Controversy with your coffee?

May 14, 2007 Monday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Regular or nonfat? Single or double shot? Pro- or anti-creationism?

Starbucks has been drawing heated responses since the coffee giant began printing quotations on its cups.

Atheists fumed when they got a shot of the Rev. Rick Warren ("The Purpose-Driven Life") with their latte, and Christians balked at gay writer Armistead Maupin's comment that "life is too damn short" to spend in the closet.

So outraged is one organization by the anti-evolution messages that it dispatched its members to protest the practice via e-mail and phone calls.

"I mean, my God," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "It's rather unforgivable. They're going to give their customers heartburn."

The cups include quotes by artists, writers, scientists and other noteworthy people on a variety of subjects.

The Seattle-based Starbucks began its "The Way I See It" program to stimulate dialogue over coffee. Company officials say they have achieved their goal.

"Based upon the input we have received on the program, people engage in discussion on some of these topics," said Starbucks spokeswoman Erika Mapes in an e-mail message.

Still, servers say they hear many complaints.

"Especially when it gets close to the holidays," said Kristi Baldwin, shift supervisor at a Walnut Creek Starbucks. "They can be controversial."

Maupin's quote sent some sippers back to the counter to demand a different cup. Baldwin said barristas dump the offending cup and offer a new drink with a smile.

And not everyone takes umbrage.

"It's nice to educate about the culture," said Ghenwa Serhan, a Walnut Creek customer.

"My first reaction was, 'eeuw,' is Starbucks trying to cram creationism down my throat along with my Americano?" said Berkeley journalist Susan Kuchinskas.

Kuchinskas reacted to two quotes on vente-sized cups. One from biologist and author Jonathan Wells links Darwin's theory of evolution with eugenics, abortion and racism. The other from author David Quammen says evolution has been "abundantly reconfirmed, explaining physical phenomena by physical causes."

On a closer reading, Kuchinskas recognized "an attempt to provoke thought and discussion -- which it obviously has."

Gaylor isn't buying.

"What are they going to do next, run quotes challenging the theory of gravity, then run a separate one by Galileo saying, 'Oh, no, it's true'? No wonder this country is going downhill scientifically."

Starbucks is not the first company to float religion on its merchandise: Forever 21 and XXI clothing chains stamp the Bible quote "For God so loved the world ..." on shopping bags. In-N-Out Burger has been serving up Scripture with its drinks and fries for 20 years. The biblical passages are on the bottom of its containers.

"I love it," said Maggie Edmunds, a customer of In-N-Out Burger in Pinole. "It makes (the company) seem more personal -- not cold and impersonal, like a corporation. I would like to see more of this."

Ron Zee, a Christian, found word of the cup-bottom Scripture at In-N-Out intriguing. When he lifted up a cup and found one, "I said to myself, 'Cool.'"

The practice allows a business to unobtrusively introduce itself and the beliefs of its owners, Zee said. Nonetheless, silence is golden; he wouldn't want an employee to strike up a conversation on the subject.

"I go to a restaurant to eat, not to be proselytized, even if I agree with the agenda," he said.

A Spokesman for In-N-Out Burger declined comment. Forever 21 and XXI could not be reached for comment.

The label for All Natural Bragg Liquid Aminos bears a tiny fish-symbol and scriptural reference to John 3:2. It reads, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth."

Who could argue with that?

"I don't want to have to walk down the grocery store aisles carrying my indexless Bible trying to make sure the food I'm buying is making the right religious statement," said Chloe Etienne, an East Bay shopper. "It's hard enough to read all the labels for nutritional content."

"Sorry," she said. "I believe in a separation between church and food."

Christopher Hitchens: Without a prayer

Edmonton Journal (Alberta)
June 29, 2007 Friday
Final Edition

Rebecca Rosen Lum, Contra Costa Times

Last month at a debate in Berkeley, Christopher Hitchens ranted for the better part of two hours with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges over the value of faith.

Shouting Hedges down and hurling profanities at audience members who chided him for his support for the Iraq war, the celebrated author reached his crescendo ahead of schedule and stalked off the stage -- although the sight of him puffing away backstage made one wonder whether that was one of his trademark dramaticisms or whether he couldn't hold out another minute for a smoke.

