Jesus Freaks
Don Lattin
A pair of wannabe religious leaders came to California at the height of the Summer of Love and got ideas. All that naivety and idealism on display seemed ripe for corruption. They both set up cults and attracted a family of followers. Their main method for growing their church was to use young women as honey traps, “sacred whores” practising the art of “flirty fishing,” or just plain prostitutes to use the legal term.
One of the two, Charles Manson, was undone by paranoia and megalomania. The other, David Berg (who died in 1994), founded a kind of church (now known as The Family International) that is a continuing albeit marginal presence on the religious scene. At one point Ricky Rodriguez had been groomed to be leader of the Family, but he left the church and later planned a revenge on its leaders, who had abused him as a child. In the end he only killed one person before committing suicide. Jesus Freaks is thus, at least in part, a true crime story, but one where our sympathy is largely with the killer. More than that though, it reveals once again the darkness that lies behind so many religious origin stories. How close did Manson come to being bigger than The Beatles?
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