tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40835469595811005482024-02-08T03:14:12.418-08:00The Family by Jeff SharletThe Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American PowerAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-82624443086099647362009-07-12T05:06:00.000-07:002009-07-12T05:11:58.341-07:00Buy The Family The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet Online<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51f20PR6UKL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 240px;" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51f20PR6UKL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><b>Product Description</b><br /> <p> 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. </p> <p> 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. <i>The Family</i> 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. </p> <br /><br /> <b>About the Author</b><br /> <p> Jeff Sharlet is a visiting research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media. He is a contributing editor for <i>Harper's</i> and <i>Rolling Stone</i>, the coauthor, with Peter Manseau, of <i>Killing the Buddha</i>, and the editor of TheRevealer.org. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.<br /></p><p><br /></p><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Product Details</span> <ul><li><b>Paperback:</b> 464 pages</li><li><b>Publisher:</b> Harper Perennial (June 2, 2009)</li><li><b>Language:</b> English</li><li><b>ISBN-10:</b> 0060560053</li><li><b>ISBN-13:</b> 978-0060560058</li><li><b> Product Dimensions: </b> 8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches </li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_top&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=amazonbank-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=0060560053" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><h2>The Family The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet Review</h2><br />A compellingly brilliant account of power in America and how it's shaped by religion. 'The Family' chronicles the ideas advanced by the elite Christian fundamentalist group of that name at the highest levels of government during the past half century. Through its White House and congressional connections, the Family has influenced the deployment of US power, especially in foreign policy during the Cold War and beyond. Led by the talented and Machiavellian Doug Coe, the group has operated sub-rosa in the corridors of power unhindered by democratic accountability.<br /><br />Jeff Sharlet, a scholar-writer on the nexus of religion & politics, pursues three goals in this remarkable book: (1) To trace elite fundamentalism's lineage from Jonathan Edwards in the 18th c. through the 19th c. religious leader Charles Finney to the present; (2) To demonstrate the Family's behind the scenes role in deployment of American power; and (3) To challenge the purely secular American historical narrative by arguing the role of religion behind the facade of formal power.<br /><br />Sharlet accomplishes the first objective with verve, the Finney chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Based on his research in the Family's archives, the second goal is achieved, especially on the group's involvement in blunting US de-Nazification policy in postwar Germany, facilitating Indonesia's Suharto's crushing of East Timor, and encouraging the Somalian dictator and other similar types. The author's third challenge is the most ambitious, but I believe he meets it.<br /><br />In fact, if the critical sociologist C. Wright Mills who wrote the influential 'The Power Elite' (1956) were alive today, I expect he'd be among the first to welcome 'The Family' revelations on the secretive role of Coe's elite "followers of Christ in government, business, and the military" in the projection of American power.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060560053?ie=UTF8&tag=amazonbank-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0060560053">For more Review Click Here</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Buy <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060560053?ie=UTF8&tag=amazonbank-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0060560053">The Family The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet</a> at Amazon.com and Get a free Shipping </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-70298352568182547582009-07-12T03:25:00.000-07:002009-07-12T03:35:00.528-07:00The Family - Table of Content<div style="text-align: center;">The Family <span>The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">Table of Content<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/family-introduction.html">Introduction</a><br /><br />I. Awakening</span><br /><ol><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/family-awakenings.html">Ivanwald</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/awakenings-experimental-religion.html">Experimental Religion</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-awakenings-revival-machine.html">The Revival Machine</a></li></ol><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">II. Jesus Plus Nothing</span><br /><ol><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/ii-jesus-plus-nothing-unit-number-one.html">Unit Number One</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/ii-jesus-plus-nothing-f-word.html">The F Word</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/ii-jesus-plus-nothing-ministry-of.html">The Ministry of Proper Enlightenment</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/ii-jesus-plus-nothing-blob.html">The Blob</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/ii-jesus-plus-nothing-vietnamization_12.html">Vietnamization</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/ii-jesus-plus-nothing-jesus-0-x.html">Jesus + 0 = X</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/ii-jesus-plus-nothing-interesting-blood.html">Interesting Blood</a></li></ol><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">III. The Popular Front</span><br /><ol><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/iii-popular-front-interlude.html">Interlude</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/iii-popular-front-what-everybody-wants.html">What Everybody Wants</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/iii-popular-front-romance-of-american.html">The Romance of American Fundamentalism</a></li></ol><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">IV |Contents</span><br /><ol><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/iv-contents-unschooling.html">Unschooling</a></li><li><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/iv-contents-this-is-not-end.html">This Is Not the End</a></li></ol><br /><a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/2009/07/acknowledgments.html">Acknowledgments</a><br /><br /><a href="Notes">Notes </a><br /><br /><a href="INDEX">Index</a><br /></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-24523578255778237232009-07-12T03:22:00.000-07:002009-07-12T03:24:51.950-07:00Where Can I Read The Family - The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff SharletWhere Can I Read The Family - The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet?<br /><br />Simple Questions need a Simple answer.<br /><br />The Family - The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet<br />can be read in <a href="http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/">http://thefamilybyjeffsharlet.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br />Full book are posted there.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-88243345011592028682009-07-12T03:17:00.001-07:002009-07-12T03:17:30.282-07:00INDEXabortion issue, 6, 198, 258, 264, 265, American fascism, 114–43. See also Ger-<br />269, 275, 276, 295, 314, 327–28, man fascism<br />357– 60, 429n Bruce Barton’s book The Man Nobody<br />Abs, Hermann J., 166 –68, 175 Knows and, 133–37<br />Abstinence Clearing house, 327–29 Frank Buchman and, 124–33<br />abst inence-only sex education pro- Euro pean fascism and, 121, 130–33<br />grams, 328– 29. See also sexual Merwin Hart and, 189–90<br />purity movement A rt hur Langlie and, 114–21<br />accountability. See also ethics New Deal reversal and, 141–43<br />Family/Fellowship tract on, t heocracy and, 121–24 (see a lso<br />219–20 theocracy)<br />Jesus plus nothing t heology and, A bram Vereide’s labor- management<br />282–83 reconciliation and, 137–41<br />personal responsibility and, 372–79 American fundamentalism<br />post war Nazi, 165 Cold War anticommunism and (see<br />sel essness and abdication of, 127 Cold War anticommunism)<br />Suharto’s Indonesian massacres and, de ned, 3– 4, 393n<br />251 Jonathan Edwards and (see Edwards,<br />Adamic, Louis, 99 Jonathan)<br />Adenauer, Konrad, 172, 178–80 elite vs. populist, 7–9 (see also elite<br />Adorno, Theodore, 121, 337 fundamentalism; populist<br />African Americans, 139– 41, 233, fundamentalism)<br />236– 40 Family/Fellowship as the avantgarde<br />AIDS, 328, 357, 382 of, 2– 5 (see a lso Family/Fellow-<br />Albania, 25, 185 ship)<br />Allende, Salvador, 248 fascism and (see American fasc ism;<br />America. See United States German fascism)<br /><br /><br />434 | INDEX<br /><br />American fundamentalism (continued) arap Moi, Daniel, 281–82<br />Charles Grandison Finney and (see A rendt, Hannah, 144, 386<br />Finney, Charles Grandison) Armenia, 267<br />Jesus Christs of, 5 (see also Jesus A rmstrong, O. K., 168, 411n<br />Christ) A rterburn, Stephen, 330 –31<br />myt hs of liberalism vs., 371, 386–87 A shcroft, John, 21, 258, 380–81, 385<br />politics and (see democracy; politics; authoritarianism, American. See<br />theocracy) A merican fascism<br />Popular Front cult ure war of, avant- garde, 3, 122<br />287–90 (see also Christian Azerbaijan, 266–67<br />educational movement; New L ife<br />Church; sexual purity movement) Baker, James, 25, 46, 58<br />su ering, salvation, deliverance, and, Baker, Susan, 273<br />370 –87 Bakke, Dennis, 23, 273, 397n<br />Abram Vereide and (see Vereide, Bakke, Eileen, 273, 329<br />Abraham [Abram]) Bakker, Jim, 322<br />Americans United for Separation of Barre, Siad, 222, 279–84<br />Church and State, 265 Barton, Bruce, 133–37, 141–42<br />American Values, 259 Barton, David, 342<br />Anderson, Lisa, 319–21 Batista, Fulgencio, 184–85<br />Angleton, James Jesus, 206 Bauer, Gary, 259, 381–82<br />Angola, 222 Beck, Dave, 99–100, 119<br />anti- abortion crusade. See abortion Begin, Menachem, 24<br />issue Bell, James F., 21, 227–28<br />anticommunism. See Cold War Benham, Flip, 357–58, 363 –65<br />anticommunism Benin, 28<br />ant i- intellectualism, 172–73, 347 Bennett, Charles E., 199, 204<br />anti- Semitism. See also German fascism; Bermuda retreat, 32<br />Jewish people Bevere, Lisa, 333–34<br />Bruce Barton on Hitler’s, 136 B ible<br />Christian Embassy and, 353 biblical scholarship and, 135<br />Gust av Adolf Gedat’s, 164 biblical worldview and, 350<br />Merwin Hart’s, 124, 412n Sam Brownback and, 267–68<br />Abram Vereide and Henry Ford’s, murderers in, 222<br />122–24 smuggling, 185–86, 306–7<br />anti- sex tra cking legislation, 274–75 biblical capit alism. See also capitalism<br />anxious bench, 80–83 Doug Coe and, 217<br />Apelian, Bill, 342 faith-based initiatives, 382–83<br />Apostolidis, Paul, 234, 421n Henry Ford and, 122–23<br />Arafat, Yasir, 245 Ted Haggard and, 304–7<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 435<br /><br />religious market economics and, Bush, George W., 22, 58–59, 294– 95,<br />312–15 379–86<br />theonomy as, 191 business, 122, 133–37. See a lso capital-<br />Abram Vereide and, 104– 5 ism; management<br />Billy Graham Center Archives, 60–61 But helezi, Mangosuthu, 24, 242<br />Billy Graham Crusade, 152 Byrnes, Jimmy, 159<br />Black, Hugo, 361<br />Black Bu ers, 238–39 Cabaniss, Ed, 189–90<br />Blob, The ( lm), 181–83, 204 Campus Crusade, 152, 216, 225–27,<br />Bob Jones University Press, 342, 428n 247, 353, 362, 380 396n<br />Body of Christ, 21, 255–56 Capehart, Homer, 168–69, 176, 215<br />Brat t, James D., 429n c apitalism. See also management<br />Brazil, 24, 222 biblical (see biblical c apitalism)<br />breakfast meetings. See National Prayer Dwight Eisenhower and, 185<br />Breakfast; prayer breakfast Ted Haggard and, 304–7<br />meetings labor unions and, 99–108<br />Bredesen, Harald, 186 religious market economics and, <br />Brewster, Ralph, 138 312–15<br />Bridges, Harry, 99–109, 120, 203, 289 t heocracy and, 382–83<br />Bright, Bill, 216, 225–27, 353, 380 A bram Vereide on, 190<br />Broger, John C., 155, 202–4 Carlson, Bengt, 2, 17, 30 –32, 36, 47–51<br />brot herhood, 40–41, 216, 254 Carlson, Frank, 155, 174, 186 –98, 200, <br />Brownback, Sam, 260–72 204– 5, 215, 219–20, 263–64,<br />career of, and Values Act ion Team, 408n<br />263– 69 Carmichael, Stokely, 238<br />Catholicism of, 261– 63 Carter, Jimmy, 24, 367, 400n<br />Hillary Clinton’s collaboration with, Carter, John, 354<br />274–75 Casanova, Carlos Eugenios Vides, 25<br />diplomac y of, 269–70 Caslen, Bob, 354<br />Family/Fellowship and, 18, 20 Castle Mainau conference, 174–77<br />Republican revolution and, 260 –61 Castro, Fidel, 184 –85, 380, 413n<br />sexual purity movement and, 328 Cat holicism, 97, 261–62, 269, 307,<br />Brown v. Board of Education case, 361 323, 381<br />Bryan, William Jennings, 5, 236 Cat ton, Jack, 354<br />Buchman, Frank, 124–30, 134, 154, Cedars<br />178, 405n, 406n author’s prayer meet ing at, 32–33<br />Burns, Arthur, 230 Hillary Clinton at, 272–73<br />Burton, Linda and A aron Michael, Doug Coe and, 26<br />307–9 Ivanwald and, 6, 15–16 (see also<br />Bush, George H. W., 25–26, 58, 223 Ivanwald)<br /><br /><br />436 | INDEX<br /><br />Cedars (continued ) Rousas John Rushdoony’s Christian<br />prayer meetings at, 27–29, 53, 245, Reconstructionism and, 347–51<br />251, 398n (see also prayer breakfast Vision Forum educational materials<br />meetings) and, 345–47<br />theology of, 45 Christian Embassy, 156–57, 353–54,<br />celibacy. See sexual purity movement 430–31n<br />cells (core groups). See also prayer Christianity, 5, 16, 50, 134, 179. See <br />groups also A merican fundamentalism; <br />Frank Buchman, Abram Vereide, and Catholicism; Protestantism;<br />inspiration for, 127–29 religion<br />Family/Fellowship and, 19–20, Christian Legal Societ y, 275<br />44–47 Christian Reconst ructionism, 347<br />foreign politics and, 162 Christian Right, 4 4, 132, 222–23, 295,<br />New Life Church and, 305–7, 337, 347, 383, 431n<br />313 –15 church (term), 4, 213, 255, 374<br />nonpartisan polit ics of, 385 churches, 15, 73, 83. See also church/<br />Chambliss, Saxby, 310 state separation issue; New Life<br />charit able choice concept, 381 Church<br />chastity. See sexual purity movement church/state separation issue<br />Chavez, Hugo, 413n Christian educational movement and,<br />Chile, 248, 422–23n 336–39, 356–60<br />China, 28, 267–68 Dwight Eisenhower and, 199–200<br />Christ. See Jesus Christ Hillary Clinton and, 275<br />Christian (term), 2, 13–14, 19, 29–30, faith- based initiatives and, 379–86<br />51, 83, 310 Family/Fellowship secrecy and, 245<br />Christian Democrat ic Union (CDU), providential history and, 356–57<br />178–80 Earl Warren on, 199<br />Christian educat ional movement, Clay, L ucius D., 158<br />336– 69 Cleaver, Eldridge, 240<br />author’s prayer meeting experience Clinton, Bill, 276–77, 392–93<br />and, 339, 356–69 Clinton, Hillary, 260, 272–77<br />church/state separat ion issue and, Coats, Dan, 242, 381, 418n<br />336–39, 356–60 Coburn, Tom, 18, 264 –65, 404n<br />home schooling, unschooling, Coe, David, 35–38, 243<br />providential history and, 339–45, Coe, Doug<br />428n A frican A mericans and, 237–40<br />Stonewall Jackson and, 351–56 authoritarianism and, 30, 216–17,<br />Jewish history and, 360– 64 254–55<br />religious in uences in American James Baker and, 25<br />history, 364–69 Sam Brownback and, 264 –65<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 437<br /><br />Hillary Clinton and, 272–73 Colson, Charles W.<br />Charles Colson and, 231–33, 235 Born Again memoir of, 7, 228, <br />on churches, 213 424 –25n<br />on covenants, 29–30 Sam Brownback and, 269–70<br />on domestic politics, 198 career and conversion of, 227–33<br />education of, 210–11 Christian worldview and, 342– 43,<br />as Family/Fellowship leader, 8, 384, 429n<br />21–22, 208–18 (see also Family/ Hillary Clinton and, 274–75<br />Fellowship) on Family/Fellowship numbers, 20<br />Mark Hat eld and, 211–212 in uence of, 240, 259, 379<br />internationalism of, 218–24 (see a lso Prison Fellowship of, 22, 233–36<br />foreign politics) communism. See also Cold War<br />on Jesus plus nothing theology, 30, anticommunism<br />42, 58, 121, 252–56, 380 (see also Harry Bridges and, 102<br />Jesus plus nothing t heology) Frank Buchman and, 129<br />David Kuo’s meeting with, 380 cells and, 19–20, 45, 306–7<br />Nat ional Prayer Breakfast and, 22–26 Suharto slaughter of Indonesian<br />(see also Nat ional Prayer Breakfast) communists, 221, 245–52<br />power of, 21–26, 214, 259–60 A bram Vereide and, 99, 139, 157<br />prayer bet of, 244 Community Bible Study, 22<br />on social order, 371 compassionate conservatism, 233,<br />Somalia case and, 281–82 236– 40, 258<br />spiritual warfare and, 213–14 Compassion International, 295<br />as stealth persuader, 92 Congress, U. S. See also politics<br />submergence strategy of, 223–24 anti- union legislation and, 141– 43<br />Dawson Trotman and, 210–11 Sam Brownback in (see Brownback,<br />visit to Ivanwald by, 51–55 Sam)<br />Coe, Jan, 213 Frank Carlson and, 186–95 (see also<br />Coe, Jonat han, 281– 82 Carlson, Frank)<br />Cold War anticommunism. See also Family/Fellowship members in, 6,<br />communism 15–16, 18–19, 138–40, 142, 148, <br />The Blob lm and, 181–83 168 –70, 185, 198 –99, 247, 264,<br />containment policy and, 162 276, 395, 396, 399– 400n, 416n<br />missionaries and, 413n Hillary Clinton in, 260, 272–77<br />Robert Taft and, 192–94 postwar Nazi reconciliation and,<br />Abram Vereide, German fascism, and, 168 –74, 177–78<br />150–52 (see also German fascism) Prayer Breakfast meetings wit h<br />Abram Vereide’s vision of interna- members of, 138 –41 (see also<br />tional spirit ual war as, 152–55 (see National Prayer Breakfast; P rayer<br />also foreign politics) Breakfast meetings)<br /><br /><br />438 | INDEX<br /><br />Conlan, John, 353 democracy<br />Connally, Je , 17–18, 30, 33– 35, Konrad Adenauer and, 179<br />38–42, 282–83 Frank Buchman and, 128–29<br />conservatism. See also Republicans deliverance and, 387<br />compassionate, 233, 236– 40, 258 history of American secular, 337–39<br />liberalism vs., 182 (see also liberalism) Ivanwald brothers and, 40<br />neoconservatism, 183, 267 Art hur Langlie and, 122<br />Abram Vereide’s elite fundamental- theocracy vs., 6–7, 277–78, 366–69<br />ism and, 112–13 (see also theocracy)<br />Constitution, U. S., 339, 348 Demo crats. See a lso liberalism<br />containment policy, 162, 182. See a lso Family/Fellowship and, 18–19, 190<br />Cold War anticommunism Art hur Langlie and, 122<br />Cook, Roy, 33, 210 Denning, Michael, 287<br />Coonley, Howard, 138–39, 189–90 deregulation, 142<br />Cooper, Dan, 354 desire, 50 –51, 373 –74, 386<br />Cooper, Merian, 203–4 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 341<br />core groups. See cells (core groups) Dewey, John, 376<br />Corey, Lewis, 287 dictators, Doug Coe and, 222<br />Costa R ica, 220–21 Diem, Ngo Dinh, 199<br />covenants, 29–30, 4 4, 54–55, 255 DiIulio, John, 380–81<br />Crocker, Chester A., 54 disobedience. See obedience<br />Cromartie, Michael, 23 Dobson, James, 259, 295<br />Crosby, Kenneth M., 184–85 Domenici, Pete, 18<br />C Street House, 29 –30, 259, domestic politics, 181–204, 257–84<br />276–77 The Blob lm and, 181–83<br />Cuba, 184 –85, 413n Bill Bright, Campus Crusade, and,<br />culture war, 227–28, 236, 287–90. See 225–27<br />also Christian educat ional Sam Brownback and, 260 –72<br />movement; New Life Church; Frank Carlson and Dwight Eisenhow-<br />Popular Front; sexual purity er’s presidential election, 183–95<br />movement Hillary Clinton and, 272–77<br />Curtis, Carl, 18 Charles Colson, cult ural polit ics,<br />and, 227–36<br />Dague, Paul B., 142 electoral politics of George W. Bush<br />Daubenmire, Dave, 356–57 and, 383, 385<br />Declaration of Inde pen dence, U. S., elite fundamentalism and, 277–79<br />339, 343 faith- based initiatives and, 274–75,<br />Deism, 366 379–86<br />DeLay, Tom, 265, 430, 431 Family/Fellowship in uence in,<br />DeMint, Jim, 18 198–204, 257– 60<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 439<br /><br />rst Presidential Prayer Breakfast, elite fundamentalism. See also American<br />195–98 (see also National P rayer fundamentalism<br />Breakfast) A merican fascism and, 121–24 (see<br />Jesus plus nothing t heology and, also A merican fascism)<br />29–30, 283–84 of Frank Buc hman, 124–30, 405–6n<br />nonpartisan Prayer Breakfast of Charles Colson, 235–36<br />meetings and, 139–40 (see also of Family/Fellowship, 43–44, 57–58<br />Prayer Breakfast meetings) (see also Family/Fellowship)<br />dominionism, 44 international capitalism and, 306 (see<br />Dore, John, 118– 20 also biblical capit alism)<br />Dorn, William Jennings Bryan, 220 internationalist ambit ions of, 152–53<br />doubt, absence of, 48–51 (see also Cold War anticommu-<br />Douglass, Walter, 109–11 nism; foreign politics; German<br />Douthat, Ross, 347– 48, 429n fascism)<br />Doyle, Clyde, 168 Jesus Christ of, 5<br />Dunbar, Matt, 324 –27, 332, 334 –35 merging of populist fundamentalism<br />Duncan, James, 140– 41 and, 262, 372–73, 377, 381,<br />Durenberger, David, 26 385–86<br />Duvalier, François “Papa Doc,” 215–16 National Prayer Breakfast and,<br />195– 98 (see also National Prayer<br />East Timor, Suharto and, 246–52 Breakfast)<br />Edwards, Jonathan, 56–72, 401n Popular Front culture war and,<br />American fundamentalism and, 7–9, 287– 90 (see also Christian<br />58–61 educat ional movement; New Life<br />culture war and, 289 Church; sexual purit y movement)<br />experiment al religion of, 68–71 populist fundamentalism vs., 7–8,<br />Charles Grandison Finney vs., 77, 277 (see also populist fundamental-<br />79–81 ism)<br />Abigail Hutchinson’s conversion to su ering, salvation, deliverance, and,<br />true religion of, 61– 68 370–87<br />Jesus Christ of, 5 of Abram Vereide (see Vereide,<br />Jesus plus nothing t heology and, Abraham [Abram])<br />56–58 El Salvador, 25, 367, 400<br />Abram Vereide vs., 87, 113 Ellingwood, Herb, 398n<br />Eisenhower, Dwight, 185, 187–89, Elson, Edward L. R., 184<br />192–98, 413–14n, 416n empire, 3 –4, 57, 69, 183, 191, 228,<br />Eldredge, John, 330 233, 288– 90, 336, 343, 386<br />electoral politics, 119, 145, 192–95, Engle v. Vitale case, 225<br />383, 385. See also domestic Enlightenment rationalism, 338,<br />politics 366–67<br /><br /><br />440 | INDEX<br /><br />Ensign, John, 18 fascism and (see American fasc ism;<br />Enzi, Mike, 18 German fascism)<br />ethics, 4 4, 113, 130, 156, 230. See also nancial principles of, 45<br />accountability nancial support and, 16, 22<br />Ethiopia, 25, 215, 248, 280 –81 Dick Fot h as leader of, 21, 385<br />Eu ro pe an fascism, 121–23, 129–33. See International Christ ian Leadership<br />also German fascism (ICL) and, 8, 21, 123–24, 163,<br />evangelicalism, 43, 73, 173, 386 166, 191<br />evangelism Ivanwald and, 1–2, 18–27 (see also<br />American history of, 336 –39 Ivanwald)<br />Frank Buchman on, 125 Jesus plus nothing theology of (see<br />de ned, 7 Jesus plus not hing theology)<br />Jonathan Edwards and, 62–68, David Kuo and salvat ion theology of,<br />70–71 379–86<br />Jonathan Edwards vs. Charles mission statement of, 19<br />Grandison Finney on, 77 National Prayer Breakfast of, 22–26<br />Charles Grandison Finney and, (see also National Prayer Breakfast;<br />73–74, 77–83 Prayer Breakfast meetings)<br />stealth, 190 polit ics of, 6–7 (see also domestic<br />Abram Vereide and, 97–98 polit ics; foreign politics; politics;<br />Everson v. Board of Education case, 357, theocracy)<br />361 Popular Front culture war and,<br />Every Home for Christ, 295 287– 90 (see a lso Christian<br />Every Ma n’s Battle (book series), 330–33 educat ional movement; New Life<br />Exodus International, 331 Church; sexual purit y movement)<br />exurban movement, 309–12 power of, 257– 60 (see also power)<br />renaming of Fellowship as Family,<br />Faith and Action in the Nat ion’s Capital, 239<br />257 Abram Vereide as found er of (see<br />faith- based initiatives, 233, 236, Vereide, Abraham)<br />274–75, 379–86 Farrell, James Augustine, 96 –97, 130<br />Falwell, Jerry, 7–8, 258, 346– 47 fascism, 130, 137. See also American<br />Family/Fellowship fascism; Eu ro pe an fascism;<br />as avant- garde of American funda- German fascism; theocracy<br />mentalism, 2–5, 122 (see also Federer, William J., 338–39, 356, 364<br />American fundamentalism; elite Fellowship. See Family/Fellowship<br />fundamentalism) Fellowship Foundation, 22<br />Doug Coe as leader of (see Coe, feminism, 20, 213–14, 269. See also<br />Doug) women<br />documents and history of, 60– 61 Ferguson, Homer, 198–99<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 441<br /><br />Fernández, José Joaquín Trejos, 220 152–55 (see also Cold War<br />lms, 181–83, 196, 203–4, 320 anticommunism; German fascism)<br />Finding the Better Way (Fellowship Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 134–36<br />pamphlet), 138–40, 142 Foth, Dick, 21, 385<br />Finney, Charles Grandison, 73 –83 Foundat ion for Religious Action in t he<br />anxious bench innovation of, 80 –83 Social and Civil Order, 184<br />conversion of, 74–77 Found ers, United States, 366<br />Jonathan Edwards vs., 77, 79–81 Franco, Francisco, 227, 262, 396n,<br />evangelism of, 7–8, 73 –74 407n<br />Jesus Christ of, 5, 87 Franklin, Benjamin, 59–60, 353, 366<br />Abram Vereide vs., 113 freedom of religion, 368–69<br />Fisk, Kyle, 299 free enterprise, 155, 187, 217, 343. See<br />Fitzsimmons, Frank “Fitz,” 231 also c apitalism<br />Flanders, Ralph E., 190, 200 –201 Freeman, C. S., 224<br />Focus on the Family, 259, 273, 295 Fricke, Otto, 159, 163–65, 169, 171<br />Folger, James A., 105 Frontier Christian Fellowship, 316 –17<br />follower of Christ (terminology), 2, 372 fundamentalism, American. See<br />Ford, Gerald, 19, 230, 246–47, 250 American fundamentalism<br />Ford, Henry, 122–23, 126, 130 futurism, 183 –84<br />Ford, John, 203–4<br />foreign a airs, 205–40. See also Gar eld, James, 362<br />Worldwide Spiritual O ensive Gärtner, Margarete, 176 –77, 411n<br />abst inence programs and, 328–29 Gedat, Gust av Adolf, 163–65, 175, 177,<br />Doug Coe’s succession to Family/ 218 425n<br />Fellowship leadership and, German fascism, 144–80. See also<br />210–18 Eu ro pe an fascism; Hitler, Adolf<br />compassionate conservatism and, Konrad Adenauer’s Christian<br />236 –40 Democrat ic Union and, 177– 80<br />faith- based initiatives and, 236, 384 American fascism and, 122–24, 129,<br />Richard Halverson and, 208–10 132, 143 (see also A merican<br />international subversion strategy and, fascism)<br />218 –24 Castle Mainau conference on Nazi<br />Charles Malik, United Nations’ moral rehabilitation, 174–77<br />Universal Declaration of Human Doug Coe and, 215–16, 254 –55<br />Rights, and, 224–25 Cold War anticommunism and,<br />Clifton Robinson and, 205–8 149– 52, 168–74<br />Somalia case and, 279–84 Nazi espionage in U. S., 144– 49<br />submersion strategy and, 223–24 theodicy, postwar Nazi su ering,<br />Abram Vereide’s vision of interna- and Cold War containment policy,<br />tional spirit ual war and, 143, 160– 62<br /><br /><br />442 | INDEX<br /><br />German fascism (continued) Hait i, 215–16, 421n<br />Abram Vereide’s Christian Embassy Hall, Tony, 276, 396n, 424n<br />and postwar Nazi reconciliation, Halverson, Richard, 208–10, 216, 230, <br />156–59, 163– 68 238, 278–79, 418n<br />Abram Vereide’s vision of interna- Hamilton, Alexander, 340<br />tional spirit ual war and, 152–55 Hanes, Robert M., 148<br />Glen Eyrie Castle retreat, 211, 252–56 Hardesty, Howard, 249<br />Global Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze), Hardt, Michael, 387<br />295 Hargis, Billy James, 322<br />Global Harvest, 301 Harmel, Pierre, 224<br />globalization, 306 –7, 384 Hart, Merwin K., 124, 189–90, 412n, <br />God- controlled government. See 420n<br />theocracy Hata, Tsutomu, 46<br />God’s will, 107, 123, 141– 42, 378. See hate-crime legislation, 265–66. See also<br />also Jesus Christ homosexuality<br />Goebbels, Joseph, 129, 254 Hat eld, Mark, 25, 183, 211–12, 247<br />Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, 165 Hawley, Joseph, 70 –71<br />Gore, Al, 259–60 Hayek, Friedrich von, 190–91<br />Graham, Billy, 24, 74, 184, 186, Hayford, Jack, 300–301<br />195–98, 219, 229, 257, 276–77, Hays, Brooks, 140, 185<br />362, 380, 415n heart as a theological concept, 6, 7, 39, <br />Grassley, Chuck, 18, 54, 281 4 0, 42, 58–59, 77<br />Great Awakenings. See Edwards, Henry, Carl F. H., 153 –55<br />Jonathan; Finney, Charles Hildring, John H., 158<br />Grandison Hilton, Conrad, 195–98<br />Greece, 154 –55, 190 Himmler, Heinrich, 129, 254<br />Green, Marshall, 246 Hirs, Alfred, 169–70<br />Groseclose, Elgin, 249 history, providential, 2–3, 339 –56, <br />Grubb, Norman, 98–99, 101, 123, 190, 364–69. See also Christian<br />399n, 403n educational movement<br />Guatemala, 199, 201 Hitler, Adolf. See also German fascism<br />guidance and Frank Buchman, 127–30, Hermann J. Abs and, 166–67<br />138 A merican fascism and, 98<br />Gunther, John, 99 A merica First and, 148<br />Bruce Barton on, 136<br />Haggard, Ted, 293–97, 300, 304–7, Frank Buchman on, 129–30<br />314 –15, 323, 426n, 431n. See also Doug Coe on, 30, 54, 212, 217, 244,<br />New Life Church 254–55, 380<br />Haines, Wallace E., 160, 175–77, Family/Fellowship on, 3, 45, 217<br />217–18 Henry Ford and, 122–23<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 443<br /><br />Gedat, Gustav Adolf on, 164 Idea, Abram Vereide’s, 89–92. See also<br />German Christians and, 164, 172 key man t heory; Vereide,<br />Hans Speidel and, 166 Abraham (Abram)<br />Abram Vereide on, 143, 157 Imago Dei Community, 374–79<br />Manfred Zapp and, 146 –47, 149 Indonesia, 24, 221, 245–52, 320, 422n<br />Ho Chi Minh, 30, 254 Industrial Workers of the World, 101–8<br />Ho man, Paul G., 192 “In God We Trust,” 199<br />Hofstadter, Richard, 74 Inhofe, James, 6, 18, 259–60, 430n<br />Hohenlohe, Gott fried, 175, 177 International Bible Society, 319–21<br />holy laughter, 364 International Christ ian Leadership <br />homeschooling, 340–46, 349. See also (ICL), 8, 21, 123–24, 163, 166,<br />Christian educat ional movement 172–73, 189–91, 199, 207–8. See <br />homosexuality also Family/Fellowship<br />Sam Brownback and, 265–66, International Council for Christian<br />268– 69 Leadership, 163, 191<br />Frank Buchman and, 126, 405n International Foundation, 22<br />culture war and, 57, 132, 259, 277, internationalism. See Cold War <br />294, 311 anticommunism; foreign politics;<br />Ted Haggard and, 293–94, 296, Worldwide Spirit ual O ensive<br />322–23, 426n International Religious Freedom Ac t,<br />Homosexual Revolution, The (book), 275<br />322–23 Iraq, 26, 303<br />Ivanwald and, 2, 40, Islam, 13, 29–30, 132, 233–34, 259,<br />Operat ion Resc ue (Operation Save 266–67, 307, 320<br />America) and, 359, 363 Israel, 224, 245, 262, 270, 303<br />Rushdoony, Rousas John and, 347 It Can’t Happen Here (book), 130 –31<br />same–sex marriage, 375 Ivanwald, 13–55<br />sexual purity movement and, 324, author’s encounter wit h brother of,<br />331 13–16<br />spiritual warfare and, 309 author’s encounter wit h house leader<br />Workplace Religious Freedom Act at, 38– 40<br />and, 275 author’s ent ry into, 1–2, 16–18<br />Honduras, 25 author’s initiation at house meeting<br />Hoover, J. Edgar, 183–84 at, 32–35<br />Houses of Worship Act, 265 brotherhood at, 40 –42<br />Hughes, Harold, 232, 240, 278–79 Cedars retreat, Potomac Point, C<br />Hull, Cordell, 145 Street House and, 27–30<br />human rights, 224–25, 266–67 cell and Youth Corps instructions at,<br />Hunter, Bob, 53–54 44–47<br />Hutchinson, Abigail, 62–68 daily regimen at, 30 –32<br /><br /><br />444 | INDEX<br /><br />Ivanwald (continued ) A bram Vereide and, 94–96, 109–10,<br />faith and practice at, 47– 51 152–53<br />relationship of Family/Fellowship to, Jesus plus nothing theology, 241–56, <br />18–27 272, 283, 386. See also account-<br />responses to author’s art icle about, ability; Jesus Christ; personality<br />241– 45, 385, 394n Black Bu ers and, 238<br />Somalia lm and, 282–83 George W. Bush and, 58– 69<br />theology of, 42–44 Doug Coe and, 30, 217, 252–56, <br />visit of David Coe to, 35–38 264– 65<br />visit of Doug Coe to, 26, 51–55 mainstreaming of, 272<br />responses to author’s article about <br />Jackson, Henry “Scoop,” 183 Ivanwald and, 241–45, 394n<br />Jackson, Robert H., 124 Social Gospel vs., 370–79 (see also<br />Jackson, Thomas J. “Stonewall,” 351–56 Social Gospel)<br />Japan, 46, 343 Suharto’s Indonesian massacres and, <br />Jay, John, 361–62 245– 52<br />Je erson, Thomas, 339 Dawson Trotman and, 211<br />Jesus Christ. See also Jesus plus not hing Jewish people. See also anti- Semitism<br />theology; theocracy American fundamentalism and,<br />Bruce Barton’s book on, 133–37 257–58, 334, 346, 353<br />Frank Buchman’s Quiet Time and, author and, 15, 257<br />126–28 Bruce Barton on, 136<br />chosen ones of, David Coe on, Family/Fellowship and, 27, 139,<br />35–38 220, 230, 254, 395n, 420n<br />Eldridge Cleaver and, 240 Henry Ford and, 122–24<br />Doug Coe on, 29–30, 216, 380 Gustav Adolf Gedat and, 164<br />Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship history of, 360– 61<br />and, 235–36 Israel, 224, 245, 262, 270, 303<br />Family/Fellowship and, 4, 27, philo-Semitism, 262, 316, 36 –61<br />275–76 postwar Nazi su ering and, 160–61, <br />Charles Grandison Finney on, 77, 83 164– 65, 411n<br />God’s will, 107, 123, 141–42, 378 Swiss bankers and money stolen<br />as interventionist, 374 from, 169–70<br />Ivanwald brothers and, 1–2, 14–15, A bram Vereide and, 123<br />27, 31–32, 39– 40, 45 Theophile Wurm’s desire to convert,<br />Ed Meese and, 28–29 176<br />as mood, 5, 60, 72 Manfred Zapp and, 148–49<br />as personality (see personality) Johnson, Harold K., 219–20<br />as psyops man, 194 Johnson, Marian Aymar, 156<br />Billy Sunday’s, 87 Jones, Bob, Sr., 155<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 445<br /><br />Jones, Bob, IV, 396n Kuo, David, 24–25, 379–86<br />Jones, David, 281 Kuyper, Abraham, 349 –50, 429n<br />Jones, Don, 273–74<br />Jones, Mike, 293–94 labor unions<br />Jordan, 270 anti- union legislation and, 141– 43,<br />Jordan, B. Everett, 249, 423n 193, 382<br />Judd, Walter, 139, 168 Frank Buchman and reconciliation of<br />just (term), 373–74, 386 management and, 129–30<br />Hillary Clinton and, 273<br />Kemp, Jack, 58, 380, 406n Charles Colson and, 231<br />Kemp, Joanne, 273 It Can’t Happen Here book and, 131<br />Kennan, George, 162 Art hur Langlie and, 122<br />Kennedy, Ted, 380 prayer breakfast meetings and, 140–41<br />Kenya, 281– 82 San Franc isco strike by, 99–113<br />Kerr, Robert, 190 Seattle mayoral race and, 119–20<br />key man theory Abram Vereide’s reconciliation of<br />American fundamentalism and, management and, 108 –13<br />364–65, 368, 386 LaHaye, Tim, 342, 376<br />Chile and, 248 Laird, Melvin, 19, 227, 230, 246, 248,<br />Doug Coe and, 215–16, 254 396n, 422n<br />foreign connections and, 250 Landon, A lf, 186–88<br />Ot to Fricke and, 159 Langlie, Arthur B., 116–22<br />Stonewall Jackson and, 353 language, American fundament alism<br />Arthur Langlie and, 117 and, 42, 373–74, 386 –87<br />liberalism and, 367 Largent, Steve, 18, 264, 396n, 399n<br />management and, 137–38 Lawrence, David, 139<br />Popular Front and, 385–86 leadership, 3, 133–37, 235. See a lso<br />providential history and, 343– 45, Congress, U. S.; key man theory;<br />363–64 obedience<br />Somalia and, 282 Lebanon, 224–25<br />Spain and, 227 Left Behind (book series), 342<br />U.S. Congress and, 395n legislation. See Congress, U. S.;<br />Abram Vereide and, 89–92, 113 domestic politics<br />Vietnam War and, 206 –8 Lenin, Vladimir, 3, 30, 45, 194, 216,<br />King, Martin Luther, Jr., 236–37, 362, 255, 393n, 400n<br />431n L everone, Nathaniel, 170<br />Kingsbury, Kenneth, 105 Lewis, Sinclair, 130–31, 134<br />Kissinger, Henry, 114, 247 liberalism<br />Korry, Edward, 248 conservativism vs., 182 (see also<br />Krogh, Egil “Bud,” 230 conservatism)<br /><br /><br />446 | INDEX<br /><br />liberalism (continued) man- method, Abram Vereide’s, 121,<br />Family/Fellowship and, 275–76 138, 250<br />key men of, 367 Man Nobody Knows, The (book), 133–37<br />myt hs of American fundamentalism Marcos, Ferdinand, 249–50, 424 –25n<br />vs., 371, 386–87 Marcuse, Herbert, 143<br />New Deal (see New Deal) market economics, religious, 312–15.<br />strengths and weaknesses of, See also biblical capitalism<br />153–55, 278, 375 Marpaung, Darius, 247– 48, 422n<br />Lieberman, Joe, 24 marriage<br />Lilly, Jim, 364 same- sex, 375<br />Lindbergh, Charles, 123–24, 130 sexual purity movement and, 324–35<br />Lindsay, D. Michael, 25, 235, 396–98n spiritual war and, 213–14<br />Lindsley, A rt, 377 Marsden, George, 59–60, 393n<br />Locke, David, 253 Marshall Plan, 150–51<br />love as t heological concept Martin, William, 44<br />Doug Coe on, 255–56 Martinez, Gustavo A lvarez, 25<br />Jonathan Edwards and, 61 mart yrdom, 346, 351<br />Richard Halverson on, 279 masculinity, 109–10, 138, 172, 214,<br />Imago Dei Community and, 374 –75 235–36, 316–17, 330, 345–46<br />Ivanwald brothers and, 27, 34–35, Mather, Cotton, 5, 66<br />42, 282–83 maximalism, 4<br />obedience and, 211, 386 (see also McCarran, Pat, 190<br />obedience) McCarthy, Joe, 200 –201<br />Lowry, Charles Wesley, 184 McClure, Harold, 249<br />Lugar, Richard, 25, 239 McCord, James W., 230<br />McHugh, Michael, 343<br />MacArthur, Douglas, 343– 44, 428–29n McIntyre, Mike, 19<br />MacBride, Neil, 43 McNarney, Joseph T., 158<br />Mackay, John, 225 Medcalf, Lane, 360–64<br />Magruder, Jeb, 230 Meese, Ed, 27–29, 267, 381–82, 399n<br />Main, Ross, 21 megachurches, 7–8, 73. See also New <br />Malik, Charles, 224 –26 Life Church<br />management. See also business Meyers, Vic, 119–20<br />Frank Buchman and reconciliation of M ichelet, Edmond, 224<br />labor and, 129–30 “Militant Liberty” projec t, 202–4<br />Jesus and, 133–37 military- industrial complex, 201<br />prayer breakfast meetings and, 140 M iller, Perry, 5<br />Abram Vereide and reconciliat ion of M inutemen United, 356 –57<br />labor and, 108 –13 Moorer, Thomas H., 248<br />Mandela, Nelson, 24 Moral Majority, 258, 346<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 447<br /><br />Moral Re- Armament, 125, 141, 154, neo- evangelicals, 43– 44<br />178, 405– 6n New Deal, 98, 117–18, 141–43,<br />Mullen, Shirley, 373 –74 187–88, 194, 200, 210–11, 357<br />murderers, Doug Coe on, 222 New Life Church, 291–321<br />Museveni, Yoweri, 23, 46, 52– 54, 223, author’s experience at, 293–97<br />328 L inda Burton’s experience at, 304–7<br />Muslims, 13, 29–30, 266– 67, 307 Christian groups in Colorado Springs<br />Mussolini, Benito, 129, 136 and, 319–21<br />Colorado Springs as fundamentalist<br />National A ssociation of Evangelicals, city, 291–93<br />152, 155, 180–83, 185, 294, 299, exurban movement and, 309–12<br />426n Ted Haggard and, 293–97<br />National A ssociation of Manufac turers, Ted Haggard on free- market<br />138, 156, 170, 189 c apitalism and, 304–7<br />National Commit tee for Christian market economics and small-group<br />Leadership, 21, 139 o r g a n i z a t i o n o f , 3 1 2 – 1 5<br />Nat ional Day of Prayer bill, 276 Royal Rangers, Frontier Christian<br />National Economic Council, 124, 189 Fellowship, and Christian<br />National L eadership Council, 21–22 manhood at, 315–19<br />Nat ional Prayer Breakfast. See also World P rayer Center at, 301–4<br />Prayer Breakfast meetings New York City, 13, 320–21, 324–27<br />Costa R ican, 220 Nickles, Don, 6, 60, 265<br />Family/Fellowship, Ivanwald, and, Niedicker, John, 215<br />22–26 Nimeiry, Gaafar, 281<br />Indonesian, 221 Nixon, R ichard, 19, 33, 176, 216, 221,<br />David Kuo and, 379–80 227–31, 246, 310, 398n, 400n,<br />power of, 91, 259 –60, 270 416n, 422n<br />President ial Prayer Breakfast as rst, Noebel, David, 322–23<br />195–98 North, Gary, 348<br />National Security Council, 151, 243, 253 Nort hwest Ordinance of 1787, 339<br />national socialists (Nazis). See German Nyerere, Julius, 384<br />fascism<br />Navigators, 22, 152, 210–11, 216, 253, obedience<br />263, 295 Bruce Barton on, 141–42<br />Nazi fascism. See German fasc ism Doug Coe on, 211<br />Negri, A ntonio, 387 Charles Colson on, 233–34<br />Nelson, Bill, 18 Ivanwald brothers and, 2, 17, 38<br />Nelson, Grace, 273, 275 Stonewall Jackson’s, 352–53<br />neoconservatism, 183, 267. See also love and, 211, 386 (see also love)<br />conservatism povert y and, 382<br /><br /><br />448 | INDEX<br /><br />obedience (continued) P inochet, Augusto, 248, 422–23n<br />providential history and, 365– 66 Pitt s, Joe, 6, 18, 26, 265–67, 328,<br />Suharto on, 247 405n<br />Abram Vereide’s concept of, 110, 143 Pledge of A llegiance, U.S., 26, 198 –99<br />Ockenga, Harold, 180 Pohl, Oswald, 167, 411n<br />O’Connor, Sandra Day, 380 Poling, Dan, 138<br />O ce of Faith-Based Init iatives, 381–83 polit ics. See also Congress, U.S.; power<br />Ohlendorf, Otto, 411n Frank Buchman and, 128–29<br />Olasky, Marvin, 258, 381 domestic (see domestic politics)<br />Olsen, Tillie Lerner, 107–8 Jonathan Edwards and, 69, 71–72<br />Operation Abolition ( lm), 203 Family/Fellowship and, 5–6, 15–16<br />Operat ion Resc ue (Operation Save Charles Grandison Finney and,<br />America), 258, 343, 357 80 –83<br />Opus Dei, 262, 269 foreign (see foreign a airs)<br />or ga nized labor. See labor unions history of American religion and,<br />Orr, J. Edwin, 186 2–3<br />Orwell, George, 338 A rt hur Langlie and, 117–21<br />A bram Vereide and, 108–13<br />Pakistan, 23, 26, 46, 418n Pop u lar Front. See also Christian<br />Parent, Adam and Christ ie, 372–79 educat ional movement; New Life<br />Park Chung Hee, 24, 215, 250 Church; sexual purit y movement<br />Parker, Tom and TJ, 315–19 c ulture war and, 287–90<br />Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, 295 Carl F. H. Henry on, 154–55<br />paternalism, 103, 140, 266 merging of elite and populist<br />Patriot Pastor, 357, 364 fundamentalism in, 385–86<br />Peale, Norman Vincent, 139, 414n populist fundamentalism. See also<br />Pent agon prayer cells, 201–2 American fundamentalism<br />Perdue, Sonny, 310 elite fundamentalism vs., 7–8, 262,<br />Perkins, Tony, 266, 298 277 (see also elite fundamentalism)<br />personality as theological concept, Family/Fellowship and, 20, 43–44<br />121–22, 137–41, 152, 215–16, Jesus Christ of, 5<br />252–56, 343 –45 merging of elite fundamentalism and,<br />Philippines, 202, 204, 249–50, 261, 372–73, 377, 381, 385–86<br />279, 424n National Prayer Breakfast and,<br />Phillips, Douglas W., 346 –47 195– 98 (see also National Prayer<br />Phillips, Howard, 258, 346 Breakfast)<br />Phillips, Kate, 181–83 Popular Front culture war and,<br />Phillips, Tom, 26, 230–31, 398n 287– 90 (see also Christian<br />Pic ardo, Juan Edgar, 220–21 educat ional movement; New Life<br />Pierce, Bob, 186 Church; sexual purit y movement)<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 449<br /><br />su ering, salvation, deliverance, and, prayer groups. See a lso cells (core<br />370 –87 groups)<br />pornography, 70, 332 Sam Brownback and, 264 –65<br />Porter, William, 238–39 Hillary Clinton and, 272–73<br />Potomac Point, 28, 30, 40, 42–43 Costa Rican, 220 –21<br />poverty, 118, 136–37, 172–73, 380–83. Family/Fellowship and, 19<br />See also su ering international, 24–25<br />power. See a lso polit ics international spiritual war and, 281<br />American fundamentalism and, 16, Pentagon, 201–2<br />366 Suharto and, 247–49<br />Frank Buchman on, 125 White House, 230<br />Doug Coe on, 25, 121 premillennialism, 43 –44<br />Jonathan Edwards and, 61, 68–69 Presidential Prayer Breakfast, 195–98.