Hitchens, 58, has unleashed his mighty ego on a book tour plugging his latest opus, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

As the fog settled over San Francisco the next morning, another Hitchens emerged, a bit bleary of eye and considerably more accommodating. He poured coffee for his guests and listened thoughtfully to questions. He acquiesced to a photographer's directions in the grand archway of San Francisco's Four Seasons Hotel, where north light illuminated his pale blue eyes.

"This always makes me feel terribly silly," he said, posing for his close-up.

He wore the same silver suit he wore the night before, now more rumpled. Spots decked his purple shirt, and swollen red rings rimmed his eyes. Several applications of eye drops later, he gave up and put on a pair of sunglasses.

A bottle of Jim Beam shared space with a bottle of Evian on his hotel room table.

English-born and Oxford-educated, Hitchens is legendary for his ability to function on vast quantities of liquor.

Indeed, he hadn't forgotten much from the previous evening's debate. And he was still angry at Hedges, whom he called contemptible for describing Palestinian suicide bombers as driven by despair.

"(Expletive) putz," he murmured.

He quietly confirmed that he has known religious people who exemplified their faith, like the Greek bishop in Albania whom he describes as "saintly."

"I've asked myself, without religion would we be nicer?" he muses.

Pause 2-3-4.

Nah.

God, he says, is "man-made -- cruel and contradictory. And so are we. It's exactly what you would expect."

The book is jumping off the shelves faster than Humpty Dumpty off the wall, but draws mixed reviews. Hitchens' hometown paper in the United Kingdom says that "in toppling one god, he replaces him with another -- himself."

That sounded about right to Hedges. A call to the longtime foreign correspondent at his home in New Jersey found him still stinging.

Was that a debate?

"Ugh -- no," he said. "I kept it together, but I was very angry. He was insulting and rude -- and racist. The things he said about Muslims were really disturbing."

But Hitchens says he speaks as a man who has been on the wrong end of a fatwa -- once for simply allowing author Salman Rushdie to bed down at Hitchens' apartment.

"I don't make anything of it because everyone in this country gets delivered a fatwa," he says.

And he is no bully.

Rather, he is a protector of innocence: "When we consider whether religion has "done more harm that good," he writes, "we are faced with an imponderably large question. How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?"

Religion, with its barbed-wire playsuit of threats and admonishments, keeps children in a perpetual state of terror, Hitchens claims. They're told their loved ones will suffer the flames of hell if they have not been baptized, or baptized in the wrong faith. They're warned away from the imaginary perils of masturbation, and driven to self-loathing that comes along with tagging a healthy and necessary biological process -- menses -- "a curse."

Hitchens brooks no allowances for progressive denominations. That includes black churches, from which many would argue the civil rights movement sprang.

White people make the condescending assumption that "black people would prefer to be led by ministers than anyone else," leading media to seek out charlatans rather than intellectuals to speak for blacks.

"You can say Farrakhan's gang gets people off drugs. How feeble must people be? I think they would be better off on drugs."

He calls the Bible "an extremely crudely fashioned fabrication -- a heap of shards and scraps.

"Like the Qur'an, it's piffle," he says.

It upsets him not a bit that the fans who celebrated his The Trial of Henry Kissinger have parted ways with him over his support for the Iraq war.

In Kissinger, he used newly released documents to track the former national security adviser's political activities in nations with strategically useful but brutal and anti-democratic regimes.

The book has prompted Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France and Spain to seek Kissinger out for questioning, severely limiting his ability to travel freely.

But he did not write that book to court the left, and he has not slammed Islam to court the right -- although it has brought him several new friends, including neocon writer and former leftist David Horowitz. Nonetheless, the book tour "seems like it's been going on forever now," and as God climbs ever higher on the bestseller lists, the tour has grown.

"I now have more sympathy for how the politicians turn into zombies," he said, pouring Evian into a goblet. "It's almost possible to tire of the sound of one's own voice."

Bias against Muslims on the rise, group says

July 2, 2007 Monday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Civil rights violations targeting Bay Area Muslims spiked last year, ranging from schoolyard taunts to deadly assaults to routine citizenship applications strangled by government red tape.

