The Children of God

Jerusalem Quits Errant Ways to Join ‘Children’

Tucson Daily Citizen

December 24, 1971, North America

Instead, just three weeks ago she joined the new Tucson colony of the Children of God, a four-year-old fundamentalist sect that has been linked with bitter controversies throughout the country.

As “Jesus revolutionaries” Jerusalem and her dozen or so fellow disciples at 1609 E. Silver Lake Road scorn drugs, premarital sex and material goods and goals. They hold to a literal reading of the Bible and believe the world will soon end.

Like more than 1,500 other Children living in nearly 50 US colonies, most of them in Texas and southern California, the fervent youths now living here subject themselves to a rigid lifestyle.

Their authoritarian ways are in stark contrast to the formerly permissive habits of typical converts such as Jerusalem, but somehow seem to attract the lost, lonely and depressed.

Before this month, Jerusalem was a University of Arizona art student – a senior set to graduate this June because her parents wanted her to go to college.

With her unsuspecting parents in Philadelphia, she somehow became a “speed freak,” turning to prostitution, she said, to pay for the drugs.

A few days after Thanksgiving she “OD’ed” – took an overdose – and wound up in the UA Infirmary. On coming down, she was shown the door – put out in the street to be found by recently arrived Children.

Now, as one of the Children, she has given up her original name for a Biblical one and given up the lifestyle that led her to two abortions. Jerusalem lives with a communal cult, which says it’s not just another “Jesus people” group, not a sect “out to just get people off drugs to get our own glory for it.”

Despite some seemingly similar views, the Children or different from the dozens of recently formed religious groups.

In a conversation the other day, she and two other Children, Seth and Asaph, talked about the heated disputes the group has been embroiled in and about what they said the sect really represents.

About 250 Children were driven out of a colony near the west Texas town of Mingus in October, and other bands have been forced out of encampments near San Diego and Los Angeles.

“In California,” Seth said, “the people had heard so much about Jesus they were sick of it. When you went up to them, they said they had heard all about it. They don’t want to listen.”

In Tucson the situation seems to be different, one of the reasons the Cincinnati-bound Children group decided to set up a colony here about a month ago.

The local disciples hope to take up teaching and counseling activities.

“We’ll teach them (drug users) the Bible and we may even get into a lot of heavy prophecy,” said Seth.

“The kids here are hungry for the word of God. We saw the need – we saw all the street people that came down here or the weather. And Tucson is close to the border so there’s a lot of drug traffic.

“Kids are walking around the streets looking for a home; they’re on drugs and some are into crime. It’s our ministry to help these people.”

“The Bible says ‘Lay not up for yourself treasures on earth … but lay up for yourselves treasures in heave (Matt. 6:19)’.” Seth said.

He and the other Children carry around pocket Bibles as Mao Tse-tung’s most devoted carry the Red Book, memorizing passages and defending their actions and beliefs with verse after verse.

The slogan, “A sample, not a sermon,” sums up much of their philosophy. Asaph, aged 20, explained it this way:

“(Before I joined the Children) I started doing grass and then dealing, and then I started doing a lot of heroin. My mid was closed to Jesus because I was everybody preaching but nobody giving a sample.”

Giving a sample – or practicing what one preaches – means more than leading a somber, ascetic life for the Tucson Children.

Although they don’t believe in working for money, they do work – their new last names indicate their communal assignments. Zebulon, farming; Joseph, procurement of goods; Levi, elders; Ephraim, laundry.

Some are cooks and seamstresses, others printers, photographers and auto mechanics.

Women’s liberation leaders would have a difficult time with Children. Females are considered to be the handmaidens of the Lord and men run the colonies.

The girls prefer long dresses and the boys’ hair is short in comparison to other youths. A few disciples wear beards, but keep them neatly trimmed.

Although Asaph said the Children include members of all ages, most of them are 15 to 30 years old. All religious backgrounds and all races are represented. Many of the youths are physically ‘unlovely,” and some used to be emotionally crippled.

For every day, from 8 a.m. to midnight, the hierarchy works out set schedules.

Half of the day at the three-bedroom rented house here is set aside for reading (the Bible) or dining or talking – always in groups, never individually.

Searching for sheep – possible converts – takes up much of the remainder of the disciples’ time. They pile into the “prophet bus” and head for a park or district, such as the East 8th Street area near the UA, where sheep can be found.