<br />Family/Fellowship and, 51 See also National Prayer Breakfast<br />Charles Grandison Finney and, 83 Presidential Prayer Team, 34 4<br />international spiritual war and, 155 presuppositionalism, 349–50<br />Rob Schenck on, 257–60 P rison Fellowship, 22, 233– 40. See also<br />Trut h and, 377–79 Colson, Charles W.<br />Abram Vereide and, 96, 110, 114 –17 P romise Keepers, 262<br />Power, Robin, 324–27, 334–35 prosperity gospel, 87, 197–98<br />pragmatism, 376 Protestantism, 43, 307, 343<br />prayer providential history, 2–3, 339–56,<br />Doug Coe and, 52–54, 225 364–69, 408n. See also Christian<br />Jonathan Edwards and, 61–62 educational movement<br />Charles Grandison Finney and, Pryor, Mark, 18<br />75 –76<br />Ted Haggard and, 307–9, 312 Quayle, Dan, 58, 380–81<br />Ivanwald brot hers and, 1–2, 15, 30, Quie, Al, 238, 246, 396n<br />42– 43, 47–51 quiet man myth, 355<br />“just” in, 373–74 Quiet Time, Frank Buchman’s, 126–28<br />school, 225, 361<br />Abram Vereide and, 87– 89, 104–5 R adford, A rt hur W., 202<br />World Prayer Center and, 301– 4 radicalism, 104, 309<br />Benjamin Wright and, 79–80 rationalism, 59, 338, 366–67, 383<br />Prayer Breakfast meetings. See also Reagan, Ronald, 2, 19, 25, 43, 54,<br />National P rayer Breakfast 58–59, 142, 210, 240, 398n,<br />international spiritual war and, 155 413n<br />Abram Vereide’s rst, 109–12, reconciliation as theological concept<br />114–15, 121 Doug Coe and, 239, 278<br />Abram Vereide’s spread of, 137– 41 exurban movement and, 311<br /><br /><br />450 | INDEX<br /><br />reconciliation as theological (continued ) Sadat, Anwar, 24<br />labor- management, 103, 108–13, St. Clair, William, 110–11<br />142 salvation<br />post war Nazi, 164–65, 168–77 deliverance vs., 386– 87<br />poverty and, 382 Jonathan Edwards on, 71<br />su ering and, 371 (see also su ering) elite fundamentalism and, 220, <br />Reed, Ralph, 310, 347, 431n 379–86<br />Regier, Jerry, 276 Savimbi, Jonas, 222<br />Rehnquist, William, 19 Scalia, Antonin, 258<br />Reifel, Ben, 247 scandals, sex, 293–94, 322–23<br />religion, 2–3, 15, 29–30, 61–62, Schae er, Francis, 273, 342–43, 429n<br />368 –69. See also American Schenck, Rob, 257– 60, 274, 276, 343,<br />fundament alism; Catholicism; 357<br />Christianity; Islam; Protest antism Schmelz, Gustav, 166<br />Republicans. See also conservatism school prayer, 225, 361<br />Christian R ight, 44, 132, 222–23, school segregation, 361<br />383 science<br />Dwight Eisenhower vs. Robert Taft, American fundamentalism and, 135<br />192–94 Jonathan Edwards and, 61, 68–69<br />faith- based initiatives and, 379–86 homeschooling curricula and, 342,<br />Family/Fellowship and, 190 346<br />revirgining, 334 Truth and, 376<br />revivalism. See evangelism Scopes trial, 277, 337<br />Rhodes, John, 246, 396n Scott, Win eld, 352<br />Robertson, Absalom Willis, 19, 154, 190 secrecy, Family/Fellowship, 19–21, 46, <br />Robertson, Pat, 8, 19, 154, 186, 240, 259 223–24, 239, 243– 45<br />Robinson, Clifton J., 205 –8, 246, secularism, 133, 155, 219, 265,<br />248– 49 287–90, 349<br />Rohrbach, Paul, 166, 175 Sekulow, Jay, 258<br />Roo sevelt, Franklin, 96, 98, 136, 154, Selassie, Haile, 215, 248, 280<br />157, 406n, 409n. See also New sel essness, 50–51, 58–59, 70–71, 127,<br />Deal 207. See also Jesus plus nothing <br />Royal Rangers, 315–19 t heology; key man theory<br />Rushdoony, Rousas John, 191, 341, sexual purity movement, 322–35<br />346–51, 429n author’s meetings wit h New York <br />Rwanda, 28 City men and, 324 –27<br />Frank Buchman and confessions of <br />sabotage sexual sins, 126, 128<br />labor union, 101–2 foreign policy, abstinence-only sex <br />Nazi, 147– 48 educat ion programs, and <br /><br /><br />INDEX| 451<br /><br />Abstinence Clearing house books 280. See also Cold War anticom-<br />on, 327–34 munism; communism<br />Ivanwald brothers and, 40–41 Spain, 227, 396n, 407n<br />sex scandals and, 293–94, 322–24 Sparkman, John, 140<br />sexual payo for, 334–35, 337 Speidel, Hans, 166, 175<br />Sezibera, Richard, 28 –29 spiritual war<br />Sheldon, Louis P., 259 Harry Emerson Fosdick on, 135–36<br />Silk Road Strategy Act, 266–67 Ted Haggard, New Life Church, and, <br />Silva, Cost a e, 24, 222 297, 301, 304<br />Simon Wiesenthal Center, 167–68 international, 155, 217, 281 (see also<br />Sims, Gannon, 5–6, 17, 31–32, 52 foreign politics; Worldwide <br />sin Spiritual O ensive)<br />Frank Buchman and sexual, 126, 128 Ivanwald brothers and, 1, 29, 39, 42<br />Jonathan Edwards and, 70 Stonewall Jackson as model for,<br />elite fundamentalism and, 220 355–56<br />forgetting of, 278–79 sports, 15, 30, 41<br />Abram Vereide and, 107, 110 Staggers, John, 238 –39<br />Smith, H. Alexander, 139 Stalin, Joseph, 252, 255, 380, 400n<br />Smith-Connally Act, 142 Stark, Rodney, 312–13, 427n<br />Social Gospel stealthiness, 19–20, 91–92, 190. See <br />Catholic, and faith- based initiatives, also secrecy, Family/Fellowship<br />381 Stennis, John, 25, 140<br />Hillary Clinton and, 274 Stockstill, Larry and Melanie, 301<br />Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship Stoddard, Solomon, 65<br />and, 236–4 0 Stoeker, Fred, 330 –31<br />Jesus plus nothing t heology vs., Stone, Clement, 26, 199<br />370 –79 (see also Jesus plus nothing Stone, Donald C., 151–52, 154<br />theology) Stone, I. F., 201<br />Abraham Kuyper and, 350 strikes, labor union, 104–8, 122. See <br />Abram Vereide’s reject ion of, 110, also labor unions<br />153 Stoll, David, 413n<br />social order, 255, 371, 378, 385 submersion strategy, 223–24. See also<br />socialism, 155, 215, 280, 409n, 429n secrecy, Family/Fellowship<br />Somalia, 25, 222, 279 –84 submission, 70 –71, 262–63, 344. See<br />Soulforce pro- gay ministry, 323 also obedience<br />soul surgery, 124–26, 128, 130–31, subversion st rategy, 208, 218–24<br />156 Sudan, 267–68<br />Sout h Korea, 24, 215, 250 su ering<br />South Vietnam, 199, 205–8, 248 Bruce Barton on, 136–37<br />Soviet Union, 150–51, 162, 171–72, deliverance and, 386– 87<br /><br /><br />452 | INDEX<br /><br />su ering (continued) Abram Vereide’s Idea about (see<br />labor unions and, 102 Vereide, Abraham [Abram])<br />Social Gospel vs. Jesus plus nothing theodicy, 93, 160–62, 311. See also<br />theology on, 370–79 su ering<br />theodicy and, 93, 160 –62, 311 theology. See American fundamental-<br />Truth and, 377–79 ism; Jesus plus not hing theology;<br />Suharto, 24, 221, 245–52, 423n religion<br />Sullivan, William H., 206, 417–18n theonomy, 191. See also biblic al<br />Summit Minist ries, 322 capitalism<br />Sunday, Billy, 87, 113 Thieu, Nguyen Van, 248<br />Sundberg, Bruce, 249– 50, 424n Thomas, Clarence, 26<br />Swaggart, Jimmy, 322 Thomas, Rusty, 357– 60, 364 –66<br />Thune, John, 18<br />Taft, Robert, 187–89, 192–94, 199 Thurmond, Strom, 19, 140, 225, 265,<br />Taft- Hartley Act, 142, 193 395–96n<br />Talmadge, Herman, 19 Tiahrt, Todd, 29–30<br />Tanzania, 384 Tice, Jayson, 303–4<br />Tarrant, Tommy, 240 totalitarianism. See American fascism;<br />Teamsters Union, 99–100, 104, 231 Eu ro pe an fascism; fascism;<br />televangelists, 43, 293–94, 322–23 German fascism; theocracy<br />Temple, Paul, 227, 398n Traditional Values Coali tion, 259<br />Tempting Faith: T he Inside Story of a Trask, Thomas E., 298<br />Po liti cal Seduction (book), 379, Travis, William Barret, 345<br />383, 431n Trotman, Dawson, 210–11<br />Terry, Randall, 343 Trueblood, Elton, 186<br />theocracy True L ove Waits, 327<br />American fascism and, 121–24 (see Truman, Harry, 150, 154–55<br />also American fascism) Truth , 374–79<br />American history of, 8, 336 –39 Turner, Carl, 219 –20<br />Frank Buchman on, 130<br />Doug Coe on, 223 Uganda, 23, 46, 52–54, 223, 328–29<br />democracy vs., 6–7, 277–78, Ukraine, 304<br />366 –69 “under God,” U. S. Pledge of Allegiance<br />Jonathan Edwards and, 59–60 and, 26, 198–99<br />faith- based initiatives as, 379–86 unions. See labor unions<br />of Family/Fellowship, 56–58 United Nations, 157, 224–25<br />Arthur Langlie and, 121 United States. See also American<br />Rousas Rushdoony on, 347– 48 fascism; A merican fundamental-<br />theocentric worldview vs., 342–43 ism; Congress, U. S.; domest ic<br />as totalitarianism of God, 151–52, 155 politics; foreign politics; politics<br /><br /><br />INDEX| 453<br /><br />as Promised Land, 221–22 on Suharto’s coup in Indonesia,<br />providential history, 2–3, 339–56, 245– 46<br />364–69 (see also Christian Billy Sunday vs., 87–89<br />educational movement) vision of international spiritual war<br />Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by, 152–55 (see also foreign<br />224–25 polit ics; spirit ual war)<br />Unruh, Leslee, 327–29 Vereide, Warren, 88–89, 91<br />unschooling, 342. See also Christian Vessey, John, 25, 282<br />educational movement Vietnam War, 199, 205–8<br />Unumb, Greg, 241–45, 251–52, 278 virginity, 40– 41, 316, 323. See also<br />sexual purity movement<br />Values Action Team (VAT), 18, Vision Forum, 345–47<br />265–66, 328 von der Ropp, Baron, 172, 180<br />Vandenberg, Arthur, 148, 157 von Gienanth, Ulrich, 147–49, 172–74<br />Vereide, Abraham (Abram), 87–113 von Neurath, Konstantin, 167, 411n<br />Frank Buchman and, 124–30<br />conversion, immigration, and WallBuilders, 342<br />ministry of, 92–101 “wall of separation,” Thomas Je erson<br />deat h of, 121 and, 339. See also church/state<br />Jonathan Edwards and Charles separat ion issue<br />Grandison Finney vs., 87, 113 Wamp, Zach, 19, 264<br />elite fundamentalist key man Idea of, war criminals, Nazi, 158–59, 165–68. <br />89–92 (see a lso elite fundamental- See also German fascism<br />ism; key man theory) Warren, Earl, 199<br />fascism and, 122–23, 150–52, Washington, George, 366<br />156–74 (see also A merican Washington, Walter, 237<br />fascism; German fascism) Watt, James, 26<br />Finding a Better Way pamphlet and Wayne, John, 203–4<br />spread of prayer breakfasts by, Webster, Daniel, 349<br />137–41 welfare, privatization of, 381<br />rst National P rayer Breakfast of, White, Mel, 323<br />197 (see also Nat ional Prayer Whitehead, John W., 349<br />Breakfast) White House prayer cell, 230<br />as found er of Family/Fellowship, 8, Wilberforce Foundat ion, 22<br />21 (see also Family/Fellowship) Wiley, Alexander, 139, 168–71, 176,<br />labor- management reconciliation 180, 199<br />by, 99–113 (see also reconcilia- Willis, Raymond, 139<br />tion) Willowbank retreat, 32<br />Arthur Langlie and, 114–21 Wilson, Charles E., 201–2, 204<br />ret irement of, 205 Wings of Eagles, The ( lm), 204<br /><br /><br />454 | INDEX<br /><br />Wolf, Frank, 19 Wright, Benjamin, 77–80<br />women Wright, Christ ian, 23<br />culture and, 376 Wright, J. Elwin, 155<br />feminism, 20, 213–14, 269 Wurm, Theophile, 176–77<br />Potomac Point house for, 28, 30, 40,<br />42– 43 Yeaworth, Irvin “Shorty,” 181–83<br />sexual purit y movement and, 332–34 York, Alvin, 343–44<br />World Prayer Center, 293, 301–4, 312 Young Life, 22, 239, 295<br />World Vision agency, 209 Youth Corps, 46– 47<br />Worldwide Spiritual O ensive, 155, Youth For Christ, 152<br />206, 217, 264, 288. See also<br />foreign a airs Zapp, Manfred, 144 –52, 177–79, 417nAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-66405833004245270502009-07-12T03:16:00.001-07:002009-07-12T03:16:53.239-07:00NotesFundamentalism and Evangelicalism (William B. Eerdmans, 1991), a pithy sum-<br />mation from a scholar sympathetic to evangelicalism. It su ces so long as we<br />remember that anger takes many forms, and that the “something” a fundamen-<br />ta list is opposed to is not, in his or her mind at least , nec essarily modernity, but<br />sin, whether de ned as sex outside of marriage or the d isobedience to God<br />many fundamentalists believe is implicit in managed economies.<br /><br /><br />1. IVANWALD<br /><br />1. In this chapter, I use the full names of men who held leadership positions<br />at Ivanwald. Such men are activists, and some, such as Gannon Sims, built on<br />their Ivanwald experiences to develop careers in government. (Gannon be-<br />came a spokesman for the Depar tment of State’s O ce to Monitor and Com-<br />bat Human Tra cking.) Men who were not in leadership or government<br />positions I identify only by their rst names. “Zeke” is a pseudonym for a man<br />who I fear m ight face repercussions for h is role in introducing me to the Fam-<br />ily. In the years since then, several former members have contacted me with<br />accounts of ostracization and even retaliation for various actions, and while<br />I’ve no way of con rming these stories, there’s no need to unduly expose<br />Zeke to the possibility of similar responses.<br />2. A note on notes: In this chapter and throughout The Family, I use endnotes<br />to identify archival sources and to provide sources for h istorical events that<br />may not be well known. Chapters 4–9, which depend largely on historical<br />research, are extensively endnoted, but where I rely on personal experience<br />(chapters 1, 9, 14) or directly reference interviews (chapters 10–14), or on<br />publicly available sources identi ed within the text (chapters 12–14), I gener-<br />ally refrain from notes. As for this account of Ivanwald: like several of the<br />brothers, I openly kept a journa l. When writing about a conversation that had<br />occurred earlier, I often asked individual brothers for their recollections. This<br />was not “undercover.” Although I had no inkling of a book about the Family or<br />fundamentalism at the time, I told the brothers I was a writer, the publications<br />I’d written for, and that I was working on a book about unusual religious com-<br />munities (Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible, with Peter Manseau [Free Press,<br />2004]). A few documentary notes in chapters 4–10 identif y the only general<br />collection in which the relevant documents can be found. I made my rst,<br />brief archival research tr ip in late 2002, after I had decided to write about<br />Ivanwald but before I had even imagined this book. Since magazine fact checkers<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 395<br />are more interested in actual evidence than my assu ra nces that memo x can be<br />found in folder y in an archive, I made Xerox copies instead of notes for future<br />researchers. When I returned to the main archive of the Family at the Billy<br />Graham Center at Wheaton College with a book in mind, I made note of ap-<br />propriate ling numbers. In total I or my research assistants reviewed well<br />over 60,00 0 pages of primary-sou rce docu ments, a nd ma de copies of around<br />5,000 pages; I lack folder numbers for a very few pages, and those I have cop-<br />ies of.<br />3. Senator Brownback, Senator Pryor, and Representative Wolf told me of<br />their involvement in interviews. I met Senator Ensign wh ile he was living in<br />the C Street House, a former convent maintained as a group home for con-<br />gressmen by a Family- a liated organization, and Senators Grassley and Nel-<br />son and Representative Pitts are well represented in the Family’s archives.<br />Senator Cobur n told the reporter Tom Hess of his residence in C Street House<br />and his participation in a Family cell for a feature in James Dobson’s Citizen<br />magazine, “ ‘There’s No One I’m Afraid to Challenge,’ ” accessed at http://<br />www .family .org/ cforum/ citizenmag/ coverstory/ a0012717 .cfm on October<br />10, 2004. Senator Thune cited the Family’s leader, Doug Coe, and a house the<br />Family maintains on Capitol Hill in a Christianity Today interview with Collin<br />Hansen ( http:// www .christianitytoday .com/ ct/ 2005/ februaryweb-only/ 42<br />.0a.html, accessed Januar y 7, 2007). Most of the rest of these men were spo-<br />ken of as members by Ivanwalders and se nior men in the Family—for in-<br />stance, Steve South, former se nior counsel for Senator Don Nickles, told me<br />of Senator Domenici’s involvement, con rmed in the Family’s archives ( le<br />15, box 354, collection 459, Papers of the Fellowship Foundation, Billy Gra-<br />ham Center Archives [hereafter cited as BGCA]). I’ve no reason to doubt<br />these claims; members of the Family are scrupulous about distinguishing be-<br />tween members, those who have joined a prayer cell or made some other com-<br />mitment to the work, and friends, those with whom they’re comfortable<br />working. Representative Eric Cantor, for instance, a Jewish Republican f rom<br />Virginia, is just a friend. Representative McI ntyre, who joined Representative<br />Wolf ’s prayer cell, is a member. This is only a partial list. The Fam ily believes<br />in a concentr ic model of holiness, with a few key men close to Ch rist at the<br />center (Representative Pitts, for instance), another circle of active supporters<br />farther out (Senator Grassley), followed by one of casual allies (such as Senator<br />Pryor) who are mostly unaware of the group’s inner workings.<br />Thurmond: I nterview, Cliford B. Gosney, former Family member. Thur- 4<br />mond’s association was among the Family’s most long- standing, stretching<br /><br /><br />396 | N O T E S<br />across the decades. On October 30, 1987, Family leader Doug Coe sent to<br />Representative Tony Hall, a Democrat from Ohio who moved rightward un-<br />der the Family’s guidance, a sermon preached by Thur mond to a meeting of<br />the weekly Senate Prayer Break fast. The subject was “integrity” and “the un-<br />raveling of the fabric of our society,” to which Thurmond—a segregationist<br />who refused to publicly acknowledge his African-American daughter—<br />responded with four suggestions on becoming “men and women of integrity.”<br />Folder 3, box 166, collection 459, BGCA. Talmadge and Robertson: Annual Re-<br />port of the Fellowship Foundation, 1962, folder 2, box 563, collection 459,<br />BGCA. Ford: Paul Wilkes, “Prayer: The Search for a Spiritual Life in Washing-<br />ton and Elsewhere: A Country on Its Knees?” New York Times, December 22,<br />1974. Besides Laird and Ford, the other two members of the cell were Repub -<br />lican congressmen John Rhodes, a Bar ry Goldwater protégé from Arizona,<br />and Al Quie of Minnesota, an early opponent of a rmative action. The four<br />had been organized into a Family prayer group during the late 1960s. Rehn-<br />quist: Doug Coe to Panayiotis Touzmazis, Apr il 24, 1974, folder 11, box 200,<br />collection 459, BGCA. And then there are the jocks: Bu alo Bills legend and<br />vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp; Seattle Seahawks NFL Hall of Famer<br />Steve Largent, one of the ercest ideologues of the Republican Revolution<br />of 1994; and Oklahoma Sooners Orange Bowl champ J. C. Watts, the<br />highest-ranking black Republican in congressional histor y. According to Bob<br />Jones I V, Watts prefer red Campus Crusade’s related e ort, Ch ristian Em-<br />bassy (“The Church Inside the State,” World, October 12, 1996), but when I<br />interviewed him in 2003, he told me he prayed with “the Prayer Breakfast<br />people” as well.<br />5. NCCL News Letter, April 1948. Christian Leadership News, October 1950.<br />Collection 459, BGCA.<br />6. On July 15, 1965, the Family’s founder, Abraham Vereide, boasted in an<br />address to a prayer meeting that in Generalissimo Franco’s Spain, initially<br />hostile to the Protestant Family, “there are secret cells, such as the American<br />embassy, the Standard Oil o ce, allowing [our men] to move practically any-<br />where.” No box number, collection 459, BGCA. 350: D. Michael Lindsay, “Is<br />the National Prayer Breakfast Surrounded by a ‘Christian Ma a’? Religious<br />Publicity and Secrecy Within the Corridors of Power,” Journal of the American<br />Academy of Religion 74, no. 2 (June 2006): 390– 419.<br />7. Quoted in Stephen Scott, “Jesus’ Name Has Drawing Power for Prayer<br />Breakfast,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, April 14, 2001.<br />8. The Fellowship Foundation’s 2005 990 tax form showed o cial income of<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 397<br />nearly $17 million and program expenses of nearly $14 million. Among the<br />expenses, $900,000 went to the National Prayer Breakfast, a Fellowship-<br />produced event that appears to the world to be an o cial function of the fed-<br />eral government. (When I attended in 2003, I got my press credentials through<br />the White House.) I n 2005, the Fellowship actually turned a pro t on the<br />Breakfast, taking in $47,000 more than it cost. In “Showing Faith in Discre-<br />tion,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2002, the journalist Lisa Getter noted<br />that the Family has paid for overseas congressional junkets and even loaned<br />congressmen money.<br />9. Ba kke’s deal is docu mented in Deepak Gopinath, “The Divine Power of<br />Pro t,” Institutional Investor, March 1, 2001. Bakke isn’t conservative in the<br />conventional sense—he’s a major Democratic donor—but he has made a ca-<br />reer out of deregulation and anti-union management, and he’s used his wealth<br />to create the Harvey Fellows Program, which aims to train an “expanding<br />beachhead of evangelicals in the Amer ican elite” and “the corr idors of power”<br />through funds for graduate students who agree to sign a statement of faith. D.<br />Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American<br />Elite (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 80.<br />10. Getter, “Showing Faith in Discretion.”<br />11. Lindsay, “Is the National Prayer Breakfast Surrounded by a ‘Christian Ma-<br />a’?” Lindsay, a fellow at Princeton University’s Department of Sociology du r-<br />ing the period of this study a nd now on the faculty at Rice Un iversity, enjoyed<br />tremendous ac cess to what he refers t o as the “bac kstage” of Family leadership of<br />his study of the “Christian Ma a,” in which he a sserts that the Family is not se-<br />cret but private. Secrecy, he notes, “often protects the interests of the power-<br />ful.” Of course, so may privacy when maintained by elites who use it to shield<br />networks of in uence from public transparency. The di erence between secrecy<br />and privacy, Lindsay argues, is that those who are not in on secrets—especially<br />secrets about power—resent them, whereas those excluded from a private as-<br />sociation of elites don’t mind, since such “privacy” appeals to trad itions of defer-<br />ence to the elite. Thus, the “privacy” used by the Fa mily to protect the privilege<br />of its members, Lindsay argues, is “legitimated” by the public status of the Fa m-<br />ily’s members. Such are the ju sti cations for power by the ivory tower so often<br />derided as too leftist by conservative pundits.<br />12. Monday Associates Meeting, January 23, 1995, Burnett Thompson pre-<br />siding.<br />13. David Kuo, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (Free<br />Press, 2006), pp. 21–24.<br /><br /><br />398 | N O T E S<br />14. Doug Coe and General Vessey : Minutes of a luncheon held at the Cedars, the<br />Family’s Arlington, Virginia headquarters, October 19, 1983, collection 459,<br />BGCA; no box number. The luncheon was organized by Aquilino E. Boyd,<br />the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega’s ambassador to the United States.<br />Also in attendance was an inner-circle member of the F amily na med Herb El-<br />lingwood, a longtime Reagan aide who had been responsible for “psychologi-<br />cal warfare” against student protestors in California. In 1970, Ellingwood was<br />one of the small circle of men who laid hands on Reagan and heard a voice,<br />allegedly God’s, prom ising Reagan the White House. Paul Kengor, God and<br />Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (Regan Books, 2004), pp. 135–36. When Rea -<br />gan ascended t o 1600 Pen nsylvan ia Avenue, he t ook Ellingwood with him as a<br />deputy counsel. Ellingwood’s advice? “Economic salvation and spiritual salva-<br />tion go side by side.” John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right<br />Nation: Conservative Power in America (Penguin Press, 2004), pp. 331–32. Lugar<br />et al.: Telegram to General Manual Antonio Noriega, January 25, 1984, col-<br />lection 459, BGCA. Casanova and Martinez: Getter, “Showing Faith in Discre-<br />tion.” Military aid to Honduras: Elaine Sciolino, “U.S. Said to Link Latin Aid to<br />Support for Contras,” New York Times, May 18, 1987.<br />15. Quoted in Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power, p. 36.<br />16 Ibid., p. 35.<br />17. Paul N. Temple to James F. Bell, October 7, 1976, collection 459, BGCA;<br />no box number. Phillips gave $30,000 toward the cost of the Cedars; Stone, a<br />self-help author of get-rich-quick books who was also fa mous for having given<br />$2 million to Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 campaigns, donated $100,000. Temple,<br />a for mer Standard Oil executive, gave $150,000, while the oilman Harold<br />McClure gave $100,000. Other nancing for the Cedars came from: William<br />Lo in, $150,000; James Millen, $150,000; Mike Myers (not the actor),<br />$150,000; Otto Zerbe, $100,000; the PGA pro Jim Hiskey, $100,000; and<br />Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital, $83,000. The president of a local bank<br />who was also a member of a Fam ily prayer group ar ranged for a loan up to<br />$400,000 (Temple to Bell, January. 6, 1977).<br />18. Thomas: Kuo, Tem pting F aith, p. 92; Durenberger: Edward Walsh, “Sena-<br />tor Goes Public with Pr ivate Life,” Washington Post, March 2, 1986, and Tony<br />Bouza, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: Corruption, Decadence, and the<br />American Dream (Da Capo, 1996), p. 102; Watt: Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of<br />Power, “Is the National Prayer Break fast Surrounded by a ‘Christian Ma a’?”<br />19. New chosen and throwaway religion are ordinary phrases in the daily ver-<br />nacular of the Family, no more than variations on contemporar y evangelical<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 399<br />rhetoric, but the din of the vox populi—the voice of the people— I found as far<br />back as an account of the rst National Prayer Breakfast (then known as the<br />Presidential Prayer Breakfast) held shortly after Eisenhower’s inauguration in<br />1953, by the then-Senate chaplain Dr. Frederick Brown Harris. Dr. Harris is<br />quoted at length in a hagiography of the Family’s founder by the Family evan-<br />gelist Norman Gr ubb: Modern Viking: The Story of Abraham Vereide, Pioneer in<br />Christian Leadership (Zondervan, 1961), p. 131. The existence of a published<br />biography may seem like a paradox for a group so bent on invisibility, but the<br />early Fam ily leaders assumed a lack of public scrutiny as the due of their elite<br />status. It wasn’t until the antiestablishment revolt of the late 1960s that Ver-<br />eide’s successor, Coe, led the group “underground.”<br />20. Lynette Clemetson, “Meese’s I n uence Looms Large in Today’s Judicial<br />Wa rs,” New York Times, August 17, 2005. Meese is credited with moving into<br />the mainstream the idea of a jurisprudence of original intention—the basis for a<br />conservative judicial philosophy that rejects worker protections, the right to<br />privacy, women’s reproductive rights, and queer rights.<br />21. Ben Daniel, a minister in the Presbyteria n Church (U.S.A.) and a former<br />member of the Family, interviewed former residents of Potomac Point for a<br />study of what he views as the Fam ily’s “spiritual abuse”: “A former resident of<br />Potomac Point told me about her nine months there. Having been encouraged<br />to share her every thought and to expose her secrets and sins, she found her<br />confessions and con dences used against her when she would ask questions or<br />resist Fellowship authority. As the Fellowship exerted control over every as-<br />pect of her life she became angry and bitter. Something broke inside her.<br />‘When I came to Potomac Point I struggled with self-esteem issues,’ she told<br />me. ‘While I was there my low self-esteem moved from a personal to a spiri-<br />tual level.’ When, at last, she expressed a desire to leave, she was told that,<br />without the teaching and company of the Fellowship, her well- being would<br />disintegrate. She became terri ed of life on the outside.” The wife of a Fel-<br />lowship member describes her role in the Family: “I’m always third. The Fel-<br />lowship comes rst in my husband’s life. Then our ch ildren. Then me.”<br />“Dysfu nction in the Fellowship F amily,” http:// bend aniel .org/?p= 110 ac-<br />cessed November 27, 2007.<br />22. Congressmen who have lived there include former representatives Steve<br />Largent (R., Oklahoma), Ed Bryant (R., Tennessee), and John Elias Baldacci<br />(D., Maine). The house’s eight congressman-tenants each paid $600 per<br />month in rent for use of a town house that includes nine bathrooms and ve<br />living rooms. Lara Jakes Jordan, “Religious Group Helps Lawmakers With<br /><br /><br />400 | N O T E S<br />Rent,” Associated Press, April 20, 2003. When the Los Angeles Times asked<br />then-resident Representative Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat from Michi-<br />gan, about the proper ty, he replied, “We sor t of don’t talk to the press about<br />the house.” Getter, “Showing Faith in Discretion.”<br />23. On October 29, 2007, a reporter for the Norwegian da ily Dagbladet, Tore<br />Gjerstad, who was following up on Norwegian con servatives’ connections to<br />the Family, managed to confront Coe with some of the language about Hitler<br />I’ve quoted. Coe, Gjerstad told me, responded, “No one who really knows me<br />would think I admire Lenin, Hitler, Stalin. They were evil men. But they were<br />successful when it came to power . . . All power is with Jesus. You can choose<br />to go aga inst him, but you can never have more power than what he gives you.”<br />24. Carter’s contacts with Doug Coe, whom he told the sociologist D. Mi-<br />chael Lindsay (“Is the National Prayer Breakfast Surrounded by a ‘Christian<br />Ma a’?”) had been a “very importa nt person” in his life, predated his presi-<br />dency. In a 1972 brie ng to the Family’s leadership, Coe wrote that Carter was<br />involved with the Family’s mission to Brazil’s dictatorial government. Folder 1,<br />box 362, collection 459, BGCA. That same year, the Fam ily’s chief Central<br />American associate, a Costa Rica n lawyer named Jua n Edgar Picado, hosted<br />Carter in Costa Rica; in 1976, Picado boasted to his Centra l American allies<br />that Carter wou ld increase aid to the region, which he did. It was Ca rter, not<br />Rona ld Reagan, who began the United States’ support for El Salvador’s brutal<br />regime. (Howa rd Siner, “Attorney Knows Carter as Smart, K ind Friend,” San<br />Jose News, Ma rch 4, 197 7.) Nixon kept his personal dista nce from the Family<br />until after his presidency, when, according to Lindsay, he “min istered ” Rea-<br />gan’s national security adviser, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, into a Family prayer<br />cell in the wake of McFa rlane’s d isgrace as an Ira n-Contra conspirator.<br />25. Folder 1, box 166, collection 459, BGCA.<br /><br /><br />2. EXPERIMENTAL RELIGION<br /><br />1. Doug Coe, “The Person of Chr ist, Pt. 4,” videotape of an address given to<br />a conference of presidents of evangelical organizations, Navigators Great Hall<br />Productions, January 15, 1989.<br />2. There are ma ny great biographies of Edwards, but my method of research<br />for this account of his life was to rely primarily on original sources, which I tried<br />to read through the lter of my own half- secula r m ind and as I imagine a Fa mily<br />man might, attuned to power and relationships. I depended on the two-volume<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 401<br />Works of Jonathan Edwards, with a Memoir by Sereno E. Dwight, ed. Edward Hickman<br />(F. Westley and A. H. Davis, Stationers Court, 1834); Works of Jonathan Edwards,<br />particularly vol. 2, Religious A ections, ed. John E. Smith (Yale University<br />Press, 1959); vol. 7, The Life of David Brainerd, ed. Norman Pettit (ibid., 1985);<br />and vol. 16, Letters and Personal Writings, ed. George S. Claghorn (ibid., 1998);<br />Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards,<br />rst published in 1765 and collected— along with a useful portrait by Peter<br />Gay, “Jonathan Edwa rds: An American Tragedy,” and two ne poems about<br />Edwards by Robert Lowell—in David Levin, ed., Jonathan Edwards: A Pro le<br />(Hill and Wang, 1969). For a full accou nt by a sympathetic biographer, I rec-<br />ommend George Marsden’s authoritative Jonathan Edwards (Yale University<br />Press, 2003). I also found useful portions of Philip J. Gura’s brief biography,<br />Jonathan Edwards: America’s Evangelical (Hill and Wa ng, 20 05); Perry Miller’s<br />classic portrait of the Puritan mood, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth<br /> Century (Macmillan, 1939); Jon Butler’s investigation of the eccentricities of<br />American religion, Awash In A Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People<br />(Harvard University Press, 1990); Ann Taves’s history of religious enthusi-<br />asm, Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from<br />We sley to Ja mes (Princeton University Press, 1999); Nancy Carlisle, “Pursuing<br />Re nement in Rural New England, 1750 –1850: An Exhibition Review,” Win-<br />terthur Portfolio 3 4, no. 4 (19 99): 239 –49; Ava Chamberlain, “Bad Books and<br />Bad Boys: The Transformation of Gender in Eighteenth-Century Northa mp -<br />ton, Massachu setts,” New England Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2002): 179–203; Cham-<br />berlain, “The Immaculate Ovum: Jonathan Edwards and the Con struction of<br />the Female Body,” William and Mary Quarterly 57, no. 2 (200 0): 289 –322; Sa n-<br />dra Gustafson, “Jonathan Edwards and the Reconstruction of ‘Feminine’<br />Speech,” American Literary History 6, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 185–212; and<br />“Jonathan Edwa rds in 2003,” a special issue of Theology Matters, “A Publication<br />of Presbyterians for Faith, Family, a nd Min istry” published in November/<br />December of 2003 and edited by, among others, Richard Lovelace, a mentor<br />of sorts to Doug Coe’s son Jonathan, and the inspiration for Jonathan House,<br />an Ivanwald-like residence for young men on Capitol Hill in Washington.<br /><br /><br />3. THE REVIVAL MACHINE<br /><br />1. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on<br />the Eve of the Civil War (Harper and Row, 1965), p. 79.<br /><br /><br />402 | N O T E S<br />2. Charles G., Finney, The Original Memoirs of Charles G. Finney, ed. Garth M.<br />Rosell and Richard A. G. Dupuis (Zondervan, 1989), p. 66. The rst edition<br />of Finney’s memoirs was published in 1876; the edition I rely on most is pub-<br />lished by one of the biggest evangelical publishers of today but is a scholarly<br />work in the sense that it re ects the text as Finney intended it, not as his<br />nineteenth-century publishers presented it. Finney, who in his old age dic-<br />tated these memoirs to a former student, is one of the great underappreciated<br />memoirists of American letters. His memoirs are not high art, but they are<br />storytelling in a distinct American vein, and I make extensive use of them in<br />this chapter. Biographical details are taken from the memoirs unless other-<br />wise indicated.<br />3. Ibid., jacket blurb.<br />4. William C. Cochran, “Charles Grandison Finney Memorial Address” (J.<br />B. Lippincott, 1908).<br />5. Richard Hofstadter, Anti- Intellectualism in American Life (Alf red A. Knopf,<br />1963), p. 92.<br />6. Marianne Perciaccante, Calling Down Fire: Charles Grandison Finney and<br />Revivalism in Je erson County, New York, 1800–1840 (State University of New<br />York Press, 2003), p. 38.<br />7. I don’t mea n to suggest that the arguments of Finney scholars such a s Wil-<br />liam G. McLoughlin, Keith J. Hardman, Allen C. Guelzo, John L. Hammond,<br />and others miss the point. Indeed, from their close readings of<br />nineteenth-century theological disputes they derive great insights into the<br />evolution of Amer ican religion and politics. (Of particular interest in the lat-<br />ter regard are Paul E. Johnson’s A Shop keeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in<br />Rochester, New York, 1815–1837 [Hill and Wang, 1978], and “God and Mam-<br />mon,” chapter 7 of Charles Sellers’s The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America,<br />1815–1846 [Oxford University Press, 1991], both of which are among the rare<br />works of academic specialization that are also splendid reading.) Rather, I<br />mean to simply single out the strand of Finney’s life that I believe is most rel-<br />evant to the genealogy of American fundamentalism as it has appeared in re-<br />cent times.<br />8. For a discussion of the “machiner y” of revival and its critics, see “The<br />Businessmen’s Revival,” chapter 1 of John Corr igan’s Business of the Heart: Reli-<br />gion and Emotion in the Nineteenth Century (University of California Press,<br />2002). Mark A. Noll provides a succinct description of Finney’s “new mea-<br />sures” in A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (William B.<br />Eerdmans, 1992; reprint edition, 2003), pp. 176–77.<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 403<br />9. Charles Chauncey, Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in<br /> N e w - E n g l a n d (Rogers and Fowle, 1743), p. 218, cited in Eric Leigh Schmidt,<br />Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Harvard Uni-<br />versity Press, 2000), p. 71.<br />10. Finney, “Human Government,” in Finney’s Systematic Theology (Bethany<br /> House, 1994).<br /><br /><br /> 4. UNIT NUMBER ONE<br /><br />1. My account of Abram’s early life is shaped by his own reminiscences in<br />letters and notes for a biography, stored in collection 459 of the Billy Graham<br />Center Archives, but the major details and quotations are for the most part<br />from the two full-length, English-language biographies (there is a third, by an<br />evangelical admirer, in Norwegian) written about Abram: Modern Viking: The<br />Story of Abraham Vereide, Pioneer in Christian Leadership (Zondervan,1961), writ-<br />ten by a revivalist named Norman Grubb mainly for private distribution to<br />Abram’s followers; and Abraham, Abraham, by Abram’s son, Warren Vereide,<br />and Claudia Minden Weisz, a privately published book (I received my copy<br />from a former member of the Fellowship). The Abram story would be retold<br />over the years in the literature produced by h is various organizations; where I<br />rely on such material in future chapters, I’ll provide additional notes.<br />2. James C. He ey and Edward E. Plowman, Washington: Christians in the<br />Corridors of Power (Tyndale House, 1975), p. 100.