David Brandt Berg (February 18,1919 – October 1, 1994), also known as King David, Mo, Moses David,Father David, Dad, or Grandpa to followers, was the founder andleader of the new religious movement currently known as The FamilyInternational. Berg's group, founded in 1968 among the countercultureyouth in Southern California, gained notoriety for incorporatingsexuality into its spiritual message and recruitment methods. Bergand his organization have subsequently been accused of a broad rangeof sexual misconduct, including child sexual abuse.

Life

Family heritage

His maternal grandfather was Rev. JohnLincoln Brandt (1860–1946), a Disciples of Christ minister, author,and lecturer of Muskogee, Oklahoma. Brandt had a dramatic conversionin his mid-twenties and immediately entered full-time Christianservice. For years he was a Methodist circuit rider. He later becamea leader of the Alexander Campbell movement of the Disciples ofChrist, a restoration movement that developed into the currentProtestant denomination Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Early years (1919–1969)

Berg was born on February 18, 1919, inOakland, California. During his early years, he usually lived in oraround Florida. He was also the youngest of three children born toHjalmer Emmanuel Berg and Rev. Virginia Lee Brandt, both parents wereChristian evangelists. His father was Swedish. His mother is theindividual whom he credited for influencing him the most. Althoughraised in a Christian home, Virginia became an atheist during hercollege years. However, shortly after the birth of her first child,she broke her back in an accident and spent the next five yearsdisabled and bedridden, often hovering near death. Eventually sherecovered and spent the rest of her life with her husband, Hjalmer,in active Christian service as a pastor and evangelist.

Virginia and Hjalmer were no strangersto controversy. They were expelled from the Disciples of Christ afterpublicly testifying of her "divine healing," whichwas contrary to church doctrine. They subsequently joined a newdenomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, shortly beforeDavid Berg's birth. In later years, their missionary zeal and disdainfor denominational politicking often set them at variance with theconservative faction of that church's hierarchy, causing them to worklargely as independent pastors and evangelists.

David Berg spent his early yearstraveling with his parents, who pursued their evangelical missionwith a passion. In 1924, they settled in Miami, Florida, afterVirginia successfully led a series of large revivals at the MiamiGospel Tabernacle. This became Berg's home for the next 14 years,while his mother and father were pastors at a number of Miamichurches. As is the case with many pastors and their dependents, theBerg family depended entirely on the generosity of their parishionersfor their support, and often had difficulty making ends meet. Thisinstilled in Berg a lifelong habit of frugality, which he encouragedhis followers to adopt.

David Berg graduated from Monterey HighSchool in 1935 and later attended Elliott School of BusinessAdministration. Like his father, Berg became a minister in theChristian and Missionary Alliance in the late 1940s, and was placedat Valley Farms, Arizona. Berg was eventually expelled from theorganization for differences in teachings and for alleged sexualmisconduct with a church employee. In Berg's writings he claimed theexpulsion was due to his support for greater racial diversity amonghis congregation.

Fred Jordan, Berg's friend and boss,allowed Berg and his personal family to open and run a branch of hisSoul Clinic in Miami, Florida as a missionary training school. Afterrunning into trouble with local authorities over his aggressivedisapproval of evolution being taught as fact in public schools, Bergmoved his family to Fred Jordan's Texas Soul Clinic, in WesternTexas.

The Children of God/The Family(1968–1994)

David Berg, along with his wife andchildren, founded the organization known as the Teens for Christ,operating out of Light Club coffeehouse in Huntington Beach,California, in 1968. While in California, after receiving strongresistance from local churches due to his followers picketing them,he took the whole group of 40–100 people "on the road."It was while they were camped in Louis and Clark Park that a newsreporter first called them "The Children of God."

In the mid-1970s, Berg began preparinghis followers for a "revelation" he had about"Flirty Fishing" or winning important, influentialmen through prostitution.

In 1975, after letting everyone knowvia one of his letters that his mistress, Maria (Karen Zerby), gavebirth to a so-called "Jesus baby" (as his cultcalled babies born within the cult), Berg changed the name to "TheFamily of Love" or "The Family." Eventuallyin 1991, this was changed to "The Family International."

Berg lived in seclusion, communicatingwith his followers and the public via nearly 3,000 "MoLetters" ("Mo" from his pseudonym "MosesDavid") that he wrote on a wide variety of subjects. Thesetypically covered spiritual or practical subjects and were used as away of disseminating and introducing policy and religious doctrine tohis followers. Berg's letters admonished the reader to "lovethe sinner but hate the sin." His writings were oftenextreme and uncompromising in their denunciation of what he believedto be evil, such as mainstream churches, pedophilia laws, capitalism,and Jews.

