A masterful labor of research and synthesis, this book is a comprehensive history of Evangelical Protestantism's influence in the United States government in the twentieth century. Those seeking to understand the persistent theocratic impulse in a government founded solidly on Enlightenment principles--and Mr. Sharlet does a particularly able job of sorting out the various strands of intellectual history in this area--will do well to start with this book.

An example of just one of the many established norms of American politics and government is that its citizens have been lied to for nefarious ends. ( )

Extensive research embedded, dedicated journalist = scary product. I used to read Robert Ludlum because he spun a good yarn, but this work of non-fiction is no yarn, because The Family is real, pervasive and infecting the U.S. like a malevolent virus. And not just the U.S. - they back some of the worst dictatorships. Think of the most backward public figures in recent years - John Ashcroft, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, John Ensign, Sam Brownback - all Family. These people scare me - they have money and they have a jihadist mindset with their own interpretation of Christianity. ( )

This was a very difficult book for me. I don't doubt the facts it presents.

One thing I have seen in my life - people who actually believe that rich people are somehow better, rich people know what is right. I have seen this in people who have little money, who have a comfortable amount of money, and in people who are quite wealthy. When somebody confesses this belief to me, I am always amazed. My own theory is that rich people are about as tuned into truth as anybody else is, i.e. sometimes they're pretty tuned in but an awful lot of the time they are very far off the mark.

I guess for me what would help more would be a perspective that steps back a bit. Sharlet does occasionally hold up his fundamentalists next to other groups, sometimes liberal secularists, sometimes Islamic jihadists. But never for very long. His book is already plenty long so I can hardly blame him for not triply or quadrupling it! He has a particular story to tell. But to make sense of this story is really hard. It's probably just my style, to understand a thing by seeing it as an instance of a more general category.

I like his proposed solution, deliverance versus salvation.

I do wonder though... here is an analogy: climate change is a problem, but maybe we will run out of fossil fuels soon enough that actually climate change won't be such a big problem. Living without fossil fuels is going to be plenty hard, though! The cure may well be every bit as difficult as the disease would have been!

Similarly, the American Empire may not reach the kind of totalitarian finality that would make clear what horrible nightmares its dreams actually are. Between debt deflation, various global crises from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea etc., we may end up splintered into gangs and clans, ruled by war lords like Ted Bundy and who can say what militias... the USA could look like Afghanistan or Somalia, transformed with horrible suddenness.

What kind of stories can we then live by to give our lives meaning? ( )

At its best a detailed description of the history of American fundamentalism and the Family, including alarming and possibly damnable evidence of its ties (post- fall) to Nazism and fascism. No one has yet provided a reliable course for navigating American fundamentalism; instead we now have a number of paths through it that only provide views of some of its features, ignoring others. I had hoped that Sharlet would provide more of a definitive history, but even if it's not that this is a strong book. ( )

A revealing and frightening book that I read for one of my local bookclubs...The "headquarters" of this movement is within walking distance of my home, making it all the more troubling. Despite having lived in the D.C. area for more than 35 years, a book like this can still shock me. It is a book that delves into fundamentalism in this country and the impact is has on national (and international) politics. It is an important subject for citizens to explore. ( )

Revealing and extremely disturbing. ( )

An interesting if long-winded history of Christian fundamentalism in America and its current roots, and the origin of the National Prayer Breakfast.
( )