<br />3. Mauritz A. Hallgren, “Panic in the Steel Towns,” The Nation, March 30,<br />1932.<br />4. Richard C. Berner, Seattle in the 20th Century, vol. 2, Seattle, 1921–1940:<br />From Boom to Bust (Charles Press, 1992). For Seattle history, I rely on Abram’s<br />memoir, documents from the Washington State archives, and most of all the<br />incomparable and epic multivolume Seattle in the 20th Century, by R ichard<br />C. Ber ner, who presents pieces of nearly every signi cant primary source on<br />the city’s politics and culture during the period he covers. In this chapter and<br />in chapter 5, I draw especially on volume 2, Seattle, 1921–1940: From Boom to<br />Bust (Philadelph ia: Charles Press, 1992) and volume 3, Seattle Transformed:<br />World War II to the Cold War (1999).<br />5. Except where particular sources are indicated, my account of Abram’s<br />nightmare nemesis, Harry Bridges, the strike of 1934, and the factors that fed<br />into it is based on the following: Charles P. Lar rowe, Harry Bridges: The Rise<br /><br /><br />404 | N O T E S<br />and Fall of Radical Labor in the United States (Lawrence Hill and Coe, 1972);<br />David F. Selvin, A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San<br />Francisco (Wayne State University Press, 1996); Mike Quin, The Big Strike<br />(Olema, 1949); Paul Eliel, The Waterfront and General Strikes, San Francisco, 1934<br />(Hooper, 1934); Warren Hinckle, The Big Strike: A Pictorial History of the 1934<br />San Francisco General Strike (Silver Dollar Books, 1985); J. Anthony Lukas, Big<br />Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets O a Struggle for the Soul of America<br />(Simon and Schuster, 1997), Louis Adamic, Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence<br />in America (Viking, 1934).<br />6. Tillie Lerner, “The Strike,” Partisan Review, September–October, 1934.<br />7. Abraham Vereide, notes prepared for Grubb, Modern Viking, from collec-<br />tion 459 of the BGCA, no box number.<br />8. Evelyn Seeley, “Our Number One Fascists,” The Nation, April 15, 1936.<br /><br /><br />5. THE F WORD<br /><br />1. Kissinger’s graduate work was recently brought to public attention by the<br />economist Paul Krugman in The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New<br />Century (W. W. Norton, 2003). Unfortunately, K rugman reads Kissinger too<br />literally, settling for the either/or dichotomy established at rst glance and<br />then translating it to the present political situation as us (the secular state)<br />versus them (the “right-wing movement” as “revolutionary power”). Krugman<br />falls for this intellectual trap despite the fact that he acknowledges that the<br />right-wing movement controls much or most of the state (depending on the<br />electoral moment). The us and the them, status quo and revolutionary power,<br />are not so di erent after all. As Pogo famously put it, “We have met the en-<br />emy, and it is us.”<br />2. Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great<br />Depression (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 83–95.<br />3. Robert O. Paxton writes on the fascist penchant for colored shirts and its<br />relationship to the appearance of perfect unity in The Anatomy of Fascism (Al-<br />fred A. Knopf, 2004).<br />4. “Cincinattus Drive Is Sped in Seattle,” New York Times, March 1, 1936.<br />5. Mary McCarthy, “Circus Politics in Washington State,” The Nation, Oc-<br />tober 17, 1936.<br />6. Richard L. Neuberger, “State of the Slapstick in Politics,” New York Times,<br />February 20, 1938.<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 405<br />7. “Seattle Deals Radicals a Blow,” Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1938.<br />8. Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1938; New York Times, March 10, 1938.<br />9. Michael Janson, “A Chr istian Century: Liberal Protestantism, the New<br />Deal, and the Origins of Post-War American Politics” (dissertation, Univer-<br />sity of Pennsylvania, 2007), pp. 163–70.<br />10. Hart’s involvement with ICL; Edward Cabannis to Abram, July 24, 1951.<br />Folder 6, box 166, collection 459, BGCA. FBI on Hart and Lindbergh, and<br />Hart on the Jews: Max Wallace, The American Ax is: Henry Ford, Charles Lind-<br />bergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich (St. Martin’s Press, 2003), p. 252. Robert<br />H. Jackson on Hart: “Democracy Under Fire,” delivered to a meeting of the<br />Law Society of Massachusetts, Boston City Club, Boston, Massachusetts,<br />October 16, 1940.<br />11. For biograph ical details in this sketch of Buchman, I am indebted to the<br />popular press of the era, which found Buch man a subject for admiration or a<br />source of amusement, and especially to Tom Driberg’s The Mystery of Moral<br />Re- Armament: A Study of Frank Buchman and His Movement (Alfred A. Knopf,<br />1965). Driberg was the rst British journalist to investigate Buchman in the<br />late 1920s. By the time he published his book-length study, however, he was a<br />member of Parliament for Labour, and Buchmanites had long sought to dis-<br />credit h im as a communist and homosexual. Driberg had, indeed, joined the<br />British Communist Party as a young man, but as his biographer Francis Wheen<br />writes in The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg—Poet, Philanderer, Legislator, and<br />Outlaw (Fourth Estate, 2002), he had been expelled when it was discovered<br />that he was reporting to M15. His homosexuality was hardly a secret; he was<br />famous for it, and in case there was any confusion he outed himself once again<br />in The Mystery of Moral Re- Armament. He died a British peer, Baron Bradwell, in<br />1975 and was charged with having been a KGB spy in 1999 by the ex-KGB<br />archivist Vasili Mitrok hin, who claimed that the Soviets black mailed Driberg<br />on th reat of exposure of his sexuality. This seems a rather dubious assertion,<br />given the fact that Driberg was out, and Driberg’s defenders say that their man<br />had once again played double agent. Such facts are hard to ascertain, but for<br />certainty’s sake in my reliance on his account of Buchman, I’ve used only in-<br />formation that Driberg clearly sourced; amboyant in politics and romance,<br />he was a moderate wr iter who made h is case with care.<br />12. Peter Howard, Frank Buchman’s Secret (Heinemann, 1961), p. 28. How-<br />ard’s shor t book is an exercise in distortion. The most egregious of its<br />misrepresentations is Howard’s celebration of the Moral Re- Armament men<br />who fought for the Allies in World War I I. While many MRA followers no<br /><br /><br />406 | N O T E S<br />doubt did ght, MRA went to such ends in seeking to obtain exemptions for<br />military service for British and American followers that Colo nel Arthur V.<br />McDermott, New York City’s draft director, declared that MRA was “reeking<br />with hypocrisy and bad faith.” Quoted in Driberg, The Mystery of Moral<br /> Re- Armament, p. 75.<br />13. Frank Buchman, “Guidance or Guns,” speech delivered at Interlaken on<br />September 6, 1938, in Remaking the World: The Speeches of Frank Buchman (Bland-<br />ford Press, 1961), p. 63.<br />14. This fact, and the following description of a typical Buchmanite house<br />party, are derived from “Soul Surgeon,” a pro le of Buchman by Alva Johnson<br />in the April 23, 1932, New Yorker, pp. 22–25.<br />15. Buchman, Remaking the World.<br />16. Grubb, Modern Vik ing, p. 51.<br />17. Buchman, “Will God Control America?” broadcast from Ph iladelphia,<br />June 19, 1936, in Remaking the World, p. 33.<br />18. Buchman, “How to Listen,” speech delivered in Birmingham, England,<br />July 26, 1936, in Remaking the World, p. 35.<br />19. William A. H. Birnie, “Hitler or Any Fascist Leader Controlled By God<br />Could Cure All I lls of World, Buchman Believes,” N e w Y o r k W o r l d - T e l e g r a m ,<br />August 26, 1936. Buchman’s high opinion of Hitler so addled his senses,<br />writes Dr iberg in The Mystery of Moral Re- Armament (pp. 66– 67), that before a<br />tr ip to Germany he had one of his followers, a U.S. assistant attorney general,<br />request a meeting with FDR for Buchman on the grounds that “Herr Hitler”<br />had himself requested a meeting with Buchman, and Buchman would be em-<br />barrassed to report to Hitler that his own president would not receive him.<br />It’s not k nown whether or not Buch man did, in fact, meet Hitler, but if so,<br />he must have been red-faced; Roosevelt wanted no truck with Moral<br /> Re- Arma ment’s gnome.<br />20. Buchman, “Miracles in the North,” speech delivered in New York City,<br />November 20, 1935, in Remaking the World, pp. 19, 23.<br />21. Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here (Doubleday, Doran, 1935), p. 21.<br />22. Richard M. Fried, The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of<br />Modern America (Ivan R. Dee, 2005), p. 97.<br />23. American magazine, June 1930, p. 202, quoted in Barton in Blunderland, a<br />1937 campaign pamphlet for the American Labor Party.<br />24. “Dollar’s Eagle I s a Sparrow, Bar ton Finds,” Washington Post, June 10,<br />1934.<br />25. Bruce Barton, “Hard Times,” Wall Street Journal, March 30, 1926.<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 407<br />26. Finding the Better Way, periodicals, collection 459, Records of the Fel-<br />lowship Foundation, BGCA.<br />27. Grubb, Modern Viking, p. 66. Poling’s relationship to the Philadelphia<br />machine is discussed in “Ring Job Ordered,” Time, August 6, 1951.<br />28. Richard C. Berner, Seattle in the 20th Century, volume 3, Seattle Trans-<br />formed: World War II to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Charles Press, 1999), p. 52.<br />29. Ibid., p. 54.<br />30. “Barton Breaks a Lance,” Wall Street Journal, October 26, 1937.<br />31. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced<br />Industrial Society, 2nd edition (Beacon Press, 1991), p. 1.<br /><br /><br />6. THE MINISTRY OF PROPER ENLIGHTENMENT<br /><br />1. “Nazi Envoy Silent on Agency Ouster,” New York Times, January 17, 1941.<br />2. Quoted in “D.C. Trial Bares German Secrets,” Washington Post, July 24,<br />1941.<br />3. “It is of paramount . . .”: Hans Thomsen to Zapp, August 30, 1938, repro-<br />duced in full in “Excerpts f rom Wh ite Paper on Nazi Activities Here Re-<br />leased,” New York Times, November 22, 1940. “My task here . . .”: Zapp to Rudolf<br />Leitner, then the German ambassador to South Africa, November 25, 1938,<br />in ibid.<br />4. “You can easily recognize Manfred Zapp, the Nazi agent, his madcap girl-<br />friend, and . . . John Edgar Hoover,” Walter Winchell wrote in a blurb for<br />High Stakes (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), a thinly ctionalized account of the<br />FBI’s investigation of Zapp by the journalist Cur t Riess, a German ém igré<br />considered an authority on Naz i espionage. For Zapp in Havana, see Willard<br />Edwards, “Find 200 Agents in Havana Push Cause of Hitler,” Chicago Tribune,<br />July 27, 1940.<br />5. Zapp’s antagonism toward Ryan was all the more remarkable for the fact<br />that Ryan occasionally struck a friendly note for fascism, as in his 1937 de-<br />fense of Generalissimo Franco’s fascist rebellion in Spain. Wilson D. Mis-<br />ca mble, “T he Limits of American Catholic Anti-Fascism: The Case of John A.<br />Ryan,” Church History, 59, no. 4 (December 1990): 523–38. Zapp’s rebuttal:<br />Winifred Mallon, “Asks Public to Rise on Neutrality Act,” New York Times,<br />July 14, 1939.<br />6. “Roo sevelt’s Attack Comes as G-Men Order Probe of Nazi Press Ser-<br />vice,” Washington Post, October 25, 1940.<br /><br /><br />408 | N O T E S<br />7. Drew Pearson, “Merry-Go-Round,” Washington Post, October 25, 1946.<br />8. “Huge Area Shaken, But City Escapes,” New York Times, September 13,<br />194 0.<br />9. “West Point Sails With Axis Agents Ousted from the U.S.,” New York<br />Times, July 16, 1941.<br />10. “German Newsmen Tour Army Bases,” Information Bulletin, September<br />1951 (U.S. High Com missioner’s O ce), p. 72. University of Wisconsin<br />Digital Collections, http:// digital .library .wisc .edu/ 1711 .dl/ History .<br />11. Correspondence between Donald C. Stone and Ho man, “Re attached<br />report by Donald C. Stone: I mplications of Mutual Security Act and Requ ire-<br />ments for Action, October 4, 1951,” correspondence, 1951, Economic Coop-<br />eration Administration File, Paul G. Ho man Papers, Truman Presidential<br />Museum and Librar y. “My main use . . .”: Stone to Abram, undated, circa 1948,<br />folder 21, box 474, collection 459, BGCA.<br />12. National Security Council directive 10/2, quoted in Kenneth Osgood,<br />Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Univer-<br />sity of Kansas Press, 2006), p. 39.<br />13. Letter to Abram, from unknown correspondent, December 25, 1945,<br />folder 4, box 168, collection 459, BGCA; and Grubb, Modern Viking, pp.<br />101–2.<br />14. Timothy George, “Inventing Evangelicalism,” Christianity Today, March<br />2004.<br />15. “I believe honestly . . .”: Dianne Kirby, “Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy:<br />The Holy Alliance, Containment and the Cold War,” in Religion and the Cold<br />Wa r, ed. Diane Kirby (Palgrave, 2003), p. 86. Truman and MR A.: Dr iberg, The<br />Mystery of Moral Re- Armament, p. 92. Tr uma n’s mee tin g with Rober tson : Donald C.<br />Stone to John R. Steelman, the rst man to hold the o ce later known as<br />White House chief of sta , January 23, 1948, folder 21, box 474, collection<br />459, BGCA.<br />16. “Imperial interests”: Gregor Dallas, 1945: The War That Never Ended (Yale<br />University Press, 2005), p. 581. Carlson: The phrase had popped up in Fellow-<br />ship correspondence the year previous, but it seems that Carlson debuted it<br />publicly and may well have coined it. In an undated memo he wrote in appar-<br />ent preparation for the conference, he declares Worldwide Spiritual O ensive<br />as the “theme” that unites church and state into a force strong enough to con-<br />front the “Red Hordes.” Worldwide Spiritual O ensive in his view was dis-<br />tinctly American, since only the “new race” of Americans, “conscious of its<br />dependence on divine providence,” could confront the “alien way of life” prac-<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 409<br />ticed by leftists and foreigners (memo and speech). Folder 1, box 505, collec-<br />tion 459, BGCA. Broger: “Moral Doctrine for Free World Global Planning”<br />was a presentation Broger made to a Fellowship group on June 14, 1954. No<br />box number, collection 459, BGCA. The doctrine consisted of a study of<br />communism and Broger’s plan for reforming society after a “global war” using<br />Fellowship- style networking, using “indoctrinated personnel who will form<br />nucleus groups” to implement “the highest concepts of f reedom, whether so-<br />cially acceptable or not.”<br />17. Th is brief account of the NAE is derived from (and with apologies to)<br />Joel A. Carpenter’s more sympathetic but ver y insightf ul account in “An<br />Evangelical United Front,” chapter 8 of his excellent Revive Us Again: The Re-<br />awakening of American Fundamentalism (Oxford University Press, 1997).<br />18. Har riet French, “To Make Christians Leaders, and Leaders Christians,”<br />in unidenti ed newspaper, box 411, folder 4, collection 459, BGCA.<br />19. An undated brochure produced by the Fellowship shows on its f ront<br />page just such a conversation between two men walk ing down the stone<br />steps of the mansion. The man on the right, dressed in light gray and a dark<br />tie, seems to be trying to persuade his companion, an older fellow with gray<br />hair and black brows and an impatient air. The persuader, we learn in the<br />caption, is Commissioner Sigurd Anderson of the Federal Trade Commis-<br />sion; the skeptic, Howard Blanchard of Union Paci c Railroad—two men<br />with more than Christ in common. “The Bible,” declares the brochure,<br />“contains inexhaustible resources for the businessman ghting the economic<br />battle in a two- sted business world,” like a vein of coal or a pool of oil<br />“deposited” by God, awaiting re nement into a spiritual o ensive against<br />“materialism.”<br />20. FDR has long been a problematic gure for American fundamentalism,<br />and not just because of his impossible-to-ignore leadership in World War II.<br />On one hand, the New Deal bene ted too many in both the populist rank and<br />le of fundamentalism and at the elite level of Dixiecrat politicians for the<br />movement to condemn FDR altogether. On the other hand, the avant- garde<br />of fundamentalism was born in 1935 in response to FDR’s perceived godless<br />socialism. What is to be done with this historical paradox? William J. Fe-<br />derer, an accountant-turned- historian who has become a best- selling funda-<br />mentalist historian, attempts to resolve the dilemma with The Faith of F.D.R.<br />(Amerisearch, 2006), a compilation of every banal piety Roo sevelt ever<br />uttered. Federer hopes the book will cement FDR, war- president, into the<br />fundamentalist pantheon.<br /><br /><br />410 | N O T E S<br />21. Grubb, Modern Viking, p. 105. “Nominal membership”: Otto Fricke, J. W.<br />E. Som mer, Georg Reichel, Professor Landon Bender, Paul Orlamunder,<br />Friedreich Wunderlich, to Abram, August 26, 1946, folder 4, box 218, col-<br />lection 459, BGCA.<br />22. J. F. Byrnes, “Restatement of Policy on Germany, Stuttgart,” September<br />6, 1946. http:// usa .usembassy .de/ etexts/ ga4–460906 .htm accessed August<br />20, 2006.<br />23. “You are God’s man”: Abram to Fr icke, August 29, 1947, folder 4, box<br />218, collection 459, BGCA.<br />24. Michael H. Kater, Di erent Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany<br />(Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 49.<br />25. Hans Spier, From the Ashes of Disgrace: A Journal from Germany, 1945–1955<br />(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), pp. 31–32.<br />26. Hans Kempe to Abram, February 5, 1948, folder 5, box 218, collection<br />459, BGCA.<br />27. Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain<br />(Houghton Mi in, 2000), pp. 2–6.<br />28. “Meeting Agenda,” in folders 46–50, box 585, collection 459, BGCA.<br />29. Most of this money came in individual donations raised by Abram’s<br />prayer cells (see Gedat to Abram, January 14, 1951; Abram to Gedat, April<br />18, 1951, folder 7, box 218, collection 459, BGCA), but some apparently came<br />from the Mellon Foundation, as well. Gedat to Abram, March 26, 1950,<br />folder 5, box 218, collection 459, BGCA.<br />30. In The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Ca mbr idge<br />University Press, 2003), the historian Richard Steigmann-Gall delivers con-<br />clusive evidence that settles the debate over whether or not Nazism conceived<br />of itself as anti-Ch ristian: not at all. In fact, much of the top leadersh ip,<br />Steigmann-Gall documents, considered the cross and the swastika two di er-<br />ent symbols for one great idea.<br />31. “Directive to Commander-in- Chief of United States Forces of Occupa-<br />tion Regarding the Military Government of Germany,” April 1945 (JCS<br />1067). Available online from the U.S. Embassy to Germany at http://usa .<br />u s e m b a s s y . d e / e t e x t s / g a 3 – 4 5 0 4 2 6 . p d f .<br />32. “Asiatic nihilism”: Dr. H. O. Ahrens to Abram, November 10, 1949,<br />folder 5, box 218, collection 459, BGCA. Ahrens was a vocal and e ective<br />lobbyist for German industrialists determined to avoid the dismantling of<br />factories used for military production. At the time of this letter, he was taking<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 411<br />one of Abram’s American operatives, William Frary von Bromberg (who<br />claimed the title of baron, perhaps falsely) on a tour of such properties.<br />33. Abram to Fricke, September 21, 1949; Fricke to Abram, October 17,<br />1949; Abram to Fricke, November 2, 1949; folder 4, box 218, collection 459,<br />BGCA. Gedat quoted in Inge Deutschkron, Mein Leben nach dem Überleben<br />(Dtv, 2000), p. 130.<br />34. The involvement of Abs, Schmelz, Rohrbach, and Speidel is reported in<br />“The Highlights of the ICL Conference at Castle Mainau, Germany, June<br />14–17, 1951,” an account by the ICL employee Wallace Haines, and an un-<br />dated, untitled report on the same conference by a German ICL employee,<br />Margarete Gärtner (herself a former prewar propagandist for German expa n-<br />sion), folders 10 and 11, respectively, of box 218, collection 459, BGCA.<br />35. Han s von Eicken, a leader with Gedat and Fricke of the German division<br />of the Fellowship, wrote to Abram on July 11, 1951, to tell Abram that the<br />German Fellowship’s advocacy on behalf of Pohl and another war criminal,<br />Otto Ohlendorf—an in uential economist who’d boasted at his trial of hav-<br />ing overseen the murder of 90,000 Jews and other non- Aryans— had helped<br />soothe the concer ns of those in “important circles” who felt that the German<br />Fellowsh ip was the “cleverly engineered product of an American power<br />group.” Folder 7, box 218, collection 459, BGCA. On October 12, 1951, von<br />Neurath’s daughter had written Abram a letter begging for help with the case<br />of her father. He’d been treated well by his American guards, she wrote, but<br />persecuted by the Soviets who ran the prison in tandem with the United<br />States. She was outraged that her father, one of the seven “Major War Crimi-<br />nals,” su ered from bad dentistry. “It was di cult for him to talk,” during her<br />last visit to him in prison, “as his arti cial set of teeth—put in about a year ago<br />at Spandau—was tting very badly.” Abram opened a le on the case. “Can<br />we do anything about this?” he wrote in a note to one of his aides. “Maybe<br />[Congressman O. K.] Armstrong should see th is.” Von Neurath won his re-<br />lease as a medical parolee in 1953 (Arieh J. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied<br />War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment [University of North Carolina<br />Press, 1998], p. 245), but besides th is letter, the le Abram opened is lost,<br />leaving us uncertain whether Abram’s intervention played a part in von Neur-<br />ath ’s good fortune. Winifred von Mackensen (née von Neurath) to Abram,<br />folder 1, box 218, collection 459, BGCA.<br />36. “Church Group Votes, Elects 17 from Congress,” Washington Post, January<br />14, 17, 1945. “Panty- waist diplomacy”: Grose, Operation Rollback, p. 6.<br /><br /><br />412 | N O T E S<br />37. Lance Morrow, The Best Year of their Lives: Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson in<br />1948: Learning the Secret s of Power (Basic Books, 2005), p. 128. Jack Powers,<br />South Bend Tribune, February 24, 1991.<br />38. Address to the United States Senate, February 5, 1946. One can nd<br />extensive excerpts from the speech on a number of Holocaust revisionist Web<br />sites, including, as of 2006, http:// www .sweetliberty .org/ issues/ wars/ wit<br />ness2history/ 21 .htm l .<br />39. Spier, From the Ashes of Disgrace, p. 27.<br />40. Lecture to the Frankfurt chapter of I nternational Christian Leadership,<br />August 9, 1950, folder 11, box 218, collection 459, BGCA.<br />41. Von Gienanth to Wallace Haines, ICL “Field Director for Europe,”<br />March 29, 1952, folder 1, box 218, collection 459, BGCA.<br />42. Abram to Ropp, October 6, 1953, folder 3, box 218, collection 459,<br />BGCA. Ropp was himself an admirer of Merwin K. Hart, the anti-Semitic<br />American fascist whom Abram had welcomed into the Fellowship’s inner cir-<br />cle. Ropp to Wallace Haines, August 12, 1952, folder 1, box 218, collection<br />459, BGCA.<br />43. Frances Hepp, April 23, 1947, folder 4, box 218, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />44. Haines to Abram, June 23, 1951, folder 8, box 218, collection 459, BGCA.<br />45. This account of the meeting at Mainau is drawn from K. C. Liddel,<br />“Notes on Mainau Conference,” June 28, 1951, folder 8, box 218, collection<br />459, BGCA; Wallace Haines, “The Highlights of ICL Conference at Castle<br />Mainau, Germany,” folder 10, box 218, collection 459; Christian Leadership<br />News, September 1951, collection 459; Margarete Gär tner, “Newsletter,” July<br />30, 1951, folder 10, box 218, collection 459; undated reports for Abram by<br />Margarete Gärtner in folders 10 and 11, box 218, collection 459. Gärtner’s<br />past as a propagandist is referred to in John Hiden and Thomas Lane, eds., The<br />Baltic and the Outbreak of the Second World War (Cambridge University Press,<br />1992), p. 126. The U-boat commander was Reinhard Hardegen. The fascist<br />editor was Benno Mascher. Bishop Wurm’s anti-Semitic remarks can be found<br />in Wolfgang Erlich, And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the<br />Persecution of the Jews (University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 201.<br />46. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin Press, 2005), p. 61.<br />47. Dallas, 1945, p. 615.<br />48. Zapp to Abram, September 16, 1950, folder 6, box 218, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />49. Carpenter, Revive Us Again, p. 149.<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 413<br /><br />7. THE BLOB<br /><br />1. Inter view with Kate Phillips in Tom Weaver, Science Fiction Con dential:<br />Interviews With Monster Stars and Filmmakers (McFarland, 2002), pp. 234–46.<br />2. Joshua Muravch ik, “Losing the Peace,” Commentary, July 1992.<br />3. Quoted in Richard Hofstadter’s 1955 essay “The Pseudo- Conservative Re-<br />volt,” in The Radical Right ed., Daniel Bell (Anchor Books, 1964), p. 76.<br />4. A revealing statistic overlooked by conventional historians of the Cold<br />War: between 1935, the year Abram and his fundamentalist elite came in<br />from the cold of domestic exile, and 1980, the commencement of the Reagan<br />era, the average number of American evangelical m issionaries overseas grew<br />from 5,000, many of them engaged in small projects close to home, to 32,000<br />spread all over the globe. Carpenter, Revive Us Again, p. 184. The anthropolo-<br />gist David Stoll explores the interconnections— ideological and actual—<br />between the U.S. covert operations and the network of evangelical<br />missionaries connected to what was then the largest missionar y organization<br />in the world in Fishers of Men or Found ers of Empire?: The Wycli e Bible Translators<br />in America (Zed Press, 1982). Stoll takes pains to explain that such intercon-<br />nections did not constitute a conspiracy, but rather, an overlapping worldview<br />in which spiritual and imperial interests were not easily distinguished. As re-<br />cently as 2006, when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez expelled a group of<br />evangelical missionaries he claimed were U.S. spies, Christianity Today felt<br />compelled to condemn “The CIA Myth,” apparently persuasive enough to se-<br />duce even some of the magazine’s conservative evangelical readers. Deann<br />Alford, January 2006.<br />5. Quoted in Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Po-<br />litical Power in the United States (Guilford Press, 1995), p. 101.<br />6. “Our press,” reads a memo in Abram’s les on Cuba and the American<br />media’s ambivalence toward Castro, “is infested with crypto-Com munists<br />[and] intellectual prostitutes in their hire.” Whether the Fellowship would<br />extend that charge to even the evangelical press is unclear, but there can be no<br />doubt on their position with regard to détente with Castro.<br />7. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the<br />Union,” 1958. Eisenhower accused the Soviets of waging “total cold war,” to<br />which, he said, the United States must respond with “total peace” in which<br />“ever y asset of our personal and national lives,” par ticularly religion, would be<br />dedicated to the ght. Ike also believed in “progress” as de ned by the Atlas,<br />Titan, Thor, Jupiter, and Polaris missile programs. The fact that such literally<br /><br /><br />414 | N O T E S<br />totalitarian ambitions were considered calming is an indicator of the fear and<br />loathing that infused the ostensibly bland 1950s.<br />8. Ken neth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at<br />Home and Abroad (Kansas State University Press, 2006), pp. 270–75.<br />9. Reverend John Collins, chairman of Christian Action, to Abram, Sep-<br />tember 8, 1950, folder 2, box 202, collection 459, BGCA.<br />10. Osgood, Total Cold War, p. 40.<br />11. “Government Curbs Scored,” New York Times, May 11, 1949.<br />12. Grubb to Abram, August 21, 1953, folder 2, box 202, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />13. Perhaps they carr ied with them repr ints of a Look magazine article<br />Abram had had made, his chief piece of literature that year. The lead story<br />was by Nor man Vincent Peale, Abram’s colleague in the Twelve. Why was<br />Amer ica experiencing a spiritual revival? Simple, said Peale: “for the rst<br />time in the country’s history, we are lled with fear.” Peale’s solution: “It is<br />now widely recognized that prayer is a skill, that it is an actual power.” The<br />demand of the hour, wrote Peale, was organizing such power into action, a<br />“vital spiritual force.” His inspiration? “The Vereide Organization,” which<br />inculcated “the country’s lawmakers” in “the importance of divine guid-<br />ance.” Abram’s reprint of Peale’s May 22, 1951, Look article, “The Place of<br />Prayer in America,” was titled “These Scandalous Years in Washington,” a<br />reference to widespread suspicion th at the Tr uman administration was rid-<br />dled with red agents. Folder 51, box 585, collection 459, BGCA. “Direct re-<br />lationship . . .”: Associated Press, “Wiley Trip Declared in U.S. Interest,”<br />Washington Post, May 21, 1952. Particularly controversial was Wiley’s deci-<br />sion to bring his much younger new bride for a vacation, a practice that un-<br />der Eisenhower would become uno cial policy, the chumminess of power<br />couples meeting their peers used to cement “relationships” with foreign na-<br />tions, as David F. Sch mitz writes in Thank God They’re On Our Side: The United<br />States & Right-Wing Dictatorships (University of North Carolina Press, 1999),<br />p. 183.<br />14. Wil helmina was at that point technically “princess,” hav ing passed<br />her throne to her daughter, Juliana, but she was still referred to as queen,<br />and both women were strong supporters of the Fellowship, though<br />whether out of religious sentiment or other motives—the royal family<br />was responsible for the interests of Royal Dutch-Shell Oil—is unclear in<br />Abram’s papers.<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 415<br />15. Robert C. Albright, “Ike Can’t Find Titles for All His Talented Help,”<br />Washington Post, June 22, 1952.<br />16. “The June Brides,” Time, June 23, 1952.<br />17. In Phyllis Schla y and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton<br />University Press, 2005), the historian Donald T. Crichtlow argues that this<br />sense of betrayal led to the formation of the New Right that would propel<br />Barry Goldwater to the GOP nom ination twelve years later. See pp. 46– 47.<br />18. Drew Pearson, “Merry-Go-Round: Taft Talks Way Back to the Top,”<br />Washington Post, December 22, 1952.<br />19. Two of the Democratic candidates for the nom ination, Senator Estes<br />Kefauver of Tennessee and Senator Robert Kerr of Ok lahoma, were Breakfast<br />Groupers. The eventual nom inee, Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, was de-<br />cidedly not, but his hawk ish liberalism would lead h im into even more mili-<br />tant expressions of faith. The “one supreme di erence” between the United<br />States and the USSR, Stevenson told a “Washington Pilgrimage” of Christian<br />nationalists, “is that America and its leaders believe in God; the rulers of Rus-<br />sia have turned their back on God and deny His very existence.” “Presidential<br />Candidates Speak Out For Religion,” Washington Post, May 3, 1952. Steven-<br />son’s surprising piety may be understood a s a sign of the times; the 1952 elec-<br />tion was, according to the Washington Post, the rst time all presidential<br />candidates had publicly paid tribute to America’s ostensible religious—read,<br />“Chr istian”—heritage.<br />20. Graham’s account of h is role can be found in “The General Who Be-<br />came President,” chapter 12 of h is autobiography, Just As I Am (HarperSan-<br />Franciso/Zondervan, 1997), in which he says he met Abram during his<br />Northwest Crusades. He does not mention the fact that Abram had been re-<br />cr uited by his own former Seattle cell—doubling as the sponsoring commit-<br />tee for the Graham Crusade’s visit—to seek federal funds for a cover for the<br />city’s Memorial Stadium to ensure the Crusade’s success. “Graham wants<br />this,” wrote Abram’s Seattle lieutenant, a wealthy lawyer named Warren<br />Dew ar. “Langlie and Devin”—the governor and the mayor of Seattle, both<br />men whose careers had been made by Breakfast Group connections—“want it<br />too.” Dewar suggests that $18,000, possibly federal funds, had already been<br />directed toward Graham’s appearance. Dewar to Abram, May 16, 1951, folder<br />7, box 168, collection 459, BGCA. Reference to Oiltown U.S.A. may be found<br />in the BGEA’s collection 214, the records of World Wide Pictures, Graham’s<br />lm production compa ny.<br /><br /><br />416 | N O T E S<br />21. Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, quoted in Gr ubb, Modern Viking, pp.<br />130 –32.<br />22. Nick Thimmesch, “Politicians and the Underground Prayer Movement,”<br />Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1974. Thimmesch, who adm ired the Fellow-<br />ship, described it thusly: “They are secretive and guarded in discussing their<br />experiences or activities . . . They genuinely avoid publicity. In fact, they<br />shun it.”<br />23. Ferguson: Ferguson was a longtime inner circle member who regularly<br />appeared in the Fellowship’s brochures for new prospects. Bennett: Bennett’s<br />membership in ICL was repor ted in the July 1959 issue of Moody Monthly, the<br />magazine of the fundamentalist Moody Institute in Ch icago, in “Christians in<br />Your Congress,” by Donald H. Gill. Other members cited included Strom<br />Thur mond, James B. Utt—the Orange County congressman who believed<br />that the United Nations was training Africans to conquer the United States—<br />and Representative Bruce Alger, the Dallas Republican who would lead a<br />“min k coat mob ” ma de up of his wealthy female supporters in a spitting attack<br />on Ladybird Johnson. Bennett, a signer of the infamous Southern Manifesto,<br />remained close to the Fellowship for decades. “I ask too much of you already,”<br />he wrote Doug Coe on January 27, 1987, “and therefore am not pressing for a<br />particular appointment, but anytime that suits you I would cer tainly like to<br />see you.” Folder 4, box 166, collection 459, BGCA.<br />24. He ey and Plowman, Washington: Christians in the Corridors of Power,<br />pp. 120–21.<br />25. Associated Press, “Eisenhower Joins in a Brea kfast Prayer Meeting,” New<br />York Tim es, February 5, 1954. Eisenhower didn’t speak at the second breakfast,<br />but Vice President Nixon did, initiating a tradition Nixon maintained for the<br />rest of the decade. Personally indi erent to Abram’s piety, he recognized the<br />value of the Prayer Breakfast’s pulpit and made it his own. Guatemala: Van<br />Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left<br />(Verso, 1993), pp. 26–29.<br />26. Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion,<br />Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia (Duke University Press, 2005),<br />pp. 60–62. “Wiley Would End Attack on Dulles,” New York Times, July 25,<br />1954.<br />27. “McCarthy to be Asked to Aid I ke,” Washington Post, September 18, 1952.<br />Ferdinand Kuh n, “McCarthy’s Charges in Speech Stir Angry Denials, Pro-<br />tests,” Washington Post, October 29, 1952.<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 417<br />28. I. F. Stone, “The F irst Welts on Joe McCarthy,” I. F. Stone’s Weekly, March<br />15, 1954, reproduced in The Best of I. F. Stone, ed. Peter Osnos (Public A airs,<br />2006).<br />29. “For God and Country,” Vanguard University Magazine, the alumni journal<br />of the former Southern California Bible College, Spring 2002.<br />30. Osgood, Total Cold War, p. 315.<br />31. Drew Pearson, “The New JCS—and the Old,” Washington Post, August<br />13, 1953.<br />32. John Broger, “Moral Doctrine for Free World Global Planning,” a pre-<br />sentation to Abram’s ICL, June 14, 1954, folder 1, box 505, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />33. Marquis Ch ilds, “A Strange Film Shown to Soldiers,” Washington Post,<br />January 27, 1961.<br />34. “Militant Liberty Outline Plan,” November 5, 1954, Operations Coor-<br />dinating Board Central Files, box 70, OCB 091, f rom the collection of Ken-<br />neth Osgood, Florida Atlantic University.<br />35. Wayne’s USC footba ll teammate Ward Bond joined forces with Broger as<br />well, but although Bond appeared in some of the best movies Hollywood ever<br />made, including Gone With the Wind, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Ford’s brilliant<br />John Wayne vehicle, The Searchers, it wouldn’t be fair to include him in the<br />same category as those two tremendously talented reactionaries. Of course,<br />Ford would have disagreed with me. Sort of: “Let’s face it,” he once said of<br />Bond’s anticommunist snitching, “Ward Bond is a sh it. But he’s our favorite<br />shit.” Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of<br />Arts and Letters (New Press, 2000), pp. 284–87.<br />36. Broger, “Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense,” July 26, 1957,<br />no box number, collection 459, BGCA.<br /><br /><br />8. VIETNAMIZATION<br /><br />1. Clifton J. Robinson to Doug Coe, April 28, 1966, folder 2, box 372, col-<br />lection 459, BGCA.<br />2. “Carter Appoints ‘Field Ma rsha ll’ Sullivan Ambassador to Sha h,” MERI P<br />Report, no. 59, August 1977, pp. 24–25. Sullivan went on to become the last<br />American ambassador to Iran, an appointment of great controversy. Sullivan<br />“is well- tted to run secret presidential wars and lie to Congress about<br /><br /><br />418 | N O T E S<br />them,” editorialized The Nation, an assessment borne out in more adm iring<br />terms by a study conducted for the CIA: “The secret war in Laos, author Cha rles<br />Stevenson has emphasized, was ‘William Sullivan’s war.’ . . . Sullivan im -<br />posed two conditions upon h is subordinates. First, the th in ction of the<br />Geneva accords had to be maintained . . . ; military operations, therefore,<br />had to be carried out in relative secrecy. Second, no regular US ground<br />troops were to become involved.” Instead, Sullivan resorted to one of the<br />most destr uctive bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War. William M.<br />Leary, “CI A Air Operations in Laos, 1955–1974,” Studies in Intelligence (pub -<br />lished by the CIA), Winter 1999–2000.<br />3. Abram, “Memorandum to the Board,” circa 1966, folder 2, box 563, col-<br />lection 459, BGCA.<br />4. Bold Satanic forces: Ibid. Cyclone: Frank McLaughlin to Abram, December<br />15, 1966, folder 1, box 168, collection 459, BGCA. “Ten steps . . .”: Coe to Jim<br />Anderson of Young Life, November 18, 1981, folder 5, box 168, collection<br />459, BGCA.<br />5. Robinson had won for the Fellowship’s muscular Christ the ostensibly<br />Gha ndia n Hindu A. M. Thomas, responsible for India’s armed forces during<br />some of the worst ghting with Pakistan. Robinson to Ford Mason, Novem-<br />ber 30, 1964, folder 2, box 232, collection 459, BGCA.<br />6. Robinson to Halverson, April 13, 1963, ibid.<br />7. Halverson to Robinson, May 22, 1963, ibid.<br />8. Cordle, Halverson: Robinson to Mason, November 30, 1964, ibid.<br />9. V. Raymond Edman, They Found the Secret: Twenty Lives That Reveal A Touch<br />of Eternity (Zondervan, 1984), pp. 78–87.<br />10 Halverson’s responsibility to a pluralistic nation did not mellow his reli-<br />gious convictions. Upon h is death in 1995, Senator Dan Coats (R., Indiana)<br />would eulogize him by expressing his admiration for a man who would<br />preach thusly on the Senate oor: “God of our fathers, if we separate moral-<br />ity from politics, we imperil our Nation and threaten self-destruction. Impe-<br />rial Rome was not defeated by an enemy from without; it was destroyed by<br />moral decay from within. Mighty God, over and over again you warned your<br />people, Israel, that righteousness is essential to national health.” Halverson<br />also preached in the Senate against investigative reporting. Cal Thomas, “The<br />Most Powerful Man in Washington Retires,” York Daily Record, November 9,<br />1994.<br />11. Robert D. Foster, The Navigator (Challenge Books, 1983), p. 61.<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 419<br />12. Doug Coe, “The Person of Christ,” a videotaped address to the Presi-<br />dent’s Meeting, a gathering of evangelical leaders, January 15, 1989.<br />13. “Wash ington Welcomes Doug Coe,” in Chr istian Leadership, October<br />1959, collection 459, BGCA.