Religion and The Family

For many years I've had a fascination with religion. Of all the subjects I have a limited knowledge of I'd have to say that religion (and mythology) is one of my strongest areas. I've tried not to limit myself to the monotheism but given my cultural upbringing I've better versed (pardon the pun) in them and in particular Christianity and it's various offshoots. Unlike a lot of people I know, I hold the view that religion is relatively harmless and in most cases can be quite helpful to various practioners. However, there are groups that are dangerous, many times to the adherents and sometimes to the outside (to their) world. Obviously, extremist groups are dangerous to the rest of the world (and this is means extremists of all faiths). There are plenty of stories out there about extremists groups these days so I'm going to let the experts handle that. My only comment is there seems to be a lack of coverage on Christian and Jewish extremist groups although it is true they don't seem to blow up as many bombs.

In the past week I caught the scent of a group "the Family" which seems harmful to its believers or at least the children of the believers. The Family was originally called Children of God and was formed in Huntington Beach, California in 1968. Many of the early converts were actively recruited from the hippie movement. They preached a message against "the system" which was the outside world and would probably loosely translate to "Corporate America" these days. As the years went on another aspect was a practice of liberal sexuality. By 1974 it led to a form of evangelism called Flirty Fishing where women would witness to lonely men using everything including sex.

Members of The Family lived (and still live) in communes sprinkled around the world. Many are children of Flirty Fishing. It appears there were quite a few instances of abuse, sexual or otherwise. Exposing children to sex at an early age was encouraged in the earlier years of the church as shown in "The Story of Davidito". Davidito's whose real name was Ricky Rodriguez whose life eventually ended in tragedy. After leaving The Family he stabbed his former nanny (who he blamed for some of his abuse) and shortly after killed himself.

Since the mid 1980's The Family has soften their sexual practices and promised to excommunicate anyone who abuses children in anyway. However there are many who claim that those rules have in many instances been ignored.