There aren’t many members of the controversial Children of God (COG) sect left in America. Last year the COG’s middle-aged leader, David “Moses” Berg, from his secret hideaway in London, predicted—or pronounced—judgment upon the land, and he ordered the Children out. Parents who hadn’t heard from their children in months suddenly found themselves showered with lavish attention—and requests for travel money and help in obtaining passports. Almost overnight the Children became a world-wide missionary organization, a great leap forward from 1968, when the Berg family and a handful of converts got it all started (see November 5, 1971, issue, page 38).

On almost any Sunday afternoon they can be found singing (“you gotta be a baby”) and dancing in Hyde Park, London, inviting stray youths to dinner in the nearby COG commune. The Children maintain an outpost in Christiana, a former army base in Copenhagen that is now home for 1,000 hippies of various nationalities living in assorted communal arrangements. COG communes are located throughout Western Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America. A colony in Israel has been stirring up controversy with its aggressive evangelistic tactics.

No one knows how many Children there are except perhaps the leaders. The figure heard most is 3,000, but the real total is probably much smaller. The drop-out rate of long-termers is thought to be rising, family-conscious European and Latin American young people are not as apt to sever relationships and leave home as their American counterparts of a few years ago, and overseas Jesus people are much warier of the Children than were the Americans. Curiously, last summer the Children were banned from platform participation in a huge Jesus festival by Danish Jesus people, while at the World Council of Churches meeting in Holland they were welcomed with open arms. (The Children are now courting the establishment; formerly they openly scorned it, even demonstrating in church services.)

The Children have suffered some serious blows recently. Last spring, NBC television aired a devastating close-up of the COG in which Moses Berg was depicted as a dirty old man by his estranged daughter-in-law, Sarah. (Indeed, say insiders, Berg claims he received a revelation from God permitting him to have concubines, including a secretary named Maria. Four-letter words appear in the “Mo letters” he sends to COG colonies, and some letters contain ribald references to sex.) Sarah Berg also alleged that the Berg clan at times sat around in the nude and drank wine. (Mo is said to have okayed wine for married Children because its use improves sexual relationships.)

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A number of Sarah Berg’s allegations were confirmed by David Hoyt, a former Jesus leader in San Francisco and Atlanta who joined the Children at leadership level. Last year, after Hoyt questioned Berg’s theology and policies, Berg said Hoyt was demon possessed, and he instructed other leaders to exorcise the evil spirit. In an ugly scene at COG headquarters in the London suburb of Bromley, Hoyt left COG (he has tried in vain to retrieve his wife and children). He is now linked with millionaire real estate magnate Kenneth Frampton of Bromley in a ministry to ex-Children.

Frampton, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, became one of the Children’s main benefactors after two of his sons joined. He too fell out with the Berg family, mainly over theology and Berg’s apparent role as dictator of the faith. (In an interview in Paris, COG leaders there acknowledged they read Mo letters nightly to the colony. How often do new letters arrive? “Whenever we need a new revelation from God,” replied a COG elder.)

That the unseen Berg is in supreme control cannot be denied. From the moment a “babe” enters COG, his mind is controlled by outside forces. Input is programmed: certain Bible verses, interpretive notes, rationale for new life styles. Output is regulated; he is in utter submission to elders, he is never left alone (not even when he goes to the bathroom), what the group does he does. Further, he is kept at the point of exhaustion. There is simply no time for independent thinking and study. Ironically, many ex-Children, in naming what they missed most in COG, cite personal meditation and Bible study.) Fear is added as a motivating factor: to displease the COG leadership is to displease God. Morality is understood in light of what is good for the COG cause. As for security, the will of the leadership is the will of God.

Many ex-Children say they had trouble framing their thoughts and thinking through decisions in the first days after they left COG. “It was traumatic,” recalled one. “I was on my own.”

Last December, newspapers across the nation ran stories on San Diego-based “deprogrammers” who were attempting to reclaim COG members by forcibly breaking the mental hold that had been imposed upon them. The deprogrammers were members of FREE-COG, a group composed mostly of parents who want their offspring out of COG.

Within the next month or so, at the request of their parents, young people in other groups—from tightly knit charismatic prayer fellowships to secular communes—became targets of deprogramming. Parents literally kidnapped their youngsters and locked them up with deprogramming teams in a room at home or in a nearby motel. This all led to sensational stories in the press in February and March—and to criminal charges against the best-known deprogrammer, Ted Patrick, 43, an African Methodist Episcopal layman in San Diego who once served as a community relations consultant to Governor Ronald Reagan.

