Church of the elite.

• Author: Scagliotti, John
• Position: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power - Book review

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

by Jeff Sharlet

HarperCollins. 464 pages. $25.95.

For years, I have been arguing to straight progressive friends who try to paint me into the corner of identity politics that they must understand that by standing up on "gay issues," you are not only fighting for gay civil rights, you are also attacking the power of conservative fundamentalists. The preachers and politicians of the right don't really care about homosexuality, I'd say; they care about power and money; but they can't go to the little church lady and say, "Write a check, vote for me, get on board so I can consort with titans and give all your tax dollars to my rich corporate friends." No, they have to say, "The homos are coming to destroy the family and take your children; help me save them."

Who knew that was just the half of it? It wasn't until I read The Family that I realized, yes, we might be scapegoats for raising money and some cheap votes, but the enemy is much bigger than the clever rightwing fundamentalist preachers. In fact, at its core there is a stealth elite group that calls itself nothing more formal than "the Family" or "the fellowship." It has organized a whole corporate class through self-described "cells," or prayer circles, a group that really does care about Jesus but a very special Jesus, a muscular warrior who requires no special church or mumbo-jumbo and no particular morality, either. Their chosen people may be Republicans or Democrats. Senators Sam Brownback and Hillary Clinton have both been partners in prayer in the Family's weekly Senate Prayer Breakfasts and members of specialized Family prayer circles. The chosen don't even have to be Christian (Indonesia's mass-murdering dictator, Suharto, a Muslim, was a favorite of the Family, invoking Jesus's name on a regular basis in prayer circles with American diplomats and arms manufacturers). It is enough that they are an elect, blessed by Him with the only thing that matters: power. Or, in the equation put forth with a stark economy of language by the Family's leader, Doug Coe, "Jesus plus nothing."

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Jeff Sharlet, a journalist and religious scholar, has gone inside the Family to grasp America's eerie elite fundamentalists. He has come back to tell us that what is happening is even worse than we had imagined.

Sharlet spent time in Arlington, Virginia, at Ivanwald, a novitiate of sorts for young men being groomed for leadership in the Family. The "brothers" spend most of their...