<br />14. “a woman so uncomplaining”: Wallace Haines quoted in “A Key Man in<br />Ever y Country,” July 1973, folder 20, box 383, collection 459, BGCA. Sharp-<br />nack to Coe, December 28, 1959, folder 10, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.<br />15. Cal Ludeman to Coe, Apr il 27, 1960, folder 11, box 135, collection<br />459, BGCA.<br />16. Kent Hotaling to Coe, January 18, 1960, folder 10, box 135, collection<br />459, BGCA.<br />17. One of Coe’s standard closings on letters written in 1960, folder 11, box<br />135, collection 459, BGCA.<br />18. Haines is quoted back to himself in a letter from Coe to Haines dated<br />December 27, 1967, folder 4, box 204, collection 459, BGCA. Coe to par-<br />ents, November 4, 1959, folder 11, box 368, collection 459, BGCA.<br />19. Frank Laubach, “A Pentagon of World Friendship,” October 19, 1955,<br />folder 1, box 505, collection 459, BGCA. Chuck Hull to Coe, January 15,<br />1960, folder 10, box 135, collection 459, BGCA.<br />20. Traveling on Fellowship behalf: Christian Leadership, December 1959, collec-<br />tion 459, BGCA. “Capehart and Carlson Meet Duvalier; U.S. Sen ators Pledge<br />Assistance to Haiti, New Pittsburgh Courier, December 5, 1959.<br />21. Doug Barram to Coe, June 12, 1962, folder 5, box 168, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />22. “Finding the Better Way,” January 15, 1942, pamphlet, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />23. March 1962 remarks to a prayer breakfast for the governor of Arizona,<br />led under “Thoughts on Prayer,” le 16, box 449, collection 459, BGCA.<br />24. “LBJ, Billy Graham Eloquent at Breakfast,” Washington Post, February<br />18, 1966.<br />25. March 8, 1962, folder 5, box 361, collection 459, BGCA.<br />26. Carlson to José Joaquín Trejos Fernández, November 27, 1967, folder<br />17, box 365, collection 459, BGCA. Dorn wa s of no relation to the rst W. J.<br />Bryan, for whom he was named not in deference to Bryan’s fundamentalism,<br />ironically, but in honor of Br yan’s anti-imperialism.<br />27. Howard Siner, “At torney Knows Carter as Sma rt, Kind F riend,” San Jose<br />News, March 4, 1977.<br /><br /><br />420 | N O T E S<br />28. Bill Green to Coe, August 4, 1960, folder 11, box 135, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />29. Savimbi, a black African leader who enjoyed support f rom the apartheid<br />state as well as American Christian conservatives, is harder to pin down than<br />Barre, who gambled his whole relationsh ip with the United States on the<br />Family. I nterviews with and cor respondence of Clif Gosney, a former Family<br />liaison to the South Af rican Zulu ch ief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, reveal that<br />Savimbi was also with in the Family’s circle, his spiritual well- being tended by<br />Gosney, a sincere Christian, and Piet Koornhof, a cabinet minister in the<br />South Af rican government of F. W. de Klerk.<br />30. There are at least two nearly full boxes of documents at the Billy Graham<br />Center Archives detailing the Family’s relationship with Brazilian regimes.<br />Boxes 184–85, collection 459, BGCA.<br />31. I nterview with Coe by Tore Gjerstad, October 29, 2007.<br />32. Notes on reorganization folders 1–2, box 563, collection 459, BGCA.<br />33. Abram to Ad miral C. S. Freeman, November 23, 1949, folder 2, box 3 48,<br />collection 459, BGCA. Abram never put an explicitly anti-Sem itic word on<br />record, and while Malik may have been holding out hope for a Christian Pal-<br />estinian state to the south of Lebanon, he was likely motivated more by his<br />understanding of scripture, wh ich did not include anti-Semitism. Freeman,<br />however, the point man on the project, was an old-fashioned Jew hater and a<br />frequent collaborator with Merwin K. Hart, the American fascist organizer.<br />34. Quoted in the December 1959/January 1960 issue of Christian Leadership,<br />a members-only newsletter of the International Christian Leadership—the<br />Fellowship. Located in the periodicals section of collection 459 at the<br />BGCA.<br />35. June 28, 1963, “Thoughts on Prayer,” folder 16, box 449, collection<br />459, BGCA.<br />36. Bell made clear to the students that they’d been selected not for their<br />good standing as Christians—some were not religious—or good grades, but<br />solely for their status as big men on campus. February 5, 1970, “Young Men’s<br />Seminar,” tape 107, collection 459, BGCA. “During the seminar, when I<br />voiced my objection to the assumption that we were all devoted Ch ristians,”<br />Joe Persico, the student body president of San Francisco State, had complained<br />to Lyndon Johnson after a similar event in 1965, “we were told by Roger<br />Staubach . . . from the U.S. Naval Academy, ‘I feel sorry for all of you who<br />are not Christians, because you have no chance of an after-life.’ General<br />Silverthorn”—one of Abram’s chief aides, an ancient o cer who’d held a<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 421<br />Kurtz-like post in the U.S. occupation of Haiti during the 1920s—“told us<br />that, ‘of course, Chr ist said a few oddball things, too, like the Sermon on the<br />Mount.’ ” Andrew Kopkind, “The Power of Prayer,” New Republic, March 6,<br />1965.<br />37. February 5, 1970, “Young Men’s Seminar,” tape 107, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />38. Ibid.<br />39. For basic biographical details about Colson, I relied on his rst two mem-<br />oirs, Born Again (Spire, 1977) and Life Sentence (Chosen Books, 1979), and<br />John Perry’s admiring biography, Charles Colson: A Story of Power, Corruption, and<br />Redemption (Broadman and Holman, 2003). Colson’s output, augmented by<br />numerous ghostwriters, is enormous. Texts I found particularly useful to un-<br />derstanding his thinking include Against the Night: Living in the New Dark Ages<br />(Serva nt Publications, 1989); How Now Shall We Live? (Tyndale, 1999); and<br />Kingdoms in Con ict (William Morrow, 1987).<br />40. Thimmesch, “Politicians and the Underground Prayer Movement,” Los<br />Angeles Times, January 13, 1974.<br />41. He ey and Plowman, Washington: Christians in the Corridors of Power, pp.<br />38–55.<br />42. Paul Apostolidis, Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio<br />(Duke University Press, 2000), p. 151.<br />43. Kandy Stroud, “Chuck Colson: Re ections Before Prison,” Women’s Wear<br />Daily, July 1, 1974.<br />44. Collection 275, BGCA.<br />45. Apostolidis, Stations of the Cross, p. 151.<br />46. Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power, p. 59.<br />47. Colson to Coe, November 20, 1980, folder 8, box 368, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />48. Apostolidis, Stations of the Cross, p. 150.<br />49. Howard Gillette, Jr., Between Beauty and Justice: Race, Planning and the<br />Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Johns Hopkins University Press,<br />1995), p. 153.<br />50. No signature to Coe, April 1, 1960, folder 10, box 135, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />51. Julia Rabig, “ ‘Black Bu ers’: Evangelical Entrepreneurship Meets Black<br />Power on the Streets of Washington, D.C.,” unpublished paper presented at<br />the 2004 University of Pennsylvania Graduate Humanities Forum.<br />52. Ibid., p. 19.<br /><br /><br />422 | N O T E S<br />53. Interview with John Staggers, “How to Eat an Elepha nt,” HIS, November<br />1981. HIS was a men’s magazine published by the Inter-Varsity Ch ristian<br />Leadership.<br />54. Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden<br />Personality Changes (Stillpoint Press, 2005), p. 32.<br /><br /><br />9. JESUS + 0 = X<br /><br />1. Abram to Frank McLaughlin, February 14, 1968, folder 1, box 168, col-<br />lection 459, BGCA.<br />2. Kathy Kadane, “U.S. O cials’ Lists Aided Indonesian Bloodbath in ’60s,”<br />Washington Post, May 21, 1990.<br />3. Wilkes, “Prayer,” New York Times, December 22, 1974.<br />4. Senator B. Everett Jordan, “Personal and Con dential Memo” to members<br />of Congress on Fa mily assets around the globe, April 1969, folder 2, box 363,<br />collection 459, BGCA. Marpaung’s contribution to the murderous crackdown<br />is even celebrated by some evangelicals. “The story of I ndonesian revival is an<br />illustration of God’s sovereignty,” reads the subheading over an account of<br />Marpaung’s speech on an evangelical website, http://members.aol.com/the<br />waycm/revival/asia .html, accessed July 20, 2007.<br />5. Hat eld to Nixon, November 11, 1969, folder 5, box 584, collection 459,<br />BGCA.<br />6. Shortly a fter that meeting, Moorer, convinced that Nixon was soft on com-<br />munism, began an espionage operation against the president’s civilian advis-<br />ers, “a hanging o ense,” in the words of the Pentagon investigator who<br />uncovered the plot. “Don’t tell Laird,” Nixon instr ucted his attorney general<br />as he considered prosecuting Moorer. James Rosen, “Nixon and the Ch iefs,”<br />Atlantic, April 2002.<br />7. Coe to Korry, October 10, 1970, folder 36, box 194, collection 459,<br />BGCA. Korry and the October 1970 Plot: Gregory Palast, “A Marxist Threat to<br />Cola Sales? Pepsi Demands a U.S. Coup. Goodbye Allende. Hello Pinochet,”<br />Observer (UK), November 8, 1998. Korry, to his ver y m inor credit, opposed a<br />military coup because he did not think it would work. The CI A- backed mur-<br />der of Allende’s defense m inister that month seemed to bear out his point.<br />The Chilean people rallied round Allende. But in 1973, K issinger and Gen-<br />eral Pinochet, to Chile’s lasting sorrow, proved him wrong. I could nd no<br /><br /><br />THE F AMIL Y | 423<br />record of Fellowship contact with Pinochet. They had long been allied with a<br />right-wing civilian faction called the “O cialists,” headed by Hector Valen-<br />zue la Valderrama, a conservative Catholic politician whom Coe and Korry<br />shopped around in Washin gt on in 1969 as an Allende a lternative. “The Major -<br />ity Leader of the Congress, with whom you visited, called me the other day,”<br />Coe wrote Valderrama. “He again expressed an interest in the ideas that you<br />and he discussed. I think in the months to come such ideas can be pursued in<br />private discussions and someday perhaps come to pass.” Correspondence,<br />Coe, Korr y, and Valderrama, February–June 1969, folder 35, box 194, col-<br />lection 459, BGCA. “The sun is just now beginning to sh ine again”: Valder-<br />rama to Coe, December 21, 1973, box 194, BGCA.<br />8. Tape 109, January 4, 1971, titled “Fa mily Night at Fellowship House during<br />which “Sam Cram,” Douglas Coe, and Clif Robinson gave reports on their<br />recent trip to Japan, South Korea, South Vietnam, I ndia, Hong Kong, Philip-<br />pines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Turkey, and the Soviet Union to visit<br />leaders in those countries,” collection 459, BGCA.<br />9. B. Everett Jordan to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Represen-<br />tatives involved with the Presidential and Congressional Prayer Break fasts,<br />October 1970. “Mr. Howard Hardesty, Executive Vice President of Conti-<br />nental Oil company, recently traveled to Indonesia where he met for a day<br />with men in the leadership groups there. He also had dinner with President<br />Suharto and Members of the Indonesian Cabinet. The sense of spiritual rela-<br />tionship which was formed caused Mr. Hardesty to com ment, ‘Th is is one of<br />the greatest days of my life.’ ” Folder 8, box 548, collection 459, BGCA.<br />10. McClure: Jordan to members of Congress involved with the Prayer Break-<br />fasts, 197 0, folder 2, box 362, collection 459, BGCA. “Con dential” prayer:<br />Jorda n to members of Congress, undated, in reference to 1970 National<br />Prayer Breakfast, folder 5, box 584, collection 459, BGCA.<br />11. Elgin Groseclose to Clifton J. Robinson, November 28, 1972, folder 6,<br />box 383, collection 459, BGCA.<br />12. Clifton J. Robinson to Elgin Groseclose, December 1, 1972, ibid.<br />13. From a 2005 interview with the Reverend Rob Schenck, president of<br />Faith and Action, a small, Coe-style ministry with headquarters across from<br />the U.S. Supreme Court.<br />14. Locke’s rema rks are found on p. 19 of “Trip to the [illegible] and Sermon<br />by Doug Coe,” circa 1988, National Prayer Breakfast, no box nu mber, collec-<br />tion 459, BGCA.<br /><br /><br />424 | N O T E S<br /><br />10. INTERESTING BLOOD<br /><br />1. Max Blumenthal, “God’s Country,” Washington Monthly, October 2003.<br />Eyal Press’s Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Con ict that Divided<br />America (Henry Holt, 2006) is the de nitive account of the Bu alo abortion<br />wars and the murder of Barnett Slepian.<br />2. Hillary Clinton, Living History (Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 168.<br />3. Interview with Tony Hall, August 30, 2006, by Meera Subramnian.<br />Hall recently published a book (coauthored by Tom Price) with the evangeli-<br />cal publisher Thomas Nelson titled Changing the Face of Hunger: One Man’s Story<br />of How Liberals, Conservatives, Demo crats, Republicans, and People of Faith are Join-<br />ing Forces to Help the Hungry, the Poor, the Oppressed (2006). In it, Hall repeat-<br />edly refers to a gure who connects him with Republican members of the<br />Family as “our mutual friend.” Hall puts the connections to good e ect,<br />genuinely pursuing a foreign policy more oriented toward the problem of<br />hunger. But his emphasis on religious f reedom —and his disinterest in sys-<br />temic economic critiques—persistently guides him toward worthy but senti-<br />mental projects of limited e ect, or worse, actively depoliticizing local<br />organizations.<br />4. As Marcos “disappeared” his opponents in the mid–1970s, the Family<br />moved a full-time operative to Manila. In 1975, Marcos hosted his rst Presi-<br />dential Prayer Breakfast, with Coe and Senator Hughes as guests. The event’s<br />organizer, Bruce Sundberg, was blunt about his interest in the worst elements<br />of Filipino politics: “that is where the wealth is,” he wrote to his nancial sup-<br />porters in America. Sundberg didn’t want it for himself, but he believed in a<br />tr ickle-down fundamentalism. Win a “top man” for the faith, and the lesser<br />people—those without money, those without power —will fall into line.<br />Sundberg, general letter, October 17, 1975. Sundberg’s salary was paid in<br />part by such a top man, Filipino senator Gil Puyat, one of Marcos’s nanciers,<br />who put $14,285 in a tr ust for Sundberg, according to a letter to Sundberg<br />from Coe dated June 10, 1975, ibid. Puyat’s nancial support for the Marcos<br />regime is documented in John T. Sidel’s Capital, Coercion and Crime: Bossism in<br />the Philippines (Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 74. Another top man cul-<br />tivated by Sundberg was Butch Aquino, the son of Benigno Aquino, the op-<br />position hero murdered by Marcos. The younger Aquino, Sundberg wrote to<br />Coe on September 25, 1976, was “moving more and more to the ‘left’ ” until<br />Sundberg gave him a copy of Chuck Colson’s Born Again, which persuaded him<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 425<br />not to join the anti-Marcos rebels. All Sundberg correspondence is located in<br />folder 13, box 475, collection 459, BGCA.<br />5. The Family’s role in U.S.-Somali relations is documented in extensive<br />correspondence in folders 18–24, box 254, collection 459, BGCA.<br /><br /><br />INTERLUDE<br /><br />1. Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the<br />Twentieth Century (Verso, 1997).<br /><br /><br />11. WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS<br /><br />1. The stories of individual believers related in this chapter were gathered<br />during two reporting trips to New Life Church, the rst in January 2005, and<br />the second in Apr il 2005. Between these visits I corresponded with some of<br />the members of the church. Where I draw from sources other than interviews<br />conducted during this period, I’ll provide additional notes.<br />2. Pastor Ted Haggard, the former leader of New Life, has since disputed<br />that the location of the Air Force Academy was a consideration, in contradic-<br />tion of infor mation provided me by church representatives.<br />3. Cara Degette, “All the President’s Men,” Colorado Springs In de pen dent, No-<br />vember 13, 2003.<br />4. This account of Pastor Ted’s founding of New Life is drawn from per-<br />sonal interviews and Pastor Ted’s Primary Purpose: Making It Hard for People to Go<br />to Hell From Your City (Char isma House, 1995). The missionar y in question,<br />Danny Ost, is the son of Joseph Ost, a longtime collaborator of the Fellow-<br />ship’s on African work. In 1965, Joseph Ost went to work full-time for the<br />Fellowship “ behind the scenes” in West Africa. Ost introduced Doug Coe and<br />Gustav Adolf Gedat, then in the late stages of his West German political<br />ca reer, to se nior Ivory Coast a nd Liberia government o cials. (Coe to Vittoria<br />Vaccari, December 1965, folder 1, box 362, collection 459, BGCA. Coe to<br />Gedat, December 30, 1965, folder 11, box 219, collection 459.) Coe included<br />short reports of Ost’s involvement—including his meetings with African<br />heads of state—in November/December 19 65, and April/May 1966 “con -<br />dential” brie ngs he prepared for congressional members of the Fellowship.<br /><br /><br />426 | N O T E S<br />(Folder 2, box 362, and folder 19, box 449, collection 459, BGCA.) This is, of<br />course, not evidence of any organizational connection between Haggard and<br />the Family; rather, it is simply an illustration of the small world of American<br />fundamentalism’s elites.<br />5. I n Primary Purpose, Haggard writes of confronting men outside a gay bar<br />he’d discovered with one of h is associate pastors. “Two days later, I had a<br />meeting scheduled with one of the men in the church. On my way there, I<br />had to go near the intersection where the bar was located and wondered<br />how many cars would be in the parking lot of that bar in the middle of the<br />day.” After observing for a while, Ted spotted a member of h is church. Ted<br />jumped out of his car. “ ‘Jesus sent me here to rescue you,’ ” he called. His<br />friend got into Ted’s car and cr ied while Ted ministered to him. See pp.<br />107– 8.<br />6. Ibid., p. 26.<br />7. Ibid., p. 33.<br />8. Ted Haggard, Dog Training, Fly Fishing, and Sharing Christ in the 21st Century<br />(Nelson Books, 2002), p. 9.<br />9. Ibid., p. 48.<br />10. The rst populist church to successfully adopt the cell str ucture was<br />not American, but South Korean, the work of Pastor Paul Cho, who built a<br />congregation of nearly eight hundred thousand, the largest single church in<br />the world, using a cell- group structure that thrived under that nation’s Cold<br />War authoritar ianism. Steve Brouwer, Paul Gi ord, and Susan D. Rose,<br />Exporting the American Gospel: Global Christian Fundamentalism (Routledge,<br />199 6), p. 2.<br />11. Haggard, Primary Purpose, p. 160. Pastor Ted is aware that h is martial<br />plans alarm some outsiders; in Primary Purpose he also writes that when he<br />began his campaign for Colorado Springs, “spiritual warfare was not a pop-<br />ular subject . . . I didn’t speak publicly about my own experiences” (p.<br />32). Even in his more mainstream position atop the NAE, Ted’s belief in<br />less than full disclosure persisted. When the evangelical jour nalist Ayelish<br />McGarvey asked Pastor Ted in 2004 why President Bush, as a Christian,<br />had not apologized for the false assertions used to justify the Iraq War, or<br />for the dishonest smears marshaled on h is campaign’s behalf, Ted said: “I<br />think if you asked the President these questions once he’s out of o ce, he’d<br />say, ‘You’re right. We shouldn’t have done it.’ But r ight now if he said<br />something like that, well, the world would spin out of control! . . .<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 427<br />Listen, I th ink [we Chr istian believers] are responsible not to lie, but I<br />don’t think we’re responsible to say ever yth ing we know.” (McGarvey, “As<br />God Is His Witness,” American Prospect online edition, October 19, 2004,<br />http:// www .prospect .org/ web/ page .ww ?section= root & name= ViewWeb<br />& articleId = 8790 .<br />12. William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark, A Theory of Religion (Lang,<br />1987); Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–1990:<br />Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (Rutgers University Press, 1992);<br />Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Reli-<br />gion (University of California Press, 2000). Since I wrote this chapter, Stark<br />has published a new book that signals his shift from scholarship into wholesale<br />Christian triumphalism of a variety barely distinguishable from Pastor Ted’s:<br />The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Suc-<br />cess (Random House, 2005).<br />13. Stark and Finke, Chapter 8, “A Theoretical Model of Religious Econo-<br />mies,” in Acts of Faith.<br />14. Haggard, Dog Training, p. 12.<br />15. Ibid., pp. 35–39.<br />16. Ibid., p. 24.<br />17. Both organizations have their roots in the dubious late- nineteenth-century<br />science of boyology, practiced by mostly Protestant, upper-class men con-<br />cerned about the degenerative e ects of “city rot,” immigrants, and profes-<br />sional female educators on future generations of men. The Boy Scouts was the<br />most militant of many groups that started up, but over the years, it grew<br />soft—or maybe Chr istian fundamentalists grew harder in spirit. (Cli ord<br />Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sport s in Protestant America, 1880–<br />1920 [Harvard University Press, 2001].) An Assemblies of God preacher<br />named Johnny Barnes founded the Royal Rangers in 1962, blatantly copying<br />the Scouts and adding an extra dose of scripture. It has since prospered on the<br />conser vative fringe. New Life’s success with the program, though, has been a<br />big factor in moving it toward the mainstream. The Scouts still o er a “God<br />and Country Program,” but that can’t compare with the Rangers’ emphasis on<br />foreign missions, adventures that appeal to kids and fundamentalist parents<br />alike. http:// royalrangers .ag .org/ .<br />18. Our City, God’s Word (International Bible Society, 2004). “Who is the<br />‘Our’ in ‘Our City, God’s Word’ that the International Bible Society refers<br />to?” asked Colorado Springs resident Susan Hindman in a letter published in<br /><br /><br />428 | N O T E S<br />the November 7, 2004, Colorado Springs Gazette. The IBS proceeded to produce<br />editions for two more cities, further confusing the issue.<br /><br /><br />12. THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALISM<br /><br />1. Anne Constable, Richard Walker, and Tom Carter, “The Sins of Billy<br />James,” Time, February 16, 1976.<br /><br /><br />13. UNSCHOOLING<br /><br />1. The American Republic for Christian Schools, second edition, by Rachel C.<br />Larson, Pamela B. Creason, and Michael D. Matthews, is published by Bob<br />Jones University Press (2000). Bob Jones University, perhaps the most tradi-<br />tional school in Christian higher education, is too elite to be representative of<br />populist fundamentalism but too separatist and intolerant even within the<br />faith to be part of elite fundamentalism. And yet its publishing arm, one of the<br />biggest suppliers of evangelical textbooks, reaches far beyond the university’s<br />sphere of in uence. I rst learned of the press and its o er ings in 2005 at Mac-<br />Dowell, an artists’ colony in New Hampshire, as a group of writers and artists<br />were discussing the texts they’d read as schoolchildren. One, Michelle<br />Aldredge, had us all beat, with quick recall of an impressive sample of<br />eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature, from Jonathan Ed-<br />wards to Walt Whitman. What kind of amazing school had she attended? An<br />evangelical academy, where she’d studied Dr. Raymond St. John’s two-volume<br />American Literature for Christian Schools. I ordered Bob Jones University Press’s<br />2003 teachers’ edition of the text and soon realized that my secular public<br />school education had failed to provide me an adequate grounding in American<br />literature. Dr. St. John’s text o ered excerpts from writers I didn’t encounter<br />until college or behind. On the other hand, students were advised to ponder<br />how much better the already-great Melville could have been had he not been a<br />pagan.<br />2. MacArthur did more than th at, according to the h istor ian Lawrence<br />S. Wittnew: “Despite the o cial policy of religious freedom and separation of<br />church and state in occupied Japan . . . General Douglas MacArthur openly<br />and actively assisted the propagation of the Ch ristian faith . . . Christianity<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 429<br />and democracy were closely tied in MacArthur’s opinion, and during the<br />Cold War period he looked to Christianity as a major weapon against Com-<br />munism in Japan.” That weapon took the form of a campaign to bring thou-<br />sands of m issionaries into Japan and distribute 10 million Bibles. Christianity<br />didn’t take, but it’s possible that it did help blunt the powerf ul postwar appeal<br />of Japanese leftism. “MacArthur and the Missionaries: God and Man in Oc-<br />cupied Japan,” Paci c Historical Review 40, no. 1 (1971): 77–98.<br />3. Douthat’s article, published to mild fanfare in the August/September<br />2006 issue of First Things, missed the lengthy and admiring obituary published<br />by the magazine just ve years previous, William Edgar’s August/September<br />2001 tribute, “The Passing of R. J. Rushdoony,” in which Edgar eulogized<br />him as “a man of extraordinary brilliance possessing an almost encyclopedic<br />knowledge of human a airs,” and recalled with fondness his early study of<br />Rushdoony at Francis Schae er’s L’Abri. Schae er, we are told by the respect-<br />able Right, took only Rushdoony’s most civilized ideas. Wh ich is to say, he<br />narrowed Rushdoony’s rage down to abortionists, writing in the early 1970s<br />of abortion as symbolic of all of secularism and thus the front line in a battle<br />between good and evil that justi ed breaking laws. Some fans took action,<br />burning and bombing hundreds of abortion clinics and shooting several doc-<br />tors. See Press, Absolute Convictions (Henry Holt, 2006).<br />4. Quoted in John Bolt, A Free Church, A Holy Nation: Abraham Kuyper’s Ameri-<br />can Public Theology (William B. Eerdmans, 2001), p. 21. Bolt, a fellow with the<br />fundamentalist Family Research Council, is at the forefront of a broad attempt<br />to claim Kuyper as a forebear of radical Ch ristian conservatism, part of the<br />long-term project of constructing an intellectual history for a religious tradi-<br />tion that has long eschewed intellectualism.<br />5. The historian James D. Bratt argues for the progressive interpretation of<br />Kuyper in h is edited Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (William B. Eerd-<br />mans, 1998). “Kuyper was and was not a Protestant ‘fundamentalist,’ ” writes<br />Bratt. “He was in a manner: a militant in all things, including his<br />anti-Modernism . . . He did not try to eradicate history, but grow from it”<br />(p. 3). I n responding to an early draft of this chapter, Bratt noted that while<br />Rushdoony and other contemporary fundamentalists—notably Chuck<br />Colson—may have thought they were Kuyperians, their rejection of Kuyper’s<br />pluralism and socialist inclinations puts them directly at odds not only with<br />Kuyper’s writing, which is open to interpretation, but with the historical<br />evidence, in the Dutch state, of Kuyper’s intentions. Kuyper, he argues,<br /><br /><br />430 | N O T E S<br />would have rejected the attened perspective implied by a fundamentalist<br />biblical worldview.<br />6. James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend<br />(Macmillan, 1997), p. xiii. This is by far the best of the Stonewall biogra-<br />phies, of interest even if the reader has no Confederate sympathies. I used it as<br />veri cation for the claims made by less responsible fundamentalist Stonewal-<br />liana.<br />7. Like the Family, Christian Embassy prefers to keep a low pro le, but on<br />November 2, 2005, I obtained an interview with Christian Embassy’s chief of<br />sta , Sam McCullough. McCullough’s main business is explaining the Bible’s<br />position on contemporary concerns to congressmen—Brownback among<br />them, as well as Family members Senator James Inhofe and Senator John<br />Thune; and former representative Tom DeLay, “about 80 members of Con-<br />gress . . . in our rotation,” McCullough told me. Christian Embassy also<br />believes it has a special calling in the Pentagon, explaining the Bible’s view on<br />war, for example—it’s “all throughout the Bible,” points outs McCullough—to<br />a group of for ty se nior o cers.<br />8. Diamond, Roads to Dominion, 1995, p. 173.<br />9. It works: An elegant booklet that accompanies the DVD is lled not just<br />with the testimonies of generals and congressmen, but also with those of for-<br />eign diplomats declaring Washington a sort of holy city. “The most importa nt<br />thing since coming to Washington from my communist-dominated society is<br />that I have discovered God,” writes a “European ambassador,” thanking Chris-<br />tian Embassy. Fijian ambassador Pita Nacuva, reports the booklet, following<br />his “years of spiritual training in Washington, D.C.,” recon gured his coun-<br />try’s schools “on the model of Jesus Christ” using an American Christian cur-<br />riculum designed for developing nations, currently exported to around forty<br />countries.<br />10. After I rst wrote about Christian Embassy in 2006, Mikey Weinstein, a<br />former air force lawyer and Reagan Wh ite House counsel, reviewed its video<br />and saw not just bad theology but also a potential violation of militar y regula-<br />tions regarding separation of church and state. Moreover, with his son—a<br />recent graduate of the Air Force Academy—headed for I raq, Weinstein wor-<br />ried that the video functioned as almost made-to-order Al Qaeda propaganda.<br />After all, how hard would it be to convince a potential Al Qaeda recruit that<br />the United States is ghting a Chr istian crusade when U.S. generals and De-<br />par tment of Defense o cials say so in so many words? A similar concern<br /><br /><br />NO TES| 431<br />arose around one of the Christian witnesses in the video, Major General Peter<br />U. Sutton at the O ce of Defense Cooperation in Turkey. When news of his<br />participation in the video hit the Turk ish press following my article (one Turk-<br />ish paper characterized Sutton as a member of a “radical fundamentalist sect”),<br />his Turkish counterpart demanded to know why he had appeared in the video,<br />undermining their trust in him.<br />Weinstein’s organization, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation,<br />pressed the Pentagon for an investigation, and on July 20, 2007, the Depart-<br />ment of Defense Inspector General issued Repor t. H06L102270308, “Alleged<br />Misconduct by DOD O cials Concerning Chr istian Embassy,” which found<br />that seven top o cers had violated military ethics by participating in the video<br />in uniform, that the Pentagon chaplain had obtained approval by “mischarac-<br />terizing the purpose and proponent of the video,” and that h is o ce had au-<br />thorized contractor badge status to Ch ristian Embassy employees, allowing<br />them access to restricted areas. Most disturbing of all was the defense o ered<br />by one o cer: Christian Embassy, he believed, was a “quasi-federal entity.”<br />The full text of the report is available at the Military Religious Freedom Foun-<br />dation’s website, http:// militaryreligiousfreedom .org .<br />11. Ted Haggard appropriated King’s words at the August 14, 2005, “Justice<br />Sunday I I” televised forum organized by the fundamentalist Family Research<br />Council. Haggard invoked King, alongside famed civil rights champions Tom<br />DeLay and Phyllis Schla y, as part of a call for the kind of right-wing judges<br />who’d undo Brown v. Board. And in Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Se-<br />duction (Free Press, 2007), former Bush faith- based o cial David Kuo tells of<br />drawing on King as he wrote a pivotal speech for the for mer Christian Coali-<br />tion leader Ralph Reed, in wh ich Reed claimed that the Christian Right was a<br />victim of discr imination. “I was ghting my own little civil rights battle,”<br />writes Kuo (p. 67).<br />12. There are an increasing number of scholarly sources on the Jesus peo-<br />ple movement, but far more enter taining and revealing are two memoirs by<br />par ticipants. Charles Marsh, a historian, contextualizes the Jesus people in<br />the strife of souther n race relations in The Last Days: A Son’s Story of Sin and<br />Segregation in the New South (Basic Books, 2001), while the music writer Mark<br />Curtis Anderson evokes the strange mix of rock and roll and piety that<br />thrilled him as a ch ild in Jesus Sound Explosion (University of Georgia Press,<br />2003).<br /><br /><br />432 | N O T E S<br /><br />14. THIS IS NOT THE END<br /><br />1. Quoted in Lew Daly, God and the Welfare State (Boston Review/MIT<br />Press, 2006), p. 33.<br />2. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Harvard University Press,<br />2000), p. xiv.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-25671868698526766322009-07-12T03:15:00.001-07:002009-07-12T03:15:57.120-07:00ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<br /></span></div><br />This book is the product of many years, during which I have been the<br />bene ciary of the e orts and generosity of many friends and col-<br />leagues. First among them is my editor at Ha rp er’s, Bill Wasik,<br />without whose early encouragement this book would not exist. I’m<br />grateful, too, for the insights of several other magazine editors who<br />helped me develop my ideas, sharpen my prose, and get my facts<br />straight along the way, including but not l imited to: Ben Austen,<br />Naom i Kirsten, Lewis Lapham, Miriam Markowitz, and Ben Metcalf<br />at Harper’s; Will Dana, Sean Woods, Eric Bates, Eric Magnuson, and<br />Coco MacPherson at Rolling Stone; Bob Moser at The Nation; and<br />Monika Bauerlein at Mother Jones. Claire Wachtel at HarperCollins<br />saw the whole thing through with patience, wit, and wisdom. Her<br />assistant, Julia Novitch, shepherded it along with care, for which I’m<br />grateful. Vicki Haire saved me from capitalizing heaven. Special<br />thanks to Kathy Anderson, who helped me understand what this<br />book should be, found the right publisher, and made sure I actually<br />nished it. Giulia Melucci, vice president of public relations at Harp-<br />er’s, advised me on launching it.<br />My most critical and trustworthy readers were Julie Rabig,<br />Robert Sharlet, JoAnn Wypijewski, Kathryn Joyce, and Peter Manseau.<br />Thank you.<br />Kim Nauer and Joe Conason at The Nation Institute provided<br />support, as did the incomparable MacDowell Colony, at which sev-<br />eral of these chapters were written and revised during three visits.<br /><br /><br />390 | A CKNO WLEDGMENTS<br />I’m especially grateful for MacDowell’s Michelle Aldredge, without<br />whose account of her secondary education this book would not have<br />its thirteenth chapter. Hampshire College, a strange and wonderful<br />school unlike any other, is present in everything I write. I’m also<br />grateful to the KGB Bar, which has given me a forum to test out<br />much of this book piece by piece. The results are incalculably better<br />than they would have been otherwise for the in uence of New York<br />University’s Center for Rel igion and Media, where I have been an as-<br />sociate research scholar for the last four years—which is to say, a<br />sponge soaking up the ideas and insights of some very smart people. I<br />am particularly indebted to Angela Zito, Faye Ginsburg, Barbara<br />Abrash, Adam H. Becker, and Omri Elisha. Scholars at other institu-<br />tions to whom I’m indebted include Diane Winston, Michael Janson,<br />Kenneth Osgood, Ron Enroth, and Jamie K. A. Smith.<br />I’m li kewise indebted to a number of journalists and researchers<br />who shared their knowledge of Christian conservatism with me, in-<br />cluding Chip Berlet, Max Blumenthal, Frederick Clarkson, Doug<br />Ireland, Scott McLemee, Suzanne Pharr, Michael Reynolds, and<br />Bruce Wilson.<br />Several former members, associates, and neighbors of the Fam-<br />ily, as well as a few current ones, spoke with me. Many of them pre-<br />ferred to remain on background; among those I’m able to than k<br />publicly are Cli Gosney, Ben Daniel, Carl von Bernewitz, Steve<br />Bauer, Mary McCutcheon, and David Kuo. I’m also very grateful to<br />the hundreds of evangelical conservatives and other Christians who’ve<br />agreed to speak with me about their faith and their politics over the<br />years, especially Matt Dunbar and Lisa Anderson. Several evangelical<br />journalists have kept talking to me even when my work infuriated<br />them, and it’s the better for those conversations. Among them are<br />Bob Smietana, Patton Dodd, Ted Olsen, and Tony Carnes.<br />Then there are the friends, family, and fellow travelers who pro-<br />vided the kind of crucial support—responding to chapters on short<br />notice, providing me with housing, sharing ideas —without which<br />the book would have zzled. Which is to say, for better or worse, the<br />accomplices. I’ve been working on this book for a long time, which<br /><br /><br />ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 391<br />means there are more than I can l ist, but among those who spent<br />time on the front lines of this book’s production were Gretchen Agu-<br />iar, Je Allred, Laura Brahm, Fiona Burde, Colleen Clancy, Stellar<br />Kim, Michael Lesy, Victoria McKernan, Paul Morris, David Rabig,<br />Don Rabig, Jude Rabig, Irina Reyn, Gwen Seznec, Jocelyn Sharlet,<br />Darcey Steinke, Baki Tezcan, and Tom Windish. And the research-<br />ers: Martha Lincoln, Sherally Munshi, Meera Subramanian, Jaime<br />Pensado, and Seonaid Valiant.<br />Most of all, Julie Rabig, wise as serpents and innocent as doves,<br />and also as funny as a sea otter, brave as a bu alo, and more beautiful<br />than a great blue heron. Thank you for enduri ng, provoking, and i n-<br />spiring.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-39617887936657148652009-07-12T03:12:00.000-07:002009-07-12T03:14:10.340-07:00IV Contents - This Is Not the End<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">This Is Not the End<br /></span></div><br />She was as pretty as any nineteen-year-old girl thin ned down to near<br />nothing. Hair smooth and blonde, eyes big and blue, and her lips,<br />pale red on white ski n, were quivering. She stood between me and<br />the door to the bar in which she’d just struck out at begging change<br />from the last round of drinkers. She carried a piece of cardboard, the<br />sum of her life to date scrawled with black marker i n a hand too<br />shaky to read. So she put it to a sort of song, a practiced routine she<br />chanted with arti cial sadness while something real inside actually<br />broke down. “Mister, I just got to Portland, I got nowhere to go.<br />They won’t give me my TB card and, you know, so . . . I need<br />money for a shelter, I slept under a bridge. Mister, I just got to Port-<br />land, I’m scared, I need somewhere to go.”<br />I scrounged in my pocket and came up with a thin wad of twen-<br />ties and small bills; I peeled o two singles and gave them to her.<br />“Thank you, Mister,” she said.<br />I said, “Good luck.” She began weeping. “Good luck,” I said again.<br />“Thank you.”<br />“I have to go,” I said.<br />“Thank you.” She turned and went out the door; as it swung shut<br />behi nd her, she doubled over, sobbing.<br />I gave her a minute to gain some ground, and then I left, too. She<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 371<br />was hal fway up the block. I went to my rental car and took my bags<br />out of the trun k. I was staying in a room above the bar, in Portland<br />searching out the Family’s early days in archives and at addresses long<br />since given over to purposes other than Abram Vereide’s or Doug<br />Coe’s. I hadn’t found a trace. I was killing time.<br />The girl spotted me rolli ng my suitcase across the parking lot.<br />She approached as if I might hit her. The yel low streetlight made her<br />face look as if it had color; she was even prettier than she’d been in-<br />side. “Mister,” she said, “I just got to Portland, I got nowhere to<br />go . . .” Word for word the same song.<br />I stared at her. “I’m sorry. I just helped you inside.”<br />“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry, too.”<br />“I wish I could help more.”<br />“Uh- huh.”<br />“What’s a TB card? ”<br />“For a test,” she said. “They got no reason not to give it to me.”<br />She began crying agai n, her tears leavi ng trails of streetlight<br />glimmer on her cheeks.<br />“Good luck,” I said.