Death and legacy

Berg had been in hiding since 1971 anddied in November 1994 in Portugal. He was buried in Costa deCaparica, and his remains were cremated.

After his death in 1994, his wife KarenZerby (also known as Maria Berg) led The Family, and there were 6,000adults and 3,000 children as members of The Family worldwide, in 50countries. There were investigations of The Family for child abuseand prostitution in Argentina, France, Spain, Australia, Venezuela,and Peru.

Controversy

David Berg has been accused of leadinga group which promoted assaults on children and sexual abuse of womenand children for decades. Former members have told their stories inwidely disseminated media reports, though official inquiries at thetime found no evidence of child abuse. Berg was also personallyaccused of pedophilia. He claimed in his letters he was taught tomasturbate in church by another boy his age. He also claimed thatwhen his mother caught him, he was forced to masturbate in front ofhis father. Oftentimes Berg would explicitly describe his sexualpreferences and recalled that one thing he regretted was that henever slept with his mother.

In a child custody case in the UnitedKingdom Berg's granddaughter, Merry Berg, testified that Bergsexually molested her when she was a young teenager. Another ofBerg's granddaughters, Joyanne Treadwell Berg, spoke on Americantelevision about her claim of being sexually abused by David Berg.Berg's adopted son, Ricky Rodriguez, wrote an article on the web siteMovingOn.org in which he describes Berg's sexual activity involving anumber of women and children. Davida Kelley, the daughter ofRodriguez's nanny (Sarah Kelley), accused Berg of molesting her in aJune 2005 Rolling Stone article. In the same article, a womanidentified as Armendria alleged that David Berg sexually abused herwhen she was 13 years old. Despite numerous investigations and claimsby purported witnesses and survivors, Berg was never charged with acrime related to child sexual abuse.

The allegations of Berg'sinstitutionalization of pedophilia and sexual abuse were alsodescribed in Not Without My Sister, an autobiographical recount ofthe sexual abuse of three sisters who eventually escaped The Family.The book describes videos being taken of very young children engagingin sexually explicit activities for Berg's consumption, even as amethod for his choosing of child brides. Serena Kelley claims to havebeen one of Berg's child brides and was purported to have beenpresented by her mother at age 3 to be selected.

His distant Jewish ancestrynotwithstanding—in 1745, one of his mother's forebears, Jewish bybirth but a Christian convert, moved to the American colonies andlived as a Mennonite—David Berg was outspokenly antisemitic,believing that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, aswell as all persecution of Christians in the world. In support of hisviews of an international Jewish conspiracy, he cited the forgedProtocols of the Elders of Zion, but disclaimed the label"antisemitic."

Berg predicted several apocalypticevents that did not occur. His best-known prediction was that thecomet Kohoutek (1974) would wreak havoc and possible destruction.This prediction was shared by others outside The Family, such asJoseph F. Goodavage in the January 1974 issue of SAGA magazine. Healso predicted that the state of California would be subject to amassive earthquake in 1969, the Great Tribulation would begin in1989, and the Second Coming of Jesus would happen in 1993.

Personal family

Berg married his first wife, JaneMiller (known as "Mother Eve" in the Children ofGod), on 22 July 1944 in Glendale, California. They had four childrentogether: Linda (known as "Deborah" in the Childrenof God); Paul, d. April 1973 (known as "Aaron" inthe Children of God); Jonathan Emanuel (known as "Hosea"in the Children of God); and Faith.

Berg married his second wife KarenZerby (and present leader of The Family).

Berg informally adopted RickyRodriguez, the son of his second wife Karen Zerby. In the 1970s and1980s, sexually suggestive photographic depictions of Rodriguez("Davidito") with adult caretakers were disseminatedthroughout the group by Berg and Zerby in a childrearing handbookknown as The Story of Davidito. In January 2005, Ricky Rodriguezmurdered one of the female caretakers shown in the handbook beforetaking his own life several hours later.

Media featuring Berg

Children of God, Documentary,Directed by John Smithson, 1994.

Cult Killer, documentary on RickyRodriguez and child abuse within The Family International.

A&E's Cults and Extreme Belief,episode 3 (2018) is about David Berg, the Children of God, itsvictims, and the survivors.

Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away fromthe Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult, an autobiographywritten by Faith Jones Esq. (Granddaughter of David Berg, Daughter ofJonathan "Hosea") about her experience growing up inThe Family and her subsequent escape at the age of 22.

Apocalypse Child: A Life in EndTimes, A Memoir, Flor Christine Edwards.