The Children of God

By Post News Services, The Houston Post, Texas

January 3, 1970, North America

It was about dark on Wednesday—the end of a day, the end of a year, the end of a decade—when the band of “Christian revolutionaries” rolled their Jeeps into Spring Creek Park near Tomball.

They had found a new home—for one week.

There is perhaps no more typical symbol of the main theme in the story of religion in the 1960’s than this scene, to which Houston ministers responded both critically and with praise this week.

The theme has been called “provisional, mobile, questioning, inventive, heterogeneous, open-ended.”

THE WORDS accurately describe “The Children of God,” some 100 such mobile young people and adults, who began the new year in the Houston area after meandering 1,500 miles.

The group claims, like the biblical writer, that “here we have no continuing city. Church buildings, they say, “are a lie and abomination.”

“Churches of today say come down and get, get, get,” said …

By John McCleskey, Editor, Stevenville Empire-Tribune, Texas

January 3, 1970, North America

“Today’s younger generation is now relying on drugs throughout the nation in an effort to seek true personal identity and solutions to society’s ever-mounting social, governmental and economic problems. Our delegation is assembled here to fulfill God’s teachings according to the Bible. Praise the Lord, brethren.”

These idioms were voiced Thursday afternoon by Jonathan Byrd, former Huckabay resident and spokesman for the “Children of God” assembly now residing some five miles south of the Thurber community. The site is owned by Henry Jordan of Los Angeles, founder of the Texas Soul Clinic in 1946.

Initiated in 1967 by Byrd’s parents, the Children’s working teams began traveling throughout the United States recruiting members for their movement and reorganized approximately five months ago to begin solicitations in several major cities. This tour included sessions in Washington, D. C., New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago and recently Houston before entering their Erath County …

Miami Herald, Florida

January 1, 1970, North America

Houston—(AP) “I ran into a man today who gave me $20,” said a quiet-voiced youth to a gathering at a campsite among pine trees north of Houston.

“He told me he didn’t ordinarily give to charity. I told him he was not giving to charity, but for charity.”

“Amen!” exclaimed many of the people assembled with the speaker around a pot-bellied stove in the tent.

Such a revival meeting atmosphere is one aspect of what happens when the “Children of God,” a nomadic flock of young people reach town.

They insist that theirs is the last generation and that revolution, either from within or from outside, will destroy the nation soon.

Thus their vigils and witnessing are of warning and mourning.

THE GROUP reflects a simultaneous looking back and looking ahead, a curious combination of old-time fundamentalist religion, monastic life confined to no one place, and modern underground church which …