The Endtime Family: Children of God

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1 Persecution Near the end of the second millennium of Christianity, grave doubts existed about the future of faith in Jesus. Materialism in America and atheistic ideologies in Europe eroded religion. Science was claiming ever more of the territory of knowledge for its own, leaving little scope for faith. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals fought the good fight but failed to offer a distinctly new vision of God capable of conquering the brave new world of secularism. A few tiny religious movements challenged the status quo, notably the controversial “Family” or “Children of God.” About the size Christianity was at the time of the crucifixion, it promises religious innovation as well as revival, if only it can survive the persecutions. This chapter will document the high tension with the surrounding sociocultural environment experienced by this remarkable religious movement, based on interviews with many of the participants and on documents provided by the group. The massive repression it has suffered in several nations testifies to the hostility that some outsiders feel toward the Family. Its countercultural history reveals its own opposition to some conventional institutions. The terrible shock of the Argentine raids introduces us quickly to the human beings who suffered them, then a flashback scans the quarter century of development that brought the movement to this crisis. The goal of this chapter is an understanding of the human meaning that sectarian tension has for the members of the Endtime Family. Assault At 2 o’clock in the morning of September 1, 1993, eleven-year-old Steven awoke suddenly in his Buenos Aires commune, as heavily armed police burst 1 into the bedroom he shared with a half dozen other boys of the Family. They grabbed him out of bed, and without a word of explanation a doctor began checking him all over. Soon a psychologist was bombarding him with questions but giving no answers in return. In the cold rain, the police moved the boys between the converted garage and the house, and then back again to get a change of clothing. The raiders threw all their possessions in heaps scattered across the floor, as if they were frantically looking for something. Except for muttering about lawyers and saying the children would be allowed to say goodbye to their parents, they refused to respond to any questions. Then, breaking their promise, they pushed the children on a bus without letting them see their mothers and fathers, and rushed them off into the gloomy night as the littlest ones cried and the bigger ones stared anxiously into the darkness. Across town in the Media Home reserved for those who had responsibility for communicating with officials and the press, Steven’s mother, Claire, awoke at the same moment as her son to yells and pounding on the door. As the police burst in, they commanded the stunned Family members to raise their hands or be shot, and they waved a search warrant that gave no clue about the purpose of the raid. Within moments, fifty officials and social workers had invaded the home, herded the three children into the living room where one of the parents prayed with them, and began confiscating written material and tape recordings. Police vehicles carried most residents of the home away in a short time, but Claire and some of the men were kept under house arrest for sixteen hours while the officers cataloged all their possessions. One asked Claire where the safe was, and when she told him there was none he angrily threatened to tear the place apart until he found it. Later she refused to sign a statement agreeing that the material confiscated was sufficient evidence to justify her arrest. Surrounded by four policewomen, she was hauled off and held incommunicado, told she had no right to know the charges against her or to see her son. At the Flare, a home for seventeen young adults, Sunny was still half asleep when a camera flashed in his face and men in bulletproof vests with semi-automatic weapons stormed into his room. They took his passport and told him he was under arrest, as guards stood by the telephone to prevent them from warning other Family homes and from calling their lawyer. The teenagers gave the raiders Christian witness, telling them they were unwittingly involved in religious persecution and projecting a confidence during this horrible episode that could only have come from profound faith in God. Most residents of the home legally were minors, and before...