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Loading... The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Powerby Jeff Sharlet
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This book was very interesting but at times it was hard to follow all of the names and history of the fundamentalist movement. The most shocking thing to me, yet totally unsurprising, is how much the leaders of the Family idolized men like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and supported dictators in Latin America, Indonesia and Somalia, even though they collectively murdered many millions of people. Clearly they care about power more than love, no matter what their rhetoric says. (  )1   lemontwist | Nov 10, 2009 |  This book gives an amazing (and chilling) insight into the machinations behind the scenes in the name of Christianity. Anyone who has been under the spell of fundamentalists should read this book. (  )1 illecanom | Oct 24, 2009 | To begin with let's stipulate that Jeff Sharlet has an agenda, but so do most writers of political analysis. Like it or not, the political is as much personal as vice versa & we've all got an ax to grind. Having said that this is a wonderfully well-written book & I enjoyed it immensely despite the fact that it triggered all my paranoia. The Family is an examination of the The Fellowship (aka The Family) a somewhat secretive fundamentalist group that at its most overt is responsible for the National Prayer Breakfast & at its most covert is influencing political policy through its members on an international scale. Members of this group include people in power from both sides of the aisle. Their Christianity isn't like any that I've ever experienced. The essential notion is that those who are in power are in power because they are chosen by Jesus, &, therefore, all of their actions are justifiable in his name. The group has studied the organizing tactics of everyone from Marx to Hitler, breaking themselves into hierarchies that at their most fundamental are prayer cells. On the surface this group might seem like an innocent way for people in power to network, but scrape that surface & things get scary. Some of their members believe the poor should be disenfranchised because they are poor & therefore unloved by Jesus & unworthy of the vote. The group has been supportive of genocidal dictators such as Suharto of Indonesia who came to their attention after his first half million killings. The notion of a personal Jesus is not an unfamiliar one, but taken to such an extreme that all of one's actions are justified by him & this is out of hand. Sharlet also examines the history of American fundamentalism through this lens reminding the reader that the theocrats have always been with us. In the case of this group & all of its offshoots, however, I think the vision is less for a Taliban-style theocratic state & more for a concentration of power in the hands of the chosen (them). This book could easily have been dry & hard going, but it reads like a thriller & it can easily give you nightmares. It will certainly make you re-examine how you see some of the people in our halls of power. ( )3 kraaivrouw | Aug 3, 2009 | reviewed on my site SherryPeyton | Jun 29, 2009 | This is a terrific book about a subject that has been fueling my interest for a number of years now; namely, how Christian fundamentalism in America expresses itself in both the culture and politics of the nation. Sharlet has experience in this genre and has created a fierce and exhaustive account of the organization behind the seemingly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast. More than that, however, The Family provides needed insight into the nebulous architecture of belief that has come to typify the modern evangelical movement in this country. According to Sharlet, the “prayer cell” model utilized by the Family is fueled by a fundamentalist conviction that the person of Jesus should be followed, period. Therefore, evangelical belief is (as we know) utterly unmoored from its pedigree in establishment religion… but it is also disdainfully anathema to theological dialectics which dissect and interpret the meaning (and importance) of Jesus’ life and teachings. As such, American Christendom has become (and most assuredly is) a mechanism by which power entrenches and protects itself. In stressing obedience to Jesus above all else, obedience itself has become the hallmark of devotion – nevermind that Jesus himself was a vaguely eschatological agent of social change. (  )1 Narboink | May 30, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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A journalist's penetrating look at the untold story of christian fundamentalism's most elite organization, a self-described invisible network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful
They are the Family—fundamentalism's avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen—congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a "leadership led by God," to be won not by force but through "quiet diplomacy." Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside its walls.
The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the far right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public, they host Prayer Breakfasts; in private, they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."
Sharlet's discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the cold war, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not "What do fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?"
Part history, part investigative journalism, The Family is a compelling account of how fundamentalism came to be interwoven with American power, a story that stretches from the religious revivals that have shaken this nation from its beginning to fundamentalism's new frontiers. No other book about the right has exposed the Family or revealed its far-reaching impact on democracy, and no future reckoning of American fundamentalism will be able to ignore it.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:56 -0400)
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