Family International launches image makeover

Family International: Once dismissed as 'sex cult,' tiny church
launches image makeover

http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_12681558

New leader distances communal church from the past while planning a
broader, brighter future.

By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 06/25/2009

It's a time of intense self-scrutiny for the Family International
(formerly known as the Children of God), a tiny Christian fellowship
that advocates communal living, extramarital sex and an apocalyptic worldview.

Some 40 years after David Berg, a charismatic evangelical preacher,
garnered thousands of hippie followers in Southern California with
his messages about sharing bodies, food, children and homes, the
movement is struggling to reinvent itself. The 1960s church has
battled allegations of past child sexual abuse, complaints from
disaffected and aging members and dissatisfaction with an outdated theology.

All new religious groups face essentially the same question if they
hope to endure: How do you revise some teachings and practices for
wider appeal without forsaking the faith's unique identity and
unconventional doctrines?

"Many desire to see innovation, professionalization and
modernization," Karen "Maria" Zerby, one of the Family's spiritual
and administrative leaders, said last week in her first-ever public
address. "We must determine what elements of our theology, culture
and context are rooted in the past and no longer hold relevance."

Zerby, who was Berg's wife and his successor after his death in 1994,
shared her plans for reshaping the Family at the annual meeting of
the Center for the Study of New Religions in Salt Lake City.

This is no small task for Zerby and her co-leader, Steve Kelly (who
goes by "Peter Amsterdam"). The Family now has about 15,000 members
gathered in small communal centers in 90 nations -- none in Utah.

There is a core group of followers, including some second- and
third-generation members, but fewer than 20 percent of the original
participants remain, and many of the those are in poor health with no
medical insurance or retirement plans.

The church made headlines in 2005 when Zerby's son, Ricky Rodriguez,
murdered Angela Smith, his former nanny and confidante of his mother,
and then shot himself. Rodriguez blamed the Family for ruining his life.

That's all behind us, said two public-affairs representatives for the
church who were in Salt Lake City for the conference.

"We acknowledge that mistakes were made and that there were
excesses," said Claire Borowik, who has been with the Family
International for 30 years. "We've taken stringent measures to right
those wrongs and apologized to former members."

Thus, she said, "we find it disheartening for people to focus so much
on the past."

The Christian counterculture » David Brandt Berg, his first wife,
Jane, and four teenage children arrived in Huntington Beach, Calif.,
in 1968 and felt immediately called to preach among the so-called
"Jesus freaks" who had congregated in the seaside town.

Berg sought young converts willing to "commit themselves to a
radically focused missionary life in which they abandoned worldly
occupations to preach salvation, live communally and share all things
in common," sociologist brothers Gordon and Gary Shepherd wrote in an
essay about the Family in The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions .

The point, the Shepherds wrote, was to be "witnesses for Jesus in the
end time of human history."

When Berg's followers had grown to about 100 members, he became known
as "Father David" and the group "the Children of God." One of them
was a young Karen Zerby, who later became his wife.

Berg communicated his counsel on spiritual and practical aspects of
Christianity via letters of instruction, called "Mo letters," to his
followers. But Berg's Children of God was controversial from the beginning.

It practiced the "law of love," or nonmonogamous sex, as well as
using sex to attract new members in a system known as "flirty-fishing."

"The demand for total commitment to an unconventional missionary
lifestyle that sharply condemned the corruption of the existing
social institutions and established churches, while simultaneously
flouting traditional sexual norms, quickly stigmatized the Children
of God as a religious 'sex cult,' " the Shepherds wrote. "All of this
converged with the brainwashing controversy concerning new religious
movements in the 1970s."

In the aftermath of sensational media attention and hounding by
critics, church leaders restructured the group, changing its name in
1978 to the Family International Inc.

Responding to child-abuse allegations, Berg and Zerby later barred
sexual contact between adults and children and discontinued
"flirty-fishing," conceding some members had misapplied Berg's
liberal teachings about sex.

Since then, the Family has issued seven official apologies to former
and current members for any grievances they had with their
experiences in the group. It also has worked hard to repair its image
and reach out to potential converts.

Family spokesman Lonnie Davis -- who notes that the group keeps
careful records of each pamphlet distributed, DVD sold and Web page
viewed -- said, "We've led 33 million souls to Jesus."

What now? » Zerby's speech in Utah was part of the Family's
coming-out party, said Utah attorney Michael Homer, one of the
conference sponsors.

"The Family has made a decision to begin constructing a more public
profile," he said. "It plans to enhance its Internet presence and
adapt its message to the cultures in which it lives. It also plans to
open the membership to persons who are not full-time missionaries and
do not want to necessarily commit their entire day to Family
activities. This may include allowing members to live outside homes
and not participate in communal living."

The group is honing its missionary appeals, focusing on humanitarian
efforts and social-gospel ministries. It is working to make each
community self-sufficient as well as more open, tolerant and egalitarian.

And its leaders are looking 30 to 50 years into the future, rather
than expecting the return of Jesus at any moment.

That is "a monumental shift" for these believers to contemplate," but
an essential one, Zerby said in her speech.

The hope, she said, is that the Family can "prosper well into the
future as a thriving religious community that is relevant to today's world."
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pstack@sltrib.com
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What the Family International believes

» There is one true, eternal God, who is the all-powerful,
all-knowing, ever-present, invisible spirit of love who created and
rules the universe and everything in it. In the Godhead, there are
three distinguishable but inseparable persons: the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit.

» Everyone can have a personal relationship with God through Jesus
Christ. He can speak to our hearts and give us direction, guidance
and practical solutions to the challenges we face in society today.

» The Holy Bible is the inspired word of God.

» The biblical account of creation as depicted in the book of Genesis
is to be accepted literally and not allegorically.

» Although God has power to heal illnesses, the decision of whether
to rely on prayer alone or to seek medical assistance in addition to
prayer is a personal one, and members are free to avail themselves of
medical assistance.

» The New Testament's account of the lifestyle of the early church
offers not only a historical narrative, but also an exemplary pattern
and model, which God intended succeeding generations of believers to follow.

» Heterosexual relations, when practiced as God ordained, designed
and intended between consenting adults of legal age, are a pure and
natural wonder of God's creation, and permissible according to Scripture.

Source: www.thefamily.org

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