Reports more than doubled in 2005-06, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The nonprofit organization documented 246 incidents in 2006, up from 113 in 2005.

The Bay Area numbers reflect national numbers, which show episodes of anti-Muslim bias jumping by

25 percent. California accounted for nearly one-third of all the complaints.

The report chronicles verbal and physical harassment, and circumstances in which Muslims were singled out for questioning, subjected to lengthy delays in immigration or naturalization, or otherwise discriminated against. The crime scenes ranged from airports and government agencies to schools, work places, and mosques.

And cyberspace.

An e-mail from an angry Danville man to an East Bay blogger triggered one of the complaints.

"Hey, (expletive) bag, get the (expletive) out of my country," it read. "If I run across you in my daily tasks, I will get you."

Twenty-four hours and plenty of dialogue later, the Danville man apologized.

"Hate mail is actually quite common," council spokeswoman Abiya Ahmed said.

Alia Ansari of Fremont never got an apology. In October 2006 the Afghan mother of six was gunned down as she walked with her 3-year-old daughter. A suspect was arrested, but no motive has been determined. Family members and Muslim leaders suspect her head scarf marked her for a hate crime.

The rise in reported cases is partly due to the organization's Citizen Delay project, which documents instances in which immigrants are forced to wait beyond the legal limit of 120 days for their citizenship applications to be processed, Ahmed said. Many have been waiting for years, she said.

Legal or immigration problems accounted for 35 percent of complaints, followed by due process issues and hate mail.

Ahmed herself figured in one of the hate mail complaints. After reading an Oct. 14 commentary in the Contra Costa Times in which Ahmed said all thoughtful Muslims decry violence, an Oakland letter writer sent her a vitriolic missive saying her words were "like poison."

"May you wander in the desert for a thousand years," the letter said. "Believe me no one will miss you, or look for you or pine for your return."

The agency received 276 reports, and found 246 warranted further investigation, Ahmed said. In some cases, council staffers mediated problems. In others, they referred victims to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Complaints of workplace discrimination based on both religion and national origin had been steadily declining since they spiked in 2002, but increased last year, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"There is a slight increase at certain times," said Azima Subedar, civil rights coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We got more calls when the London bombings happened."

The findings struck a chord with attorneys at the Asian Law Caucus, who take cases of employment discrimination, citizenship delays and racial and ethnic profiling.

Attorney Malcolm Yeung said, "On an initial glance, you would think, why would one of the most diverse and theoretically progressive areas of the country see so much discrimination? The diversity of the Bay Area doesn't mean you don't have to be vigilant."

Sikhs say airport screening policy violates religious faith

August 30, 2007 Thursday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

A new Homeland Security Department policy singles out Sikh men for rigorous airport security searches at the discretion of screeners, a national civil rights organization says.

The United Sikh Coalition has written to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff to protest the policy, implemented Aug. 4, which it says amounts to racial profiling. Nearly 2,000 have signed petitions.

Previously, travelers wearing turbans were searched only if they failed to clear metal detectors or other preliminary checks. The new rules, implemented Aug. 4, allow pat-downs of religious headgear at the screener's discretion.

For the world's 25 million Sikhs, the turban is an article of faith, only to be removed in the home or in private.

"In the last three weeks, we've heard dozens of complaints, people being asked to remove their turbans in public and denied the use of a mirror or space to re-tie them," said Kavneet Singh, East Bay resident and director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund. "For a Sikh man, that's like being strip-searched."

J.P. Singh, president of the Sikh Center of the San Francisco Bay Area in El Sobrante, teaches Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies about Sikh practices.

"It's like asking a woman to take off her blouse in public," he said. "It's that bad."

At San Francisco International Airport on Aug. 12, screeners ordered aside three Sikh men. One of them was Kuldip Singh, managing director of United Sikhs.

"The metal detector did not go off," he said. "I asked the guy why they were asking me to step aside. He said they have a new no-hat policy, and we have to pat down your turban.

"What was very strange to us is they are saying it's totally up to the screener. It's the perception of the screener. And that person could be biased."

At Kuldip Singh's request, the screener agreed to move to an enclosed area.

