Joaquin Phoenix and Rose McGowan Spent Their Early Years in a Religious Cult. Then it Became Infamous.
Here's what you need to know about the Children of God.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a29374581/children-of-god-cult-joaquin-phoenix-rose-mcgowan/
Joker star Joaquin Phoenix had an unconventional early childhood, living in Venezuela, Florida, and eventually Hollywood with his peripatetic parents and siblings Summer, Liberty, Rain, and late fellow actor River. But until Phoenix was around three years old in 1977, the family were followers of the Children of God, a cult helmed by a rogue preacher called David Berg that would later become notorious amid allegations of child sexual abuse. And he’s not the only celebrity who spent some of their early years in the group—Rose McGowan also spent part of her childhood in the cult. Here’s what you need to know.
Who are the Children of God?
In 1968, preacher David Brandt Berg founded a group initially called Teens for Christ, which at first consisted of young runaways and hippies. This church would evolve into the Children of God, which at one point counted 15,000 members around the world.
The church believed in group living and zealous proselytizing, and soon grew to include hundreds of communes. Members of these communities could be isolated, as they didn’t work—people who held real-world jobs were called “systemites”—or send their children to school.
Berg’s church melded worship of Jesus Christ with ’60s-era free love, and preached a fairly standard cult leader prophecy—the apocalypse was coming, and soon. This doomsday predication encouraged his followers to live hand-to-mouth rather than making long-term plans; ex-members later told The Guardian of begging for alms and subsisting off of donated food.
What are the allegations against the group?
The cult earned notoriety for its sexual practices, which included what Berg dubbed “flirty fishing,” and which found him ordering female followers to have sex with men in order to bring them into the cult. In 1979, he reported that “flirty fishers” had added 19,000 members to the group’s ranks. "It was religious prostitution," one of Berg's daughters told Timeline in 2017.
Joaquin Phoenix told Vanity Fair that the introduction of the "flirty fishing" policy drove his parents to leave the group. "They got some letter, or however it came, some suggestion of that," he said, "and they were like, 'Fuck this, we’re outta here.’"
His mother, Heart Phoenix, told the magazine that "it took several years to get over our pain and loneliness" after leaving the group. Rose McGowan’s family also escaped the cult during her childhood.