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192
Members of Children Of God.
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What is "Children Of God"?
The Family International is a Christian New Religious Movement founded in Huntington Beach, California, USA, in 1968 by David Berg that has been criticized as an authoritarian cult. Originally named Teens for Christ, it has gone under a number of different names. It gained notoriety as The Children of God. -
Who are the Children Of God?
In 1968, preacher David Brandt Berg founded a group initially called Teens for Christ. These teens were hippies or homeless. This church would evolve into the Children of God, which at one point counted 15,000 members.
The church believed in group living and zealous proselytizing, and soon grew to include hundreds of communes. Members of these communities could be isolated, as they didn’t work, people who held real-world jobs were called systemites or send their children to school. -
What are the allegations against the group?
The cult earned notoriety for its sexual practices, which included what Berg dubbed “flirty fishing,” and which found him ordering female followers to have sex with men in order to bring them into the cult. In 1979, he reported that “flirty fishers” had added 19,000 members to the group’s ranks. "It was religious prostitution," one of Berg's daughters told Timeline in 2017. Joaquin Phoenix told Vanity Fair that the introduction of the "flirty fishing" policy drove his parents to leave the group. -
Leaving the Children of God 'sex cult'
One of the first religious sects to be dubbed a “sex cult." Including a “Children of God” documentary. Actors River Phoenix and Rose McGowan were famously members. And writer Lauren Hough addresses her experience in her book of essays "Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing." In his doctrine, sex was godly and should be encouraged between everyone, including children and adults. For women and girls to say no to a Family member meant being labeled “unyielding” and going against God.