Screeners also may search people wearing cowboy hats or straw hats. Skullcaps, worn by many observant Jews, are not on the list of suspicious head coverings, "so it means a specific community is targeted," Kuldip Singh said.

Airport screeners work for the Transportation Security Administration and are not employees of the airport.

Security officials say screeners can no longer rely solely on metal detectors and wands to filter out weapons, such as plastic explosives.

"We have to change as the threat has changed," said Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nico Melendez. "We have to keep a step ahead of the bad guys."

If screeners do not consider a skullcap reason to search a person, it is because there is no weapon that could possibly fit inside one, Melendez said.

But the government never conducted tests to see whether an explosive device could fit in a wrapped turban, said legal defense fund spokesman Raj Singh Datta.

"In training, we tie an actual turban on a guy," he said. "It's 18 to 24 feet long, one yard wide. When you see how much cloth there is in there and how tightly it's tied ... you can't really hide anything in it."

Fund members met with federal security officials Friday to talk about the changes.

"We are always ready to help the Department of Homeland Security as a community," said Kuldip Singh. "No Sikh has ever been involved in such cases, and they know that."

Mosque celebrates away from home

Contra Costa Times (California)
September 14, 2007 Friday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

ANTIOCH, Calif. -- Amid a row of women bowing in diaphanous, brightly colored gowns, Sughran Ahmed prayed -- prostrate in silence, rising with the imam's sung "Allah Akbar," God is great. Suddenly, her 3-year-old son, Muhammad Ali, broke free from his caretaker, ran to his mother and threw his arms around her neck. She smiled at him tenderly.

It is an affectionate congregation, said Chairman Abdul Rahman of the Islamic Center of the East Bay, which was recently displaced by an Aug. 12 arson fire.

"I wish these positive feelings would rub off on the community," he said with a sigh.

The figs, fruits and communion that break the fast at the end of the day tasted especially sweet this year.

About 100 worshipers gathered at sundown Thursday for the first iftar, or fast-breaking meal, of this Ramadan. The seller of an Antioch restaurant, empty in escrow, offered it as a temporary prayer hall Sunday, tripping off a mad dash to get insurance and permits in time for the celebration.

Walnut Creek restaurateur Misbah Khelid donated the food.

"Why not?" he said. "It's a time of need."

The 30 days of reflection and fasting take place in the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, beginning at sunset after the first sighting of the new moon -- or, in these times of technological advancement, when calculations pinpoint the appearance of the new moon.

For much of mosque President Mohammed Chaudry's childhood, Ramadan fell during the summer months. But by the time he had become an adult, the fasting days had grown shorter. Now they are long again.

Because Islam follows the lunar calendar, each year Ramadan falls 10 days earlier. Every third year, it moves back a month.

"It's a justice system by God," he said. If not for the lunar calendar, "people in the West would be condemned to a fast for 11 hours."

The Quran directs the faithful to abstain from food, drink and other worldly pleasures, starting as early in the morning as one "can plainly distinguish a white thread from a black thread by the daylight" until darkness falls. The fast ends with a three-day festival called Id-al-Fitr.

For 1 billion faithful worldwide, Ramadan provides a time for considering one's character, strengthening bonds between loved ones and developing empathy for the hungry

A virtuous Ramadan record can be undone by lying, slandering, denouncing people behind their back, uttering a false oath, or indulging in greed or covetousness.

But the most drastic offense is giving in to anger, Chaudry said.

"The whole exercise is null and void if you give yourself to anger -- even if somebody provokes you," he said.

Those who would use Islam as a basis for terrorism or acts of aggression "are earning their way straight to hell," he said, his voice cracking with emotion.

Chaudry was visiting the Vatican with his wife when a call came from his son telling him their Antioch mosque had been gutted by fire.

"I fell into a deep depression," he said. "For 10 years, I had devoted my life to creating a place where people could come and pray."

The mosque has resolved not to fold in fear.

But fewer people have been showing up each week for services at a Pittsburg mosque that has taken in the displaced congregation, Rahmen said.

Leaders will not know until the insurance claim is settled whether they should rebuild in place or find a new site.

"I would rather be back at the mosque," said Fauzia Rahman. Her sisters and cousins agreed.

