The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
by Jeff Sharlet
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jeff SharletBrand: MyBook
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-02
ISBN: 0060560053
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Book Review: The Wrong Family (the Right One ends in -Stein or -Berg)
Summary: 3 Stars
Jeff,
I finished reading through your book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, last night. Some portions I scanned and others I read more closely. I also examined your footnotes.
Before I give you my overall impression, I would like to record the following observations:
1. I want to send you a scan of a very funny cartoon from an Al Franken book, called "Supply Side Jesus".
2. Recently I heard Norma McCorvey on one of the radio shows speaking against Mr. Franken, claiming that he stole the election in Minnesota. She is the former plaintiff in Roe vs. Wade who recently became first an evangelical and now Catholic. Her voice fairly dripped with ignorance and self-righteousness. Another fool to be manipulated by the power elite. (Where was she when Bush appeared to have stolen the elections in Florida and Ohio?)
3. When I lived in Fort Collins, Colorado, in winter of 2006, I fellowshipped with a group of idealistic Christians. But unlike your group in Arlington, these people were purists and totally apolitical. I also visited one of the local mega-churches. In a Sunday school class I met a United Airlines pilot. When I asked him about the incredibly contorted maneuver of the plane that allegedly flew into the Pentagon, piloted by a man who could not even get certified on a Cesna, he looked at me and said, without batting an eyelash, that flying a 747 like that is "a piece of cake"! What a despicable liar! Also in that same class, which was discussing Christian history, I asked the instructor why Christians even supported the American revolution since they are supposed to submit to the "king God has placed over them"! The instructor glared at me and said that this was not the appropriate forum for such a question! (You might be interested to know that John Wesley recalled back to England all the Methodist ministers from the colonies on the eve of the Revolution, since he believed that this war was morally unjustified.)
4. I disagree with Haggard about the supposed superiority of Protestantism to Catholicism. I do not think that Protestants are really more free or forward looking than Catholics. Protestant control mechanisms are just as hierarchical and pervasive as Catholic, as your description of New Life church makes pretty clear. The real difference in my view is that Protestant churches appear to be more culturally relevant and flexible than the Catholics, who are stuck on the paradigm of latinized Roman imperialism as a unifying force for Christendom. The Catholic church pines for the days of Charlemagne when Christendom appeared to be unified. They are centralists. Protestants are no less imperialistic in their ambitions, but they appear to be driving for an Anglo-American English speaking globalist Christian empire. It appears that the RCC is reluctantly going along with them too.
5. Read this pamphlet from the Philadelphia Church of God, which runs down the Catholic Church as the harlot of Revelation who fornicates with the beast power of Imperial Rome/Europe. Yet this same church happily fuses its power with the military beast of America or England, as seen in its monthly outreach magazine.
.
6. Haggard's admission that Christianity is just another commodity is pretty astounding and damning in my view. It reflects the shallowness of his thinking: the McDonaldization of religion. Can't add much to that, except for outrage!
7. The Christian right loves to scorn those who promote a "social Gospel" seeking activism and justice in the arena of everyday life. But your book makes clear that they are happy to engage in their own social engineering on behalf of the capitalistic elites, it would appear. This is because since all churches are dependent on donations, they invariably become corrupted by pandering to the wealthy elite, who use their largesse to capture the church as a voice of social pacification and subjugation. These people don't do too well with the description in Acts 2 of how the early Jewish Christians lived communally and held all things in common. Ask them about this and watch them choke up:
Acts 2:42 And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.
43 And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.
44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
46 And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,
47 Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.
8. I think the biggest problem that Christianity struggles with is the tension between the two images of Jesus as the suffering servant and the lamb who carries away the sins of the world in the Gospels, and the triumphant lion of Judah in the Book of Revelation. Christians are told to "take up the cross and follow Me", meaning they must share in Christ's path of suffering. But there also is a strong tendency for Christians to want to participate in Christ's triumph over evil. They do not know how passive they can be as Christ triumphs spiritually. Certainly in the Old Testament there is much bloodshed and warfare, holy warfare of the Islamic Jihad sort, as Ted Haggard indicates with regard to the way the US ought to wage war in Iraq. Jesus Himself says some ambiguous things about violence. In one passage He tells His disciples to make sure they are armed with swords (but many commentators think He spoke here with intentional irony). In another passage He tells Peter that "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword".
