Family heritage Berg's maternal grandfather was John Lincoln Brandt (1860–1946), a
Disciples of Christ minister, author, and lecturer of
Muskogee, Oklahoma. Brandt had a dramatic conversion in his mid-twenties and immediately entered full-time Christian service. For years he was a Methodist circuit rider. He later became a leader of the
Alexander Campbell movement of the
Disciples of Christ, a
restoration movement that developed into the current Protestant denomination
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The Brandt family were descended from ethnic
German Jews who had converted to
Anabaptism in the 18th century, with involvement with the
Mennonites and the
Dunkard Brethren Church.
Early years (1919–1969) Berg was born on February 18, 1919, in
Oakland, California. During his early years, he usually lived in or around Florida. He was the youngest of three children born to Hjalmar Emmanuel Berg and Virginia Lee Brandt, both Christian
evangelists. His father, a
Swedish immigrant, was a
minstrel performer and singer who had been converted to the Disciples of Christ by his father-in-law. Virginia and Hjalmar were expelled from the Disciples of Christ after publicly testifying of her
divine healing, which was contrary to church doctrine. They subsequently joined a new denomination, the
Christian and Missionary Alliance, shortly before David's birth. In later years, their missionary zeal and disdain for denominational politicking often set them at variance with the conservative faction of that church's hierarchy, causing them to work largely as independent pastors and evangelists. Berg spent his early years traveling with his parents, who pursued their evangelical mission. In 1924, they settled in
Miami, Florida, after Virginia successfully led a series of large revivals at the Miami Gospel Tabernacle. This became Berg's home for the next 14 years, while his mother and father were pastors at a number of Miami churches. Berg graduated from
Monterey High School in 1935 and later attended Elliott School of Business Administration.
The Children of God/The Family (1968–1994) Berg and his family founded the organization Teens for Christ, operating out of the Light Club coffeehouse in
Huntington Beach, California, in 1968. While in California, after encountering strong resistance from local churches due to his followers picketing them, he took the whole group of 40–100 people on the road. It was while they were camped in Lewis and Clark Park that a news reporter first called them "The Children of God". Around the end of 1969, about 200 members of the COG group established a 425-acre "colony" several miles from Thurber, Texas - a ghost town. This acreage was owned by the American Soul Clinic. In the mid-1970s, Berg began preparing his followers for a "revelation" he had about
Flirty Fishing, or winning important, influential men through prostitution. By 1971, the COG claimed that it had 4,000 members, mostly consisting of teenagers and people in early 20s. In November of 1971, COG's colony was evicted after a serious disagreement with American Soul Clinic's head Fred Jordan and other associates. In 1991, this was changed to "The Family", and in 2004 it was changed again to "The Family International". Berg lived in seclusion, communicating with his followers and the public via nearly 3,000 "Mo Letters" ("Mo" from his pseudonym "Moses David") that he wrote on a wide variety of subjects. These typically covered spiritual or practical subjects and were used as a way of disseminating and introducing policy and religious doctrine to his followers. Berg's letters admonished the reader to "love the sinner but hate the sin". His writings were often extreme and uncompromising in their denunciation of what he believed to be evil, such as mainstream churches, pedophilia laws, capitalism, and Jews.
Death and legacy Berg, who had been in hiding since 1971, died in November 1994 in Portugal. He was buried in
Costa de Caparica, and his remains were cremated. After his death in 1994, his wife led The Family, and there were 6,000 adults and 3,000 children as members of The Family worldwide, in 50 countries. There were investigations of The Family for child abuse and prostitution in Argentina, France, Spain, Australia, Venezuela, and Peru. ==Sexual abuse, antisemitism, and apocalyptic predictions==