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Patrick, whose own son was in COG for a short time, was recently arrested in New York City while helping a parent to force his 21-year-old son into a car. The youth, Daniel Voll, belongs to the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, a charismatic community headed by Hannah Lowe. Proceedings in the case were pending this month.

One of the deprogramming leaders, Mrs. Ila Meece of San Diego, a member of a well-known evangelical church, denies that mainstream Jesus people are targets. “In fact, we use Jesus people as deprogrammers,” she says. “They’re the ones who can get through best to some of these mixed-up kids.”

She says that most of the COG members who went through deprogramming left the Children as a result.

In an interview, she explained how deprogramming works. First, the member is isolated from his group for two or three days. Other Christians stay with him the entire time, praying with him and asking him to explain his relationship to Christ, to answer criticism against COG, to determine whom he is really serving—all the time seeking to draw out independent answers and to convince him that he is loved by family and friends. Scriptural teaching on issues pertinent to COG is also a part, she adds.

In retrospect, what do those who undergo deprogramming think of it?

Jill Huston, 23, who had been with the Children nearly two years, reflects: “You’ve been deceived with the Word. The only way to receive the truth is if someone shares and shows it from the Word.” (When she was first locked in her room, Miss Huston jumped out a window, but later returned at the counsel of a young man from the church.) As for the methods used, “I’m not sure,” she says, “but I guess they have good ends.”

So far, fewer than 100 have gone through deprogramming. Important constitutional questions are involved, and courts may soon be called on to answer them.

Spanish Jesus Blitz

In a recent witness blitz of Zaragoza, a predominantly conservative Catholic city of 500,000 in northern Spain, 350 young Christians sang and preached their way through town in a Jesus march. Thousands of tracts were distributed, and hundreds packed into the largest of the city’s four small evangelical churches for a rally. Forty responded to the invitation to receive Christ.

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Such events were prohibited before 1967, when a religious-liberty law was passed in conformity with Vatican II’s position on non-Catholic churches.

The local Catholic archbishop reportedly asked police to halt the activities, organized by Operation Mobilization and local leaders. Several youths were arrested but were released after several hours of interrogation.

ANGEL CORTES

Case Dismissed

Evangelist Billy Graham had some explaining to do when he got back from the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism. First, reporters wanted to know about a widely publicized comment in which he advocated castration of rapists. Next, they wanted to know why Durban mayor Ron Williams lashed out at the Graham organization on a matter of congress offerings.

Graham conceded the rapist remark was made “offhand” in a South African press conference and one he “regretted almost as soon as I said it.” It came, he said, from a deep concern over the rapid increase in the number of rapes and after reports that a 12-year-old girl may be a psychological invalid for life after being raped by several men. On the other hand, said he, it seems that “the thought of castration for some people stirs a far more violent reaction than the idea of rape itself. Perhaps this is part of our permissive society’s sickness.”

The evangelist’s expression of regret soothed the feelings of black church leaders in Minneapolis who had threatened to boycott Graham’s July crusade there because of the remark, which they interpreted as being underhandedly racist.

On the matter of funds, it was all a mix-up on the mayor’s part, explained a Graham spokesman. After a fire destroyed an Indian market in Durban, congress delegates in a morning session gave an offering of $715 to aid the victims. That afternoon Graham preached at a congress-sponsored rally. At the beginning of the rally the rally’s chairman, a Methodist minister, told about the relief offering and urged the audience to pray for the victims and help any way possible. Later, the rally offering, amounting to $15,700, was received for expenses of the meeting. A designated gift of $143 was received and forwarded directly to the relief fund.

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But Mayor Williams thought the entire offering had been intended for relief, and he cut loose with criticism in the press, implying that the audience had been duped and that Graham was getting a big share of the offering. Graham replied that he had nothing to do with the organization of the congress. Further, said he, “We paid all our own expenses … we did not receive one rand [$1.43] from anybody.”

Later, Williams admitted it was all a misunderstanding, and he apologized for linking Graham’s name to the affair.

Underground Evangelism: The Other Side

Founder-president L. Joe Bass of Underground Evangelism (UE) claims that a recent CHRISTIANITY TODAY news story on UE (see April 13 issue, page 44) was in error at several points.

