Teens for Christ Leader Ordered Picketing of GWC!
Daily Pilot, California
December 10, 1968, North America
The sandal-shod Teens for Christ have been ordered by their “spiritual adviser” to begin picketing Golden West College as one member of the militant Huntington Beach sect faced arraignment on week-old trespassing charges.
“Uncle” Dave Berg, leader of the band of hippie-appearing young people, announced the sandwich board protest Sunday at the conclusion of an evening meeting at the First Baptist Church of Fountain Valley.
The Teens, headquartered at 116 Main St., attended morning worship services at the First Christian Church of Orange then would up their 24-hour-day personal evangelism with the panel discussion in the sanctuary of the Baptist Church at 17415 Magnolia St.
Both visits were by invitation. Previous march-ins were surprise processions during worship services.
The decision to send pickets to Golden West stems from the Dec. 6 arrest of six of the self-named “Christian revolutionaries” found distributing religious tracts on campus.
Full congregations greeted the band at both the Orange and Fountain Valley churches.
Berg in dark glasses and wearing a wooden ox yoke around his neck told wide-eyed Baptists, “We believe in the message of Jeremiah, the prophet of doom, who wore a yoke as a symbol to his own people of their coming bondage.”
The 49-year-old former high school teacher shouted to the 200-strong congregation that America has “forgotten God.”
He stated the public school system had become the sounding board of “atheism, Leninism, Communism and evolution and was anti-God, anti-Christ and anti-Bible.”
Berg’s daughter, Mrs. Faith Dietrich, speaking to a question of the group’s opposition to alleged hypocrisy in organized religion, said the Teens are “tired of seeing people in churches sitting on their haunches doing nothing.”
She added teenagers would be “thrown out of school if they believe in Christ.