Jesus Freaks by Don Lattin Page A

Zerby, andamidst the chaos, Merry Berg was born in Mingus, Texas, on June 5, 1972. Within a month, Shula was flying off to London with a newborn baby on her lap.
    Shula’s experience was different than that of most recruits. Her involvement with Aaron gave her an early glimpse of what The Family would soon become. Many of those who joined the sect in 1971 didn’t know David Berg existed when they were first brought into the fold. All they knew at first was that they were joining a band of Christian revolutionaries who were preparing for the Endtime. They had to be hooked before they were fed the teachings of David Berg through his “Mo Letters.” 8
    Consider the story of Jim LaMattery, who joined The Family before he ever heard of David Berg. Family missionaries approached him in a park in San Diego in the summer of 1971. Jim was sitting under a tree. He’d just smoked a joint.
    â€œWant to hear a song?” one of the missionaries asked.
    â€œUm, sure man, I guess so,” he replied.
    Jim loved music and also played guitar. But he’d never heard this song.
    How long you have been waiting ,
    For somebody to love you?
    How long you been waiting ,
    For somebody to care?
    This guy could really sing. Jim asked him if he was in a band.
    â€œYeah,” he answered, swinging his guitar onto his back and sticking his hands into the pockets of his bell-bottom pants. “So what are you doing here?”
    â€œJust hangin’,” Jim said.
    The stranger smiled and turned his head over toward a crimson van that was pulling up to the curb. There was a young girl riding shotgun. Jim gladly accepted his new friend’s invitation to come and have dinner with them. They both piled into the van with the girl and her friend, another attractive hippie chick. Strands of colored glass beads separated the driver and front passenger seats from the rest of the van.All the other seats had been torn out. Intense conversation ensued as the van rolled down the streets of San Diego. They were talking about a revolution of love.
    â€œLove means getting together,” said the girl behind the wheel.
    â€œYeah, and sharing everything,” added the one riding shotgun, flashing a smile at the star-struck teenager. 9
    LaMattery went for dinner and wound up staying six years. At first, when he was living at The Family mission in downtown Los Angeles, he didn’t even know David Berg existed, or that there was another large group of disciples in Texas. Berg’s youngest daughter, Faithy, and her husband were running the colony in Los Angeles.
    Jim LaMattery soon took his guitar into the streets to sing about the revolution of love. It was about Jesus, but not the same Jesus he’d learned about growing up in the Catholic Church. This was radical, revolutionary. Jesus as Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary, not like that good shepherd from Sunday school. It was radical, but there was also a feeling of safety in the sect. It seemed like the war in Vietnam would never end. The prospect of the draft hung over LaMattery and his generation like a mushroom cloud, and The Family was a ready-made bomb shelter. Just before his encounter with The Family, LaMattery had started a summer job picking apricots on a farm outside San Diego. Here was an alternative—a radical, communal alternative to getting sucked into the military or some dead-end job. They were going to change the world, and they had God on their side.
    â€œThey made rebellion look great,” he recalled years later. “It was a radical stance against the government. They called it the ‘gospel of rebellion.’ They used the shell of religion to control people. That put a holy stamp on the whole thing. It wasn’t just a playground or some kind of experimental living. You had some very devoted people.”
    Among those LaMattery brought into the fold was Donna, a nineteen-year-old convert and his future wife. When the word came