Karen Zerby
 |
Karen Zerby | |
|---|---|
| Born | Karen Elva Zerby July 31, 1946 Camden, New Jersey, USA |
| Other names | Mama Maria, Maria David, Queen Maria |
| Occupation | Leader of Children of God/Family International |
| Spouses | |
| Children |
|
Karen Elva Zerby (born July 31, 1946) is the current leader of the new religious movement The Family International (TFI), formerly the Children of God. She also goes by the names Mama Maria,[1] Maria David,[1] and Queen Maria.[2]
Biography
Zerby was raised in evangelical Pentecostalism; her father was a Nazarene minister, and she is credited with bringing the "fundamental Pentecostal principle of being 'spirit-led'" into the church she eventually came to lead.[3] Going by the name Maria she joined the group, then called Teens for Christ, in 1969. After becoming a secretary to David Berg, the group's founder, a sexual relationship started between the two. Eventually Berg left his first wife and Zerby became his wife.[2] Soon after leaving Miller, Berg told the group about a prophecy called "The Old Church and the New Church", which was viewed by some as his justification for leaving his first wife.[4]
In 1975, while living in Tenerife, Spain, Zerby had a son, Ricky Rodriguez.[5] Rodriguez's childhood (Berg was his stepfather) was recorded in a book called The Story of Davidito, which was meant to be an example to other members on how to raise their children, and featured photos of Ricky Rodriguez being sexually molested. The book is controversial for its encouragement of child sexual abuse.[2] The church leadership in this period was highly secretive, living in remote locations and being barely seen by anyone; Zerby was known to the church's followers mostly from cartoons in the Berg-penned MO Letters, as well as the various nude photos of Zerby which Berg included in his publications.[3] In January 2005, Rodriguez killed his childhood nanny Angela Smith (a former member of the cult who sexually molested Rodriguez); hours later Rodriguez committed suicide. In a video recorded the night before, "he said he saw himself as a vigilante avenging children like him and his sisters who had been subject to rapes and beatings". Apparently, he had been looking for his mother and for his stepsister: "He wanted to see his mother prosecuted for child abuse, and to free Techi from the group".[5]
By the mid-1980s Zerby began to issue edicts of her own. Throughout the 1980s she dictated and enforced elements of discipline, ending for instance a training program for children she deemed too harsh.[2] With David Berg's health declining in the late 1980s, Zerby, having been groomed for the position, essentially took over the leadership position in 1988, and in 1994, at Berg's death, she married Steve Kelley, another cult leader, and assumed the spiritual leadership of the cult.[2]
References
- ^ a b Leonard, Bill J. (2012). "Children of God". In Leonard, Bill J.; Crainshaw, Jill Y. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Religious Controversies in the United States. ABC-CLIO. pp. 202–203. ISBN 9781598848687.
- ^ a b c d e Chancellor, James (2014). "A Family for the Twenty-First Century". In Lewis, James R.; Petersen, Jesper Aagaard (eds.). Controversial New Religions. Oxford UP. pp. 13–38. ISBN 9780199315314.
- ^ a b Shepherd, Gordon; Shepherd, Gary (2010). Talking with the Children of God: Prophecy and Transformation in a Radical Religious Group. U of Illinois P. pp. 7–. ISBN 9780252077210.
- ^ House, H. Wayne (2000). Charts of Cults, Sects, and Religious Movements. Zondervan. ISBN 0-310-38551-2.
- ^ a b Goodstein, Laurie (15 January 2005). "Murder and Suicide Reviving Claims of Child Abuse in Cult". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2014.
External links
- Karen Zerby
- xFamily.org Publications Database — contains almost all of the writings by Karen Zerby and her partner Steven Kelly, as well as the entire contents of David Berg's "Mo Letters"