The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

Last updated

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
The Family - The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.jpg
First edition
Author Jeff Sharlet
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectPolitical power of the Christian Right
Publisher HarperCollins
Publication date
May 20, 2008
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages464
ISBN 978-0-06-055979-3
OCLC 148887452

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power is a 2008 book by American journalist Jeff Sharlet. The book investigates the political power of The Family or The Fellowship, a secretive fundamentalist Christian association led by Douglas Coe. Sharlet has stated that the organization fetishizes power by comparing Jesus to “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden” as examples of leaders who change the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”. [1] [2] [3] [4] It was published by HarperCollins.

Contents

One year after the book's initial publication, the sex scandals of prominent members of the Family, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, as well as accusations that the Family was illegally subsidizing the rent of members of Congress and involved in the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which would have imposed the death penalty for homosexuality in Uganda, thrust the notoriously secretive organisation into the national spotlight.

Beliefs and theology

Journalist Jeff Sharlet did intensive research in the Fellowship's archives, before they were closed to the public. He also spent a month in 2002 living in a Fellowship house near Washington, DC, and wrote a magazine article describing his experiences. [5] In his 2008 book about the Family, [6] he criticized their theology as an "elite fundamentalism" that fetishizes political power and wealth, consistently opposes labor movements in the U.S. and abroad, and teaches that laissez-faire economic policy is "God's will." He criticized their theology of instant forgiveness for powerful men as providing a convenient excuse for elites who commit misdeeds or crimes, allowing them to avoid accepting responsibility or accountability for their actions. [7]

Controversial leadership model

Jeff Sharlet and Andrea Mitchell have described Fellowship leader Doug Coe as preaching a leadership model and a personal commitment to Jesus Christ comparable to the blind devotion that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot demanded from their followers. [8] In one videotaped lecture series in 1989, Coe said:

Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had... But they bound themselves together in an agreement... Two years before they moved into Poland, these three men had... systematically a plan drawn out... to annihilate the entire Polish population and destroy by numbers every single house... every single building in Warsaw and then to start on the rest of Poland." [9]

Coe adds that it worked; they killed six and a half million "Polish people". Though he calls Nazis "these enemies of ours", he compares their commitment to Jesus' demands: "Jesus said, ‘You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.'" Hitler's demands (Coe argues), in order to be in the Nazi party, were similar; that is, you have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people. [8]

Coe also compared Jesus's teachings to the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution:

I’ve seen pictures of young men in the Red Guard of China... they would bring in this young man’s mother and father, lay her on the table with a basket on the end, he would take an axe and cut her head off... They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of the mother-father-brother-sister – their own life! That was a covenant. A pledge. That was what Jesus said. [9] [10]

Jeff Sharlet told NBC News that when he was an intern with the Fellowship "we were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao" and that Hitler's genocide "wasn't an issue for them, it was the strength that he emulated." [9]

Reception

Sharlet's book was endorsed by several commentators, including Frank Schaeffer, once a leading figure of the Christian right, who called Sharlet's book a "must read ... disturbing tour de force," and Brian McLaren, one of Time "s "25 most influential evangelicals" in the U.S., who said: “Jeff Sharlet [is] a confessed non-evangelical whom top evangelical organizations might be wise to hire—and quick—as a consultant." [11] [12]

Lisa Miller, who writes a column on religion at Newsweek , called his book "alarmist" and says it paints a "creepy, even cultish picture" of the young, lower-ranking members of the Fellowship. [1] [13]

On August 9, 2019, an original documentary series was released on Netflix based on the book, titled The Family . [14] [15]

Related Research Articles

Christian fundamentalism, also known as fundamental Christianity or fundamentalist Christianity, is a religious movement emphasizing biblical literalism. In its modern form, it began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants as a reaction to theological liberalism and cultural modernism. Fundamentalists argued that 19th-century modernist theologians had misunderstood or rejected certain doctrines, especially biblical inerrancy, which they considered the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach</span> German foreign service official, businessman and accused war criminal (1870–1950)

