Life in the Family: An Oral History of the Children of God (New Religion Movements)

By James D. Chancellor

From a unique insider's perspective--including interviews with more than seven-hundred family members--James Chancellor charts The Family's course since its emergence as the most controversial group to grow out of the Jesus People Movement in the 1960s.

Chancellor, who had extraordinary access to rare Family records, includes the experiences of members who have remained loyal to the community and to the founding vision of their prophet, David Brandt Berg. In the first book of its kind--comprising often painful personal histories and firsthand accounts--Chancellor focuses on the motivation and process of becoming a Child of God, the core beliefs of the community, the mission of the disciples, their shifting sexual mores, and the cost of membership in terms of internal discipline and external persecution.

Intense confrontation with the legal, religious, political, and educational establishment marked the movement's activities from the beginning. The young disciples heeded the call of their prophet to flee a soon-to-be-destroyed North America. Dispersed throughout Europe, Latin America, Africa, and East Asia, they virtually disappeared from the American landscape. In the late 1980s, The Family had gone through extreme theological and lifestyle changes, including a radical reordering of their sexual ethos. The Children of God started to come home. Now a worldwide counterculture of some twelve thousand members, the movement's colorful history reveals a profoundly religious group that has tested the limits of human experience.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815606451
• ISBN13: 9780815606451
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

First hand knowledge leads to top notch insight

Dr. Chancellor has done something that most do not especially when investing an entity that most people refer to as a "cult". By spending more time with the group than anyone else in academia, Chancellor is able to offer insights that would otherwise be distant observations. How a group views themselves offers added detail that the normal objective theological observation does not. Chancellor is right when he said recently that he was not the nations leading cults expert, but that he is the leading authority on the Children of God.

Distorted?

This is mainly a comment on previous remarks on the book. I think it is helpful to know that Dr. Chancellor poured over six years of his life in unprecedented close contact with followers of the Children of God from all over the world. When he was done with his research, the manuscript was reviewed by Peter Amsterdam himself, second in leadership of the movement. Amsterdam found only two factual errors, which were corrected, despite the clear portrayal of the movement's self-admitted embarassing practices. From Dr. Chancellor's own mouth, he does not in anyway support their practices. By stating that they have made improvements simply means just that. It is not the same as supporting them.

BEST AND MOST ACCURATE BOOK ABOUT "THE FAMILY"

This book is one of the best and most honest ones about the"Family", a Christian humanitarian international movement that is out all over the world following Christ's commandment "to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature". The"Family" lives communally like the early Christians in Acts lived and are really "succesful" because they put God's Love for mankind into action. I can only recommend this book.