I like that many of the American Indians believe in a "Great Spirit" that has attributes that are not sexualized, as in "Father" or "Mama".
I was not in the fam. when Maria received her psychotic coronation, but I did come from family that were "normal" on the outside (good jobs, good work, good pay, good neighborhood) and extremely sadistic and emotionally, physically and sexually abusive behind the scenes. For some reason, being the youngest, I was the one that most of the hell from my parents and sibs. My real family were my animals and for some years, a neighbor lady who was the mother of a longtime child friend. My father was binge Catholic and full-time alcoholic who was also a rage-o-holic. He liked to tease and torture animals and thought it was "cute" when my sister hurt me.
My mother was a closet "witch" who had books on Sybil Leach (?) who trained under LaVey. She read cards and did the Ouija board thing when my father was out of town which he frequently was.
Needless to say, I hated religion of any kind. I was atheist since an early age, with a period of superficial exploration of different spiritual avenues before arriving at the decision that they were all pretty fucked up.
I legally left home on my 18th birthday and would have left sooner, begged to leave sooner, but with my father's law enforcement connections that was impossible. He threatened to have me locked up until 21. I have had a shotgun to my face from him before. But he is long dead. I was tied down and tortured as a kid by my brother and sister and blacked out big chunks of that. He was 10 yrs older than me and his weight, I remember barely being able to breathe and having pillows pressed over my face and playing dead.
Then I was out on the streets. I was unprepared to handle that. In the French Quarter in N.O., I sought shelter in a "Christian Outreach" that was run by a single lady with a boyfriend that had a shaved head and went by a street name like "spider" or something. He wanted me in bed so I found no respite there. Then the guys I met on the streets all wanted that, and I was drugged, escaped. Went up to a total stranger on the street and said "Help me I am dying". I remember that and sweating profusely. Don't know what I was given but others hallucinated on it.
So we (a girlfriend of mine and I) left N.O. and hitchhiked with a few guys to Austin, Houston, left them in Austin, then met with another girlfriend and the three of us hitchhiked to California seeking a meaning in life. The third girl said she had an uncle in LA but she didn't. Many near-death experiences later, we arrived in LA where the freaky deaky people there came up to me and said things like "I will pay you 20 dollars if you will just let me see your breasts" And where I was kidnapped, my friend was raped and I was almost, and we might have been killed. Then another time was a three day black out. We stayed with these guys that one was a script writer for TV and I remember going to bed on the floor in the corner of a bedroom, hiding. Then waking up on a bed and seeing a jumpy 8 mm film-like view of some men walking down the hall, then I was out again. The safest people around that we later met were some bikers who watched out for us like we were their little sisters and did not pressure us for anything at all.
Then I met different cults, which were a new phenomenon then, and not known as "cults" then. I visited the Khrishna's but luckily with a couple of guys that were making fun of it, or I might have gotten into that crap. I was so scared.
Then I joined one group for three days (Alamo's) and left them for the family while out on my first "witnessing trip". At that time the family was very different. You didn't hear or see anything about Berg but they "witnessed" and looked like other young people and not "church people". Before I left Austin, I was on the campus of UT and reading the saying over the bldg.: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free" And I thought about that. I knew nothing about the bible and was not frequently in Catholicism, largely in latin at that time anyway. I did not know this verse was from the bible.
I went back on a bus to the 5th and towne bldg. and went thru a screening process. I was very scared, of the streets, of the unknown. But going home would have been worse and not an option.
Then I stayed in the family. I had not slept in a few days. I was pretty shell shocked. Everything was so different and strange. I had never seen people praying together and never heard of tongues and did not know the simplest of bible stories. There was someone with me every moment and a sytem incl. guards. I was directed regarding everything to do. There were "set cards" with scriptures to memorize, and buddies, and tribes and classes and classes and classes and exhortations, and every night almost there was an "inspiration" where there was singing and dancing but no sex or "sharing" or "dad" around. There were leaders and I thought they really were hearing right from a real God. There were purging sessions too where people were urged to speak up and admit to any shortcoming, sin or whatever, pretty much weekly. These were gruesome and grueling and humiliating with people breaking down in tears over stupid shit like using more than (at that time) two sheets of toilet paper.
Being humorous was "vain babbling" and we were the original "cream of the crop" who were God's endtime army with a mission to reach the world with Jesus and at the time there was only two locations: TSC and LA. There were only about 175 members overall, more at TSC than in LA.
The family presented itself as having all the answers and the verse "Ye shall know the truth" was quoted by someone. I was shocked that this was in the bible and it seemed to be a confirmation that the family was "of God". Enter the beginning of magical thinking. Berg was described as a man with a heart for the youth of the world who declared a revolution against the churches and supposedly left them after having a congregation where, according to him, he was kicked out because he welcomed people of color as well. Of course his daughter who left, Deborah, later said something quite different. But who knew? As "Babes" we were to be fed "milk" and that meant basic bible classes and witnessing trips. But it also included tests of endurance, militaristic survival training with use of little water to bathe (i.e. wash-up from a small bowl) and a once a week, if lucky, cold shower incl. in the winter time. No shaving legs no wearing bras or make up as that was "system" and "unnatural".
Now that no shaving legs thing, that was a hard one for me!
Bottom line, if the family had never introduced sex, it was about absolute control and domination of one ultimate leader via trained henchmen and hatchet men and women and to train others to be the same. Some did not have it in them. They were not "leadership material" and did other things.
(I'll stop here for now, sorry to be so long.)