84 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019
Counterculture Crossover: Growing Up in the Love Family
By Rachel Israel
Reviewed by Robert W. Balch
Life Story Press, Maple Valley, WA. (2018).
ISBN-10: 9781732240018 ISBN-13: 9778-
1732240018 (paperback). (Amazon.com,
$25.00 Kindle, $20.00). 643 pages.
Counterculture Crossover is Rachel Israel’s
fascinating account of growing up in the Love
Family, a highly controversial religious
commune based in Seattle, Washington. In 1975,
at age 6, Ms. Israel became a member of the
Love Family when her mother joined, and she
stayed until 1983 when the Family broke up
after an unsuccessful palace coup. These were
the Family’s glory years, the classic phase
before the fall.
To its defenders, the Love Family was an
intentional community, a new religious
movement, and a beautiful utopian experiment
but to its detractors, it was a dangerous cult, pure
and simple. In 1971, two members had died
from breathing toluene, a solvent the Family
used to produce visions, which led the famous
deprogrammer Ted Patrick to describe the group
as a “collection of drugged-up, spaced-out,
wired-up mental zombies” (Patrick &Dulack,
1976, p. 152). In 1979, a National Enquirer
headline called the Family “America’s Most
Dangerous Cult—A World of Violence, Drugs
and Child Abuse” (National Enquirer, 1979).
1979 also was the year I met the Love Family,
and frankly, I was enchanted. For me, visiting
the Family was like being transported to a
magical fairy kingdom. The grounds and houses
were simple, clean, orderly, and tranquil,
brightened by flowers and well-tended gardens.
The members were distinguished by their long,
well-groomed hair, full beards, handmade robes,
gentle demeanor, and especially their names—
for example, Strength, Honesty, Courage,
Happiness—representing the virtues of Jesus
Christ. Unlike Ted Patrick’s zombies, I found
the members to be bright, alert, and genuinely
committed to their dream of building a new
society.
Enchanted though I was, my main interest in the
Love Family was sociological. Out of thousands
of communal experiments in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, the Love Family was one of the few
survivors, and I wanted to understand how it had
managed this feat. So imagine my shock when,
in 1983, the Love Family suddenly blew up over
allegations that its leader, Love Israel, had
become a self-indulgent, abusive, cocaine
addict. As luck would have it, I was able to
negotiate a leave of absence from my university,
and with the help of Janann Cohig, a sociology
student, I spent the next year in Seattle
interviewing members and defectors to find out
what had happened. I continued interviewing
over the next two summers, gradually piecing
together the Family’s history and uncovering the
roots of the discontent and corruption that led to
the big breakup. The research resulted in a few
professional articles about the community,
which today gather dust in university libraries
(Balch, 1988 1995 1998).
So I had a special interest in Rachel Israel’s
book. Not only does it describe the period that I
studied, but Ms. Israel also was one of the
teenagers I interviewed in the 1980s. She writes
from an unusual perspective. Unlike most
second-generation members, she was not born
into the Family but joined when she was old
enough to know about life in “the World.” She
and her mother had been beach hippies in
Hawaii and homesteaders living in the rough-
and-tumble backwoods of Alaska. Then
suddenly she was thrust into a radical communal
experiment where everyone was expected to be
perfect and merge with the collective mind. Her
experiences gave her a comparative perspective
that enabled her to remain an observer even as
she came to embrace the Family’s belief system.
Secretly, she kept a diary as a way of
maintaining her identity apart from the group,
and this, too, helped keep her in an observer
mode.
Counterculture Crossover: Growing Up in the Love Family
By Rachel Israel
Reviewed by Robert W. Balch
Life Story Press, Maple Valley, WA. (2018).
ISBN-10: 9781732240018 ISBN-13: 9778-
1732240018 (paperback). (Amazon.com,
$25.00 Kindle, $20.00). 643 pages.
Counterculture Crossover is Rachel Israel’s
fascinating account of growing up in the Love
Family, a highly controversial religious
commune based in Seattle, Washington. In 1975,
at age 6, Ms. Israel became a member of the
Love Family when her mother joined, and she
stayed until 1983 when the Family broke up
after an unsuccessful palace coup. These were
the Family’s glory years, the classic phase
before the fall.
To its defenders, the Love Family was an
intentional community, a new religious
movement, and a beautiful utopian experiment
but to its detractors, it was a dangerous cult, pure
and simple. In 1971, two members had died
from breathing toluene, a solvent the Family
used to produce visions, which led the famous
deprogrammer Ted Patrick to describe the group
as a “collection of drugged-up, spaced-out,
wired-up mental zombies” (Patrick &Dulack,
1976, p. 152). In 1979, a National Enquirer
headline called the Family “America’s Most
Dangerous Cult—A World of Violence, Drugs
and Child Abuse” (National Enquirer, 1979).
1979 also was the year I met the Love Family,
and frankly, I was enchanted. For me, visiting
the Family was like being transported to a
magical fairy kingdom. The grounds and houses
were simple, clean, orderly, and tranquil,
brightened by flowers and well-tended gardens.
The members were distinguished by their long,
well-groomed hair, full beards, handmade robes,
gentle demeanor, and especially their names—
for example, Strength, Honesty, Courage,
Happiness—representing the virtues of Jesus
Christ. Unlike Ted Patrick’s zombies, I found
the members to be bright, alert, and genuinely
committed to their dream of building a new
society.
Enchanted though I was, my main interest in the
Love Family was sociological. Out of thousands
of communal experiments in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, the Love Family was one of the few
survivors, and I wanted to understand how it had
managed this feat. So imagine my shock when,
in 1983, the Love Family suddenly blew up over
allegations that its leader, Love Israel, had
become a self-indulgent, abusive, cocaine
addict. As luck would have it, I was able to
negotiate a leave of absence from my university,
and with the help of Janann Cohig, a sociology
student, I spent the next year in Seattle
interviewing members and defectors to find out
what had happened. I continued interviewing
over the next two summers, gradually piecing
together the Family’s history and uncovering the
roots of the discontent and corruption that led to
the big breakup. The research resulted in a few
professional articles about the community,
which today gather dust in university libraries
(Balch, 1988 1995 1998).
So I had a special interest in Rachel Israel’s
book. Not only does it describe the period that I
studied, but Ms. Israel also was one of the
teenagers I interviewed in the 1980s. She writes
from an unusual perspective. Unlike most
second-generation members, she was not born
into the Family but joined when she was old
enough to know about life in “the World.” She
and her mother had been beach hippies in
Hawaii and homesteaders living in the rough-
and-tumble backwoods of Alaska. Then
suddenly she was thrust into a radical communal
experiment where everyone was expected to be
perfect and merge with the collective mind. Her
experiences gave her a comparative perspective
that enabled her to remain an observer even as
she came to embrace the Family’s belief system.
Secretly, she kept a diary as a way of
maintaining her identity apart from the group,
and this, too, helped keep her in an observer
mode.
