felt that parents were trying to "rescue" children who had joined CoG, encouraged members to " abroad—first to Europe, eventually to Latin America and East Asia".
By 1972, COG stated it had 130 communities around the world, and by the mid-1970s, it had "colonies" in an estimated 70 countries. BBC reported 10,000 full-time COG members in the 1970s.
In 1974, the NY Attorney General’s Office called the COG a “cult”. Investigations by the FBI and Interpol were underway and hunted for Berg. One informant had spoken of rape, imprisonment, kidnapping, as well as incest inside the group. The investigations, however, ended in 1994 when Berg died.
In 1976, Berg introduced a new proselytizing method called Flirty Fishing, which encouraged female members to "show God's love" through sexual relationships with potential converts. Flirty Fishing was practiced by members of Berg's inner circle starting in 1973, and was introduced to the general membership in 1976.
The Family of Love (1978–1981)
The Children of God was abolished in February 1978, and Berg renamed his group "The Family of Love" In what Berg called the "Re-organization Nationalization Revolution". Berg reorganized the movement, dismissing "more than 300 leading members after hearing unspecified 'reports of serious misconduct and abuse of their positions." Reportedly involved were The Chain's abuse of authority, and disagreements within it about the continued use of Flirty Fishing. The group was also accused of sexually abusing and raping minors within the organization, with considerable evidence to support this claim. One eighth of the total membership left the movement. Those who remained became part of a reorganized movement called the Family of Love, and later, The Family. The majority of the group's beliefs remained the same.The Family of Love period was characterized by international expansion.
After 1978 Flirty Fishing "increased drastically" and became common practice within the group. A Mo Letter from 1980 for example was headlined "The Devil Hates Sex! — But God Loves It!".
In some areas flirty fishers used escort agencies to meet potential converts. According to TFI "over 100,000 received God's gift of salvation through Jesus, and some chose to live the life of a disciple and missionary" as a result of Flirty Fishing. Researcher Bill Bainbridge obtained data from TFI suggesting that, from 1974 until 1987, members had sexual contact with 223,989 people while practicing Flirty Fishing.
The Family (1982–1994)
According to the Family's official history, the group had "far fewer common standards of conduct" during The Family of Love stage than it had previously. In the late 1980s the group "tightened its standards" "to ensure that all member communities provide a very wholesome environment for all, particularly the children", and changed its name to "The Family". In March 1989, TF issued a statement that, in "early 1985", an urgent memorandum had been sent to all members "reminding them that any such activities are within our group", and such activities were grounds for immediate excommunication from the group. In January 2005, Claire Borowik, a spokesperson for TFI, stated:Due to the fact that our current zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual interaction between adults and underage minors was not in our literature published before 1986, we came to the realization that during a transitional stage of our movement, from 1978 until 1986, there were cases when some minors were subject to sexually inappropriate advances ... This was corrected officially in 1986, when any contact between an adult and minor was declared an excommunicable offense.
After a 1993 expose in the Los Angeles Times, the group broke "years of virtual silence" and began "inviting reporters and religious scholars" to visit its commune in La Habra, California, where Washington Post journalist Gustav Niebuhr found its members to be "a clean-cut bunch, friendly and courteous". At that time The Family claimed to have "about 9,000 members worldwide, with about 750 scattered across the United States". The group emphasized its mainstream Christian opposition to abortion, homosexuality, drugs and drunkenness and its respect for Rev. Billy Graham.
Internationally, the Family had been subject to police investigations and prosecutions during this period for child protection and morality offenses. Investigations are known to have occurred in Argentina, Australia, England, France, Italy, Norway, Peru, Spain and Sweden. In Argentina and Australia, children were taken into state custody for protection, then released after examination.
The Family (1995–2003)
After Berg's death in October 1994, Karen Zerby assumed leadership of the group.In February 1995, the group introduced the Love Charter, which defined the rights and responsibilities of Charter Members and Homes. The Charter also included the Fundamental Family Rules, a summary of rules and guidelines from past TF publications which were still in effect.
In the 1994–95 British court case, the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Alan Ward ruled that the group, including some of its top leaders, had in the past engaged in abusive sexual practices involving minors and had also used severe corporal punishment and sequestration of minors. He found that by 1995 TF had abandoned these practices and concluded that they were a safe environment for children. Nevertheless, he did require that the group cease all corporal punishment of children in the United Kingdom and denounce any of Berg's writings that were "responsible for children in TF having been subjected to sexually inappropriate behaviour".