9. The problem for Christianity is when it becomes the approved religion of the governing elite. The early church eschewed military service. Soldiers were allowed to convert to Christianity and continue in the Roman army. But baptized Christians could not join the Roman army. Once Constantine accepted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, suddenly this easy dichotomy could not be maintained.
10. In my personal view, Christianity is most successsful as a fringe counter cultural force opposed to the prevailing power structures. Once Christianity comes into favor by the governing elites, it falls rapidly from grace and becomes hopelessly corrupted. This is the phenomenon your book describes in such painful detail. Jesus said His followers would be like salt. Salt is good in moderation. But when salt runs rampant, it overwhelms all other tastes and actually becomes poisonous. vehamayvin yavin.
Now, back to my review of your book. I found the section on Colorado Springs and New Life church the most interesting, perhaps because I have been there myself or perhaps because it seems the most relevant to our contemporary situation.
Your portrayal of Ted Haggard is most fascinating. He certainly allowed you an intimate glimpse into his lifestyle and beliefs.
I found his comment about Bush's lies regarding Iraq very intriguing, especially his comment that while a Christian leader must not lie, he also does not need to say everything he knows. I think this is rather naive. Apparently Haggard does not realize that Macchiavelli wrote his book, The Prince, as cynical advice to none other than the Roman Catholic Pope! The problem here is that Jesus' moral instructions seem applicable to only the average person and not to those who hold power, who apparently are encouraged to make up their own rules as they go along. This is a sad example of how the morally utilitarian attitudes of Christians can make "non-believers" cynical to say the least.
My overall impression of your book, however, is not so positive. Not that it is poorly written or poorly researched. Not at all. It is extremely impressive in its detail and thoroughness. However, it is my impression over the last ten years since my conversion to Christianity, that other groups are much more significant as movers and shakers. I think the people you portray are minor actors at best, perhaps willing dupes, pious fools, or however you want to describe them.
I think at best these people are like David Kuo, sincere and earnest and easily manipulated by the power elite. Obviously the fundamentalist network within government and industry is very broad and deep. I do not deny that. But I think that largely these people respond to the forces others set in motion. They are not really visionaries as much as easily mobilized activists.
My impression is that the Catholics and the Jews wield much more influence over our society than the rather sorry group your book portrays. The Catholics control the Navy. Most of the Supreme Court Justices today are Catholic. There are prominent Catholic neocons who advise government. And Catholic universities are much more distinguished than anything in the evangelical world. The society you portray, as impressively organized as it is, is nothing more than a dime store operation compared to the Roman Catholic Church in America.
The Jews are divided into two groups: the financiers and the Zionists. Sometimes they overlap. But clearly their influence is enormous. AIPAC (which I like to call A Pack of Lies) virtually runs Congress on behalf of a foreign government. It would appear to violate the Act that prohibits US citizens from lobbying for foreign entities. The Jewish financiers own Congress, along with most media organs in our country. It is widely reported that Wall St. firms gave Obama 1 billion dollars in campaign contributions. Their newspapers and other mass media outlets fail to report the truth about virtually anything. I have been listening to the usual run of the mill talking head radio jocks, and it strikes me as curious that while they are so eager to decry Obama's health plan and to depict him as a Socialist/Marxist, they fail to take up the one rock hard issue against him: his foreign birth that disqualifies him from the US Presidency. Why would that be, do you suppose? It seems clear to me that the Jewish media owners have given orders simply to toy with Obama, to bluster about him in order to create a stink that will drive up ratings. But they do not care in the least if he serves in office or not.
