The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
by Jeff Sharlet
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jeff SharletEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-01
ISBN: 0060560053
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780060560058
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Book Reviews of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Book Review: A journey into the dark heart of American evangelicalism
Summary: 3 Stars
Judging purely from the sorts of folk who are vocal supporters of Sarah Palin, and discounting the few clearly intelligent but equally clearly totally bananas right-wingers such as Bill Kristol, one could easily imagine that US evangelical Christians are either or both of (a) uneducated and (b) several fries short of a Happy Meal.
This book, written prior to the emergence of the Palin phenomenon, seeks to show that evangelical Christianity in the USA has much bigger and more powerful politically-influential guns, and has had these for some time. These work quietly behind the scenes and prefer it that way. The recent (July 2009) spate of articles in the mainstream press concerning the group variously known as "The Family" and "The Fellowship", organiser of the National Prayer Breakfast, and its exclusive DC premises, will not have been welcome. The Family encompasses both prominent Republicans and Democrats, and even foreign (and non-Christian) leaders, whom it seeks to influence.
Much has been made recently of America as a "Christian country", even though the Founding Fathers were men of the Enlightenment and often at best deists (Thomas Jefferson famously had a Bible, out of which he had cut all the miracles, and he was accused of being an "atheist" when he ran for President). However, while the FF weren't Christian in an evangelical sense, many of their countrymen were, and the FF knew it and got their message across by using a language familiar to people brought up on a solid diet of weekly sermons. The result of it all was a conflation of the ideas of God's purposes and the USA, of the USA being a unique nation through which God has chosen to do his work in the world, the "shining city on a hill". It provides divine approval of America's way of doing, well, everything. The Family seeks to promulgate this, even, according to Mr. Sharlet, at the cost of closing eyes to the misdeeds of dictators (the "our sons of bitches" school of thought).
The book is interesting, but somewhat turgid at times. And somewhere in the middle of the book, Mr. Sharlet's thrust drifts off course and he burrows into other aspects of US evangelical life and views - Ted Haggard, home schooling - with the Family sometimes disappearing from the discourse almost completely. "Interesting," I would think, "but what's this got to do with the price of fish?"
So, how reliable are Mr. Sharlet's writings? Potential readers are advised to go to the amazon.com site and read there the literate one-star review by Mr. C. Coffman and the dialogue in the comments between Mr. Coffman and Mr. Sharlet himself. Mr. Coffman essentially accuses Mr. Sharlet of committing the sin of which Mr. Sharlet accuses the religious right, of distorting and misinforming people and thereby contributing to the divisions of an already badly-divided US society. So, who's right? Without doing the research all over again, it's impossible to tell, which shows you how careful you have to be with the written word.
However, the book does reinforce one important point. The mixture of religion and politics is a dangerous one, and the combination is always bad, never good - Northern Ireland, militant Islam, militant Judaism, and now militant so-called Christianity in the USA. The belief in the divine approval of one's thinking and the ability to enforce that thinking is catastrophe in the making. If nothing else, Mr. Sharlet's book is a warning that it is not an option to ignore, hoping that they'll go away, the forces that would bring about perhaps not quite a theocracy but certainly a blurring of the boundaries between religion and politics, a boundary on which the Founding Fathers were quite keen. Remember again Sarah Palin, who believes that we are living in the last generation, and who could so easily have been one heartbeat away from the button to ensure it.
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