"They wrote on the walls," said Verda Siddiqui, 10, looking bewildered.

Women chatting over their meal agreed that outsiders must have set the fire that destroyed their mosque.

"We lived there for three years," said Neelo Shaikh. "It's a really nice neighborhood."

Chaudry received a call from Antioch police at 7 a.m. the first day of fasting saying a vandal had kicked in the remaining functioning door on the mosque. Three weeks ago, he found graffiti scrawled on the back of the building.

But "support has been overwhelming," he said. The Contra Costa Interfaith Council plans a solidarity march Sept. 23.

"They have been very sympathetic, very generous and very kind," he said. "A big majority is sharing our grief."

Ramadan

Thirty days -- beginning at sunrise and ending at sundown -- of reflection and fasting arrive in the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. In addition to five customary daily prayers, the Islamic faithful add the lengthy Tarawih, or night prayer, until, by the end of Ramadan, they have recited the entire Quran. On the 27th evening, they celebrate Laylat-al-Qadr in honor of the night the angel Gabriel revealed the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad.

Unitarians launch ad campaign

September 19, 2007 Wednesday

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Garrison Keillor has long joked that Unitarian missionaries founded Lake Wobegon after a failed attempt to convert American Indians through interpretive dance.

Now, Unitarians are seeking converts and hoping radio spots on Keillor's iconoclastic Prairie Home Companion will draw the same earthy, progressive, crowd the show does.

Seventeen Bay Area Unitarian Universalist congregations have launched a $300,000 marketing campaign financed by 600 member donors. Its theme: "Imagine A Religion."

TV, radio and print spots designed by gUUrilla marketing began airing this week on Comedy Central, The Daily Show and A Prairie Home Companion

About 500 signs are going up in BART stations. Mainstream publications and specialty magazines serving Spanish-speaking or gay and lesbian readers will carry ads.

The campaign also features sequential billboards, based on the old Burma-Shave ads, meant for passing motorists to read.

"Imagine a religion that embraces many different beliefs ... including yours," reads a magazine ad that pictures a middle-aged gay male couple, a young African-American man, a mother holding a young child and a mixed-race family.

"For us, this campaign reflects a change of heart," said the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the national association. "We've been willing to be the best kept secret in religion. This represents a coming out effort."

The denomination has its roots in the Christian Protestantism of Transylvania and Poland but is not Christian per se. Rather, it draws from numerous religions and belief systems in a common "search for truth and meaning." It respects the sacred texts of all religions, but believes that none hold an absolute truth.

Unitarians "pitch a big theological tent," Sinkford said. "We want to make Unitarian Universalism available for those who yearn for a liberal religious home."

The ad blitz, which dovetails with the national Unitarian Universalist Association's growth drive, is the most recent attempt by religious progressives to make themselves heard in the public discourse over faith dominated by religious conservatives for some 25 years.

"The problem with that is the discourse is incomplete," Sinkford said.

The Unitarian-Universalistic faith prizes conscience and reason, has little use for dogma and a traditional distaste for proselytizing.

But previous ad campaigns showed a little evangelizing could go a long way.

Similar drives in Kansas City, Houston and Southern California netted new members. A Houston, Texas congregation grew by 10 percent -- 40 people -- after a 2005 advertising blitz.

"Unitarians aren't very much for trying to convert people," said the Rev. Bill Hamilton-Holway of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. "But so often, people come, and they say, 'This is me, this is perfect for me, but I never knew you were here.'"

The crafters of the campaign say many Americans are unaware of the fundamental role Unitarians have played in shaping the nation's character.

Julia Ward Howe ("Battle Hymn of the Republic") was a Unitarian, as were presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and William Howard Taft. Celebrated Unitarian legal scholars include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Daniel Webster and Clarence Darrow. Unitarian civil rights activists James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo were both slain during Freedom Summer.

Membership declined during the 1970s and has picked up since but modestly.

"We are absolutely interested in younger people," said gUUrilla marketing's Sue Polgar.

Once they arrive, "We hear, 'Where have you been all my life?'" said Cilla Raughley, director of the Central Pacific District.

