TW: sensitive content
In this direct quote from a 2007 publication, Steven Kelly, the cult’s current co-leader, defends Flirty Fishing (FFing, aka religious prostitution). FFing was widely practiced in the cult from 1974 until 1987, when it was officially discontinued, due in part to the AIDS epidemic.
Under FFing, female cult members were pressured to be “God’s whores” and “hookers for Jesus”. Sex was given to strangers, purportedly as a means to show God’s love, in return for a donation or Escort Servicing fee. FFing was financially lucrative for the cult and increased cult membership due to the many children born from the practice (as the cult banned contraception), who were known as “Jesus babies”.
In 1995, Lord Justice Ward, who presided over a prominent court case involving the cult, condemned FFing: “[Berg] and his organization … were procuring women to become common prostitutes. They were knowingly living in part on the earnings of prostitution. That was criminal activity. Their attempts to deny this must be dismissed as cant and hypocrisy.”
Yet Steven Kelly persists in defending FFing and upholding cult teachings on the practice.