Difference between revisions of "Karen Zerby"

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With David Berg's health declining in later years, Maria began to take a leadership role within the group.  Upon his death in October [[1994]] she assumed full leadership of the group and married her long-time partner, [[Steven Douglas Kelly]] (known in the group as King Peter, Peter Amsterdam or Christopher Smith).
 
With David Berg's health declining in later years, Maria began to take a leadership role within the group.  Upon his death in October [[1994]] she assumed full leadership of the group and married her long-time partner, [[Steven Douglas Kelly]] (known in the group as King Peter, Peter Amsterdam or Christopher Smith).
  
Senior Family leadership including Zerby has long attempted to keep their photographs and legal names from common circulation (see "[[selah]]"). Although by now most of the group's members have seen photographs or video footage of Karen Zerby and Steven Kelly, their identities and location are still heavily guarded by those members working closest to them. Recent photographs or video footage of Karen Zerby, Steven Kelly and most [[World Services]] (WS) members are not readily available even to fulltime members of The Family.
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Senior Family leadership including Zerby has long attempted to keep their photographs and legal names from common circulation (see "[[selah]]"). Although by now most of the group's members have seen photographs or video footage of Karen Zerby and Steven Kelly, their identities and location are still heavily guarded by those members working closest to them. Before being posted here, recent photographs of Karen Zerby, as well as Steven Kelly and most [[World Services]] (WS) members were not readily available even to fulltime members of The Family.
  
 
==Photos==
 
==Photos==

Revision as of 05:11, 7 March 2005

Karen Elva Zerby (legally changed to Katherine Rianna Smith and uses the aliases Maria, Mama, Maria Fontaine, Maria David, Maria Berg, or Queen Maria) (born in Tucson, Arizona, July 31, 19??) is the current leader of The Family, a new religious movement.

Zerby joined the group, then called Teens for Christ in 1969. After becoming a private secretary to David Berg, the group's founder, a sexual relationship started between the two. In a prophecy titled "A Prophecy of God on the Old Church and the New Church", Berg explained that he had been told by God to leave his first wife, Jane Miller, who represented the "old church", for Zerby who became his soi-disant second wife, who represented the "new church".

With David Berg's health declining in later years, Maria began to take a leadership role within the group. Upon his death in October 1994 she assumed full leadership of the group and married her long-time partner, Steven Douglas Kelly (known in the group as King Peter, Peter Amsterdam or Christopher Smith).

Senior Family leadership including Zerby has long attempted to keep their photographs and legal names from common circulation (see "selah"). Although by now most of the group's members have seen photographs or video footage of Karen Zerby and Steven Kelly, their identities and location are still heavily guarded by those members working closest to them. Before being posted here, recent photographs of Karen Zerby, as well as Steven Kelly and most World Services (WS) members were not readily available even to fulltime members of The Family.

Photos

Karen Zerby, early 2000s
Karen Zerby and partner Steven Kelly
Early 2000s
Karen Zerby, circa 1970s
Zerby on the right of David Berg in Tenerife, 1977


Documents

References

  • House, H. Wayne (2000). Charts of Cults, Sects, and Religious Movements. Zondervan Publishing Company. ISBN 0310385512.
  • Lewis, James R. (2004). Controversial New Religions Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195156838.