Several times while I was reading THE FAMILY, I wondered if Jeff Sharlet was paranoid. I've felt the increased influence of the Christian Fundamentalist movement on the United States but had never thought it was as wide-spread as he proclaimed, with active cells reaching into all three branches of government and influencing governments throughout the world. I decided to read the reviews of his book and found that many of the ones that were positive (and they were the majority) were written by people whose opinions I respect. Some of the negative ones, on the other hand, seem to have been composed by people so far to the right that I doubt if they even read the book or understood it if they did.
The Family is a group, basically started by a philosophy of an immigrant preacher from Norway in 1935. His idea was to gather a small group of powerful men sympathetic to fascism to bring those ideas into American government. Henry Ford was one of his followers. His (and later other group leaders) models were Hitler, Lenin, and Mao. It wasn't so much that they agreed with their actions but they liked the discipline they imposed and how they got their government and populations to do their bidding although he states that Hitler had a picture of Ford in his office and visa versa.
Giving themselves over to Jesus was their method and they, and their followers, even today, firmly believe the most important thing in their lives is to bring Jesus's message and actions to everyone everywhere.
The group was divided into small cells with each cell providing its members with support and reinforcement. They were interested in the elite, not the general population, though they did recruit a large number of families and offered programs to attract and maintaing their membership.
They are against government aid to people because they think that shows the recipients have forgotten that "God will provide" and expect to receive benefits from the government.
They were able to gain early success through their fight against communism. Some of their accomplishments to show we were better than the "Godless Communists" was to insert "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, placing "In God we Trust" on our coins, and instituting the National Prayer Breakfast in the halls of government in DC.
They began the home-schooling movement and provide many of the textbooks used by parents, textbooks that are skewed to present The Family's viewpoint.
They have established "faith-based" desks in many government departments.
The book names of the Presidents, Congressmen and Senators, and Supreme Court Justices, and top-level military leaders who were and are part of The Family. They supported governments throughout the world, sending US funding to them, that were ruled by some of the most ruthless murdering dictators of the twentieth century including General Suharto of Indonesia, General Costa e Silva of Brazil, Haile Selassie of Etheopia, and El Salvador. With the support of the US government, members of The Family were able get access to leaders throughout the world to try to get them to recognize the supremacy of Jesus.
After the fall of the USSR and the Berlin Wall, communism was no longer the major threat to the US. They decided the new one was sex and fought to prevent abortions and homosexuals. An example of their success was in Uganda where Congressman Joe Pitts got their government to write abstinence into their law. He redirected millions of dollars from effective sex-ed programs to programs stigmatizing condom use. College students had bonfirs to burn condoms. The result was the number of cases of AIDS, which had been the Africa's most successful country for reducing AIDS, nearly doubled. But since the country followed the evangelical playbook, it is considered a triumph the the American Family members who promoted it.
The followers of The Family truly believe they are doing Jesus's works and that they must get our government and people to follow their lead.
Since I am not an Evangelistic Christian and prefer following the dictates of my own religion, I found this book frightening. It reminded me of what they are afraid the Muslims are doing but don't see the comparison.
I gave this four stars because I think it would have been more effective (and an easier read) if he had cut back on the descriptions of many of the people mentioned. For instance, what difference does the shape of a man's fingers make?
I think it is an important book to help people understand the movement, its history, and how is has and will affect us all. ( )

An account of a fundamentalist Christian group called The Family, which is incredibly well-connected politically (they run the National Prayer Breakfast and appear to be the folks who added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and "in God we Trust" on our currency) and has an odd and sometimes difficult-to-fathom agenda. They seem to believe that Jesus supports the powerful and that their mission is to attain as much power as possible for the United States, but without any clear moral values except for those that appear to keep mainstream white males in power. I found the writing a bit hard to follow at times, and while the author did a fine job explaining who belonged to the group over the 20th century and provided some anecdotal information about specific moments where they intervened (and usually in a way I found upsetting--such as overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954), I found it difficult to determine exactly what this group is trying to do. They don't seem to follow the teachings of the New Testament as I've understood this book, but seem intent on calling power "Christian." I am guessing there are some very good magazine articles in here, but as a book, it was in need of a good editor. I had hoped to learn some things about a world view I find difficult to understand, but did not come away feeling particularly enlightened. ( )

Jeff Sharlet investigates a religious organization called the Family, a fundamentalist Christian group which puts much of its emphasis on "leadership" (or, to use a less charitable word, "power"), and which possesses a surprising amount of clout in American politics. He opens by talking a little about the organization, its people, and its principles, including recounting his own experiences with the group, then spends the bulk of the book exploring the history of the Family and its precursors, highlighting the often rather startling influence that this very narrow breed of evangelical Christianity has had on politics both foreign and domestic. He then devotes a couple of chapters to the social attitudes of its adherents and their place in the so-called "culture wars."

