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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 277.3083
EAN: 9780060560058
ISBN: 0060560053
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: June 01, 2009
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: June 02, 2009
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Product Description:
They insist they are just a group of friends, yet they funnel millions of dollars through tax-free corporations. They claim to disdain politics, but congressmen of both parties describe them as the most influential religious organization in Washington. They say they are not Christians, but simply believers.
Behind the scenes at every National Prayer Breakfast since 1953 has been the Family, an elite network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful. Their goal is "Jesus plus nothing." Their method is backroom diplomacy. The Family is the startling story of how their faith—part free-market fundamentalism, part imperial ambition—has come to be interwoven with the affairs of nations around the world.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Basically, this book is a profile of a cult. Yeah, it's scarey and sad that people like this exist but I found the book itself to be increadibly boring. I've always suspected that people generally overrate the importance and influence of the idiot fringe in this country. I skipped around in the middle and the last third is a little better but, overall, I was disappointed.
Not recommended.
Rating: -
This is a somewhat informative book that leads you on a winding journey through some better-known and lesser know byways of modern american religion, and its interaction with government. The fact that this group of religious people woke up to the fact that in Washington DC you are either "at the table or on the menu" and are playing the political game just like numerous other special interest groups is somehow some evil conspiracy is a real stretch.
The author also weaves so much editorializing and speculation into the text that it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. If you have a pre-existing phobia of evangelical Christianity, this book will be a hearty helping of red meat. Even though the author tries to pose as superficially frendly toward evangelicals, The endnotes read like opposition research. The book inadvertently tells more of the pathological fear the left has about eveangelicals and the "Christian Right" than it does of evangelicals themseves.
Rating: -
"Archie gives blood" was the title of an episode of "All in the Family," which aired on Groundhog Day 1971 (Feb 2). Archie debates donating blood, fearing that his donated blood might end up flowing through liberal veins. After all, commies and pinko's are not "in the family." The now celebrated fiction of Archie and Edith Bunker played a light tune to serenade my disturbing journey through this eyewitness account of a fifth-column grab-bag of tricks and slights of hand.
Stealth mission tactics appear as fresh in 'The Family' as wet ink on first edition copies of Machiavelli's 'Art of War,' which hit the streets in 1520. Sharlet discloses the strained virtue of so-called Christians embedded in economic conglomerates and elected political offices plotting to use secular leaders "to pursue political jiujitsu." At the top of the grab-bag rests intended avoidance of identifying themselves by the Christian label. This tactic alone causes the author, born of a mixed Jewish-Christian marriage, enough consternation to serve as a sub-theme in the book.
Exposed are the Family's "cells"--local units bearing much in lack of organization in common with Al Qa'ida cells-- as inbred cadres of re-branded waifs complete with self-aggrandizing switches and plenty of ambiguous erotic short-circuits. Still it is clear that all cells bear much in common. They lack confidence in divine Providence, because prayerful trust in the Holy Trinity appears absent in Sharlet's descriptions of exchanges with and among many group members over the course of a year or more.
As it turns out, therefore, the family might not drop the Christian label only to make their aims palatable in culture wars. In fact, they might not be Christian at all except in nominal sense of the word. Sharlet paints the Family as boasting an elite and folksy membership roster--names of "successful" but disaffected and/or delusional Americans sewn together by a tacit populist fundamentalism. Like fundamentalists in any ideology masquerading as true religion, the Family has done more to take lives in armed conflicts than bring the Commonwealth of peace on earth as it is in heaven. The devil is in Sharlet's details.
The author has gone underground inside Ivanwald, the Family's bootcamp where would-be Family members learn rules and procedures about cell life after Ivanwald, where they live cheek to jowl for up to a year or more.
Who are the elite members? Without revealing all of the celebrated names and pedigrees, suffice it to say that "Hilary (Clinton) may well be God's beautiful child, but she's not a member of Coe's family" (p. 272).
Coe refers to the one and only Doug Coe, organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast and reigning Family mogul. No intellectual welter-weight, Coe has packaged Family pragmatism to make even Hilary and Sam Brownback occasional prayer partners. (Sam Brownback received his Senate crown after fellow Kansan, Bob Dole, released his throne in 1996.)
Speculation runs that nothing more than occasional moments have united polar opposites in the Family's 'Art of War.' However, debates of political jiujitsu loom large in this book leaving many answers to the question of who is in the Family and who is out.
Rating: -
Jeff Sharlet writes about the C Street fellowship that recently came to light after two of its members, a senator and a governor, were caught in sex related scandals. This book predates these revelations and presents information about this group that was previously hidden from view.
The Family seems to be a loose connection of powerful people who introduce each other to one another through an ostensibly shared version of Jesus. The Jesus of the Family differs greatly from that of the Jesus of Bible or even the Jesus of other fundamentalist groups. Douglas Coe, its current leader, like the founder Abraham Vereide, has a fascination with dictators. Coe admires the strength and efficiency of Hitler and the discipline of Chinese communists who can kill their mothers on command. He speaks of this, unchallenged, in settings of the powerful. His Jesus favors certain individuals and grants them wealth and power. All others must obey.
Considering the rhetoric, it is not surprising that Coe and his people have befriended dictators around the world. What is surprising is how he has been able to get influential people to support them too.
This book needs major editing. It's like Sharlet was hired to write a 400 page book and had to stretch it. The history, while interesting is wordy. The end parts about Ted Haggard and individual evangelicals don't fit, especially since one of Sharet's points is that elite fundamentalism is not much concerned with abortion, homosexuality or home schooling.
The author dilutes his points in conflating attendance at prayer breakfasts with support for the family. For instance, Hillary Clinton's and Al Gore's need for religion or their political use of it is far different that than of Sam Brownback. While he emphasizes the influence this group has with presidents, Jimmy Carter, the most overtly religious president in my lifetime receives hardly a mention.
Another weakness is the implication that this elite fundamentalism was a driving factor in US foreign policy in specific countries during the cold war. He notes that the Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger and by implication other neo-cons of this type were not under the Family's influence. Also, the CIA, as noted in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, set policies reflecting the Family's fascination with dictators without much outside input from any groups, including this one.
The book's weaknesses put it in the 3 star category. Providing information not available through other sources makes it a 5, so I'll average it to 4 stars.
Rating:  -
This book is only for those readers who are capable of independent thought: religionists need not apply. For anyone wanting to know why our government has become Taliban Lite: this is the first step in knowing the truth.
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