Jesus Freaks by Don Lattin

the time,” she confessed, “I didn’t think I was leaving my daughter. I thought I was putting God first. It was a communal attitude. Your kids were everybody’s kids. When I came back, Susan and her husband were totally in love with my daughter. Aaron didn’t want her. I allowed myself to be influenced by people who didn’t really care about me. Deborah was saying, ‘Do you want to be with Aaron, or do you want to be with your baby?’”
    In 1971, Berg and Zerby went on a secret mission to Israel. The Endtime Prophet had visions of relocating his flock to a kibbutz in the Jewish state. He expected “Hosannas” from the Jews, but wound up getting deported. Few of his disciples at the Texas Soul Clinic knew about it, but Berg and Zerby had returned to the Lone Star State and were hiding out in a Dallas hotel room. Berg would summon his children and other top leaders to the hotel for meetings. One time, Shula was invited to come along with Aaron.
    â€œBerg was blasting the hell out of Deborah and her husband for something. He knew I had issues with Deborah, and I think he invited me in order to impress me.”
    Business was adjourned. Berg was in the mood for one of his “sharing” parties. By now, the prophet had pulled out a bottle of wine and removed his clothes. He was walking around the hotel room stark naked, proclaiming his favorite proverb.
    â€œTo the pure,” Berg said, “all things are pure!”
    Before long, the sharing was in full swing. “Everybody was having sex,” Shula recalled. “It wasn’t like an exhibition. It was under the covers. There was one bedroom with two double beds. There was a mattress on the floor in the living room. Hosea and his wife were off in one corner. I shared with someone other than Aaron. Later on, Berg came up to me in the middle of the night and started kissing me and playing around and said, ‘Oh, I could make you my fifth wife.’ That’s all that happened. The next morning, Berg didn’t remember a thing. He’d had a couple glasses of wine and didn’t remember what he said the night before, and I certainly wasn’t about to remind him.”
    Nevertheless, the young convert had seen what really went on inside the Berg family. She had been initiated into sharing years before the rank-and-file members of The Family could even guess that teaching was coming down the line.
    â€œIn some ways, I guess I thought it was possible to love everybody,” Shula recalled. “Now I see that stuff doesn’t really work. I was twenty, but my maturity level was maybe seventeen or eighteen. Maybe I was trying to break away from my Puritan heritage. I had never been a hippie, so I guess I was trying to be one. I was just totally taken in.”
    Shula’s next child, Merry Berg, was conceived while she and Aaron were off proselytizing across eastern Canada. This time Aaron was the father. Mothers often know the moment their children are created, and Shula believes Merry was conceived in the back of a van heading through the Canadian countryside. Aaron’s mother, Jane, was riding shotgun and her new mate, Stephen, was behind the wheel. By now, Jane had accepted Karen Zerby’s rightful “place above all the maidens.”
    â€œWe [Shula, Aaron, Jane, and Stephen] called ourselves the Fearsome Foursome. It was in some ways the happiest time in my life,” Shula said. “We won people to Jesus every day. People were dropping out of society and joining us. Aaron would write three or four songs in a day. He had a powerful anointing on him.”
    Aaron and his pregnant wife returned to Texas just as the Soul Clinic was breaking up. David Berg had gotten into another battle with his old boss and landlord, Fred Jordan. But there were other reasons to leave. Angry parents and law enforcement authorities were coming after the Endtime Prophet. Berg took off to England with