It's an interesting and important subject, one that (distressingly, for those of us who believe strongly in the separation of Church and State) is extremely relevant to the current political landscape in America. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I got quite as much out of this book as I wanted to. It's a complicated topic that requires clear and careful journalism, and while Sharlet has obviously done vast amounts of research, he comes across as less "clear and careful journalist" and more "frustrated literary novelist," writing in a style that includes lush and often slightly fanciful descriptions of people's physical appearances and personalities and interactions, lots of rhetorical rambling, and turns of phrase or even whole paragraphs that leave me imagining the author sitting back and smiling in satisfaction at his own linguistic cleverness. None of which is necessarily a bad thing, and it works pretty well in the chapters where he's giving us glimpses of ordinary individuals and using that to convey some of the flavor of this particular theology and culture. But when it comes to his presentation of the historical facts, I think it muddles things a bit and dilutes some of the rather important points he's trying to make.

Which isn't to say that the book didn't have any impact. Mostly, it's left me feeling depressed. I like to believe that compromise and mutual understanding are always possible, but occasionally I have to acknowledge the fact that some worldviews are just intrinsically irreconcilable, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that we have some of those battling it out in America today. ( )

2 1/2 stars: I didn't particularly like it or dislike it; mixed or no real interest

______________

From the back cover: They insist they are just a group of firends, 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 how their faith--part free market fundamentalism, part imperial ambition--has come to be interwoven with the affairs of nations around the world.

-------------------

I was reasonably disappointed in this book. I thought it was going to give many more real world examples of this group and what they've done--and frankly I thought it would make me angry. Instead, it was just a history of a group of people. I don't agree with their views of politics or religion, but I don't find them to be as extreme as I had heard them portrayed.

The part I felt was the most interesting, was when they discussed the idea of "Jesus plus zero". They don't even follow the teachings of Jesus; its Jesus as some ideal, without any knowledge of his teachings? Such is American fundamentalism. "We worship a person, they worship ideas. ' That was American fundamentalism's Christ: a person, purged of the ideas that defined him, as if what mattered mos about Jesus was the color of his eyes and the shape of his beard.'"

"Following implementation of one of the continent's only successful anti-AIDS programs, President Yoweri Museveni, the Family's key man in Africa, came under pressure from the US to emphasize abstinence instead of condoms. Congressman Pitts wrote that pressure into law, redirecting millions of dollars from effective sex-ed programs to projects such as Unruh's. This pressure achieved the desired result: an evangelical revival in Uganda, and a stigmatization of condoms and those who use them so severe that some college campuses hold condom bonfires. Meanwhile, Ugandan souls may be more "pure" but their bodies are suffering; following the American intervention, the Ugandan AIDS rate, once dropping, nearly doubled. This fact goes unmentioned by activists such as Unruh and politicians such as Pitts, who continue to promote Uganda as an abstinence success story."

"Therein lies the paradox of the purity movement. It's at once an attempt to transcend cultural influences through the timelessness of scripture, and a painfully specific response to the sexual revolution. Populist fundamentalism grew into a political force in almost direct proportion to the mainstreaming (and subsequent weakening) of various sexual liberation movements, and as it did so it led the elites of American fundamentalism, so closely aligned with the secular conservatives as to be nearly invisible, out of the establishment coalition. Absent the sexual revolution, populist fundamentalism might still thrive only in enclaves, and elite fundamentalism still coexist easily with secular politics, as it did during the early days of the Cold War. " ( )

This is one of the more important books I have read since reading James Barr's Fundamentalism. It is one of the more disturbing books since I tried to read Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. After 30 years, I still have not dared pick up Marcuse's book. What is disturbing about the thesis of this book is that it is hard to know how to oppose the fundamentalism that this book describes. And it is easy to get hooked by elements of their program. I was once a reader of Francis Schaeffer and have been attracted by the concept of servant leadership. For now, the only advice I have is to hold fast to democracy and clearly support the separation of church and state. ( )

A must read for everyone who wants to understand how we went from being a secular country to being a "Christian" nation. This was not chance; it was planned. Sharlet is a compelling writer, and provides convincing details to lay out the agenda of the powerful men who have passed through the C Street house and become part of our government at all levels. ( )

Unfortunately dull and extremely difficult to read. It had nothing to keep my interest. After a few chapters I decided to move on. ( )

‘The Family’ is the name of a deliberately informal organization that claims to be centered on the life and teachings of Jesus. The group is best known for organizing the annual ‘National Prayer Breakfast’, which the President of the United States usually attends.

