The Family International: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

One law only — love — read out to its last consequence.

Founded as a coffeehouse ministry to street kids by David Berg in Huntington Beach in 1968 and known for most of its life as the Children of God: a hippie-era evangelistic movement that grew into a worldwide network of shared households run by Berg's mailed letters. Its doctrine reduced the law to a single command to love, and from 1974 to 1987 it practised flirty fishing — using sex to evangelise and to raise money. Berg died in 1994; in 2010 the leadership dissolved the communal homes, and the group now exists mainly as an online network.

On the record

From 1974 until 1987 the group practised flirty fishing, in which women members used sex to recruit and to raise money. Berg's letters of the same period also sanctioned sexual contact between adults and children; the practice was formally forbidden in 1986 and adult–minor contact made an excommunicable offence. Police raided communities in Argentina, France, Spain and Australia between 1989 and 1993; most criminal proceedings were dismissed. In a custody judgment given in the Family Division of the English High Court in 1995, Lord Justice Alan Ward found that the group had permitted the sexual abuse of minors and severe corporal punishment, and made the child's placement conditional on the group repudiating Berg's teachings on the subject, which it did. On 8 January 2005 Ricky Rodriguez — Karen Zerby's son, and the child whose upbringing the group had published as a manual — killed a former member who had abused him as a small child, and then himself.

Why it is filed this way

The communal structure ended in 2010 in a reorganisation the leadership called the Reboot. Members no longer live together and the shared economy is gone; the movement continues online under Karen Zerby and Steven Kelly.

DeitiesTrinitarian in form, with an unusual amount of the devotional weight moved onto the Holy Spirit, addressed as female, and onto Jesus as a lover rather than a judge. In his lifetime Berg was held to be God's endtime prophet, and his letters carried the authority that follows from that.

Founded1968 CE · Huntington Beach, California

FounderDavid Brandt Berg

AfterlifeThe rapture, the millennium and a resurrection body — expected soon, and dated more than once

TextsThe Bible · The Mo Letters — Berg's circulated letters, treated as current revelation

The map

The Family International’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1968 CE The Family International

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

The law is love, and nothing else survives it. Berg's Law of Love held that any act done in genuine love is permitted. It made the group generous, mobile and fearless, and it is what the abuse was justified under. Go deeper — context →

The letters carried the authority. For four decades the group was governed by mailed letters treated as current revelation. Members read the newest one and changed their lives that week; critics and former members describe the same mechanism. ⚖ contested within Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

D David Berg, who was never seen. He led a worldwide movement for twenty-five years by post, from addresses his own members did not know. Photographs of him are rare; the literature drew him as a lion. Domain The letters, and the authority they carriedStanding Held in his lifetime to be God's endtime prophet. The group publicly repudiated parts of his teaching in the 1990s Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

Read the letter, then write down what you get. Devotions ran on the current publication and on prophecy received by ordinary members, written down and circulated. Instruction arrived continuously and was expected to be acted on. When Daily, and at set timesWho Members, individually or in a home Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Judaism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith The Bahá'í Faith — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Family International — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Family International shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

The Family, statement of 1986 and Charter of 1995 (rendered) where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.