In 1973, John, Arlyn and River Bottom left Texas for South America in order to do missionary work for a Christian sect. The ministry’s fifty-four-year old founder, David Moses Berg (left), descended from a long line of Christian clergy going back to the Eighteenth Century. Berg’s mother, Virginia, was a highly respected evangelist with a thriving congregation of her own.

Berg married Jane Miller in 1945, and between then and 1951 had four children: Linda, Paul, Jonathan and Faithy. Sometime during this early stage of child-rearing, Berg joined his father in becoming an ordained minister for the Christian and Missionary Alliance (dates vary from 1948-1954). The church soon expelled him over differences in teaching and an alleged affair with a seventeen-year old church staffer.*

Berg tried to establish his own congregation. After years of futility, he gave up, opting instead to manage his kids’ pop band, Teens for Christ, which traveled throughout the US until winding up in California in 1968. Teens for Christ played in front of captive audiences of west coast beachcombers, and were quite a draw at clubs where Jesus Freaks congregated. Berg eventually collected enough hippie followers to establish his own congregation, which he dubbed the Children of God.**

At first, the Children of God shunned drugs and extramarital sex. Still they participated in protests and other activities one would associate with the counterculture. Police began giving them grief for their political beliefs and aggressive proselytizing, so they left California without so much as a destination. For weeks they drifted about the country, camping out wherever they could, and praying for a miracle. A colleague of Berg’s, first-generation televangelist Fred Jordan, offered them that miracle when granting him use of his 400-acre compound, the Texas Soul Clinic, located in Thurber.

During their stay in Texas, things slowly became unhinged as the 1970s got underway. One of his followers, when leading a prayer group, likened Berg to King David. Berg subsequently began to view himself as the actual reincarnation of Goliath’s slayer. At the same time, he began to develop apocalyptic beliefs. But a vision would mark the start of things to come. As related in the documentary The Love Prophet:

I was lying between two naked women in our camper, when I first received the gift of tongues. The one I was making love to would suddenly turn into one of those beautiful goddesses and I would immediately explode in an orgasm of tremendous spiritual power while at the same time, prophesying violently in some foreign tongue.

After the dream-vision, he wrapped himself in chains and exited the camper. In a very somber tone, he said, in front of amassed followers, “This is what the System marriage will do to you. But Jesus is gonna set us free.” With that, Berg instantly freed himself of the chains in a gesture symbolizing that many of the old taboos and mores regarding sex would be cast off as well.

Soon after, he acted upon this new revelation by dumping his wife, and taking up with his young assistant, Karen Zerby.  And from that point, the Children of God evolved into a cult of free love--at least for followers. Unlike other cults, the CoG weren’t shy about spreading that free love to outsiders…for a small price.

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*The Family International disputes this as the reason for Berg's firing.  According to them Berg was fired because for his attempts to racially integrate his congregation.

**In 1978, Berg reorganized the Children of God, rechristening it The Family of Love. They currently exist as The Family International. Throughout its history, the Children of God/Family of Love has operated under myriad subsidiary organizations, all with different names. When talking about the whole of the group‘s history, I’ll use the term Children of God (CoG), and use the Family of Love (FoL) for actions and events initiated after 1978.