This book is an account of power in America and how it's shaped by religion. 'The Family' chronicles the ideas and influence of a group that, through its connections, has influenced the deployment of US power, especially in foreign policy during the Cold War. This very powerful group operates discreetly and acts below the public surface of legislation and politics without any scrutiny.

Jeff Sharlet, a scholar who writes on the connection between religion and politics, traces elite fundamentalism's lineage from Jonathan Edwards in the 18th c. through the 19th c. religious leader Charles Finney to the present. He also demonstrate the Family's behind the scenes role in deployment of American power; and he challenges the purely secular American historical narrative by arguing the role of religion behind political power, suggestings that fundamentalism is a critical element of America's political history..

Many people dismiss the Christian right as irrelevant and not as powerful as before, however Sharlet demonstrates the deep roots that the Christian right have in the American political system and how they maintain influence and reach.

Sharlet does not regard complexity as something to be avoided and his talent is in finding the right key for unlocking it. His careful analysis and first class research is written up within a fascinating narrative that helps readers understand how religion has influenced and shaped American life and politics.

The Family's obsession with secrecy and elites is disturbing. Sharlet assembles amazing evidence from the group's archives, shows its role within American politics and foreign policy. He investigates the theological, historical underpinnings of a fundamentalist vision that has been consistently ignored by scholars and journalists. This book will stand the test of time because Sharlet has approached his topic with an eye for connectedness and complexity.

I recommend it to anyone who wonders about church, state, the religious right, and the way religious groups orchestrate legislation and diplomacy. ( )

"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. ( )

This is a scary book when you really think about what the author has researched and presented to us. The most important point I took from the reading was that there is a well-hidden movement within the Christian fundamentalists that has positioned itself to influence the government of this and other countries toward the goal of imposing a Taliban-like society on everyone. By this I mean totalitarian, religious-focused, faith-based, and rulled by the elite. The Taliban is the same -- the elite are exempted from the strict rules because they set the rules. Religion is used to control the masses either through coercion or through the rigid structuring of the peoples' lives. I kept having flashes of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale as the ultimate destination of the Family.

An interesting aspect of the Family's belief system is one discussed often in the Atheist forums - the fact that people take a basic story, like that of Jesus from the Bible, and read into it whatever they want to project to achieve their own goals. In the case of the Family, they've distorted the Bible Jesus into some sort of capitalist warrior with his only goal to take over the world by whatever means is necessary. They truely believe that the end justifies the means. This is the scariest part of religion in general, people can twist an idea to whatever purpose they wish, and those really good at influencing others through their words and writings can take a horribly distorted idea and make it seem like a very reasonable approach.

It worries me that many of our leaders have bought into these warped ideas. I have to wonder if people see these ideas as a way to justify doing things they know are wrong, but would rather have the benefits derived from the power and authority they control instead of using their positions to help others and improve the human condition.

The earthquake in Haiti last week was an interesting occurance given the author's mention of the role of the Family in Haiti's politics. The people in Haiti suffer possibly because of the support we've given the dictatorships of the past trying to fight the Family's fear of communism and non-Christian beliefs.

Ironically, the Family's ultimate goal is a religious dictatorship without capitalism, skepticism, or freedom. ( )

Still in the reading process. He certainly could have used a better editor. The writing is a bit choppy and not always the best, but he has done some fascinating and scary research into the use of religious underpinnings in the quest for power. And were concerned about Islamic fundamentalists?

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

reviewed on my site