Your approach seems similar to a book that purported to expose an enormous prostitution ring in, say, Washington DC, but failed to reveal, or even mention, the existence of the pimps and others who control the ring from the top. And a book that really wished to dig into the subterranean levels of conspiratorial control over our nation would expose such the real cynics and power brokers, not the pathetic Johnny Appleseed Christian right, who are just tools in the end of the moneyed elite.
For this reason I must judge your book to be a total failure and an abject disappointment. I suspect, given your connections to the world of New York City mass media, that your book was custom ordered to help keep the smoke blowing that conceals the predatory and pernicious policies of those who truly run our country from behind the curtain. And that means that, in the end, your book tragically serves the highest interests of those who would enslave us.
Here are some stories that any investigative journalist worth his salt might pursue, were he truly interested in truth, justice, and the American way:
[...]
...Fifth Clue -- Quality of Pilots in Pentagon crash: As you point out in Operation 911: No Suicide Pilots [...], the flying instructors who trained the "suicide" pilots of Flight 77 said they were hopeless. "It was like they had hardly even ever driven a car ..." The flight instructors called the two, "dumb and dumber," and told them to quit taking lessons.
Yet the Washington Post described the maneuvers of Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon. The huge jet took a 270 degree hairpin turn to make its target. The Post said Flight 77 had to be flown by expert pilots.
Something is wrong here. Now "dumb and dumber" are expert pilots. That is your fifth clue...
2. This strange report from Ed Haas was totally ignored by the mainstream "Whoreporate Mess Media": [...]
Here is a note I added to his report:
The statement supposedly overheard in the Jewish cemetery that: "The Americans will learn what it is to live with terrorists after the planes hit the twins in September." seems authentic since, while Americans usually refer to the WTC as the Twin Towers, in Hebrew they are referred to simply as the Te'umim, or Twins, exactly as Haas' source reported. When I was living in Israel in 2005 people there always referred to the buildings destroyed on 9-11 as simply the Te'umim, or Twins. This is the common Hebrew idiom to refer to them.
3. Victor Ostravsky, the Israeli Mossad agent who supposedly retired and wrote an expose of the agency, runs an art gallery in Phoenix Arizona:[...]
The suspicious Israelis who were rounded up and deported after 9-11 all had visas as "art students".
Perhaps Mr. Ostravsky faked his "retirement" from Mossad and was in place as their handler all along?
But I have no illusions that anything even approaching this will come out of a New York publishing house, newspaper, or magazine, TV or radio network.
Finally, let me close with two true stories. When I flew from New York to the West Coast in December of 2005, I was sitting next to two NYC radio news reporters who were headed to a Las Vegas convention. After some time I asked them about 9-11 and why the media coverage was so enemic, why none of the strange situations and mountains of circumstantial evidence ever was probed seriously. They just stared at me blankly. Then I said: "My mother was raised in New York and always told me that New Yorkers are the smartest people in the world. But my impression, based on the reporting about 9-11, is that they are spineless wimps and idiots, tools of the pseudo-capitalist criminal cabal that runs our nation." They snarled at me and looked like they wanted to rip my face off. But in the end they were simply feeble and ineffectual. And that is how I judge your book, too.
The second story occurred when I lived in Boulder, Colorado. When Mark Carr was arrested and brought over from Thailand, there was a media circus for almost one month. TV networks from all over the world camped outside the Boulder Justice Center. I decided to utilize the opportunity to circulate a flyer about 9-11. After a few days on the job, I was taken aside by one of the FOX news cameramen. Fearing the worst, I approached him gingerly. He spoke to me sympathetically and then said: "You're wasting your time". When I asked him why, thinking he was another media fool and dupe, he told me a shocking thing. He said something like: "All of us in the media know that the official 9-11 report is a bogus whitewash, but the problem is that the news executives back in New York won't let us dig out the truth."
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And I am sure that those same media moguls are very happy with your book The Family, which creates another chimerical enemy with which to distract Americans from the ugly truth about who their true oppressors really are.
Shalom ve Emet,
Michael Korn
PS I intend to post these comments on the Amazon website link to your book.
Summary of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
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.
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