Karen Zerby

Karen Elva Zerby. (circa 1970s?)

Karen 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. 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.

Documents

• King County Name Change Order - Documents Karen Elva Zerby name change to Katherine Rianna Smith (11/04/1997)

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.