<br /><br /><br />If I was a believer, I would have said, “God bless you.” If I wasn’t a<br />believer, I should have said, “God bless you.” Either way, it would<br />have cost me nothing and would have been so much less hopeless than<br />wishing “good luck” to a woman who was not likely to have any. Such<br />is the dilemma of the American city upon a hill with which I began<br />this book, and the problem of fundamentalism’s myths versus those<br />of liberalism with which I closed the last chapter. Both are systems of<br />knowing, of believing, of absorbing citizens into what Doug Coe<br />calls the “social order.” They are not means of “changing the world”<br />but of reconciling us—the believers and the unbelievers—to its or-<br />dinary su ering.<br />If I was a believer, I might thi nk my blessing would matter; if I<br />wasn’t, I’d know it would sound good and that it would not matter.<br /><br /><br />372 | JEFF SHARLET<br />But I said, “Good luck,” and the woman bent over crying again, and I<br />left her like that, weeping on the street, and I went up to my room<br />thinking of Christians and of “followers of Christ,” of the Fam ily’s<br />“ heart for the poor.” I was thinking, too, that I should go back and<br />o er t he woman a place to stay; of giving her a bed to sleep in, and<br />how I wouldn’t put any moves on her, and she would appreciate that,<br />and she’d make me some ki nd of o er, and I’d decline, and I’d be a<br />real hero. I was thinking, too, of tuberculosis, and of the cramped,<br />airless rooms above the bar, and the germs swirling arou nd me as I<br />drifted o , her microscopic gratitude servi ng as a di erent kind of<br />communion.<br />And I thought of the morning, of waking up with no money.<br />How would she get it? She couldn’t sneak away without waking<br />me. Maybe she had a knife. I imagined bringing her to the room and<br />her big eyes turning mean and her lips and teeth snarling like she was<br />a raccoon in a corner, her bone- and-skin hand swipi ng my money and<br />her backing away with her knife ready for my gut should I make a<br />wrong gesture.<br />That wouldn’t have happened. There would have been no knife,<br />and, for that matter, I’m guessing here, she would have said no if I’d<br />o ered to share my room with her. She needed something, but it<br />wasn’t a bed. I don’t know what it was, whether it came in a pill or a<br />pipe or a needle.<br />I asked mysel f, What would a believer do?<br />I was thinking about some believers whom I’d met earlier in the<br />eve ning, a house church of a half dozen young families and a few<br />single men and women who met every Sunday night in the living<br />room of a couple named Adam and Christie Parent. I’d joined them<br />because a false lead had suggested that theirs was a church that func-<br />tions as a feeder to Ivanwald—I’d come across several around the<br />country—but the connection turned out to be no deeper than one<br />you ng man nobody knew well. Still, I stuck around, because what<br />the Parents were doing—church in their living room, “small groups,”<br />discussions of “accountability” that denied personal responsibility—<br />seemed to merge the methods of elite fundamentalism with the<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 373<br />passions of the populists. I told them I was writing a book about reli-<br />gion in America; they welcomed me, I think, because they know<br />they’re its future.<br />Adam and Christie have three kids, two little boys and a girl, and<br />they live i n a handsome old box of a house with a real yard, in east<br />Portland, just o the campus of Multnomah Bible College. Adam is<br />starting his fourth year there. He is twenty- seven, tall, wide, and<br />square in the shoulders. He grew up in San Diego and as a teenager<br />wandered up to rural Washington, where he worked as a youth pas-<br />tor until he decided to go back to school. He wears a small brown soul<br />patch just beneath his lip and dresses like the frat boy he never was —<br />loose plaid shirt, matchi ng light blue ball cap—and he talks like a<br />former surfer who has left the waves behind. He cracks smiles like<br />they were ip tops on a six-pack, but he has developed a habit com-<br />mon to preachers and salesmen, of holding your eyes with his and<br />transmitti ng sincerity. That it is real makes it no less disconcerting.<br />His wife, Christie, is short and strawberry blonde, all buttery<br />cheeks and bouncy energy. But at twenty-nine she’s one of the oldest<br />in the group, and she talks with the authority be tting a young mother<br />with more kids than any other couple i n the “home community” has<br />managed. When it came time to take all the children upstairs, Chris-<br />tie summoned a helper and herded them past Adam’s golf clubs and<br />his acoustic guitar, leaving the rest of us sitting on couches and<br />cross-legged on the oor, in a big circle, waiting for Adam to tell us<br />what we’ll be discussing. First, a prayer: studded with ju sts: “ I just<br />want to thank You”; “I just, just really love You”; “I just pray and hope<br />You show up tonight.”<br />When I rst heard the many justs of prayer at Ivanwald, I thought<br />it was a southern thing. But here was a room of northwesterners and<br />transplanted midwesterners and one Cali fornian, and when I peeked<br />during the prayer, I saw their heads nodding on the jus t l ike they<br />were counting rhythm. Shi rley Mullen, a religious historian and pro-<br />vost at Westmont College when I spoke with her in 20 04, told me<br />she had noticed the rise of just in evangelical prayer over the last<br />twenty years. “ It is a claim to innocence,” she said. “A disquali er.”<br /><br /><br />374 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Ju st is, in its ubiquity, a word central to the self-e acing desire for<br />in uence that has driven those evangelicals who stud their prayers<br />with it out of their churches and into “the culture,” a word they use<br />to refer to something that is to be wrestled with and defeated. It’s a<br />word that hides its own hunger.<br />“Just use us, Lord, just use us, please,” Adam concluded his<br />prayer. They’d been brought together by a shared belief in the awe-<br />some power of God, “awesome” the way a skater might say it, “power”<br />as an absolute, a total ity. They wanted and bel ieved they were called<br />to be in the presence of that power, but to approach it in pride would<br />be meaningless, and they were very keen on meaning. So they pref-<br />aced speculation about God and the nature of His power with just,<br />as if by claim ing their needs were simple they could slip beneath the<br />radar God used to detect unseemly want. All they wanted, after all,<br />was just to be used.<br />At Adam’s direction, the group broke up into smaller groups<br />of three and four and proceeded to work t hrough a series of ques-<br />tions devised by Adam and the leaders of eleven other like-minded<br />home churches, all part of something called the Imago Dei Commu-<br />nity. Imago Dei is an odd mix of progressive evangelicalism and fun-<br />damentalism, a church that rejects the idea of “church”; its “vision”<br />promises, instead, community and Jesus, stripped not so much of cul-<br />tural accretion as of everything boring and less-than-intense about<br />traditional church services. They do hold a Sunday morning service,<br />but at the pulpit an artist, who paints or draws or sculpts the Gospel<br />as directed by God, accompanies the preacher. They believe God is<br />present, as in here, now. “ Interventionist,” as some theologians would<br />describe their conception of the deity, is too wonky a word for the<br />Jesus they believe is simultaneously sitting right next to them and pos-<br />sessing them, guiding every breath, every thought, every icker of<br />their eyes. They believe in sin but don’t much care; they prefer love<br />and discuss it often. Love is the word they use most frequently to evoke<br />how completely in the control of Jesus they nd themselves. Adam’s<br />home church group had instituted a col lective prayer journal, a black<br />hardcover notebook in which each member was to write, on one side<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 375<br />of the page, his or her prayer requests; and, on the other, the date and<br />time Jesus answered them. “We forget what God does in our lives,”<br />Adam explained. “We need to remind each other.”<br />In the small groups, they planned to spend that eve ning rem ind-<br />ing each other of what Truth is. The Truth they were talking about<br />was the ki nd that comes with a capital T, and it was essential, Adam<br />had written on the top of the worksheet, to “set us free from the de-<br />structive nature of life and the world.”<br />Then followed the chief question: What is Truth?<br />I joined a group of three sitting on the carpet beside the stairs:<br />Matt, a reedy Multnomah Bible philosophy student with presence<br />greater than his age, who acted as group leader; Sara, a long-legged,<br />long- armed, long-necked woman, given to elaborate stretching, who<br />worked in standardized testing; and Ben, a resident at a nearby hos-<br />pital. Ben lay down i n front of the screen door. Across the street be-<br />hind him an orange and blue sign grew in the garden of each yard,<br />declaring: one man / one woman. vote YES on Prop 36 —a<br />state initiative to ban even the possibility of proposing gay marriage.<br />“What is Truth?” Matt asked.<br />Sara jumped right in. “A lot of people say there is no Truth, but<br />my problem with that is that it’s an absolute itself.”<br />“Right,” said Ben. “It’s self-contradictory.”<br />“But we’re here,” Sara continued. “So there has to be some<br />Tr ut h.”<br />Matt volunteered that one of his Multnomah Bible professors had<br />brought in a woman who didn’t believe in Truth. The class had chal-<br />lenged her by demanding that she admit that the attacks of Septem-<br />ber 11 had been wrong. But she wouldn’t give. Right and wrong, she<br />said, weren’t categories she fou nd useful; she was more interested in<br />learning about what she, we, anyone could do better. It was as con-<br />cise a de nition of liberalism’s strengths—and central weaknesses —as<br />she could have given them.<br />Sara put a hand over her right eye, holding her head and shaking it<br />at the same time. “I wonder how her opinion would change if some-<br />one near to her was martyred. Or raped!”<br /><br /><br />376 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Matt said he had heard such people believe in what they call<br />“pragmatism,” which means, he explained, that you bel ieve whatever<br />happens to be useful at the moment.<br />“But some things never change!” Sara said.<br />“I know,” Matt agreed. “But they deny that.” He had learned<br />about pragmatism, he added, in an education class; pragmatism, he’d<br />been told, was infecting public schools. Matt hadn’t heard of John<br />Dewey, the early twentieth-century reformer who’d introduced the<br />philosophical school of pragmatism into American education in the<br />form of an emphasis on critical thinking rather than memorization.<br />But the ideas of Tim LaHaye, who writes that Dewey was part of a<br />prideful conspiracy to undermine Truth, had infused his lessons at<br />Multnomah Bible College.<br />Sara wove her ngers together and twisted her hands backward<br />and stretched them out in front of her, then arched her back and<br />leaned forward, her shirt riding up her spine; Ben and Matt, red-faced,<br />averted their eyes. “ What Truth does,” Sara said, “is: Truth names<br />things.” She rose up out of her stretch and pointed between Matt and<br />Ben. “Truth puts a value on things. The culture tries to portray a<br />Truth, like with women.” She didn’t like the pressure put on women to<br />be thin and beautiful, she explained. Either you are or you aren’t, she<br />felt, and the culture shouldn’t tell you di erently. “That’s the culture<br />trying to name us,” she said. “We want God to name us.”<br />“Yeah,” agreed Ben. “Science”—it seemed to be his word for<br />what Sara called “the culture”—“gives you at best fragmentary truth.<br />It doesn’t try to unify things.”<br />They concluded the small group with a scripture study, looking<br />for evidence of Truth, and then everyone reassembled in the living<br />room, where Adam asked each group to announce their results. He<br />reminded everyone to stay centered on Jesus and scripture. “Don’t<br />get too caught up in the huge concepts.”<br />Truth did a lot of things, the groups had discovered: sets you<br />free, protects you from l ies, exposes deception, gives you a sol id<br />fou ndation. Truth’s solidity was key to Adam’s closing sermon. He<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 377<br />sat in a chair in the corner and punctuated his remarks with both<br />hands curled like commas and slicing downward.<br />“The postmodern c ulture, they lay aside Truth. It can be hard<br />to i nteract with them. They say, ‘I don’t care about the Bible; it’s<br />just a book of words.’ ” Adam shook his head. “But I don’t want a<br />shifty fou ndation. God gave us His Word! I am so than kful I have<br />that, because it’s easy to get sucked i n by the cu ltu re. We want a<br />solid foundation. Christ is a solid foundation. I was looking at my<br />Bible today. Christ says seventy-eight times, ‘I tell you the Truth.’<br />That is a lot of times. The culture then was similar to ours now;<br />they were questioning the Truth.” Adam didn’t mean good question-<br />ing. “So Christ told them ‘I tell you t he Trut h.’ That’s awesome.<br />He did that for them so they’d know he wasn’t just some guy. No<br />way. He said, ‘I tell you the truth.’ I was gett ing stoked looking at<br />that because I have a solid foundation. I’m protected. Unbelievers<br />think there is no absolute Truth. They trust feelings and experi-<br />ence. The power of Truth is lost to them. But we don’t have to<br />change our conception of Truth for the c ulture, because it’s abso-<br />lute. Its power is absolute.”<br />I thought of a book by Art Lindsley, a fundamental ist writer who<br />would stop in at Ivanwald from time to time to teach the young men<br />about “character” and politics. A slim volume called Tr ue Tru th: De-<br />fending Absolute Truth in a Relativistic World was Lindsley’s most popular<br />work among the brothers, who took its tautological butchery of lan-<br />guage for a closed circuit of power and wisdom. This ultrarigid intel-<br />lectualization of “Truth” is the doctri ne that merges elite and populist<br />fundamentalism. The elite fundamentalism of the Family preaches<br />its unbending concept of “ Truth” as a defense of privilege; populist<br />fundamentalism embraces these philosophical underpinnings as a<br />response to su ering. Many of the men and women in the Parents’<br />living room, in fact, were employed as social workers or nurses; sev-<br />eral were former activists, some of them even once radical leftists.<br />They were good-hearted folk. They wanted to help the poor, the sick,<br />the weak, and on small, everyday levels, they did so more than most<br /><br /><br />378 | JEFF SHARLET<br />do; and yet nothing seemed to get better. Their commitment to this<br />stern Truth enabled them to let go of the feelings of powerlessness<br />that often a ict those whose hearts are largest. Indeed, many of<br />them had so let go of power that they’d lost their politics, too. For-<br />mer liberals had stopped voting; conservatives trusted giant evan-<br />gelical organizations to make the best use of their small donations, a<br />form of “ big government” by another name. Their Truth had proven<br />itsel f relative, emboldening the powerful and tranqui lizi ng the pow-<br />erless.<br />Adam continued. They all knew, he said, that a couple of weeks<br />ago the mentor of Imago Dei’s pastor had been shot. The details<br />didn’t matter; he had been shot. “Well, if you don’t believe in absolute<br />Truth, what do you do with that? What’s your foundation? ” True<br />Truth makes such losses bearable. It absolves you of the need to ask<br />more questions. True Truth is God’s will, Coe’s “social order.” It’s<br />the power and solace of submission.<br />We bowed our heads in prayer. We prayed for friends and rela-<br />tives with cancer, just that they m ight know God, and that if God<br />wanted to heal them that he would, but just, please God, let them<br />know you. And we prayed for me, for my book, that it just be a good<br />book, a True book, one by which I’d come to know what I had been<br />created for.<br />And—just—amen.<br /><br /><br />Later that night, I thought about Truth and the junkie, what she<br />wanted and what she needed, and what a believer might have done. I<br />couldn’t come up with answers, and I knew it wouldn’t help to ask<br />Adam. Because even if there is a Truth, what we would have done in a<br />given situation is always subjective. But I’m pretty sure Adam would<br />have prayed for her salvation, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he<br />had taken her by the arm and guided her to a shelter. Nor would I<br />have been shocked if he had given her a blessi ng and a sad, half-mouthed<br />smile and sent her packing. In either case, what would be the Truth<br />of the matter?<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 379<br />I checked into my room, a tiny box with a window looking out<br />on an air shaft and a skyl ight above the bed reveali ng the dark purple<br />night. The room was stu y, so I turned on its rotating table fan and lay<br />on top of the covers. “Everything is connected,” Ben the doctor had<br />told me at the house church. “ Everything is Jesus. It’s like a web, and<br />He’s at the center”—where otherwise you’d nd a spider.<br /><br />2. Salvation<br /><br />In 2007, as this book neared completion, I met with a former special<br />assistant to President Bush the younger named David Kuo, in a quiet<br />o ce he’d rented outside of Washington to write his memoirs. He’d<br />published a book called Tempting Faith: The Inside Story of a Political<br />Seduction, in which he recounts his own journey from liberalism to<br />fundamentalism and, after a fashion, back again. Kuo is a tall, big-<br />boned man with spiky black hair and a pleasantly padded face given<br />to loose smiles. His demeanor is naive, but by his own account he can<br />be calculating; yet he doesn’t seem to want to deceive.<br />As a student at Tufts University in the 1980s, Kuo found the<br />Fam ily. Or rather, they found him. He was bright, pol itical, and<br />moving rightward, from a girlfriend’s abortion to antiabortion activ-<br />ism. A man named Kevin, who “worked with” student Christians on<br />elite campuses, fed him books by conservative Christian writers and<br />took him to go hear Chuck Colson speak. “I was dazzled,” writes Kuo.<br />“If I followed Jesus, helped others follow Jesus, and did it all publicly,<br />I’d be ghting back against the secularizing forces that were sweep-<br />ing God into the corner.” Kuo has always been a service-m inded soul.<br />He wanted to help—as a young man, he didn’t think too much about<br />what he wanted to help—and he wanted to do so on a grand scale.<br />Before he graduated, Kevi n gave him a “political gift”: an invita-<br />tion to the National Prayer Breakfast, where he’d be one of “150<br />student leaders” initiated into “the mysterious—some thought<br />secretive—group behi nd the prayer breakfast.” It was, he’d learn,<br />“the most powerful group in Washington that nobody knows.” At a<br /><br /><br />380 | JEFF SHARLET<br />session with Doug Coe after the o cial event, he learned that “Jesus<br />the man” is more important than politics, that faith must be individ-<br />ual, that Jesus chose certai n individuals to whom to reveal greater<br />secrets. “The three within the twelve,” Coe called them—Peter,<br />James, and John, the three disciples who, according to Coe’s teach-<br />ing, Jesus took aside for “gli mpses of his power” and “special instruc-<br />tion.” That was a “model,” Coe taught, “of intimate relationships”<br />fol lowed by only a few very clever leaders. “[Coe] pointed to Hitler,<br />to Stalin, to Mao, to Castro.” Evil men, said Coe, but wise. “Do you<br />want to prove your worth? ” Coe asked Kuo and the other students<br />selected for special instruction. “ Then pursue Jesus, pursue real rela-<br />tionships. Forget about power.”<br />It was like the note Abram wrote to him sel f i n 1935, his scrib-<br />bled list of delegated authority for his new movement: To this man<br />went responsibility for organization, to that one nances. And beside<br />his own name, he’d written “power”—and then crossed himself out,<br />erasing the evidence of his desire.<br />Kuo began to rise in politics. An intern for Ted Kennedy in col-<br />lege, he became a Republican, working in the orbit of Fam ily men<br />such as Jack Kemp and John Ashcroft. He tried to strike out on his<br />own—and failed. Coe took him up as a project. “Without my real-<br />izing it, the Fellowship”—as he prefers to call the Family—“ began<br />subverting my ideas of power, and, more speci cally, of Christian<br />power.” Coe took Kuo shing in Montana, with Supreme Court Jus-<br />tice Sandra Day O’Connor. He introduced him to Billy Graham and<br />Bil l Bright of Campus Crusade, to Democrats and Republicans.<br />Through the Family, he met former vice president Dan Quayle. In<br />1996, Quayle arranged for his conservative backers to support a non-<br />pro t Kuo had created to evaluate groups doing “e ective” poverty<br />work and channel more money their way—an experience Kuo would<br />draw on when the grand experiment in “ faith- based initiatives” to<br />which he’d been contributing went federal in 20 01.<br />In the rst months of the new Bush administration, John DiIulio,<br />the Democrat Bush had tapped to sell his faith- based program, called<br />to invite Kuo to move into the West Wing. “Karen Hughes is on<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 381<br />board, Karl Rove is on board,” he told Kuo. “When can you start?”<br />Faith- Based and Commun ity Initiatives merged DiIulio’s old-<br />school urban politics, rooted in Catholic social justice teachings,<br />with the ideas long championed by the Family. Its chief advocates in<br />Congress during the late 1990s were two Family members, Senator<br />Dan Coats of Indiana and Ashcroft, who as a senator from Missouri<br />inserted the concept of “charitable choice”—allowing religious<br />groups to win government funding without separating out their reli-<br />gious agenda—into the 1996 welfare-reform bill. The theory behind<br />faith- based initiatives grew out of the work of scholars and theolo-<br />gians schooled in traditions that could hardly be considered funda-<br />mentalist, or even conservative. But its implementation was in many<br />senses the logical result of the Family’s decades of m inistry to Wash-<br />ington’s elite combined with the increasingly established power of<br />populist fundamentalism: a mix of sophisticated policy maneuvers<br />and the kind of sentimentalism that blinded many supporters to the<br />fact that faith- based initiatives, no matter how wel l intended, are<br />nothing less than “the privatization of welfare,” as the faith- based<br />theorist Marvin Olasky put it in a 1996 report commissioned by<br />then-Governor Bush. Such an outcome satis ed elite fundamental-<br />ism’s long- standing belief in the relationship between laissez-faire<br />economics and God’s invisible, interventionist hand, and populist<br />fundamental ism’s desire for publ ic expressions of faith, pre ferably<br />heartwarming ones. The goal, Senator Coats declared, was the “trans-<br />fer of resources and authority . . . to those private and religious in-<br />stitutions that shape, direct, and reclaim individual lives.”1<br />Coats, a bulb so dim he considers Dan Quayle a mentor, isn’t<br />much of a thinker on his own, but he couldn’t have summed up<br />Abram’s original Idea any more succinctly. The Family’s interests<br />have always tended toward foreign a airs, but faith- based initiatives<br />embody a core philosophy of governance fundamentalists have long<br />sought on every front. During the 1980s, Attorney General Ed<br />Meese and Gary Bauer, Reagan’s domestic policy adviser, corre-<br />sponded with Coe about creating a federal, faith- based response to<br />poverty—a broad application of the methods Coe had experimented<br /><br /><br />382 | JEFF SHARLET<br />with a decade earlier by backing the Black Bu ers as an alternative<br />to black power. Meese’s plans never came to fruition, but the out-<br />lines of compassionate conservatism, as Olasky would desc ribe the<br />trickle-down approach to helpi ng the poor, began to cohere in t hose<br />letters.<br />What is the cause of poverty? they asked themselves. Their an-<br />swer was simple: “disobedience,” according to a special report com-<br />missioned by the Fam ily. At the right end of the Family spectrum, this<br />was interpreted according to the logic of just deserts (Bauer, for in-<br />stance, seemed to believe AIDS was a punishment from God) or plain<br />denial (in 1983, Meese said he had a hard time believing there actually<br />were any hungry children in the United States). But both those posi-<br />tions eroded as the Family’s international realpolitik asserted itself<br />domestically: the poor existed, and they had to be helped. Or recon-<br />ciled, in the Family’s words. The goal was not the eradication of pov-<br />erty; it was the maintenance of a social order through the salvation of<br />souls. That’s always been the main agenda of populist fundamental-<br />ism; now, elite fundamentalism began to embrace it as well.<br />But t hat’s not what Kuo cared about when he went to work in<br />the West Wing. Kuo’s religion was as infused with liberal Christi-<br />anity as it was with the obedience- based theology of t he Family.<br />For that matter, faith- based initiatives are as liberal as they are<br />fundament alist, t heir privatization of social services an exercise<br />of the unstated conviction of classical liberalism that the free market<br />is absolute and yet requires government subsidy. They are to religion<br />what Clinton-era “ free trade” deals were to labor: a “ rationalization”<br />in the name of “e ciency.” Both turn on a contradiction: a belief in<br />a u niversal principle—faith, free markets—put into practice by de-<br />nying the importance of universal principles. “ That we hoped every-<br />one would one day know Jesus was simply a private goal,” writes<br />Kuo, even as he insists that one’s “worldview” informs one’s every<br />action.<br />That’s why suppor ters of faith-based gover nance can’t comprehend<br />the critics who accuse them of theocratic inclinations. They think<br />they’re going in just the opposite direction, secularizing salvation,<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 383<br /> reconciling theology into law. Theocracy is a collective endeavor,<br />they point out; American fundamentalism reveres the individual.<br />So, too, the mystic liberalism of free markets, more similar to<br />fundamentalism in function than secularists believe. Classical<br />liberalism fetishizes the rational actor; fundamentalism savors the<br />individual soul. Both deny possessing any ideology; both inevitably<br />become vehicles for the kind of power that possesses and consumes<br />the best intentions of true believers.<br />When Kuo discovered that Bush’s faith- based rhetoric was for<br />the most part just that—lost in the shadow of the Iraq War, the pro-<br />gram never received anywhere near the $8 billion Bush had once<br />spoken of—he resolved to prove its value to the money men. Tempt-<br />ing Faith is, most damningly, the story of how he and a few others<br />transformed the O ce of Faith- Based Initiatives into the very Re-<br />publican vote-getting machine its critics had accused it of being from<br />the begin ning. “We laid out a plan whereby we would hold ‘roundtable<br />events’ for threatened incumbents with faith and community lead-<br />ers,” he writes. In 2002, those roundtables contributed to nineteen<br />out of twenty victories in targeted races. In 2004, the O ce of<br />Faith- Based Initiatives repeated the trick on the presidential scale.<br />But by that time, Kuo was gone. He had quit. “We were good people<br />forced to run a sad charade, to provide political cover to a White<br />House that needed compassion and religion as political tools.”<br />It was a startlingly honest adm ission. The media celebrated Kuo<br />as a truth teller and his book as the rst big crack in the Christian<br />Right’s alliance with the Republican Party. By 2007, the press was<br />declaring the Christian Right dead and evangelicalism a waning force<br />in American life, despite the fact that by Kuo’s own confession, the<br />machine he helped build will likely continue to lurch along after<br />Bush is gone. Bush never provided it the funds he had promised in<br />idealistic speeches aimed at evangelical voters, but he did something<br />more signi cant: through administrative changes made by executive<br />order, he transformed Clinton’s 1996 welfare reforms i nto a wedge<br />with which to drive irreparable cracks into the wall of separation<br />between church and state. Suddenly, there were faith- based o ces<br /><br /><br />384 | JEFF SHARLET<br />not just in the Department of Health and Human Services but also in<br />the Department of Justice, not only in the Department of Education but<br />also in the Department of Commerce. The Small Business Adminis-<br />tration gained a faith- based o ce; so, too, did the Agency for Inter-<br />national Development, through which the United States distributes<br />its imperial largesse, the diplomacy of foreign aid. None of these of-<br />ces had much money, but then, they didn’t need to. Their bud gets<br />didn’t matter so much as the bud gets of the departments and agencies<br />in which they were housed, huge portions of which could now be<br />tapped for faith- based ends even if the money didn’t ow directly<br />through the faith- based o ce. The real achievement of faith- based<br />initiatives was not to launch ashy programs or even to buy votes for<br />Republicans; it was to open the door for religious groups to the whole<br />trea sure house of federal social-services funding, tens of billions of<br />dollars.<br />But that, too, was only a means to an end: Abram’s Idea written<br />into the DNA of the government of a world power, Chuck Colson’s<br />“worldview” fused with constitutional tradition. The dream, harden-<br />ing now not into politics but the very structures in which politics<br />happen, is the sancti cation and privatization of power as one and<br />the same pro cess, proclaimed as “service” by the powerful and ac-<br />cepted as God’s will by the powerless.<br />This is no more nor less than a theological restatement of<br />globalization—a transfer of wealth and power embraced by most<br />Democrats as well as Republicans as a natural “ fact,” as if divinely<br />ordained. The di erence between the two parties, econom ically,<br />theologically, is one of degrees, not principles. “The United States is<br />also a one-party state,” Julius Nyerere, the rst president of Tanzania,<br />once observed in defending his own one-party system. “But with<br />typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” That was a<br />truth Abram grasped seven decades ago. The rst law of the Fam ily’s<br />elite fundamentalism is that power does not require partisanship.<br />“True Truth,” transcending traditional left and right, is a doctrine of<br />obedience, not a bill of particulars.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 385<br />Bush’s mistake—the misapplication of power that cost him the<br />loyalty of men such as Kuo and even John Ashcroft, who emerged as<br />a late critic of the administration—was to bend the “ True Truth” of<br />American fundamentalism to the needs of the electoral cycle. The<br />slow convergence of the el ite and populist fundamentalism separated<br />at the Scopes trial in 1925 doesn’t promise the permanent victory of<br />a political party but of a social order, served with greater or lesser<br />devotion by Republicans and Democrats bound together in prayer<br />cells.<br />After Kuo and I had been talking for several hours, I mentioned<br />that I’d written about the Fam ily for Harper’s. Kuo seemed surprised.<br />“I think I remember your article,” he said. He tapped a couple of his<br />keys on his computer. Not a Google search; a couple of keys. “This is<br />how they pray,” he began reading, and then shot me a goofy grin.<br />Was I supposed to think he’d had the story on his screen before I<br />arrived? “You should call Doug Coe,” he said, and gave me a number.<br />(I did, as I had before; no response.) Coe, he said, had entered<br />semiretirement. Stepping up to replace him was a man named Dick<br />Foth, a longtime adviser to John Ashcroft. I’d listened to a recorded<br />sermon by Foth; it’d struck me as unremarkable stu , platitudes and<br />tautologies. Kuo wasn’t o ended. This, he said, is proof that the<br />Family is not political. Politics are speci c, Kuo said; the Family’s<br />faith is universal.<br />In a sense, this was true. The cell structure that de ned Abram’s<br />movement in 1935 has si nce become the model for populist funda-<br />mentalism and more, one of the common denominators of evangeli-<br />calism. Both elite and populist cells look upward, their concept of<br />faith drawn along the vertical axis. Elected elites look up to their<br />greatest constituent, God; the people who elect them pray that their<br />leaders listen to God. Both call this gaze “ love,” and in exchange both<br />demand “salvation.”<br />The popular front promises the salvation of individuals, a chance<br />to buy into “purpose,” “meaning,” a movement: to feel like a part of<br />the big picture. Elite fundamentalism pursues the literal salvation of<br /><br /><br />386 | JEFF SHARLET<br />that big picture: the preservation of power, even as those who serve<br />it change churches, or parties, or particular political whims. Power<br />is what remains. The popular front rises and falls in an ebb and tide<br />of “revivals,” spontaneous and cultivated, each, so far, stronger than<br />the last, each surging just as secularism says that this time that bad old<br />religion, the superstitious kind, the political ki nd, the powerful kind,<br />is a thing of the past. The key men endure. Indeed, they prosper.<br /><br />3. Deliverance<br /><br />The numbing authority of American fundamentalism resides in its<br />language, “love” as an expression of obedience, “ just” as a disclaimer<br />for desire, “Jesus plus nothing” as a description not of a brilliant di-<br />vi ne but of blunt authority. Such banalities do not disguise evil, as<br />Hannah Arendt argued in her famous study of traditional fascism, but<br />rather subvert what is essentially generous about fundamentalism, its<br />dream of a community in which every member is free to approach<br />the divi ne as he or she feels guided, its desire for a city upon a hill in<br />which hunger and regret are unknown. At their roots, evangelical-<br />ism and its child, American fundamentalism—both driven by the<br />democratic feeling of individual belief toward faith in authority—arise<br />in response to the central dilemma of nearly all religion: su ering,<br />from that of Abigail Hutchinson to that of lonesome immigrant<br />Abram to that, even, of Ted Haggard. Fundamentalism wants to ease<br />the pain, to banish fear, forget loneliness; to erase desi re. Populist<br />fundamentalism does so by o eri ng certainty, a xed story about the<br />relationship between this world and the world to come; elite funda-<br />mentalism, certain in its entitlement, responds in this world with a<br />politics of noblesse oblige, the missionary impulse married to mili-<br />tary and economic power. The result is empire. Not the old imperial-<br />ism of Rome or the Ottomans or the British navy, that of a central<br />power forcing weaker groups to pay tribute. Rather, the soft empire<br />of America that across the span of the twentieth century recruited<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 387<br />fundamentalism to its cause even as it seduced liberalism to its ser-<br />vice “presents itself,” in the useful formulation of the political theo-<br />rists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “not as a historical regime<br />originating in conquest, but rather as an order that e ectively sus-<br />pends history and thereby xes the existing state of a airs for<br />eternity.”2<br />Eternity! There’s a word that the subjects of this book understand<br />better than Hardt and Negri and the entire establishment of political<br />theorists, political scientists, policy wonks, and newspaper editorial<br />boards. Eternity, says fundamentalism, is the only real response to<br />the basic fact of su ering, the constant of human existence that com-<br />pels us to seek knowledge, or understanding, or faith, or grace. Fun-<br />damentalism frames that response as a story with a neat beginning,<br />middle, and, most of all, an end that can be known. The better story<br />we—believers and unbelievers alike, all of us who love our neigh-<br />bors more than we love power or empire or even the solace of<br />certainty—must tell is not simply a di erent answer, secular myths<br />opposed to fundamentalism’s, but a question. Maybe it’s about that<br />city upon a hil l. Maybe it’s about how we get there, and what we<br />must walk away from. Such a question isn’t to be found i n revelation,<br />but in exodus, the act of stepping i nto the unknown. I suspect it has<br />something to do with the di erence between salvation, as i magined<br />by fundamentalism, and deliverance. Salvation ends in heaven; deliv-<br />erance begins in the desert. Salvation is the last word of a story; de-<br />liverance is the rst. Salvation is the certainty of empire; deliverance<br />is the hope of democracy. It’s not humble, because hope isn’t humble,<br />it’s i mpertinent. It’s a question, always another question, always leav-<br />ing Egypt behind.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-74944156336156889872009-07-12T03:01:00.000-07:002009-07-12T03:12:49.370-07:00IV Contents - Unschooling<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Unschooling<br /></span></div><br />We keep trying to explain away American fundamentalism. <br />That is, those of us not engaged personally or emotionally in<br />the biggest political and cultural movement of our times —those on<br />the sidelines of history—keep trying to come up with theories to<br />discredit the evident allure of this punishing yet oddly comforting<br />idea of a deity, this strange god. His invisible hand is everywhere, say<br />His citizen-theologians, caressing and xing every outcome: Little<br />League games, job searches, test scores, the spread of sexually trans-<br />mitted diseases, the success or failure of terrorists, victory or defeat<br />in battle, at the ballot box, i n bed. Those unable to feel His soothing<br />touch at moments such as these snort at the notion of a God with the<br />patience or the prurience to monitor every tick and twitch of desire,<br />a supreme being able to make a lion and a lamb cuddle but unable to<br />abide two men kissi ng. A divine love that speaks through hurricanes.<br />Who would worship such a god? His followers, we try to reassure<br />ourselves, must be dupes, or saps, or fools, thei r faith illiterate, in-<br />sane, or m isi nformed, their strength eeti ng, hollow, an aberration.<br />We don’t like to consider the possibility that they are not new-<br />comers to power but returnees, that the revivals that have been<br />sweeping the nation with generational regularity since its inception<br />are not are-ups but the natural temperature uctuations of Ameri-<br />can empire. We can’t accept the possibility that those we dismiss as<br />dupes, or saps, or fools —the believers —have been with us from the<br />very beginning, that their story about what America once was and<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 337<br />should be seems to some great portion of the population more com-<br />pelling, more just, and more beautiful than the perfunctory pro-<br />cesses of secular democracy. Thus we are at a loss to account for this<br />recurri ng American mood. The classic means of explaining it away—<br />class envy, sexual anxiety—do not su ce. We cannot, like H. L.<br />Mencken writing from the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, dismiss<br />the Christian Right as a carnival of backward bu oons resentful of<br />modernity’s privileges. We cannot, like the Washington Post in 1993,<br />explain away the movement as “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to<br />com mand.” We cannot, like the writer Theodor Adorno, a refugee<br />from Nazi Germany, attribute America’s radical religion—nascent<br />fascism? —to Freudian yearning for a father gure.