Gustav Georg Friedrich Maria Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was a German foreign service official who became chairman of the board of Friedrich Krupp AG, a heavy industry conglomerate, after his marriage to Bertha Krupp, who had inherited the company. He and his son Alfried would lead the company through two world wars, producing almost everything for the German war machine from U-boats, battleships, howitzers, trains, railway guns, machine guns, cars, tanks, and much more. Krupp produced the Tiger I tank, Big Bertha and the Paris Gun, among other inventions, under Gustav. Following World War II, plans to prosecute him as a war criminal at the 1945 Nuremberg Trials were dropped because by then he was bedridden, senile, and considered medically unfit for trial. The charges against him were held in abeyance in case he were found fit for trial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Colson</span> American attorney and author (1931–2012)

Charles Wendell Colson, generally referred to as Chuck Colson, was an American attorney and political advisor who served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1970. Once known as President Nixon's "hatchet man", Colson gained notoriety at the height of the Watergate scandal, for being named as one of the Watergate Seven, and also for pleading guilty to obstruction of justice for attempting to defame Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg. In 1974, he served seven months in the federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama, as the first member of the Nixon administration to be incarcerated for Watergate-related charges.

A family is a domestic or social group.

The Fellowship, also known as The Family, is a U.S.-based nonprofit religious and political organization founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide. The stated purpose of The Fellowship is to provide a fellowship forum where decision makers can attend Bible studies, attend prayer meetings, worship God, experience spiritual affirmation and receive support.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Masonic conspiracy theories</span> Conspiracy theories involving Freemasonry

Hundreds of conspiracy theories about Freemasonry have been described since the late 18th century. Usually, these theories fall into three distinct categories: political, religious, and cultural. Many conspiracy theories have connected the Freemasons with worship of the devil; these ideas are based on different interpretations of the doctrines of those organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmond Michelet</span> French politician

Edmond Michelet was a French politician. He is the father of the writer Claude Michelet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Positive Christianity</span> Nazi movement which fuses racial purity and Christianity

Positive Christianity was a movement within Nazi Germany which promoted the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing racialistic Nazi ideology with either fundamental or significant elements of Nicene Christianity. Adolf Hitler used the term in point 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform, stating: "the Party as such represents the viewpoint of Positive Christianity without binding itself to any particular denomination". The Nazi movement had been hostile to Germany's established churches. The new Nazi idea of Positive Christianity allayed the fears of Germany's Christian majority by implying that the Nazi movement was not anti-Christian. That said, in 1937, Hans Kerrl, the Reich Minister for Church Affairs, explained that "Positive Christianity" was not "dependent upon the Apostle's Creed", nor was it dependent on "faith in Christ as the son of God", upon which Christianity relied, rather, it was represented by the Nazi Party: "The Führer is the herald of a new revelation", he said. Hitler's public presentation of Positive Christianity as a traditional Christian faith differed. Despite Hitler's insistence on a unified peace with the Christian churches, to accord with Nazi antisemitism, Positive Christianity advocates also sought to distance themselves from the Jewish origins of Christ and the Christian Bible. Based on such elements, most of Positive Christianity separated itself from traditional Nicene Christianity and as a result, it is in general considered apostate by all mainstream Trinitarian Christian churches, regardless of whether they are Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Billy Graham Center</span>

The Wheaton College Billy Graham Center was founded and opened in 1981 on the campus of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Named after Billy Graham, the center is the primary location for many of Wheaton College's bible and theology classes, as well as the graduate school's main headquarters, and host to multiple museums and auditoriums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Religious views of Adolf Hitler</span>

The religious beliefs of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, have been a matter of debate. His opinions regarding religious matters changed considerably over time. During the beginning of his political life, Hitler publicly expressed favorable opinions towards Christianity. Some historians describe his later posture as being "anti-Christian". He also criticized atheism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard C. Halverson</span> United States Senate chaplain

