Hey, You've Got My Mermaid In Your Religion

Thanks to mlfoley of Irish Wit and German Sadism for showing us the "two great tastes that go great together", mermaids and Jesus, which forms religious prostitution: Flirty Fishing.


Don't let the candy-sweet comic illustrations of the pamphlets fool you, there's something here to stick in your craw, alright; it's the cult part that's like too much peanut butter -- sticky & hard to swallow.

Flirty Fishing (FFing) was the use of sex to show God's love and win converts as well as a means of raising financial support. It was practiced by the Family of Love (aka Children of God, the Family, and now the Family International or TFI) from 1974 until it was officially discontinued in 1987; due, in part, to the AIDS scare. The cute euphemism is traced to Matthew 4:19 where Jesus says "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

In the latter part of the '70s and early '80s, [David Berg], responding in part to the sexual liberality of that time period, presented the possibility of trying out a more personal and intimate form of witnessing which became known as 'Flirty Fishing' or 'FFing'. In his Letters at that time, he offered the challenging proposal that since 'God is Love' (1 John 4:8), and His Son, Jesus, is the physical manifestation and embodiment of God's Love for humanity, then we as Christian recipients of that Love are in turn responsible to be living samples to others of God's great all-encompassing Love. Taking the Apostle Paul's writings literally, that saved Christians are 'dead to the Law [of Moses]' (Romans 7:4), through faith in Jesus, [Berg] arrived at the rather shocking conclusion that Christians were therefore free through God's grace to go to great lengths to show the Love of God to others, even as far as meeting their sexual needs.

XFamily.org has more Flirty Fishing ephemera as well as additional writings by Berg or transcriptions of his speeches, called Mo Letters (the name "Mo Letters" derived from David Berg's pseudonym, Moses David).