<br />No, God isn’t dead; Freud and Marx are. The old theories have<br />failed. The new Christ, fty years ago no more than a corollary to<br />American power, twenty- ve years ago at its vanguard, is now at the<br />very center. His followers are not anxiously awaiting his return at the<br />rapture; he’s here right now. They’re not envious of the middle class,<br />they are the middle class. They’re not looking for a hero to lead<br />them; they’re building biblical house holds, every man endowed with<br />“ headship” over his own family. They don’t silence sex; they promise<br />sac red sex to those who couple properly—orgasms, according to a<br />bit of fundamentalist folklore passed between young singles, “600<br />percent” more intense for those who wait than those experienced by<br />secular lovers.<br />Intensity! That’s what one nds within the ranks of the Ameri-<br />can believers. “This thing is real!” declare our nation’s fundamental-<br />ist pastors. It’s all coming together: the sacred and the profane,<br />God’s time and straight time, what t heologians and graduates of the<br />new fundamentalist prep schools might call kairos and chronos, the mys-<br />tical and the mundane. American fundamentalism—not a political<br />party, not a denomination, not a uniform ideology but a manifold<br />movement—is moving in every direction all at once, claiming the<br />earth for God’s kingdom, “in the world but not of it” and yet just<br />loving it to death, anyway. It feels fabulous, t his faith, it tingles in all<br />the right places.<br /><br /><br />338 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Those of us who nd ourselves suddenly (or so it seems) at the<br />dried-out margins keep telling ourselves that this country is still a<br />democracy, and that democracy still means “moderation,” private<br />religion and a public square safe for “civil society.” The fundamental-<br />ist Christ is not, we tell ourselves, the real Christ. He’s an imposter,<br />a faker, a fraud recently perpetrated on the good-hearted but gullible<br />American masses by cynical men, manipulators, pro teers, a cabal of<br />televangelists. Why? Greed. Anger. Fundamentalists are bitter, an<br />eminent divine of academe opined at a gathering of worthies con-<br />vened in 2005 by Boston’s PBS a l iate, because they feel neglected<br />by the Ivies. Perhaps more dialogue between Cambridge and Lynch-<br />burg, Virginia, home of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, will heal<br />us all.<br />Rationalism itself has been colonized by fundamentalism, re-<br />made in the image of the seductive but strict logic of a pri me mover<br />that sets things in motion, not just at the beginning but always. The<br />cause behind every e ect, says fundamentalist science, is God. Even<br />the inexorable facts of math are subject to his decree, as explained in<br />homeschooling texts such as Mathematics: Is God Silent? Two plus two<br />is four because God says so. If he chose, it could just as easily be<br /> v e . <br />It would be cliché to quote George Orwell here were it not for<br />the fact that fundamentalist intellectuals do so with even greater fre-<br />quency than those of the Left. At a ral ly to expose the “myth” of<br />church/state separation in the spring of 20 06, Orwell was quoted at<br />me four times, most emphatically by William J. Federer, a compiler<br />of quotations whose America’s God and Country—a collection of seem-<br />ingly theocratic bon mots distilled from the founders and other great<br />men “ for use i n speeches, papers, [and] debates”—has sold half a mil-<br />lion copies. “ Those who control the past,” Federer quoted Orwell’s<br />198 4, “control the future.”<br />Federer, a tall, lean, oaken-voiced man, loved talking about his-<br />tory as revelation, nodding along gently to his own lectures. He wore<br />a gray suit, a red tie marred by a stain, and an American ag pin in<br />his lapel. He looked like a congressman. He’d twice run for former<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 339<br />House minority leader Dick Gephardt’s St. Louis seat. He lost both<br />times, but the movement considers him a winner—in 20 00, he<br />faced Gephardt in the nation’s third most expensive congressional<br />race, forcing him to spend down his war chest and default on prom-<br />ises to fellow Democrats, a move that led to Gephardt’s fall.<br />Federer and I were riding together in a white school bus full of<br />Christians from around the country to pray at the site on which the<br />Danbury, Connecticut, First Baptist Church once stood. It was in an<br />1802 letter to this church that Thomas Je erson coined the phrase<br />“wall of separation,” three words upon which the battle over whether<br />the United States is to be a Christian nation turns. Federer, leaning<br />over the back of his seat as several pastors bent thei r ears toward his<br />story, wanted me to understand that what Je erson—notorious deist<br />and author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom —had really<br />meant to promote was a “one-way wall,” designed to protect the<br />church from the state, not the other way arou nd. Je erson, Federer<br />told me, was a believer; l ike all the Founders, he knew that there<br />could be no government without God. Why hadn’t I been taught<br />this? Because I was a victim of godless public schools.<br />“Those who control the present,” Federer continued darkly,<br />“control the past.” He paused and stared at me to make sure I under-<br />stood the equation. “Orson Welles wrote that,” he said.<br />Welles, Orwell, who cares? Federer wasn’t talking tactics or, for<br />that matter, even history; he was talking revolution, past, present,<br />and future.<br /><br /><br />The rst pillar of American fundamentalism is Jesus Christ; the<br />second is history, and in the fundamentalist m ind the two are con-<br />verging. Fundamentalism considers itself a faith of basic truths unal-<br />tered (if not always acknowledged) since their transmission from<br />heaven, rst through the Bible and second through what they see as<br />American scripture, divinely inspired, devoutly i ntended: the Decla-<br />ration of Independence, the Constitution, and the often overlooked<br />Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which declared “religion” necessary<br /><br /><br />340 | JEFF SHARLET<br />to “good government” and thus to be encouraged through schools.<br />Well into the nineteenth century, most American schoolchildren<br />learned their ABCs from The New- En gland Primer, which begins with<br />“In Adam’s Fall, we sinned all” and continues on to “Spiritual Milk<br />for American Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments.”<br />In 1836, McGu ey’s Eclectic Readers began to displace the Primer, selling<br />some 122 million copies of lessons such as “ The Bible the Best of<br />Classics” and “Religion the Only Basis of Society” during the follow-<br />ing century.<br />It wasn’t until the 1930s, the most irreligious decade in Ameri-<br />can history, that public education veered away from biblical indoctri-<br />nation so thoroughly that within a few decades most Americans<br />wrongly believed that nationalistic manifest destiny—itself thinly<br />veiled Calvinism—rather than open piety was the American educa-<br />tional tradition. The fundamentalist movement sees that to reclaim<br />America for God, it must rst reclaim that tradition, and so it is pro-<br />ducing a ood of educational texts with which to wash away the<br />stains of secular history.<br />Such chronicles are written primarily for the homeschoolers and<br />the fundamentalist academies that as of this writing together account<br />for as much as 10 percent or more of the nation’s children, an ex-<br />panding population that buys a billion dollars’ worth of educational<br />materials annually. These pupils are known by many within the<br />movement as “Generation Joshua,” in honor of the biblical hero who<br />marched seven times around Jericho before slaughtering “every liv-<br />ing thing in it.” The Home School Legal Defense Association has<br />lately been attempting to organize Generation Joshua into “GenJ” po-<br />litical action clubs for teens modeled, claims the association, on a<br />scheme for Christian governance conceived of by Alexander Hamil-<br />ton shortly before Aaron Burr shot him dead in a duel. Set up by<br />congressional district, the clubs study “America’s Godly heritage,”<br />write letters to the editor, and register older siblings as voters. They<br />adopt thrilling names such as Joshua’s Arrows of Nashville, Tennes-<br />see, or Operation Impact of Los Gatos, California, or the GenJ Hot<br />Rockin’ Awesomes of Purcellville, Virginia.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 341<br />“Who, knowing the facts of our history,” asks the epigraph to<br />the 200 0 edition of The American Republic for Christian Schools, a ju-<br />nior high–level textbook, “can doubt that the United States of<br />America has been a t hought in the mind of God from all eternity?”1<br />So that I would know the facts, I undertook my own course of home-<br />schooling: in addition to The American Republic, I read the two-<br />volu me teac her’s edition of United States History for Christian Schools,<br />appropriate for eleventh-graders, and the accompanying Economics<br />for Christian Schools,* and I walked the st reet s of Brooklyn listen-<br />in g to an eighteen-tape lectu re series on America up to 1865<br />created for a Christian college by the late Rousas John Rushdoony,<br />the theologian who helped launch Christian homeschooling and re-<br />vived the idea of reading American history through a providential<br />lens.† I was down by the waterfront, pausing to scribble a note on<br />Alexis de Tocqueville —Rushdoony argues that de Tocquevi lle was<br />really a fundamentalist Christian disguised as a Frenchman—when<br />a white and blue police van rolled up behind me and squawked its<br />siren. There were four o cers inside.<br />“What are you writing? ” the driver asked. The other three leaned<br />toward the window.<br />“Notes,” I said, tapping my headphones.<br />“Okay. What are you listening to? ”<br />I said I didn’t think I had to tell him.<br />“This is a high- security area,” he said. On the other side of a<br />barbed-wire fence, he said, was a Coast Guard storage facility for<br />deadly chemicals. “Somebody blow that up and boom, bye-bye<br />Brooklyn.” Note taking in the vicinity might be a problem. “ So, I<br />gotta ask again, what are you listening to?”<br />How to explain—to the cop who had just clued me in on the<br /><br /><br /><br />*Sample lesson: “Above all, one must never come to see the propagation of the free market as an<br />end i n itself. The free market merely sets the stage for an un hindered propagation of the gospel of<br />Jesus Ch rist.”<br />†F or instance: the “Protestant Wind ” with which, accord ing to an eleventh-grade tex t, God<br />help ed the British defeat the Spanish Armada so that the New World wou ld not be overly settled<br />by agents of the Vatican.<br /><br /><br />342 | JEFF SHARLET<br />ripest terrorist target in Brooklyn—that I was listening to a Chris-<br />tian jihadi lecture on how democracy as practiced in America was<br />de ance of God’s intentions, how God gave to the United States the<br />“i rresistible blessings” of biblical capital ism unknown to Europe, and<br />how we have vandalized this with vulgar regulations, how God loves<br />the righteous who ght in His name?<br />Like this: “American history.”<br />Providence would have been a better word. I was “unschooling”<br />myself, Bill Apelian, the director of Bob Jones University Press, ex-<br />plained. What seemed to me a self-directed course of study was, in<br />fact, the replacement of my secular assumptions with a curriculum<br />guided by God. When BJU Press, one of the biggest fundamentalist<br />educational publishers, started out thirty years ago, science was its<br />most popular subject, and it could be summed up in one word: cre-<br />ated. Now, American history is on the rise. “We call it Heritage Stud-<br />ies,” Apelian said, and explained its growing centrality: “ History is<br />God’s working in man.”<br />My unschooling continued. I read Rushdoony’s most in uential<br />contemporary, the late Francis Schae er, an American whose Swiss<br />mountai n retreat, L’Abri (The Shelter), served as a Christian ma-<br />drassa at which a generation of fundamental ist intellectuals studied a<br />reenchanted American past, “Christian at least in memory.” And I<br />read Schae er’s disciples. Tim LaHaye, who besides coauthori ng the<br />hugely pop u lar Left Behind series of novels has published an equally<br />fantastical work of history called Mind Siege. ( “The leading authorities<br />of Secular Humanism may be pictured as a baseball team,” writes<br />L aHaye, with John Dewey as pitcher, Margaret Sanger in center eld,<br />Bertrand Russel l at third, and Isaac Asimov at rst). And David Bar-<br />ton, the president of a history ministry called WallBuilders (as i n, to<br />keep the heathen out); and Chuck Colson, who searches from the<br />Greeks to the American founders to fellow Watergate felon G. Gor-<br />don Liddy for the essence of the Christian worldview, a vision of an<br />American future so entirely Christ- ltered that beside it theocracy—<br />the clum sy governance of priestly bureaucrats, disdained by Schaef-<br />fer and Colson—seems a modest ambition. Theocentric is the preferred<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 343<br />term, Randall Terry, the Schae er disciple who went on to found<br />Operation Rescue, one of the galvanizing forces of the anti- abortion<br />movement, told me. “That means you view the world in His terms.<br />Theocentrists, we don’t believe man can create law. Man can only<br />embrace or reject law.” The study of history for fundamentalists is a<br />pro cess of divining that law, and to that end the theocentric world-<br />view collapses the past into one great parable—Colson, for i nstance,<br />studies the Roman Empire for insight into the expansion of<br />America’s —applicable at all stages of learning.<br />It is character, in t he nineteenth-century, British Empire sense<br />of the word, that drives American fundamentalism’s engagement<br />with t he past. History matters not for its progression of “fact,<br />fact, fact,” Michael McHugh, one of the pioneers of modern funda-<br />mentalist education told me, but for “key personalities.” In Francis<br />Schae er’s telling of U.S. history, for instance, John Witherspoon—<br />the only pastor to have signed the Declaration of Independence—<br />looms as large as Thomas Je erson, because it was Witherspoon who<br />infused the founding with the idea of Lex Rex, “ law is king” (divine law,<br />that is), derived from the ercest Protestant reformers of the seven-<br />teenth century, men who considered John Calvin’s Geneva too gentle<br />for God. In the movement’s history, key men are often those such as<br />Witherspoon or Schae er himself, intellectuals and activists who<br />shape ideas. But in the movement’s telling of American history, key<br />personalities are often soldiers, such as General Douglas MacArthur.<br />After the war, McHugh explained, MacArthur ruled Japan “accord-<br />ing to Christian principles” for ve years. “ To what end? ” I asked. Ja-<br />pan is hardly any more Christian for this divine i ntervention. “The<br />Japanese people did capture a vision,” McHugh said. Not the whole<br />Christian deal but one of its essential foundations: “MacArthur set<br />the stage for free enterprise,” he explained. With Japan com mitted<br />to capitalism, the United States was free to turn its attention toward<br />the Soviet Union. The general’s providential anking maneuver, you<br />might say, helped America win the Cold War.2<br />But one needn’t be a ag o cer to be used by God. Another<br />favorite of Christian history is Sergeant Alvin York, a farmer from<br /><br /><br />344 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Pall Mall, Tennessee, who in World War I turned his trigger nger<br />over to God and became perhaps the greatest Christian sniper of the<br />twentieth century.<br />“God uses ordinary people,” McHugh explained. Anyone might<br />be a key personality. The proper study of history includes the student<br />as a main character, an approach he described as relational, a buzz-<br />word in contemporary fundamentalism that denotes a sort of pulsing<br />circuit of energy between, say, pleasant Betty Johnson, your churchy<br />neighbor, and the awesome realm of supernatural events in which<br />her real life occurs. There, Jesus is as real to Betty as she is to you,<br />and so are Sergeant York, General MacArthur, and even George<br />Washington, who, as “ father of our nation,” is almost a fourth mem-<br />ber of the Holy Trinity, a mi nd bender made possible through God’s<br />math.<br />You may have seen his ghostly form, along with that of Abraham<br />Lincoln, anking an image of George W. Bush deep in prayer in a<br />lithograph widely distributed by the Presidential Prayer Team, a ve-<br />year-old out t that claims to have organized nearly 3 million prayer<br />warriors on the president’s behalf. The Prayer Team claims to tran-<br />scend ideology because it will pray for the president whether he or<br />she is a Republican or a Democrat. That is, it will always pray for<br />authority. Its reverence built upon American fundamentalism’s imag-<br />ined history, the Prayer Team has neatly rewritten not only America’s<br />democratic tradition but also traditional Christianity, replaci ng both<br />with an amalgamation of elite and populist fundamentalism. The<br />legacy of Abram Vereide echoes i n the Prayer Team’s belief that the<br />right relationship of citizen to leader is both spiritual and submissive,<br />an idea it has dilated from the prayer cells of elites to its 3-million-<br />strong “small group” approach to authoritarian religion. The populist<br />twist is the prom ise that the citizen is not the victi m of such dis-<br />guised politics but, potentially, thei r star. In a similar image pasted<br />onto ve hundred billboards around the country, an ethereal Wash-<br />ington kneels in prayer with an anonymous soldier in desert<br />fatigues—just anot her everyday hero. That could be you, the key<br />man theory of fundamentalist hi story proposes. It’s like the<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 345<br />Rapture, when t he saved shall rise together, but it’s happen ing<br />right now: George Washington and Bet ty Johnson and you, oat-<br />ing up toward vic tory wit h arms entwined, key personalities in<br />Christian history.<br /><br /><br />One afternoon in 20 05, I found in my mail an unsolicited copy of<br />the “Vision Forum Family Catalog,” a glossy, handsomely produced,<br />eighty-eight-page publ ication featuring an array of books, videos, and<br />toys for “The Biblical Family Now and Forever.” Considered the in-<br />tellectual vanguard of the homeschooli ng movement by the other<br />fundamentalist publishers with whom I’d spoken, Vision Forum is<br />nonetheless just one of any number of providers for the fundamental-<br />ist lifestyle and hardly the largest. But its catalog is as perfect and<br />polished a distillation as I’ve found of the romance of American fun-<br />damentalism, the almost sexual tension of its contradictions: its rev-<br />erence for both rebellion and authority, democracy and theocracy,<br />blood and innocence. The edition I received was titled “A Line in the<br />Sand,” in tribute to the Alamo. There, in 1836, faced with near-certain<br />annihilation at the hands of the Mexican army, the Anglo rebel Lieu-<br />tenant Colonel William Barret Travis rallied his doomed men by<br />drawing said line with his sword and challenging them to cross it. All<br />who did so, he said, would prove thei r preparedness “to give their<br />lives in freedom’s cause.”<br />A boy of about eight enacts the scene on the catalog’s cover. He is<br />dark-eyed, big-eared, and dimple-chinned, and he’s dressed in an<br />idyllic costume only a romantic could imagine Colonel Travis wear-<br />ing so close to his apocalyptic end: a white straw planter’s hat, a<br />Confederate gray, double- breasted shell jacket, a bow tie of black<br />ribbon, a red sash, khaki jodhpurs, and shiny black fetish boots,<br />spread wide. The young rebel seems to have been photoshopped in<br />front of the Alamo at u nlikely scale: he towers over a dark wooden<br />door, as big as an eight-year-old boy’s imagination.<br />Much of the catalog is given over to educational materials for<br />Christian homeschoolers, but the back of the book is dedicated to<br /><br /><br />346 | JEFF SHARLET<br />equipping one’s son with the sort of toys that will allow him to “re-<br />build a culture of courageous boyhood.” Hats, for instance—leather<br />Civil War kepis, coonskin caps, and a ninety- ve-dollar li fe- size rep-<br />lica of a fteenth-century knight’s helmet among them. An<br /> eigh teen- dollar video titled Putting on the Whole Armor of God asks,<br />“Boys, are you ready for warfare?” Young Christian soldiers may<br />choose from a variety of actual weapons, ranging from a scaled-down<br />version of the blade wielded by William Wallace, of Braveheart fame<br />(which at four and a quarter feet long is still a lot of kni fe for a kid) to<br />a thirty- two- and- a-half- inch Confederate o cer’s saber. It is history<br />at knifepoint; a theology of arms.<br />Not all of the toys are made for literal battle. For thirty dollars<br />you can buy your boy an “Estwing Professional Rock Hammer,” iden-<br />tical to those used by creationist paleontologists to prove that dino-<br />saurs coexisted with Adam and Eve. For thi rty-eight dollars you can<br />acquire a “stellarscope” that functions as a pocket- sized planetarium<br />for understanding God’s heavens. I was tempted to buy my nephew<br />an “Ancient Roman Coin Kit,” which includes “ten genuine ancient<br />Roman coins with accumulated dirt” and tools and instructions for<br />cleaning and identifying them. “ They will captivate you,” “Line in<br />the Sand” promises. “Were they held by a third-century Christian? A<br />martyr?”<br />Martyrdom, real and metaphorical, is something of a family con-<br />cern at Vision Forum. Founder Douglas W. Phillips’s father, How-<br />ard, is a Harvard graduate, a veteran of the Nixon administration,<br />and a Jewish convert to evangelicalism, all marks of a ne pedigree<br />within elite Christian conservative culture. Moreover, Phill ips was<br />one of the small group that “discovered ” Jerry Falwell, recruiting the<br />Virginian to lead the Moral Majority in 1979. And yet Phil lips’s com-<br />mitment to the intellectually dense ideas of Rousas John Rushdoony,<br />considered too di cult and too extreme by many within the move-<br />ment, led to internal exile within the populist front of American<br />fu ndamentalism.<br />In the past few years, though, Phillips has regained a measure of<br />his former i n uence. Ideas once considered too heady for a movement<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 347<br />that de ned itself through televangelists are now taught in elite<br />colleges and universities such as Patrick Henry, Liberty, and<br />Regent—institutions funded by the millions those TV preachers<br />raised from the masses —as well as in the most august of Bible<br />schools and Christian colleges, Wheaton, Westmont, Moody, and<br />Biola, invigorated by a new generation of book-hungry homeschool-<br />ers. The anti-intellectualism that shaped the fundamentalism of the<br />twentieth century has been replaced by a feverish thirst for intellec-<br />tual legitimacy—to be achieved, however, not on term s set by secu-<br />larism but by the Christian Right’s very own eggheads, come in from<br />the cold.<br />They’ve brought with them the anxiety of a besieged m inority.<br />They’ve lent to the angry mob ethos of the Moral Majority—now<br />defunct, displaced by countless divisions and battalions, a united<br />front in place of a single army—the cachet of an avant-garde, with all<br />the attendant wounded pride of a misunderstood genius.<br />The chief candidate for that label within fundamentalism’s intel-<br />lectual revival is the late Rushdoony, whose eighteen-tape American<br />history lectures I had obtained from Vision Forum. Rushdoony is best<br />known as the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, a politically<br />defunct but subtly i n uential school of thought that drifted so far to<br />the right that it dropped o the edge of the world, disavowed as<br />“scary” even by Jerry Falwell. Most notably, Rushdoony proposed the<br />death penalty for an ever-expanding subset of sinners, starting with<br />gay men and growing to include blasphemers and badly behaved chil-<br />dren. Such sentiments have made him a bogeyman of the Left but<br />also a convenient scapegoat for fundamentalist apologists. Ralph<br />Reed, for instance, the former head of the Christian Coalition, made<br />a great show of attacking the ideas of Reconstructionism as mis-<br />guided, not to mention bad public relations. More recently, First<br />Things, a journal for academically pedigreed Christian conservatives,<br />published an oddly skeptical antimanifesto titled “Theocracy! Theoc-<br />racy! Theocracy!” in which a young journalist, Ross Douthat, eyes<br />rolling, dismisses the fears of the “antitheocrat” Left by propping up<br />Rushdoony as a fringe lunatic only to knock him down along with the<br /><br /><br />348 | JEFF SHARLET<br />liberal c ritiques that focus on his angriest notions. (Douthat was evi-<br />dently unaware of First Things’s lengthy tribute to Rushdoony upon<br />his death in 2001.) That reading of Rushdoony—by liberal critics and<br />conservative apologists—misses what matters about his revival of<br />providential history.3<br />Rushdoony was a monster, but he wasn’t insane. His most vio-<br />lent positions were the result of fundamentalism’s requisite literalist<br />reading of sc ripture, an approach that one senses rather bored him.<br />A natural ideologue, he seemed drawn most emotionally not to the<br />strict legal code of Leviticus but to the “strange re” of its tenth<br />chapter, the blasphemous tribute paid to God by priests lost in the<br />aesthetics of devotion. Rushdoony would have had them killed for<br />their presumption, which is exactly what God did. But I imagine<br />Rushdoony sympathized with thei r misgu ided sentiments. His Re-<br />constructionist movement fell apart when his son-i n-law, an even<br />more bloodthirsty theologian named Gary North, split with Rush-<br />doony over what he saw as his father-in-law’s romantic insistence that<br />the Constitution was an entirely God-breathed document, perverted<br />by politicians, no doubt, but purely of heaven at its inception. North,<br />who may actually be a psychopath—he favors stoning as a method of<br />execution because it would double as a “community project” —was<br />right on this one occasion.<br />Rushdoony was to the study of history what a holy warrior is to<br />jihad, submitti ng his mind completely to God. He derived from the<br />past not just a quai nt hero worship but also a deep knowledge of his-<br />tory’s losers, forgotten Americans—minor pol itical gures l ike John<br />Witherspoon and major revivalists l ike Charles Grandison Finney and<br />all the soldiers who fought rst for God, then country, the rugged<br />men of the past who carried the theocratic strand through from the<br />beginning. The Christian conservatives of his day, Rushdoony be-<br />lieved, had let themselves be bound by secularism. They railed agai nst<br />its tyranny but addressed themselves only to issues set aside by secu-<br />larism as “moral”; the best minds of a fundamentalist generation<br />burned themselves to furious cinders battling nothing more than<br />naughty movies and heavy petting. Rushdoony did not believe in such<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 349<br />skirm ishes. He wanted a war, and he summoned the spirits of history<br />to the struggle at hand.<br />Two central Rushdoony ideas, disassociated from his name, have<br />since been assimilated into the mainstream of Christian conservative<br />thinking. One is Christian education: homeschooling and private<br />Protestant academies, both of which he was among the rst to advo-<br />cate during the early 1960s. Among the chief champions of that edu-<br />cational movement today are John W. Whitehead, a constitutional<br />lawyer who counts Rushdoony as one of his greatest in uences, and the<br />founders of two fundamentalist colleges, Patrick Henry and New St.<br />Andrews, explicitly dedicated to training culture warriors according<br />to the tenets of Rushdoony’s other major contribution to postwar<br />fundamentalism: the revival of the American providential history<br />that had been rusting since the ni neteenth century, when no less a<br />hero of the secular past than Daniel Webster declared history “a<br />study of secondary causes that God uses and perm its in order to ful-<br />ll his inscrutable decree.” Duri ng the intervening years, el ite funda-<br />mentalists studied at elite universities (Rushdoony attended Berkeley),<br />and the rest of the faithful went to public schools and perhaps a Bible<br />college. Elites learned secular history; the rest rarely learned much<br />history at all, a state of a airs that kept the movement divided. It was<br />Rushdoony’s disdain for all things secular that cleared the course for<br />the convergence in the last few decades of the two streams of funda-<br />mentalist culture, united across classes behind a vision of a “God-<br /> led” society.<br />A strict Calvinist in uenced by his upbringing in the Armenian<br />Presbyterian Church, Rushdoony found his way to the<br />turn-of-the-century Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper and his idea<br />of presuppositionalism, which maintains that (a) everybody approaches<br />the world with assumptions, thus ruling out the possibility of neu-<br />trality and a classically liberal state; and (b) that since Christian pre-<br />suppositions acknowledge themselves as such (unlike liberalism’s,<br />which are deliberately ahistorical), every aspect of governance should<br />be conducted in the light of its revealed truths. “ There is not a square<br />inch in the whole domain of our human experience,” declared Kuyper,<br /><br /><br />350 | JEFF SHARLET<br />“over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry<br />‘Mine!’ ” 4<br />And yet Kuyper’s Christ—more the product of nineteenth-<br />century imperialism than of scripture—is, in a sense, an afterthought<br />to Kuyper’s rst assertion, which anticipated postmodernism and its<br />distrust of modernity’s claim that we can know “facts” absent the<br />interference of values. Kuyper turned i nstead to divine love as the<br />foundation of what Rushdoony—and now the majority of the Chris-<br />tian conservative intellectuals—called a biblical worldview, a re ne-<br />ment of theology into pol itical ideology.<br />Kuyper was both a democrat and a theologian who as Dutch<br />prime m inister tried to conform all aspects of his country to his vi-<br />sion of God. For much of the twentieth century, he was remembered<br />fondly only by progressive Social Gospel Christians, who saw in his<br />Europe an project of state health care and free education and even a<br />market conformed to biblical law, to the detriment of raw capital-<br />ism, a foreshadowing of the “city upon a hill” prophesied for America<br />by John Winthrop in 1630.5<br />Rushdoony agreed, and he thought most Americans would as<br />well, once they understood that scripture was the source of the na-<br />tion’s idealism. He spoke often of his fondness for John F. Kennedy’s<br />rhetoric, for instance, in which he heard echoes of America as a re-<br />deemer nation. “God’s work must be our own,” declared Kennedy,<br />and Rushdoony smiled sadly. “They’ve lost the theology,” Rushdoony<br />would lecture ten years after Kennedy’s death, “but they haven’t lost<br />the faith.”<br />Restoring the former was a matter not of grace but of education.<br />New generations would have to be raised up who understood the<br />ancestry of language such as Kennedy’s, who would seek to ful ll the<br />vision not through social programs—unlike Kuyper, Rushdoony<br />scorned governmental attempts to ameliorate su ering that he took<br />to be God’s “ inscrutable decree” —but through the intellectual as<br />well as spiritual embrace of true religion. Telling kids to stay clear of<br />bad in uences would not do the job. Bible camps and radio preachers<br />and all the various campus crusades and college clubs for the mildest<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 351<br />of young people—no redeemers, they—had failed. Rushdoony de-<br />cided to start from the beginni ng, to claim the future by reclaiming<br />the past.<br /><br /><br />Amid a pantheon now celebrated by fundamentalist historians, the<br />most surprising hero is Stonewall Jackson of the Confederacy, per-<br />haps the most brilliant general i n American history and certainly the<br />most pious. United States History for Christian Schools devotes more<br />space to Jackson, “Soldier of the Cross,” and the revivals he led<br />among his troops in the midst of the Civil War, than to either Robert<br />E. Lee or U. S. Grant; Practical Homeschooling magazine o ers in-<br />structions for making Stonewall costumes out of gray sweatsuits<br />with which to celebrate his birthday, declared a homeschooling “ fun<br />day.” Fundamentalists even celebrate him as an early civil rights vi-<br />sionary, dedicated to teaching slaves to read so that they could learn<br />their Bible lessons. For fundamentalist admirers, that is enough, as<br />evidenced by the 2006 publication of Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man’s<br />Friend, by Richard G. Williams, a regular contributor to the conser-<br />vative Washington Times.<br />Jackson’s popularity with fundamentalists represents the triumph<br />of the Christian history Rushdoony dreamed of when he discovered,<br />during the early 1960s, a forgotten volume titled The Life and Cam-<br />paigns of Lieutenant General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson. Its author, Rob-<br />ert Lewis Dabney, had served under Jackson, but more important he<br />was a Calvinist theologian who believed deeply in a God who worked<br />through chosen individuals, and he wrote the general’s li fe in biblical<br />terms. To Rushdoony, the story transcended its Confederate origins,<br />and he helped make it a founding text of the nascent homeschooling<br />movement. It’s not the Confederacy fundamentalists love but mar-<br />tyrdom. Jackson fought rst for God and only second for Virginia,<br />and, as every fundamentalist fan knows, no Yankee bullet could<br />touch him. He was shot accidentally by his own men and nonetheless<br />died happy on a Sunday, content that he had arrived at God’s chosen<br />hour.<br /><br /><br />352 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Born in the mountains of what later became West Virginia, Jack-<br />son was orphaned by the time he was seven. His stepfather shipped<br />the boy o to one uncle who beat him and then another who gambled<br />and counterfeited and drank but also let him read. Against all expec-<br />tations and two years later than most, he became a cadet at West<br />Point. He began at the bottom of his class.6<br />Four years later, he had climbed close to the top, and without the<br />help of charisma. His frame and his face had broadened, but his eyes,<br />pale irises of corn ower ringed in dead-of-night blue, seemed dis-<br />tant. His nose was long, wavering, and it ended in what looked like a<br />permanent drip. His bright red l ips curled inward, as if hiding. Even<br />as an army o cer, he felt so out of place in “society” that he was<br />deathly afraid of public speaking. Absent enemy re, he did not know<br />how to take a stand. Before the war he watched John Brown hang<br />with his own eyes and marveled at the strength of the man’s Chris-<br />tian conviction and wondered, perhaps, what he would have done<br />had it been his neck in the noose. And yet when his own time to ght<br />came, he proved just as ferociously devoted to his cause. In All Things<br />for the Good: The Steadfast Fidelity of Stonewall Jackson, the fundamental-<br />ist historian J. Steven Wilkins opens a chapter on Jackson’s belief in<br />the “ black ag” of no quarter for the enemy with a quotation of<br />Jackson’s view of mercy toward Union soldiers: “Shoot them al l, I do<br />not wish them to be brave.”<br />Earlier, in the Mexican War, Lieutenant Jackson de ed an order<br />to retreat, fought the Mexican cavalry alone with one artillery piece,<br />and won. General Win eld Scott, commander of t he U.S. forces,<br />commended him for “t he way [he] slaughtered those poor Mexi-<br />cans.” Many of the poor Mexic ans slaughtered by Jackson were<br />civilians. His small victory helped clear the way for t he American<br />advance, and Jackson was ordered to turn his guns on Mexico City<br />residents attempting to ee the oncomi ng U.S. Army. He did so<br />without hesitation—mowing them down even as they sought to<br />surrender.<br />What are we to make of this murder? Fundamentalists see in that<br />willingness to kill innocents con rmation of Romans 13:1. This<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 353<br />snippet of Paul ’s best-known epistle is a key verse for the Christian<br />Right: “ For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are or-<br />dained of God.” Obeying one’s superiors, according to this logic, is<br />an act of devotion to the God above them.<br />But wait. Fundamentalists also praise the heroism that resulted<br />from Jackson’s de ance of orders to retreat, his rout of the Mexican<br />cavalry so miraculous —it’s said that a cannonball bounced between<br />his legs as he stood fast—that it seems to fundamentalist biographers<br />proof that he was anointed by God. Is this hypocrisy on the part of<br />his fans? Not exactly.<br />Key men always obey orders, but they follow the command of<br />the highest authority. Jackson’s amazing victory is taken as evidence<br />that God was with him—that God overrode the orders of his earthly<br />com manders. The civilians dead as a result of Jackson’s subsequent<br />obedience to those same earthly commanders are also signs of God’s<br />guiding hand. The providential God sees everything; that such a<br />tragedy was allowed to occur must therefore be evidence of a greater<br />plan. One of fundamental ist history’s favorite proofs comes not from<br />scripture itself but from Ben Franklin’s paraphrase at the Constitu-<br />tional Convention: “ If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without<br />His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? ”<br />Put in political terms, the contradictory legend of Stonewall<br />Jackson—rebellion and reverence, rage and order—results in the<br />synthesis of self-destructive patriotism embraced by contemporary<br />fundamentalism. A striking example is a short video on faith and<br />diplomacy made in the aftermath of September 11, 20 01, by Chris-<br />tian Embassy, a behind-the-scenes ministry for government and<br />military elites created in 1974 as a sister ministry to the Family,<br />ers, Bill Bright of<br />with which it coordinates its e orts.7 Its found<br />Campus Crusade and Congressman John Conlan, considered them-<br />selves America’s saviors. For Bright, the threat was always commu-<br />nism, but for Conlan, it was a Jewish congressional opponent who,<br />lacking “a clear testimony for Jesus Christ,” would not be able to<br />ful ll his responsibilities.8<br />And yet, Christian Embassy’s self-promotional video almost seems<br /><br /><br />354 | JEFF SHARLET<br />to endorse deliberate negligence of duty. Dan Cooper, then an under-<br />secretary of defense, grins for the camera as he announces that his<br />evangelizing activities are “more important than doing the job.” Major<br />General Jack Catton, testifying in uniform at the Pentagon—an appar-<br />ent violation of military regulations intended to keep the armed forces<br />neutral on religious questions—says he sees his position as an adviser<br />to the Joint Chiefs of Sta as a “wonderful opportunity” to evangelize<br />men and women setting defense policy. “My rst priority is my faith,”<br />he tells them; God before country. “I think it’s a huge impact,” he says.<br />“You have many men and women who are seeking God’s counsel and<br />wisdom as they advise the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] and the secre-<br />tary of defense.” Christian Embassy also sends congressional delega-<br />tions to Africa and Eastern Europe. “We were congressmen goin’ over<br />there to represent the Lord,” says Representative John Carter of Texas.<br />“We are here to tell you about Jesus . . . and that’s it.”<br />The Embassy encourages its prayer-cell members in the State<br />Department to do the same; their rst priority is not to explain U.S.<br />positions but to send the diplomats home “with a personal relation-<br />ship with the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.” 