The Reverend Richard Christian Halverson, D.D., was an American Presbyterian minister and author who served as the chaplain of the United States Senate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Sharlet (writer)</span> American journalist

Jeff Sharlet is an American academic, journalist, and author. Throughout his career, Sharlet's work has focused on religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexuality of Adolf Hitler</span>

The sexuality of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, has long been a matter of historical and scholarly debate, as well as speculation and rumour. There is evidence that he had relationships with a number of women during his lifetime, as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence of homosexual encounters. His name has been linked to a number of possible female lovers, two of whom committed suicide. A third died of complications eight years after a suicide attempt, and a fourth also attempted suicide.

Douglas Evans Coe was an American evangelist who served as the associate director of the Fellowship Foundation, a religious and political organization known for hosting the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Coe has been referred to as the "stealth Billy Graham". In 2005, Coe was named one of the 25 most-influential evangelicals in the United States by Time. Coe was an ordained ruling elder and lay minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Historians, political scientists and philosophers have studied Nazism with a specific focus on its religious and pseudo-religious aspects. It has been debated whether Nazism would constitute a political religion, and there has also been research on the millenarian, messianic, and occult or esoteric aspects of Nazism.

Paul Nathaniel Temple Jr. was the Chairman Emeritus and co-founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Chairman of the Board of BioGenesis Enterprises.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C Street Center</span> The Fellowship property in Washington, DC

The Family is an American documentary streaming television miniseries that premiered on Netflix on August 9, 2019. The series examines a conservative Christian group—known as the Family or the Fellowship—its history, and investigates its influence on American politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gay Nazis myth</span> Myth that homosexuals pervaded the Nazi Party

There is a widespread and long-lasting myth alleging that homosexuals were numerous and prominent as a group in the Nazi Party or the identification of Nazism with homosexuality more generally. It has been promoted by various individuals and groups both before and after World War II, especially by left-wing Germans during the Nazi era and the Christian right in the United States more recently. Although some gay men joined the Nazi Party, there is no evidence that they were overrepresented. The Nazis harshly criticized homosexuality and severely persecuted gay men, going as far as murdering them en masse. Therefore, historians regard the myth as having no merit.

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War (2023) is an book on American politics by Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

References

  1. 1 2 Miller, Lisa (September 8, 2009). "House of Worship". Newsweek . Retrieved August 14, 2009.
  2. Jeff Sharlet, The Family (Harper, 2008), p. 259.
  3. Sharlet, Jeff (July 21, 2009). "Sex and power inside "the C Street House"". Salon.com . Retrieved November 28, 2009.
  4. "Jeff Sharlet on "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power"". Democracy Now!. August 12, 2009. Retrieved November 28, 2009.
  5. Sharlet, Jeff (March 2003). "Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats". Harper's Magazine. Archived from the original on July 1, 2009. Retrieved July 20, 2009.
  6. Sharlet, Jeff (2008). The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power . HarperCollins. ISBN   978-0-06-055979-3.
  7. Sharlet, Jeff (2008). The Family: Power, Politics and Fundamentalism's Shadow Elite. University of Queensland Press. ISBN   978-0-7022-3694-5.
  8. 1 2 Jeff Sharlet, The Family (Harper, 2008), pp. 254–5.
  9. 1 2 3 Mitchell, Andrea; Popkin, James 'Jim' (April 3, 2008). "Political ties to a secretive religious group". NBC News. Retrieved January 28, 2010.
  10. Jeff Sharlet, The Family (Harper, 2008), p. 255.
  11. Book review quotes, Amazon, October 13, 2009, ISBN   978-0060560058 .
  12. "Quoting book reviews for The Family", The Revealer .
  13. "Lisa Miller", Newsweek (biography).
  14. "The Family". IMDb .
  15. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : The Family: It's Not About Faith, It's About Power | Official Trailer | Netflix. YouTube .