Bass disavowed an epilogue bearing his by-line that was submitted to a number of publishers with a book manuscript on the life of Sergei Kourdakov, a Soviet defector in UE’s employ who accidentally shot himself to death in Southern California early New Year’s Day. The epilogue, which implied that an assassin may have been in Kourdakov’s motel room at the time, was written by ghost writer Fred Bauer, said Bass, who added that he would not have okayed it had he seen it. In an interview, Bauer acknowledged that he had not cleared its content with Bass, but said he submitted it with the idea in mind that it was subject to revision, following a meeting scheduled later with Bass.

“We accept the [accidental death] verdict of the coroner’s inquest,” says Bass. “Based on the evidence submitted at the inquest, it is the only possible conclusion.” He withdrew the epilogue.

The misinformation and innuendoes contained in the epilogue originated in UE circles shortly after Kourdakov’s death. Partly, said Bass, this was in reaction to rumors that Kourdakov had committed suicide and that he was a Russian agent. Such talk was indeed emanating from the camp of Richard Wurmbrand, a former UE staffer but now a UE foe who heads his own mission to Eastern Europe. Last month Wurmbrand alleged in the German edition of his newsletter that Kourdakov was drunk when he shot himself, contrary to medical testimony showing only a negligible amount of alcohol in the blood at the time of death. UE is contemplating legal action to stop the Wurmbrand rumor mill.

Bass takes issue with another former UE staffer, Haralan Popov, who was mentioned in the news story. Bass insists that he showed Popov the book manuscript he was preparing on Popov’s life (Popov maintains there are inaccuracies in the book), but Popov denies it. Bass provided a letter written by Popov when he was a UE employee in which he defends the book’s factual content, acknowledging only that Bass had “novelized” its style.

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Both Haralan and his brother, Ladin Popov (also a former UE worker), say that Stefan Bankov, 40, a fellow Bulgarian who is now a UE employee, was a deacon and a “Bible worker” in a Pentecostal church in Bourgas, Bulgaria, but not a minister as depicted in UE literature. To prove otherwise, Bass submitted a “certificate” signed in 1972 by retired minister George Cherneff asserting that “Stefan Ivanov [Bankov] has worked as a preacher for two years in the Second Pentecostal Church” and “ministered in other churches.”

Bankov says he was voted in as “the official pastor” of the church in 1958 and served until it was closed in 1964. The Popovs say this is impossible because only the denominational head can appoint ministers, but Bankov sticks by his story. Bass further states that Ladin Popov signed a statement for the American embassy in Sweden in 1969 swearing that Bankov had been a minister. But Popov says he was under pressure to sign it because it was the only way normal immigration rules could be waived.

Contrary to another report in the story, Bass says he “often preached full messages and sermons” on a trip to Yugoslavia in 1960. This was at the invitation of Pentecostal churches there (apparently after he asked if he could come), and he was invited to bring camera equipment, he says, referring to a letter from missionary Nick Gruick. Other letters, Bass says, show that his ministry was fruitful. Gruick was forced to leave because his visa expired, he states (Gruick had blamed Bass).

Not all members of the UE five-member board are employees, says Bass, pointing to Louis Menold (he once did broadcasting work for UE) and new member John Williams, whose data firm services UE. As an organization involved in public fund raising, UE would welcome any official enquiry, comments Bass. A postal investigation in 1964 turned up nothing, he points out. Any specific allegations by former employees “will evaporate and turn out to be unfounded and erroneous,” he says, denying reports of “fabrications” in UE’s printed materials.

Both Bass and UE deputation director Don Kyer say that Kyer’s call to Congressman Earl Landgrebe’s office (in which Kyer mentioned a $300 honorarium “almost as an afterthought”) was Kyer’s idea and not Bass’s. They scoff at any suspicion that it might be an attempt to “bribe” Landgrebe, who has fallen out with UE over the Kourdakov affair.

According to Bass, UE in 1971 printed 175,000 Bibles in six Eastern Europe languages (about 25,000 were sold to other agencies), 145,000 New Testaments, and thousands of other books and hymnals. Additionally, national workers and needy families received assistance in the form of cash or goods, he says. The 1971 UE report shows income and expenses of $1.7 million, $741,000 (41 per cent) of it for administration.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

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