9 Brigadier General Bob<br />Caslen, promoted since the making of the video to com mandant of<br />West Point, puts it in sensual terms: “We are the aroma of Jesus.”<br />There’s a joyous disregard for democracy in t hese senti ments, its<br />demands and its compromises, that in its darkest manifestat ion<br />becomes the overlooked piety at the heart of the old logic of Viet-<br />nam, lately applied to Iraq: in order to save the village, we must<br />destroy it.10<br />But that story is older than Vietnam. Here’s the village life, mod-<br />est and hard but sustai ned by tender mercies, that Jackson wanted to<br />save: Between the Mexican War and the Civil War, he moved to tiny<br />Lexington, Virginia, to become a teacher. He married a minister’s<br />daughter, gardened, took long strolls, meditated often on peaceful<br />portions of scripture. The bloody hero of the Mexican War disap-<br />peared, replaced by a shy, painfully polite man, obsessed with “tak-<br />ing the waters” for his frail constitution. When the minister’s<br />daughter died bearing their stillborn child, he married again, his “be-<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 355<br />loved esposa,” Anna Jackson, who, after his death, revealed that<br />whenever they were alone together the publicly awkward, nervous<br />man would grab her, kiss her, and twirl her round. They danced se-<br />cret polkas. He taught Sunday school.<br />This is the myth of the quiet man, a noble soul of no outward<br />distinction. “When it came to learning,” writes the Christian biogra-<br />pher J. Steven Wilkins, assessing his hero’s visible assets in All Things<br />for the Good, “everything was a challenge.” Wilki ns continues: “ He did<br />not have striking characteristics . . . He was gangly, uncoordinated,<br />and spoke in a high-pitched voice . . . He did not have a great per-<br />sonality.” Slow, homely, and squeaky; also, peculiar in his posture—he<br />sat ramrod straight, he said, because he was afraid of squishi ng his<br />organs—and known by what friends he had for smiling lamely when<br />he guessed that someone was saying something funny. Then came the<br />war.<br />Jackson didn’t want it. Didn’t want slavery (but accepted it as<br />ordained of God and kept ve slaves), didn’t want secession (but ac-<br />cepted it as the will of Virgi nia, “to which [his] sword belongs” ),<br />didn’t want anything but quiet i n which to consider his diet (a source<br />of deep fascination and increasing asceticism as the war grew closer)<br />and Scripture (he wished he’d been called by God to the ministry).<br />Instead, he was cal led to kill ing. “Draw the sword,” he told his stu-<br />dents, “and throw away the scabbard.”<br />Anxious about praying aloud in front of others, i n battle, Jackson<br />would abandon the reins of his horse to lift up his hands toward<br />heaven. In camp he led revivals and stumbled about as if bl ind, his<br />eyes shut as he talked to God. Under re he shouted his prayers, im-<br />ploring God not for mercy but for the blood of his enemies. “He lives<br />by the New Testament and ghts by the Old,” wrote a contemporary,<br />a standard to which the movement now aspires. “He had none of the<br />things held to be essential for leadership,” writes biographer Wil ki ns.<br />“All he had was a sincere fear of God.”<br />This, too, is the American myth of the quiet man, transformed<br />by crisis into a hero. This is the model for spiritual warfare American<br />fundamentalism wants to implement in every house hold, each fam ily<br /><br /><br />356 | JEFF SHARLET<br />and every livi ng room Bible study group discovering within itself<br />unexpected reserves of leadership and, as need arises, ferocity. Jack-<br />son’s troops thought he was l iterally invulnerable. His presence<br />among his men inspired them to fearlessness in battle. And yet Jack-<br />son was killed in 1863 by his own men, who mistook his return from<br />an unannounced scouting sortie as a Union charge. This, too, is an<br />old story: felled within the walls. Our heroes are too great to be<br />killed by the enemy; only our own weaknesses can undo us. South-<br />ern dreamers say the Confederacy would have won, abolished slavery<br />peacefully, and established a true Christian nation had Jackson, “the<br />greatest Christian general in the history of this nation,” lived to con-<br />tinue out anking the Union army.<br />Of course, we would have won in Vietnam, too, if only we hadn’t<br />tied our own hands, and we’d win in Iraq, if only Democrats would<br />stop whining. Most of all, we—the believers—could nally build<br />that city upon a hill God prom ised the as-yet- unformed nation nearly<br />four centuries ago, if only we could submit to God. Jackson, note his<br />Christian biographers, saw this problem even before the war. “We<br />call ourselves a Christian people,” Jackson once wrote, but what he<br />considered the “extreme” doctrine of separation prevented the United<br />States from ful lling its destiny.<br />Look at his wisdom! say his Christian biographers. “A gift from<br />God,” he would have demurred. Oh, the humility of this fallen hero,<br />cries American fundamentalism, always deep in conversation with its<br />mythic past, the model for a new struggle.<br /><br /><br />When William Federer and I reached the overgrown fou ndation<br />stones of Danbury Baptist, which sit on a grassy hill sprinkled with<br />pale violets, we gathered i n a circle with an invitation-only crowd<br />of pastors and activists from around the country. The event’s orga-<br />niz er was Dave Daubenmi re, a former high school football coach<br />from Ohio who’d done battle with the ACLU over his insistence on<br />praying with his players. Since then he’d launched a fundamentalist<br />mi nistry called Minutemen United, with which he was climbing<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 357<br />the ladder of the activist hierarchy.* Still a minor league out t, the<br />Minutemen had managed to wrangle some respectable B-li st activ-<br />ists. Besides Federer, there was the Reverend Rob Schenck. Schenck<br />brought greetings from t he Library of Congress’s c hief of manu-<br />scripts, who, he said, had used “FBI classi ed technology” to dis-<br />cover previously unknown margin notes in Je erson’s 1802 letter<br />proving his Christian intentions. There was the Patriot Pastor, a<br />giant man from New Hampshire who travels the country i n a tri-<br />corne hat, black vest, frilly shirt, and leggings, lect uring on the<br />“Black Regi ment,” t he ghting pastors of the Revolutionary War.<br />“This is the manifest destiny of my life,” he told me. There was the<br />Reverend Fl ip Benham, head of Operation Save America, also<br />known as Operation Resc ue. He was the man who baptized Norma<br /> McCorvey—Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade—into fu ndamentalism. For<br />the rally, he was wearing vintage white- and-brown wi ngtips, sym-<br />bols of his commitment to pre-1947 America—1947 being the year<br />when the Supreme Court ru led according to Je erson’s “wall of<br />separation” for the rst ti me, in a case concerni ng government<br />funds for parochial schools.<br />Providential historians are divided on the question of whether it<br />was this decision, Everson v. Board of Education, or FDR’s socialistic<br />New Deal that led God to withdraw his protection from the nation.<br />Operation Save America’s number two, Pastor Rusty Thomas of<br />Waco, Texas, favors the less controversial New Deal school of<br />thought. God, Rusty told me, “always gave us a left hook of judg-<br />ment, then he gave us a right cross of revival.” But when the left<br />hook of the Great Depression came, goes the economic theory of<br />fundamentalism, Americans turned to government as their savior<br />instead of God. “So we got another left hook.” Kennedy’s assassina-<br />tion, he explained. Then another left hook: Vietnam. Still we didn’t<br />learn. So God kept throwing punches, said Rusty: crack, AIDS,<br /><br /><br />*The Minutemen United should not be confused with the anti- i mmigrant Minutemen militias.<br />Coach Dave’s out t is ever y bit as militari stic in its rhetoric—one related min istr y is called Pol-<br />ished Shaft—but educational i n its operations, o ering, for in stance, instruction i n Amer ica’s<br />“god ly heritage” for schoolteacher s.<br /><br /><br />358 | JEFF SHARLET<br />global warming, September 11, thousands of ag-draped co ns<br />shipped home from Iraq and more on the way.<br />Rusty began the day’s preaching, pacing back and forth between<br />Danbury Baptist’s foundation stones. He looked like an exclamation<br />point—ti ny feet in thin-soled black leather shoes, almost dwar sh<br />legs, and a powerful torso barely contained by a jacket of double-<br />breasted gray houndstooth. But he had one of the most nuanced<br />preaching voices I’ve ever heard, a soft rasp that seemed to come<br />straight from a broken heart. “We are here to start a gentle revolu-<br />tion,” he whispered, “to reclaim the godly heritage.” He sounded sad,<br />for his sin and mine. We were all guilty of turning our backs on the<br />lessons of history. But then he growled up to a volume that made<br />even the axen-haired pastor beside me literally blin k before leaning<br />forward into Rusty’s thunder.<br />“And when you go to war in your land,” Rusty recited from the<br />Book of Numbers, “—and make no m istake about it, we are in a<br />war—”<br />Amen! hollered Reverend Fl ip.<br />“And when you go to war in your land,” continued Rusty, “agai nst<br />an adversary who oppresses you” —and here he interrupte d himself:<br />“How many besides me are vexed by what is happening in the United<br />States of America today?”<br />The crowd, shedding jackets and coats beneath a wan but warm<br />spring sun, murmured amen.<br />“Your soul is vexed,” Rusty moaned. Then he cried out, “We are<br />under oppression!”<br />“AMEN!” responded the crowd, amping up to match Rusty’s in-<br />creased volume. The bill of grievances was hard: “Are we not in<br />mourning? ” Rusty asked, repeating the question and drawing it out<br />as the women among us closed their eyes and said, plain and simple,<br />yes. “Are we not in mournnnning?” he moaned. “As terrorism strikes<br />us from without, corruptions from within?” Yes, said the women, the<br />men seemingly shamed into silence. “How many know we’re losing<br />our children?” Yes. “Our marriages are failing!” YES.<br />Pastor Rusty, in fact, was a single father of ten, the youngest of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 359<br />whom is named Torah. Liz, his wife of twenty years, had died a year<br />past from lymphoma, on the verge of what seemed like recovery.<br />Reverend Flip had chronicled online her long ght, a roller coaster of<br />remission and relapse, so that the family’s prayer partners—activists<br />and Christian radio listeners across the country—could help ght for<br />her survival. “Good night for now, sweet sister,” Flip wrote when<br />they failed. “We’ll see you in the morning.”<br />Grief, not arrogance, translates the promise of salvation—“whoso-<br />ever shall lose his life for my sake shall nd it” —into a battle cry. For<br />believers forti ed by the providential past, all of history’s lessons<br />curdle into the tragedy of one’s own awful losses, and the anguish<br />that emerges is not singular but like that of a vast choir, a Christian<br />nation punished for sin and yet promised ultimate victory. Later that<br />afternoon, on the Danbury village green, Rusty would grip my arm<br />and pul l me close, tears streaming from jay-blue eyes as he confessed<br />that he had betrayed God. He had neglected the twin si ns fundamen-<br />talists believe to be the collective responsibility of the entire society<br />in which they occur. “Child sacri ce”—by which he meant<br />abortion—“and homosexual sodomy. Any nation that condoned<br />those behaviors? That did not challenge them, that did not prevent<br />them from happening? It will be reduced to rubble.”<br />He shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. The church had allowed<br />women to murder their children and men through sodomy to damn<br />themselves and all their brothers. It was his fault more than theirs<br />because he knew the “ blueprint of God’s Word.” He had pored over<br />the Bible and the Constitution and the May ower Compact, had<br />memorized choice words from John Adams and John Witherspoon<br />and Patrick Henry, Jeremiah and Nehem iah and John the Revelator.<br />Scripture and American history are in agreement, he had fou nd: be-<br />neath God, fami ly, and church is the state, with only one simple re-<br />sponsibility: “The symbol of the state is a sword. Not a spoon, feeding<br />the poor, not a teaching instrument to educate our young.” Rusty<br />stepped back, sts clenching. “And the sword is an instrument of<br />death!” he yelled. He twitched his Italian loafers in a preacher two-<br />step. He shook out his neck like a boxer. Then sorrow slumped his<br /><br /><br />360 | JEFF SHARLET<br />shoulders. He had failed to wield the sword. He had failed the wid-<br />ows and orphans. He had failed his brothers lost to sodomy. “There’s<br />nobody clean in this,” he whispered.<br />There is a mother church, Rusty preaches, and a father church, sepa-<br />rate but equal aspects of God. The mother church nurtures and holds<br />a child when he’s done wrong; the father church is the church of dis-<br />cipli ne. The mother church feeds the poor, comforts the dying, at-<br />tempting to remind nations of righteous behavior. But to Rusty the<br />lesson of American history, the lesson of Valley Forge and Shiloh,<br />Khe Sanh and Baghdad, Dallas 1963, Roe v. Wade 1973, Manhattan<br />2001, is clear: this nation is too far gone to be redeemed by mercy<br />alone. It is the father church’s turn.<br />“Then shall you sound an alarm with a trumpet that you may be<br />remembered before the Lord your God,” he preached on the hill at<br />Danbury, again quoting from the Book of Numbers, “and you<br />SHOUT”—he replaced the future tense of the biblical sha ll with his<br />own present-tense bellow—“to be saved from your enemy!” He<br />turned to the man standing behind him, a wiry, goateed musician in<br />a brown bomber jacket. “So, brother,” Rusty called, his voice now<br />joyful, “ let it rip, potato chip!” At which the slender man blew his<br />horn.<br /><br /><br />The day’s appointed born- again ba’al tokea, the “master of the blast,”<br />was named Lane Medcalf, and his instrument was a shofar, a Jewish<br />trumpet, a three-foot-long spiral horn hewn from the head of a ram,<br />boiled clean of cartilage, polished to a high gleam. Generally reserved<br />for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, once upon a time its blast sig-<br />naled Joshua’s assault on Jericho, the rst battle for the Promised<br />Land.<br />Medcalf had borrowed his shofar from his boss’s wife, also a<br />Christian. He was an arti cial avor compounder, less than a chem-<br />ist but more than a factory worker. He had been saved since he was a<br />teenager, but lately he had become engrossed in Jewish history. He<br />was slender and slight in t he shoulders, cautious but earnest about<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 361<br />his words. Except for his pale blue eyes, he could have passed for a<br />rabbinical student on the lam from his studies, despite the fact that he<br />was fty-three. If he’d grown up in Brooklyn instead of Minnesota,<br />he might have been called a lu ftmensch, Yiddish for a sweet soul who<br />seems a little lost.<br />But Medcalf wasn’t interested in Yiddish; he wanted to know<br />Hebrew. And he wasn’t contemplating conversion; he was simply go-<br />ing deeper into the past, i n search of a truer Christianity, a faith<br />more raw. “We’ve lost our Judeo side,” he told me later. By this, he<br />meant ghting spirit. “The shofar was for warfare,” he explained.<br />“You know, alarm, in a battle situation. It’s still a weapon of warfare,<br />but for ghting demonic in uence.” Medcalf ’s shofar blasts that day,<br />for instance, were intended to travel through time and slay the invis-<br />ible demons that had once surrounded Supreme Court justice Hugo<br />Black, the author of the Everson v. Board of Education decision, in<br />1947.<br />“Hugo got a little skewed,” he told me. Black himself had not<br />been evil, Medcalf explained, just overwhelmed by Satan, who whis-<br />pered in his ear. “I was told”—here Medcalf ’s voice dropped a<br />note—“that he was a former Ku Klux Klan member.” (This is true.<br />He was also a Protestant, and his decision was in keeping with that<br />period’s fundamental ist animus toward Catholic schools.) Medcal f<br />had also been told, he conti nued, that in the mid-1950s there had<br />been another Supreme Court decision, he couldn’t remember the<br />name, that forced children to go to school where they didn’t want to<br />go. This also is technically true. Medcalf may have been referring to<br />Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that overturned o cial<br />school segregation, leading to busing and the formation of private,<br /> all- white evangelical academies.<br />It was Brown, along with two decisions in the early 1960s striking<br />down school prayer, that led to fundamentalism’s embrace of history<br />as a redeem ing creed. They had a right to educate their children reli-<br />giously. Catholics already had a system for doing so. Fundamentalists<br />began to build one, and the bricks of its construction were the proof-<br />texts of an alternate Christian nation: the letters of John Jay, the rst<br /><br /><br />362 | JEFF SHARLET<br />chief justice of the Supreme Court, on the biblical justi cations for<br />America’s wars; President James Gar eld’s Gilded Age plea for more<br />Christians in high o ces; even, eventually, the speeches of Martin<br />Luther King Jr., claimed now from megachurch pulpits across the<br />country as a martyr of fundamentalism. “All it takes is a God-<br />intoxicated people,” they quote King, inaccurately and i ndi erent to<br />context, “one generation, to alter the course of history from<br />then on.”11<br />Medcalf was part of the generation for whom Ki ng was a hero<br />rather than a villain. When he was a kid, his older brother joined a<br />Christian rock band, and when he played his guitar kids prayed out<br />loud, free form, with their hands in the air and their whole bodies<br />swaying, and girls ocked to hi m. “I had never seen Christianity l ike<br />that before,” Medcal f remembered. He wanted to join the band. He<br />learned keyboards and the drums. “ Suddenly, I could understand the<br />Bible. The Holy Spirit got up on me. Man!” “Church” was no longer<br />a place you went to; it was an experience you consumed, and you<br />wanted as much as you could get. You wore your jeans to worship<br />and grew your hair long. You called yourself a Jesus freak and you<br />called Jesus a revolutionary. You listened to groups like The Way and<br />Love Song and the All Saved Freak Band, and you read rags like Right<br />On! and The Fish and Hollywood Free Paper. “ ‘Truckin’ for Jesus,’ ”<br />Medcalf remembered. “Solid stu , man.”<br />In 1972, he went to Dallas, for Campus Crusade’s “Explo” —<br />“Godstock” for the Jesus People.12 Eighty- ve thousand Jesus freaks<br />packed the Cotton Bowl for a week straight of Christian rock and<br />preaching. When Billy Graham took the stage, all he could do was<br />smile with a hand outstretched in salute as the crowd screamed their<br />love for ten minutes solid. “ It was awesome,” Medcalf said. “We<br />knew what he had done for us. He gave us the pure gospel.”<br />Medcalf suddenly looked sad. He blinked, as if holding back<br />tears. What had gone wrong?<br />“We sold ourselves,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. He meant<br />it literally: albums and t-shirts, “ bumper stickers.” Commercialism<br />killed Christian rock n’ roll. “We lost our teeth.” One year after<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 363<br />Explo, the Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. “It happened on<br />our watch, man,” Medcalf said. The Jesus freaks had failed. They had<br />lived for today and forgotten tomorrow, and then it had slipped away<br />from them. To get it back, Medcalf said, the movement must go<br />backward. Not to the 1960s but to “ before.” It needs a foundation, he<br />explained, eternal truths. These were to be found in two places: the<br />Bible and the Constitution.<br />While we were talking, Reverend Flip had begun to preach. He told<br />the crowd about a recent victory he’d scored near Charlotte, North<br />Caroli na, where he’d led seven hundred prayer warriors to a school<br />board meeting to protest the formation of a Gay-Straight Alliance<br />club in a local high school. “The preachers preached, the singers<br />sang, the pray-ers prayed, and the theology of the church became<br />biography i n the streets!” Flip said. The school board shut down the<br />club—a deliberate bid, it had declared, to bring the issue before<br />the courts and get gay-straight clubs outlawed everywhere. Flip said<br />this was what Jesus wanted. He even did an impression: “Cry to me,”<br />he said in his best bass God voice; the prayers of the righteous will be<br />answered.<br />Medcalf smiled and applauded gently. He told me how his prayers<br />had changed when he started studying history and blowing the sho-<br />far. “ I was praying for God to restore America back to its roots one<br />day when I had what I guess you would call a supernatural experi-<br />ence. The Holy Spirit caused me to weep and cry, enabling me to<br />have a broken heart. ‘Please come back,’ I prayed. It was just so in-<br />tense.” It worked: “Thi ngs have started changing.” He said the ap-<br />pointments of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court<br />were probably the result of God’s intervention. They may be the men<br />God was waiting for, the right tools for the job of restoration. They<br />may be under an anoi nting.<br />That’s the secret of Christian history. It doesn’t require great<br />men—Medcalf considered Bush’s 2000 election an “answer to prayer,”<br />but he was under no illusions about the president’s natural abilities—only<br />wil ling men, ready to be anointed. Bush was one; Medcalf was an-<br />other. Medcalf submitted to Bush’s authority according to<br /><br /><br />364 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Romans 13—“the powers that be are ordained of God”—but both<br />submitted equally to God’s guiding hand. To Medcalf this resulted in a<br />democracy more radical than any dreamed of in the 1960s. In the ow<br />of secular time, Medcalf was a nebbish from Connecticut, mixing<br />beakers full of arti cial avors. But in Christian time, he was a herald,<br />blowing his shofar back to 1947, calling the key men of our Christian<br />nation’s history to battle.<br /><br /><br />After the rally in Danbury, I joined a group of about twenty pas-<br />tors, activists, and a few wives for a victory dinner. It really had felt<br />victorious; Pastor Rusty had worked the crowd i nto a high fever of<br />hallelujahs, and then all the pastors had joined hands in a circle at the<br />center for round robin prayer. The Reverend Jim Lilly, a white<br />hip-hop Assemblies of God preacher from a nearby town, led the<br />way, his neck heavy with cruciform bl ing and bobbing up and down<br />to the beat of his own exhortations, his smooth tenor gone gravelly:<br />“YES, LORD! PULL IT DOWN, LORD! PULL DOWN THAT<br />LIE!” He meant history as told absent the anointing of God. “KING<br />OF GLORY! COME IN! KING OF GLORY! MIGHTY IN BAT-<br />TLE! MANIFEST YOURSELF ON THIS LAND!” A pastor from a<br />Latino fundamentalist church in the Midwest grabbed the reins:<br />“Lord God, we pray for the restoration of the land!” Reverend Lilly<br />was overtaken by a t of what’s called holy laughter, a gift of the spirit<br />that’s like speaking in tongues. Medcalf got busy on his shofar, and<br />the whole crowd decided to march seven times around the founda-<br />tion, just like Jericho, singing in unison an old gospel hymn, “Power in<br />the Blood,” There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-workin’ pow’r, in—the—prec—<br />ious—blood —of —the—lamb!<br />Everyone was feel ing pretty high at the di nner later that eve ning.<br />They dragged four long tables into a giant square on the second oor<br />of the restaurant, an Italian joint that doubled as the kind of comedy<br />club that brings in sidekicks from Howard Stern’s radio show. I sat<br />between the Patriot Pastor, still in costume, and Bill Federer, an ac-<br />cidental place of honor that seemed to make some of the event’s local<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 365<br />eld organizers a little jealous. Across the table sat Pastor Rusty and<br />Reverend Flip. Flip threw his tie over his shoulder and leaned back in<br />his chair. The waitress, a handsome middle- aged woman named<br />Anna, looked crushed when she learned that the whole group, out of<br />respect for the nondrinkers among them, would be sticking to iced<br />tea. Several of the men asked her where her accent was from. She<br />said she was Polish- Rus sian, but when she came around to Flip, he<br />said, “Hola, Señorita,” and asked her where she was from. Anna<br />rolled her eyes. We ordered, most of us the bu et. Anna came back<br />to re ll our iced tea. She tried to tally the orders, which the pastors<br />kept changing. “You ordered the bu et? ” she asked Flip.<br />Flip took a toothpick from his mouth, xed her with a stare. He<br />owned the room. “I think I already had a bu et,” he said, pronounc-<br />ing the word as Bu y. “Now I’d like to try an Anna.”<br />Nobody missed a beat. The party went on.<br />I thought, Here’s where it would be easiest to unravel the whole<br />tapestry of fundamentalism. To dismiss it as rank hypocrisy, a bunch<br />of bullies cloaking their lusts, for sex or money or power, in piety.<br />But to do so would be to ignore the anointing. Flip doesn’t command<br />whatever small following he has in the movement because he’s a good<br />man but because he’s God’s chosen man. “God uses who he chooses,”<br />a North Carolina preacher once told me, the essence of John Calvin’s<br />dense theology of election boiled down to an advertising slogan. Flip<br />obeyed orders, and that made him a key man.<br />“Obedience is my greatest weapon,” Coach Dave told me after<br />dinner. He took o the ball cap he’d had made, blue black with a red<br />cross, and ran his hand through his white hair. In obedience, he said,<br />he found strength. Coach Dave was built like an old can of beans,<br />squat and solid with muscle except for a bulge in the middle. I imag-<br />ined him lecturing his former football team. Obedience, he contin-<br />ued, was a gift from God; but you needed the Holy Spirit to open it.<br />“The Holy Spirit is like the software,” he said.<br />He tried to explain. “We may need another 9/11,” he declared<br />slowly, a teacher reciting a lesson, “to bring about a full spiritual re-<br />vival.” He must have seen my surprise. “Now, you don’t get that, do<br /><br /><br />366 | JEFF SHARLET<br />you? ” I admitted that I did not. Well, he continued, history’s horrors<br />are just like God spanking a child. “ That’s a perfect example of where<br />you need the software to understand what I just said, or else you’re<br />gonna say, ‘Coach, you mean he spanks us by killing people?’ You<br />need the software. What’s the software? Well, it’s history. You gotta<br />understand what history is. It’s collective. Are you getting the soft-<br />ware? Collective. History.”<br />Now I got it. Fundamentalism blends the concept of a God in-<br />volved in our daily a airs with the Enlightenment’s rationalization of<br />that deity as a broader, more vague “common good.” The fundamen-<br />talist God is rst and foremost all-powerful, his divinity de ned by<br />his authority; the “common good” is all-inclusive, its legitimacy es-<br />tablished by democracy. Fundamentalism, as a theology, as a “world-<br />view,” wants both: the power and the legitimacy, divine will and<br />democracy, one and the same. As theology, such confusion may be<br />resolved with resort to miracles, but as politics, it is broken logic, a<br />story that defeats itself. Why, then, does it prosper?<br />Secularists like to point out that many of the Founders were not,<br />in fact, Christian but rather Deists or downright unbelievers. Funda-<br />mentalists respond by trotting out the Founders’ most pious words,<br />of which there are many (Franklin proposi ng prayer at the Constitu-<br />tional Convention; Washington thanki ng God for His direct hand in<br />revolutionary victories; etc., etc.). Secularists shoot back with the<br />founders’ Enlightenment writings and note their dependence on John<br />Locke; fundamentalists respond that Locke helped South Caroli na<br />write a baldly theocratic constitution. Round and round it goes, a<br />lucrative subgenre of popular history, “founder porn,” that results in<br />spasms of righteous ecstasy—secular as well as fundamentalist—<br />over the mystical authority of origins.<br />But fundamentalist historians can also point, accurately, to the<br />subsequent instances of overlooked religious in uence in American<br />history: not just Sergeant York’s Christian trigger nger and Stone-<br />wall Jackson’s tragic example, but also the religious roots of aboli-<br />tionism, the divine justi cation used to convert or kill Native<br />Americans, the violent pietism of presidents: not just Bush and<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 367<br />Reagan, but also Lincoln and McKinley and Wilson and even sweet<br />Jimmy Carter, the rst born- agai n president, led by God and Zbig-<br />niew Brzezinski to funnel anticommunist dollars to El Salvador, the<br />most murderous regime in the hemi sphere. Historians enmeshed in<br />the assumptions of Enlightenment rationalism naturally seek rational<br />explanations for events, and in so doing tend to deemphasize the<br />religious beliefs of historical actors. Fundamentalist historians go<br />straight to those beliefs; as a result, they really do see a history<br />missed by most secular observers.<br />Fundamentalism embraces its mythic past; secular liberalism de-<br />clares its own myth simply a matter of record. Liberalism proposes<br />in place of nationalist epic a “demysti ed ” state based on reason. And<br />yet the imagination with which we, the levelheaded masses, view the<br />“demigod” Founders and the Civil War, the Good Fight agai nst Hit-<br />ler, and the American tragedy of Vietnam (the tragedy is always ours<br />alone) is almost as deeply mystical as that of fundamentalism’s, thick-<br />ened by “destiny,” blind to all that which does not square with the<br />story we tell ourselves about who we are as a nation. There are oc-<br />casional attempts at recovering these near-invisible pieces, “people’s<br />history” and national apologies and HBO specials about embarrassing<br />missteps in the march of progress, usually related to race and inevita-<br />bly restored to forward motion by the courage of some “key man” of<br />liberalism, Jackie Robinson at rst base, 1947, Rosa Parks on the<br />bus, 1955, Muhammad Ali refusing to ght in Vietnam, 1966. But<br />such interventions are not so di erent from fundamentalism’s addi-<br />tion of Martin Luther King to its pantheon; they are attempts to<br />convince ourselves that the big We of nationalism was better than the<br />little people of history actually were.<br />Likewise our attempts to shunt fundamentalists into the outer<br />circle of kooks and haters and losers and left- behinds, undemocratic<br />dimwits who do not understand the story the rest of us have agreed<br />to live by. Our refusal to recognize the theocratic strand running<br />throughout American history is as self-deceivi ng as fundamentalism’s<br />insistence that the United States was created a Christian nation.<br />The actual past no more serves the secular imagination than that<br /><br /><br />368 | JEFF SHARLET<br />of fundamental ism. While fundamental ism projects providence onto<br />the past, secularism seeks to account for history with tools of ratio-<br />nalism. But history can not be demysti ed; it is dependent as much on<br />mystery—that which we recognize we cannot know about the<br />past—as on the rationally understood. If we believe the aphorisms of<br />literature—“The past isn’t dead, it’s not even past,” and “The past is<br />a foreign country” —then we believe in mystic history. We are not so<br />secular after all. Fundamentalism knows this, and that is why, for<br />now at least, those we’ve m isunderstood as the dupes, the saps, and<br />the fools—the believers —prefer its reenchanted past, alive to the<br />dark magic with which all histories are constructed, to the demysti-<br /> ed state’s blind certainty that it is history’s victor.<br />Most of us outside the in uence of fundamentalism ask, when<br />confronted with its burgeoning power, “What do these people want?<br />What are they going to do? ” But the more relevant question is, “What<br />have they already done? ” Consider the accomplishments of the move-<br />ment, its populist and its elite branches combined: foreign policy on<br />a near-constant footing of Manichean urgency for the last hundred<br />years; “free markets” imprinted on the American mind as some sort<br />of natural law; a manic-depressive sexuality that puzzles both prudes<br />and liberti nes throughout the rest of the world; and a schizophrenic<br />sense of democracy as founded on individual rights and yet indebted<br />to a higher authority that trumps personal liberties.<br />Run that through Coach’s software; look through a glass darkly.<br />This, then, is what American fundamentalism understands democ-<br />racy to mean, this is what it understands as “ freedom of religion”: the<br />freedom to conform, to submit, to become one with the “ biblical<br />worldview,” the “theocentric” parable, the story that swallows all<br />others like a black hole. Within it time loops around, past becomes<br />present, and the future is nothing but a matter of return. Not to the<br />Garden but to the May ower, the Constitution, or Stonewall Jackson’s<br />last battle, moments of American purity, glimpses of the Camelot<br />that haunts every nationalist imagination, fundamentalist or secular.<br />History is God’s love, its meanings revealed to his key men, presi-<br />dents and generals, preachers and a schlemiel with a shofar. As for<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 369<br />the rest of us, we are simply not part of the dream. Fundamentalism<br />is writi ng us out of history.<br />“What is to be done?” the unbelievers ask. Oh, it’s si mple: think<br />up a better story, a c reation myth that is as rich as American funda-<br />mentalism’s. We cannot just counter fundamentalism’s key men<br />with our own; nor can we simply switch out the celebratory model<br />of history for an entirely grim chronicle of horrors. Rather, we must<br />continue to revisit the history of American fundamentalism—which<br />is to say, we must reconsider the story we speak of when we say<br />“A mer ica.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-60390434679956471862009-07-12T02:58:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:59:56.032-07:00III The Popular Front - The Romance of American Fundamentalism<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">The Romance of American Fundamentalism<br /></span></div><br />After New Life banished Pastor Ted from his pulpit in late 2006,<br />the press wondered if this glaring evidence of hypoc-<br />risy would spell the end of fundamentalism’s broad appeal. The<br />press had asked the same question many times during the televange-<br />list sex scandals of the 1980s and ’90s —Jimmy Swaggart’s motel<br />rendezvous, Jim Bakker’s hush money for his secretary—and, long<br />forgotten now, another decade earlier when Time reported that two<br />students at the evangelist Billy James Hargis’s American Christian<br />Col lege, married by Reverend Hargis himself, had discovered on<br />their honeymoon that neither was a virgin; Hargis not only had mar-<br />ried the pai r but had de owered both husband and wife.1 Hargis’s<br />reputation never recovered, but his cause survived; so did the col-<br />lege vice president to whom the students confessed, David Noebel,<br />who used Hargis’s downfall to consolidate his own power. Today,<br />Noebel is president of Summit Ministries, headquartered just west<br />of New Life, where he oversees the education of 2,000 students a<br />year and the distribution of fundamentalist homeschooling materials<br />to thousands more. His most in uential book is The Homosexual Revo-<br />lution.<br />Scandal does not destroy American fundamentalism. Rather, l ike<br />a natural re that purges the forest of overgrowth, it makes the move-<br />ment stronger. And ercer. Such was the case in the aftermath of the<br />Hargis a air, when Noebel managed to convince millions that Har-<br />gis’s fall was not an occasion for a reconsideration of fundamentalism’s<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 323<br />concept of sexuality but rather a call to action. Noebel’s subsequent<br />antigay manifesto, The Homosexual Revolution, helped make sex one of<br />the movement’s most potent political causes.<br />Somethi ng sim ilar happened after Ted Haggard’s disgrace. The<br />Reverend Mel White, a former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell who has<br />since come out and now leads Soulforce, a pro-gay evangelical minis-<br />try, told me that Ted’s ordeal would serve only to drive more gay<br />fundamentalists into the closet. Nobody would want to face the pub-<br />lic sham ing Ted endured, while the fact that fundamentalist leaders<br />embraced Ted and promised to cure hi m would o er queer funda-<br />mentalists hope that they, too, could be made pure again by one of<br />the many “ex-gay” ministries that have arisen in recent years.<br />Following the end of the Cold War, during which anticommu-<br />nism was the organizing principle of American fundamentalism, sex<br />provided a new battleground. No longer would fundamentalism pre-<br />sent itself primarily as against an enemy, godless communism; after<br />the fall of the Berlin Wall, fundamentalism looked to sex as the new<br />frontier of its empire, and “purity” as the prom ise of its campaign.<br />Sexual purity also lends to the movement a radical tenor that’s thrill-<br />ing to young believers eager to distance themselves from the clumsy<br />politics of the old Christian Right. It is, one vi rgin told me, a rebel-<br />lion against materialism, consumerism, and “the idea that anything<br />can be bought and sold.” It is a spiritual war against the world, against<br />“sensuality.” This elevation of sexual purity—especially for men—as<br />a way of understanding yourself and your place in the world is new.<br />It’s also very old. First-century Christians took the idea so seriously<br />that many left their wives for “ house monasteries,” threatening the<br />very structure of the family. The early church responded by institu-<br />tionalizing virginity through a priestly caste set apart from the world,<br />a condition that continues to this day within Roman Catholicism.<br />Now, though, the Protestants of American fundamentalism are re-<br />claiming that system, making every young man and woman within<br />their sphere of in uence part of a new virgin army.<br />Real sex is no more endangered by such an ambition than the<br />political corruption—or, for that matter, radicalism—that Abram<br /><br /><br />324 | JEFF SHARLET<br />once dreamed he could abolish through the patient construction of a<br />voluntary theocracy. The chaste spiritual warriors of populist funda-<br />mentalism continue to experience all the same desires as the rest of<br />us, a fact they readily admit. The sexual purity they’re pursui ng isn’t<br />so much a static condition as a perpetual transformation, Charles<br />Finney’s revival machine rebuilt withi n one’s own soul. Purity lends<br />to populist fundamentalism the intensity of Jonathan Edwards’s Great<br />Awakening, the intimacy of Abram’s prayer cel ls. To be pure is to be<br />elite, or so chaste believers, looking at a world su used with sex,<br />may easily tell themselves.<br /><br /><br />Matt Dunbar was a short and ruddy- faced twenty- three- year- old,<br />a little shy, a man who kept his hands in his pockets. He was also<br />funny and smart and possessed of excellent conversational timing. He<br />had grown a small brown soul patch beneath his lower lip, and his<br />voice was smooth. When he talked to you, he held your eyes as if he<br />trusted you, which he did; Du nbar, wary of the world since he was a<br />boy, had decided to trust people. He studied religion through an an-<br />thropological lens as a graduate student at New York University,<br />where his friends called him Mr. Dunbar. He said in a matter-of-fact<br />manner that women liked him, and it was true. Mr. Dunbar was a<br />gentleman.