The church appeals to parents of young children who resist training them in a creed, said Linda Laskowski, trustee from the Berkeley church.

"We don't teach a religion," she said. "We teach religion."

Book details grim abuses suffered by cult's children

The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia)
December 29, 2007 Saturday
ALL EDITION

By Rebecca Rosen Lum, Contra Costa Times

David Berg was a small-time circuit preacher whose flocks ran thin until the late 1960s, when the sexual revolution and the Jesus movement bloomed at once.

He wove the two into a double helix, drawing from the remnants of hippie life - people with nothing to lose, nowhere to go, and no Christian background to serve as a compass while in the thrall of a man who purported to live by Scripture.

His Teens for Christ became the Children of God, with enclaves in California and Texas expanding into a evangelical empire across continents, yielding profit and power for the "end-time prophet" and his inner circle.

But writer Don Lattin is only slightly interested in what makes a self-anointed prophet run. Mr. Lattin, whose book Jesus Freaks (HarperOne, $24.95, 236 pages) was released earlier in December, cares more about what happens to children born into authoritarian groups - the offspring of those who voluntarily cast their lot with people such as Mr. Berg.

Subtitled A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge, the book follows the brief, tormented life of Ricky Rodriguez, Mr. Berg's designated prophet prince.

As the longtime religion writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mr. Lattin plumbed what happens to children in cults, including the Church of Scientology, the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas and the Children of God (which would later be renamed The Family, or Family International).

In each, "The kids didn't have the chance to grow up and be themselves," Mr. Lattin said in an interview just before the book's release. "There were hours and hours a day of indoctrination. In that way, the Children of God was the worst."

The accumulated years of indoctrination exploded for Mr. Rodriguez in a murder-suicide in 2005 that shook Mr. Lattin and compelled him to write the book.

"I was so taken aback by what drove Ricky, raised by The Family, to kill someone else and take his own life," Mr. Lattin said. "He was the ultimate example of what can happen to kids when they're raised in an atmosphere of severe indoctrination. It's a really dark story, a sensational story, I tried to get in the mind-sets of these people."

The Children of God melded apocalyptic Christian evangelism with mind-boggling sexual mores. Mr. Lattin stunned readers when he first detailed the unorthodox practices of the Children of God in 2001.

Mr. Berg dispatched young, attractive female followers to lure male converts through sex in a practice he called "flirty fishing." He discouraged them from using birth control.

Mr. Rodriguez, the first child conceived through "flirty fishing," was the natural son of Mr. Berg's common-law wife, Karen Zerby, also called "Maria," and a waiter she picked up in the Canary Islands. Mr. Rodriguez was called "Davidito."

"Davidito and Maria are going to be the Endtime witnesses," Mr. Berg wrote in 1978. "They are going to have such power they can call down fire from heaven and devour their enemies."

In fact, Mr. Rodriguez did devour his enemies: He left the cult, but tormented by a life of abuse, could not make a life for himself. Driven by rage, he vilified his mother in a videotaped rant, stabbed one of his former nannies to death and shot himself in 2005.

More than 13,000 children were born to followers between 1971 and 2001; "women with six, eight, 10, 13 kids were not uncommon," Mr. Lattin said.

Mothers and caretakers pulled children from their beds at night to engage in sex acts with Mr. Berg in a regular "sharing schedule" (some kids referred to it as the "scaring schedule"). A poor performance yielded brutal punishment.

"They were made to believe their eternal salvation depended on this," Mr. Lattin said.

The group once enjoyed plenty of good press.

In the waning days of the Summer of Love, parents would say, "at least they're Christians," Mr. Lattin said.

Mr. Berg died in 1994, and Ms. Zerby took control of the organization.

Grown survivors of the group have developed a deep suspicion of outsiders and adults, Mr. Lattin said. But gradually, they sensed their stories were safe with this blues guitar-playing writer, part-time professor and married stepfather of two girls, and they let it all out.

"I've never seen so many problems among kids," he said, munching Thai food at a Berkeley haunt.

"The Children of God was a machine to spread the ideas of David Berg," he said. "The children were born to do the same thing. That was the real evil. Then, when they rebelled, as teens do, they would send them off to these re-education camps."