Family, The

Exodus from the United States

Early in the 1970s, the movement spread out across Europe, Latin America, and Asia, leaving a minority of members in the United States. Over the following thirty years, membership tended to hover around 10,000 concentrated in communal households whose average size fluctuated over time. On rare occasions, as many as a few hundred members would converge at one location for a period of months, but more often one or two dozen would form a community lasting a few years. The mobility of the population is illustrated by the fact that half of all members aged sixteen and over have moved in the past year, and half have lived in more than five nations.

[Page 483]The communes are almost invariably established in cities or the suburbs of major urban centers. Members seldom take jobs in the surrounding economy as a result of their being full-time missionaries, as well as trying to keep separate from the society, but they are dependent upon it. The main source of money, food, and services is donations from nonmembers who encounter Family missionaries on the streets. In return, the missionaries give literature, colorful posters, music recordings, and prayer. The group generally rents homes, some of which are large houses that the owners eventually wish to sell, and the rental money comes partly from regular donors and partly from such temporary fundraisers as car washing, selling balloon animals, and babysitting. Many businesses let the group regularly take surplus merchandise, notably excess restaurant food, unpopular cuts of meat, and unsold baked goods.

Ministries of the Family

The Family produces a vast flood of literature, illustrated often by line drawings in a realistic but dramatic style that can be compared with that of action comic books. Internal newsletters are issued every few days, and a collection of handouts has been prepared in many languages. Tracts are called tools for “litnessing” (from literature and witnessing), with literature witnessing constituting the most visible work of the members. Over the years, members have composed hundreds of songs, typically accompanied by guitar, the only form of music heard by members and offered to outsiders.

Both the Holiness movement in American Protestantism and the youth counterculture of the late 1960s emphasized powerful, personal emotions that could energize intense love. Members of the Family are convinced that sexual intercourse, unless of a type explicitly forbidden in the Bible, is not sinful. From biblical passages such as Matthew 22:36–40, Galatians 5:14, Galatians 5:22–23, and Titus 1:15, Berg deduced the Law of Love, that any harmless act performed in God's love and with the consent of those involved, is good. Thus for about a decade ending in the 1980s, the group practiced an erotic form of ministry in which it offered sexual gratification to friendly outsiders as a sample of God's love. Within the homes, consensual sexual sharing is often practiced by adults, including married members if both spouses consent. Artificial birth control techniques are forbidden, and homes tend to raise the substantial number of children collectively.

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