<br />He lived in Brooklyn with his childhood best friend, Robin<br />Power. Sometimes Robin had a thick brown beard, and sometimes<br />he shaved himself clean and dyed his hair black and spiked it up, like<br />Johnny Rotten. He usual ly worked a gutterpunk look—a ratty, lay-<br />ered look of sweatshirts and buttons advertising obscure bands.<br />Sometimes, he wore eyeliner. He taught ninth-grade English at Mar-<br />tin Luther King High, in Manhattan, and he liked the fact that some<br />of his students thought he was gay.<br />Robin, like Dunbar, was a conservative Christian, but he wasn’t<br />allowed to talk about that at school. He was permitted to talk about<br />“values,” though, and to him, loving everyone, even gay men—his<br />students called them “ faggots,” but he considered them sinners, and<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 325<br />to him this was the di erence between secularism and Christianity—<br />was a value he wanted to share with his pupils. Once, he went to<br />school in drag to teach them a lesson, about judging a soul based on<br />appearances.<br />When I rst met Dunbar and Robin at their church—“The Jour-<br />ney,” a fundamentalist congregation of actors, dancers, and young<br />professionals who want to know actors and dancers—Robin got<br />most of the glances, the smiles, the cute little laughs that said, “Call<br />me.” But Robin was engaged. Dunbar didn’t do badly himself; the<br />women who knew Robin was taken gravitated toward him, and dur-<br />ing the time I knew him, he met a church girl, an actress named<br />Anna, blonde, broad-faced, and beautiful, quiet like Dunbar. He<br />thought she was a godly woman. He had been “waiting” for a long<br />time—“saving himself,” as an older generation might have said—and<br />now he had someone to wait for.<br />Dunbar and Robin grew up together in Visal ia, California, a hard<br />little agricultural town far from the coast. They were not part of the<br />megachurch nation; Dunbar was raised by a single mother, who took<br />him to a traditional Episcopal church, and Robin’s parents and sib-<br />lings were all musicians. They had their own little recording studio,<br />and they rocked, more Ramones than Partridge Family. Dunbar al-<br />ways wanted to be in thei r band. He and Robin went to the same<br />conservative, Christian college and moved to Manhattan afterward<br />with two other childhood friends, also Christians. They came be-<br />cause one of the men had a girlfriend here—the two are now<br />engaged—but the city has proven to be a sort of calling. “New York,”<br />said Du nbar, “is a great town for virgins.”<br />We were sitting on a bench after church, watching Sunday tra c<br />stream up and down Broadway. “Cleavage everywhere,” noted Dun-<br />bar. He had learned to look without desire. Robin held up his right<br />hand. Wrapped around his wrist, in a gure eight, was a black plastic<br />bracelet. “This,” he said, “is a ‘masturband.’ ” One of their friends at<br />college came up with the idea. As long as you stayed pure—resisted<br />masturbating—you could wear your masturband. Give in, and o it<br />went, like a scarlet letter in reverse. No masturband? Then no one<br /><br /><br />326 | JEFF SHARLET<br />wanted to shake your hand. “It started with just four of us,” said<br />Dunbar. “Then there were, l ike, twenty guys wearing them. And<br />gi rls too. The more people that wore them, the more people knew,<br />the more reason you had to refrain.” Dunbar even told his mother.<br />He lasted the longest. “ Eight and a half months,” he said. I notice he’s<br />not wearing one now. He wasn’t embarrassed. Sexuality, he believed,<br />is not a private matter.<br />The other night, he said, he’s out drinking, with “secular friends.”<br />They were al l a little drunk—Dunbar was fond of Bible verses about<br />wine—and they’re tal king about sex.<br />“Dunbar,” volunteers one of the secular guys, “is a virgin.” The<br />jerk is laughing. “By choice,” he says.<br />Huge mistake. All female eyes leave the man who wants their at-<br />tention and rotate Dunbar’s way. “Four girls surround me. They<br />want to know everything.”<br />Is he embarrassed? (“I’d only be embarrassed if I was trying to get<br />some.”) Is oral okay? Anal? ( He doesn’t l ike to be “legalistic,” caught<br />up in rules, and he has friends who enjoyed anal sex and still called<br />themselves virgins, but—no.) Has he always been a virgin? (“Uh,<br />yeah. That’s what ‘virgin’ means.”) Why? (Jesus, “romance,” it all<br />blends together . . . )<br />One of Dunbar’s room mates had recently found himself in the<br />same situation: young man from the sticks in a big-city bar, sur-<br />rounded by women who genuinely want to know if anything can<br />tempt him. They were tempting him, of course, which was the<br />point. He was in trouble. One woman gave hi m the kind of look usu-<br />ally used only by teen movie seductresses. “Sex,” she said, “ is just<br />something I do.” Lucifer himself could not have whispered more<br />sweetly. And then—the material world ruined it all. Satan’s angel<br />took a chip o a plate of cheesy nachos. “ Like eating,” she said. “ It’s<br />easy.”<br />Dunbar’s virgin comrade took a big breath of virtue and girded<br />his loins for continuing chastity. “ The whole sex/nacho thing?” Dun-<br />bar said. “It just doesn’t make sense to a virgin.”<br />Food, after all, belongs to the mundane real m. Sex, on the other<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 327<br />hand, is supernatural. Dunbar read the biblical Song of Solomon—lovers<br />rhapsodizing over each other, he obsessed with her breasts l ike “two<br />fawns” and her “rounded thighs like jewels”; she with his legs like “ala-<br />baster columns” and his lips l ike lilies, “dripping sweet- smelling<br />myrrh”—not as erotica but as a metaphor for the love between man<br />and God. Sex that is just two bodies in motion struck him as empty,<br />even if love was involved. Every encounter must be a kind of three-<br />some: man, wife, and God. Without Him, it’s just fucking.<br /><br /><br />“Suckers for romance,” Leslee Unruh, the founder of Abstinence<br />Clearing house, described men like Dunbar and Robin. She meant it<br />as praise, since she considers them the vanguard of a desexed revolu-<br />tion. “We want authenticity,” she told me. “We want what’s real.” It’s<br />“safe sex,” she explained, that requires faith, since there is “no evi-<br />dence” that safe sex “works.” Unruh is a youthful-looking grand-<br />mother from South Dakota wit h a big mouth, literally—outlined<br />in re-engine red for public performances—and dyed blonde hair.<br />Si nce her early days as one of the most fervent antiabortion crusad-<br />ers of the 1980s, she’s made over her politics, too. She still ghts<br />abortion—she was one of the activists behind South Dakota’s ban<br />on all abortions, revoked by referendum in 2006 —but she’s discov-<br />ered that she c an win more converts by going to the root cause, sex<br />itself.<br />So, in 1997, she launched Abstinence Cleari ng house in Sioux<br />Falls. She’d been a self-declared “chastity” educator since the early<br />1980s, but it wasn’t until the Cl inton years that American fundamen-<br />talism fully discovered sex as a weapon in the culture wars. In 1994,<br />a Southern Baptist celibacy program, True Love Waits, brought<br />200,000 virgi nity pledge cards to Washington, D.C. In 2004, the<br />group brought a million to the Olympics in Athens. Now, Abstinence<br />Clearing house acts as a nexus for activists and as their voice in Wash-<br />ington, claiming as “ friends” a slew of o cials with unrecognizable<br />names, abstinence crusaders in the Departments of Health and Hu-<br />man Services, Education, and even State. Family members li ke<br /><br /><br />328 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Brownback and Representative Joe Pitts used their Value Action<br />Teams to insert chastity into foreign a airs.<br />Uganda, which following the collapse of Siad Barre’s Somalia<br />became the focus of the Family’s interests in the African Horn, has<br />been the most tragic victim of this projection of American sexual<br />anxieties. Following implementation of one of the continent’s only<br />successful anti-AIDS program, President Yoweri Museveni, the<br />Family’s key man in Africa, came under pressure from the United<br />States to emphasize abstinence instead of condoms. Congressman<br />Pitts wrote that pressure into law, redirecting millions of dollars<br />from e ective sex-ed programs to projects such as Unruh’s. This<br />pressure achieved the desired result: an evangelical revival in Uganda,<br />and a stigmatization of condoms and those who use them so severe<br />that some college campuses held condom bon res. Meanwhile, Ugan-<br />dan souls may be more “pure,” but their bodies are su ering; follow-<br />ing the American intervention, the Ugandan AIDS rate, once<br />dropping, ne arly doubled. T his fact goes unmentione d by activists<br />such as Unruh and politicians such as Pitts, who continue to promote<br />Uganda as an abstinence success story.<br />The actual fate of Ugandan citizens was never their concern.<br />Pitts, in the Family tradition, may have had geopolitics on the mind:<br />with Ethiopia limping along following decades of civil war and dicta-<br />torship and Somalia veeri ng toward a Taliban state, tiny, Anglophone<br />Uganda has become an American wedge into Islamic Africa. But the<br />American uses and abuses of Uganda are still more cynical: Christian<br />Africa has been appropriated for a story with which American funda-<br />mentalists argue for domestic policy, a parable detached from Afri-<br />can realities, preached for the bene t of Americans. In Unruh’s<br />telling, the ostensible “success” of Uganda’s abstinence program jus-<br />ti es the miseducation of American schoolchildren.<br />Under the Bush administration, Abstinence Clearing house helped<br />the federal Centers for Disease Control establish a “gold standard ” for<br />abstinence-only sex education programs. A student in one of these<br />programs may hear that sex outside of marriage can lead to suicide;<br />that condoms don’t prevent AIDS; that abortion often results in<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 329<br />sterility; and that men’s and women’s gender roles are biologically<br />determined as “ knights” and “princesses,” which, if violated, cause<br />depression. And the Clearing house continues to lobby for more,<br />bringing politicians together with activists at conferences intended to<br />win support not just for abstinence curricula but for the privatization<br />of public schooling altogether: vouchers for Christian academies,<br />“character” charter schools such as those promoted by the Fam ily’s<br />Eileen Bakke (who has become a Family prayer partner of Janet Mu-<br />seveni, Uganda’s rst lady), and homeschooling. The Clearing house<br />hosts “purity balls” and abstinence teas. It sponsors “power vi rgins”<br />arou nd the country, good-looking young men and women who work<br />the fundamentalist lecture circuit spreading the no- sex gospel. It also<br />operates as a one-stop shop for abstinence paraphernalia, much of it<br />fundamentalist despite the group’s allegedly secular orientation: 14-<br />karat gold “What Would Jesus Do” rings; books such as Single Chris-<br />tian Female; ready- to- go absti nence PowerPoint pre sen ta tions. There’s<br />abstinence chewing gum, abstinence stickers in batches of 1,0 00,<br />abstinence balloons in batches of 5,000. There’s even an abstinence<br />pencil.<br />Unruh considered herself broad-m inded enough for the demands<br />of an ostensibly secular society. If religion is to be kept out of the<br />schools, she said, “shame and conscience are important tools” in its<br />place. But “romance,” more than anything else, guided her under-<br />standing of sexuality. This is what she found romantic: a father who<br />gives his teenage daughter a purity ring only to take it back on her<br />wedding day and hand it over to his daughter’s new husband, her vir-<br />gi nity passed from man to man like a baton.<br />Therein lies the paradox of the purity movement. It’s at once an<br />attempt to transcend cultural in uences through the timelessness of<br />scripture, and a pai nfully speci c response to the sexual revolution.<br />Populist fundamentalism grew into a political force in almost direct<br />proportion to the mainstreaming (and subsequent weakening) of<br />various sexual liberation movements, and as it did so it led the elites<br />of American fundamentalism, so closely aligned with the secular<br />conservatives as to be nearly invisible, out of the establishment<br /><br /><br />330 | JEFF SHARLET<br />co alition. Absent the sexual revolution, populist fundamentalism<br />might still thrive only in enclaves, and elite fundamentalism sti ll<br />coexist easily with secular politics, as it did during the early days of<br />the Cold War.<br />But the sexual revolution hardly invented sex or the anxieties it<br />results in when mixed with conservative Christianity. The com-<br />plaints of today’s purity crusaders echo those of Abram’s men in the<br />1930s when they resolved to meet in all-male cells rather than sub-<br />mit to the authority of churches in which women comprised the clear<br />majority, if not the leadership. “Christianity, as it currently exists,<br />has done some terrible things to men,” writes John Eldredge, the<br />author of a best- selling manhood guide called Wild at Heart. He<br />thinks that church life in America has made Christian men weak.<br />Women who are frustrated with their girlie-man husbands and boy-<br />friends seize power, and the men retreat to the safe haven of porn<br />instead of whipping the ladies back into line. What women really<br />want, he says, is to “be fought for.” And men, he claims, are “ hard-<br />wired” by God for battle; Jesus wants them to be warriors in the vein<br />of Braveheart and Gladiator.<br />Wild at Heart and Eldredge’s other best sellers, The Journey of De-<br />sire and The Sacred Romance (as well as “ eld manual” workbooks that<br />can be purchased separately), address sexual “purity” as part of the<br />fabric of Christian manliness. Other books, such as God’s Gift to<br />Women: Discovering the Lost Greatness of Ma sculinity and Every Man’s Bat-<br />tle, by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker, make sex their central<br />concern. Every Man’s Battle has become almost a genre unto itself,<br />with dozens of Every Man spi n- o titles: Every Young Man’s Battle, Every<br />Woman’s Battle, Every Man’s Challenge, Preparing Your Son For Every Man’s<br />Battle, and on and on. The Every Man premise is that men are sexual<br />beasts, so sinful by nature that, without God in their lives, they don’t<br />stand a chance of resisting temptation. But the temptation they most<br />fear is not the age-old seduction of the esh but the image of the<br />esh. They are not opposed to modernity, but to postmodernity and<br />what they perceive as its free- oating symbols. The books are anti-<br />media manifestos, warning that we are prey to any media we look at;<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 331<br />images, they preach, are forever. One author confesses to being<br />plagued by a picture of the sitcom actress Suzanne Somers, nude in a<br />“surging mountain stream,” that he had seen twe nty ye ar s earlier. For<br />the authors, the solution is simply not to look, an anti-iconographic<br />stance that belongs more to the Old Testament than the New.<br />I rst heard about the Every Man books from a volunteer at Dun-<br />bar and Robin’s church, a twenty- ve-year-old man who said he’d<br />slept with forty women before he “revirgi ned” with the help of the<br />series. I was more surprised to learn that Robin had been reading<br />Every Man’s Battle in preparation for marriage, and planned to lead a<br />Bible study for men in the fall using Every Man as exegetical reading.<br />Robin seemed too smart for these books. But then, what he wanted<br />from them was not subtle thinking but clarity, a law of black and<br />white.<br />“You’re sexual ly pure,” write Arterburn and Stoeker, “when sex-<br />ual grati cation only comes from your wife . . . [and] sexual purity<br />has the same de nition whether you’re married or single.” To achieve<br />this, they argue, men must go to a ki nd of war. “Your life is under a<br />withering barrage of machine-gun sexuality that rakes the landscape<br />mercilessly,” they report in their volume for single men. They en-<br />courage maki ng lists of “areas of weakness” and seem particularly<br />concerned with shorts: “nubile sweat- soaked girls in tight nylon<br />shorts,” “female joggers in tight nylon shorts,” “young mothers in<br />shorts,” and “volleyball shorts,” which are apparently so erotic that<br />they require no bodies to ll them. To avoid these temptations, men<br />must train themselves to “bounce” their eyes o female curves. Older<br />men can help, too; the coauthors urge young men to nd mentors<br />who will check in with them by phone about their masturbation fan-<br />tasies. This may be embarrassing for a young Christian, so the au-<br />thors suggest a code. Homosexuality is relegated to a short afterword<br />in which they list the number of Exodus International, a ministry<br />dedicated to “ freeing” people from homosexual desires.<br />What’s really strange about all this is that it works. Not in the<br />sense of de-eroticizing the world but in the sense of reinvigorating<br />American fundamental ism with a new generation of foot soldiers,<br /><br /><br />332 | JEFF SHARLET<br />men and women who respond to a hypersexual consumer culture by<br />making sex, in its absence, a top priority of their religion. “Absti-<br />nence,” Du nbar told me, “is countercultural,” a kind of rebellion, he<br />said, against materialism, consumerism, and “the idea that anything<br />can be bought and sold.”<br />Every Man operates a hotl ine, 1–800 NEW LIFE, for men who’ve<br />“threatened” their relationships with women through their use of<br />pornography. When I called to confess that reading about tight- shorted<br />women in Every Young Man’s Battle struck me as weirdly erotic, a pro-<br />fessional masturbation counselor named Jason told me that I needed<br />to be more like a woman. Women, he said, don’t like porn. In fact, if<br />I asked any woman I knew, she’d tell me that for her to “use” porn,<br />she’d have to fall out of love. Women are just that pure.<br />What if I became so womanly that I developed a desire for men?<br />I asked. Perfectly normal, he assured me; many men passed through<br />that dark corridor on their way to purity. The end result, he prom-<br />ised, would be total man hood. To get there, Jason suggested I sign up<br />for a ve-day, $1,800 Every Man’s Battle workshop (held monthly in<br />hotels around the country), in which I would take classes on shame,<br />“ false intimacy,” and “temptation cycles” and work with other “men<br />of purity” toward “recovery.”<br />Every Man’s Battle also o ered a two-day “outpatient program” for<br />wome n, Every Heart Restored, to help them deal with their husbands’<br />depravity, which is another one of the paradoxes of the purity move-<br />ment. Men’s sexuality, according to the movement, is on the one<br />hand all-encompassing, capable of eroticizing nearly anything, and at<br />the same time so simple and dumb that the best they can hope for is<br />to adjust themselves to their wives’ slow simmer. Women, mean-<br />while, are i nherently purer than men and thus simpler, and yet their<br />sexuality is complicated and subtle, a story in which husband and<br />wife must play carefully scripted roles. Books such as Wait For Me, a<br />tie-i n to a Christian pop hit of the same name by the Christian singer<br />Rebecca St. James, What Every Woman Wants in a Man, by Diana Ha-<br />gee, and W hen God Writes Your Love Story, by Eric and Leslie Ludy—not<br />to mention the numerous Every Woman’s Battle titles and countless<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 333<br />Christian romance novels —peddle a soft-focus vision of female de-<br />sire drawn not from scripture but from fairy tales. Wait For Me opens<br />with the claim that God has planted in every man and woman a<br />dream in which women long to be rescued by a “champion warrior”<br />with a “ double-edged sword” from the towers i n which they’ve been<br />imprisoned by the “Dark Lord.” All women, writes Lisa Bevere in<br />Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry: Why Women Lose When They Give<br />In, “long to be rescued by a knight in shining armor.”<br />And yet Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry goes deeper than chiv-<br />alrous clichés. Bevere’s description of the love of Christ isn’t lled<br />with the inadvertent innuendos that plague the men’s guides ( “true<br />manhood,” prom ises one Christian manhood guide, gets “polished by<br />the hand of God”) but rather an eroticism, studiously gentle and<br />mysterious, that is revealing of chastity’s allure. Ri ng on the scene<br />from the Gospel of John in which Jesus refuses to condemn an adul-<br />teress, Bevere writes, “At rst, He is not willi ng to look at her or to<br />answer them. He bends down and writes in the dust. The nger of<br />God etches in dust letters that are not recorded for our knowledge.”<br />Jesus, Bevere supposes, is thinking about man’s rst love, Eve. “Per-<br />haps, in His memory He is seei ng another who attempted to cover<br />her nakedness in a Garden long ago.” She imagines every woman in<br />the crowd waiting to hear what Jesus will say; she hears in Christ’s<br />rebuke to the men a secret message for women. “Let He who is with-<br />out sin cast the rst stone,” Jesus preaches. For most people, the<br />story ends there, but Bevere li ngers until the frustrated accusers have<br />left, and there is just Jesus and this naked woman, and nally “she<br />lifts her head and meets His gaze,” and Jesus tells her He does not<br />condemn her, and tells her to go, and sin no more.<br />It’s a beautiful scene, depicting Jesus as romantic hero. And it re-<br />ally is “countercultural,” an alternative not just to the sexualized<br />world but also to the unforgivi ng fundamentalists of generations<br />past. But then Bevere writes—and this is really the crux of the<br />whole virgi nity movement—that the problem arose not because the<br />woman sinned, which goes without saying for Christian conservatives,<br />but because “a treacherous enemy has dragged the women of this<br /><br /><br />334 | JEFF SHARLET<br />generation”—us, now—“naked and guilty before a holy God.”<br />God forgives; that’s why “revirgining” is always an option. “The<br />enemy” is the problem. Who is it? In the Gospel of John, the enemy,<br />as Bevere puts it, were Jews, those whom the gospel writer called<br />“the children of Satan”; but in the Gospel of Lisa Bevere, the enemy<br />is more abstract and more powerful. It’s sex. Not “real sex,” the kind<br />she enjoys with her husband, but everything else—every fantasy that<br />doesn’t conform to wedded bliss, every thrill that doesn’t belong in<br />church, the lust that spoils the romance of Christianity.<br /><br /><br />Before Robin became fully Christian—back when he cared as<br />much about his guitar as he did about God—he dated a non-Christian<br />gi rl. His voice grew husky as he remembered: “There were times,<br />when we were naked, and my tongue was inside her, and she’s whis-<br />pering for me to go further.” Dunbar stared at him. He knew this<br />story, but he didn’t mind hearing it again. It wasn’t prurient for<br />them; it was bonding. “There were times,” continued Robin, “when I<br />had to ask myself, ‘What do I believe?’ ”<br />“But you weren’t alone with her,” Dunbar said.<br />“No.”<br />Dunbar turned to me. “He had responsibility to us.” His brothers.<br />But Robin kept letti ng them down. After high school, he stayed at<br />home for a year while Dunbar and the rest of his friends went on to<br />college. He joined a Christian punk band, Straight Forward. He<br />started slipping. At college, he continued to sl ide. He began dating a<br />woman only recently born again, still immature in her faith. She was<br />thrilled by Robin’s attention; he was a man known to be on re for<br />God. The girl—a “ baby Christian,” in the lingo —wanted to get closer<br />to that warmth. She did so the only way she knew how. “A blow job,”<br />said Robin.<br />It had been one thing to go down on his girlfriend when he wasn’t<br />sure what he believed. It was another to let a girlfriend go down on<br />him after he’d committed himself to God. But then, he said, that’s<br />how it works all too often when a man looks like he’s devoted to<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 335<br />Jesus. “It becomes more about giving than receiving”—an i mplicit<br />recognition of the sexism he knew permeated the best intentions.<br />Even among Christians, the girls “will go down on you, but you don’t<br />have to go down on them.” The experience, he said, broke his heart.<br />What it did for the girl who sucked him o and got dumped for her<br />impurity, he couldn’t even imagine.<br />That sum mer, Robin and his ancée were to marry back home in<br />Visalia, where Dunbar would be his best man. Power felt like he had<br />waited a long time. He didn’t want to marry for sex, so he’d re-<br />strained himself from proposing until it did not even enter his mind.<br />Soon he would experience his reward. A “sexual payo ,” according<br />to the authors of Every Man’s Battle, that wi ll “explode o any known<br />scale.”<br />Like the fundamentalists of old, today’s Christian conservatives<br />de ne themselves as apart from the world, and yet the modern move-<br />ment aims to enjoy its fruits. To the biblical austerity of chastity, they<br />add the promise of mind- blowing sex, using the very terms of the<br />sexual revolution they rally against. And that’s just the beginning.<br />Sexual regulation is a means, not an end. To believers, the movement<br />o ers a vision grander even than the loveliness of a virgin: a fairy tale<br />in which every man will be a spiritual warrior, a knight in the service<br />of the king of kings, promised the hand and the heart and, yes, the<br />sexual services of a “ lady.” That is the erotic dream of American fun-<br />damentalism: a restoration of chivalry, a cleansi ng of impurity, a na-<br />tion without sin, an empire of the personal as political.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-70633626775150032572009-07-12T02:57:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:58:35.187-07:00III The Popular Front - What Everybody Wants<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">What Everybody Wants<br /></span></div><br />They are drawn as if by magnetic forces; they speak of Colo-<br />rado Springs, home to the greatest concentration of fundamen-<br />talist activist groups in American history, both as a last stand and as a<br />kind of utopia in the making. They say it is new and unique and pre-<br />cious, embattled by enemies, and also that it is “traditional,” a blue-<br />print for what everybody wants, and envied by enem ies. The city<br />itself is unspectacular, a grid of wide western avenues lined with<br />squat, gray and beige box buildi ngs, only a handful of them taller<br />than a dozen stories. Local cynics point out that if you put Colorado<br />Spri ngs on a truck and carted it to Nebraska, it would make Omaha<br />look lovely. But the architecture is not what draws Christians looking<br />for clean living. The mountains help, but there are other mountain<br />towns. What Colorado Springs o ers, nally, is a story.<br />Lori Rose is from Minnesota and heard rumors about t his holy<br />city when she lived on an air force base near Washington, D.C. Her<br />husband isn’t a Christian, refuses Jesus, looks at things he shouldn’t;<br />but she has fou nd a church to attend without him. “I want a rela-<br />tionship like my relationship wit h God,” she says. “It’s almost like<br />an a air.” Ron Poelst ra came from Los Angeles. Now he volunteers<br />at his church, selling his pastor’s books on “free-market theology”<br />after services. His two teenage boys stand behind him, d isplay<br />models for the bene ts of faith. They fold their hands in front of<br />themselves and both smile whenever Ron glances t heir way. L.A.,<br />Ron says, would have eaten them up: the gangs. Adam Taylor grew<br /><br /><br />292 | JEFF SHARLET<br />up in Westchester County, an heir to the Bergdorf Goodman for-<br />tune, the son of artists and writers, a pri nce of the city. He lived<br />the life of Augustine, and it nearly killed him. He came to Colo-<br />rado Spri ngs to learn the Bible the hard way, each word a nail<br />pounded into sin. Now he’s a pastor, and the Bible doesn’t hurt<br />anymore.1<br />The story they found in Colorado Springs is about newness: new<br />houses, new roads, new stores. And about oldness, imagined: what is<br />thought to be the traditional way of life, families as they were after<br />the world wars, before the culture wars, which is to say, during the<br />brief, Cold War moment when America was a nation of single-<br />breadwi nner nuclear families.<br />Crime, of course, looms over this story. Not the actual facts of<br />it—the burglary rate in and arou nd Colorado Springs exceeds that<br />in New York City and Los Angeles—but the idea of it: a faith in the<br />absence of crime. And of politics, too: Colorado Springs’ funda-<br />mentalists believe they live i n a politics-free zone, a carved-out<br />space for civility and for like-mi nded dedication to commonsense<br />pri nciples. Even pollution plays a part: Christian conservatives<br />there believe that they breathe cleaner air, despite the smog that<br />collects against the foothills of the Rockies and the cyanide, from a<br />century of mining, that is leaching into the aquifers and mountain<br />streams.<br />But those are facts, and Colorado Springs is a city of faith. A<br />shining city at the foot of a hill. No one there believes it is perfect.<br />And no one is so self-centered as to claim the perfection of Colorado<br />Spri ngs as his or her ambition. The shared vision is more modest, and<br />more grandiose. It is a city of people who have ed the cities, people<br />who have fought a spiritual war for the ground they are on, for an<br />interior frontier on which they have built new temples to the Lord.<br />From these temples they will retake their forsaken promised lands,<br />remake them in the likeness of a dream. T hey call the dream Chris-<br />tian, but in its particulars it is American, populated by cowboys and<br />Indians, monsters and prayer warriors to slay them, and ladies to<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 293<br />reward the warriors with chaste kisses. Colorado Springs is a city of<br />moral fabulousness. It is a city of fables.<br /><br /><br />The city’s mightiest megachurch crests silver and blue atop a gentle<br />slope of pale yel low prairie grass on the outskirts of town. Silver and<br />blue, as it happens, are the air force colors. New Life Church was<br />built far north of town in part so it could be seen from the Air Force<br />Academy. New Life wanted that kind of character in its congrega-<br />tion.2<br />Church is insu cient to describe the complex. There is a perma-<br />nent structure called the Tent, which regularly lls with hundreds or<br />thousands of teens and twentysomethings for New Life’s various<br />youth gatherings. Next to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray<br />box capable of seating 1,50 0; this juts out i nto the new sanctuary,<br />capacity 7,500, already too small. At the complex’s western edge is<br />the World Prayer Center, which looks l ike a great iron wedge driven<br />into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however,<br />isn’t a physical structure but the pyramid of authority into which it<br />orders its roughly 12,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups,<br />whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who<br />answer to district, who used to answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New<br />Life’s founder.<br />In late 2006, Pastor Ted achieved a notoriety that surpassed the<br />fame he had won as a preacher, when a middle- aged prostitute named<br />Mike Jones played for the press answering machine messages from a<br />regular client of his, “Art,” whom Jones had just learned was Ted<br />Haggard, one of the most powerful fundamentalist leaders in the<br />country. That wasn’t all. It turned out that Pastor Ted had been using<br />methamphetamine—speed—as well. At rst, Ted denied every-<br />thing; but there was too much evidence, and he soon resigned. Since<br />then, Ted, married and a father, has been “healed,” according to a<br />panel of fundamentalist leaders charged with his cure; he is now “100<br />percent heterosexual.” But he is not back in his pulpit. And yet the<br /><br /><br />294 | JEFF SHARLET<br />pulpit itself—the fundamentalist experiment known as New Life—<br />endures. Pastor Ted’s ideas survive, even prosper, for Ted’s downfall<br />was taken by many within his congregation as evidence of the great<br />works he had been doing. So great, that is, that the Enemy, Satan<br />himself, targeted Ted above all others. The two antigay initiatives on<br />the 2006 bal lot, which Jones hoped to defeat by outing Ted’s hypoc-<br />risy, passed with greater support than their backers—including<br />Ted—had imagined possible.<br />When I met him, Pastor Ted was a handsome forty-eight-year-<br />old Indianan transplanted to Colorado, a casual man most comfort-<br />able in denim. He insisted he was an ordinary man, in an ordinary<br />church, in an ordinary city. On the other hand, he also wanted me to<br />know that he talked to George W. Bush in a conference call every<br />Monday. He liked to say that his only disagreement with the presi-<br />dent was automotive; Bush drove a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted<br />loved his Chevy. At the time, Pastor Ted presided over the National<br />Association of Evangelicals, whose 45,000 churches and 30 m illion<br />believers make up the nation’s most powerful religious lobbying<br />group. The NAE had come a long way since its creation in 1942,<br />when its leaders had to ask Abram for help in making contact with<br />U.S. government o cials. Under Pastor Ted, the NAE was a force<br />unto itself, no longer in need of favors from anyone.<br />Under Ted, the NAE made its headquarters in Colorado Springs.<br />Some believers call the city the “Wheaton of the West,” in honor of<br />Wheaton, Illinois, once the headquarters of a more genteel Christian<br />conservatism. Others call Colorado Springs the “evangelical Vati-<br />can,” a nickname that says much both about the city and about the<br />easeful orthodoxy with which the movement now views itself. Cer-<br />tainly the gathering there has no parallel in this country, not in<br />Lynchburg, Virginia, nor Tulsa, nor Pasadena, nor Orlando, nor any<br />other city that has aspired to be the capital of evangelical America.<br />Fundamentalist activist groups and parachurch m inistries in Colo-<br />rado Spri ngs number in the hundreds. Groups migrate there and<br />multiply. They produce missionary guides, “ family resources,” school<br />curricula, nancial advice, athletic traini ng programs, Bibles for<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 295<br />every occasion. The city is home to Young Life, to the Navigators, to<br />Compassion International; to Every Home for Christ and Global<br />Ethnic Missions (Youth Ablaze). Most prominent among the minis-<br />tries is Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Fam ily, whose radio pro-<br />grams (the most extensive in the world, religious or secular),<br />magazines, videos, and books reach more than 20 0 m illion people<br />worldwide. It was Pastor Ted who persuaded Dobson to relocate<br />from Pasadena to Colorado Springs, where his operation is so vast it<br />earned its own zip code.<br />Whereas Dobson plays the part of national scold, promising to<br />destroy pol iticians who defy the Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guided<br />those politicians through the ritual of acquiescence required to save<br />face. He did n’t strut, like Dobson; he gushed. When Bush invited<br />him to the Oval O ce to discuss policy with seven other chieftains<br />of the Christian Right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his congrega-<br />tion with the story via e-mail. “Well, on Monday I was in the World<br />Prayer Center”—New Life’s high-tech, twenty-four-hour-a-day prayer<br />chapel—“and my cell phone rang.” It was a presidential aide. The<br />president, said Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signi ng of the<br />Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Pastor Ted was on a plane the next<br />morning and in the president’s o ce the following afternoon. “It was<br />incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that<br />Dobson wasn’t there.3<br />Moreover, it was Pastor Ted, not Dobson—a child psychologist<br />with a Ph.D.—who proved most comfortable in the secular atmo-<br />sphere of Washington politics, where he was as likely to lobby for his<br />views on international trade negotiations as on sexual morality. In Ted,<br />the popul ist and elite strands of American fundamentalism had merged.<br />At the height of his power, no pastor in America held more sway over<br />the political direction of fundamentalism than did Pastor Ted, and no<br />church more than New Life. It was by no means the largest mega-<br />church, but New Life was a crucible for the ideas that inspire the move-<br />ment. Fundamentalism is as much an intellectual as an emotional<br />movement; and what Pastor Ted built in Colorado Springs was not just<br />a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them.<br /><br /><br />296 | JEFF SHARLET<br />New Life began with a prophecy. In November 1984, a mission-<br />ary friend of Pastor Ted’s named Danny Ost—known for his gifts of<br />discernment—asked Ted to pull over on a bend of Highway 83 as<br />they were drivi ng, somewhat aimlessly, in the open spaces north of<br />the city. Pastor Ted—then twenty-eight, married, father to Christy<br />and Marc us, given to fasting and oddly pragmatic visions (he believes<br />he foresaw Internet prayer networks before the Internet existed) —<br />had been wondering why God had called him to this bleak city, then<br />known as a “pastor’s graveyard.” Ost got out of the car and squinted.<br />“This,” said the missionary, “this will be your church. Build <br />here.”4<br />So Pastor Ted did. First, he started a church in his basement. The<br />pulpit was three ve-gallon buckets stacked one atop the other, and<br />the pews were lawn chairs. A man who lived in a trailer came round<br />if he remembered it was Sunday and played guitar. Another man got<br />the Spirit and lled a ve-gallon garden sprayer with cooking oil and<br />began anointing nearby intersections, then streets and buildings all<br />over town. Pastor Ted told his ock to focus their prayers on houses<br />with For Sale signs so that more Christians would come and join<br />them.<br />He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado<br />Spri ngs was a small city split between the air force and the New Age,<br />and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted<br />soon began upsetting the devil ’s plans. He staked out gay bars, invit-<br />whole congregation pitched itself<br />ing men to come to his church;5 his <br />into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of pub-<br />lic buildings. One day, while Pastor Ted was working i n his garage, a<br />woman who said she’d been sent by a witches’ coven tried to stab<br />him with a ve-inch knife she pulled from a leg sheath; Pastor Ted<br />wrestled the blade out of her hand. He let that story get around. He<br />called the evil forces that dom inated Colorado Springs —and every<br />other metropolitan area in the country— Control.<br />Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday<br />night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you,<br />Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be<br />unrelenting pandemonium in this city.” No kidding! Pastor Ted<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 297<br />hadn’t come to Colorado Springs for his health; he had come to wage<br />“spiritual war.”6<br />He moved the church to a strip mal l. There was a bar, a liquor<br />store, New Life Church, a massage parlor. His congregation spilled<br />out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He<br />strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed <br />JESUS.7<br />He assigned everyone in the church names, taken from the phone<br />book, they were to pray for. He sent teams to pray in front of the<br />homes of supposed witches—in one month, ten out of fteen of his<br />targets put their <br />houses on the market.8 His congregation “prayer-<br />walked” nearly every street of the city.<br />Population boomed, crime dipped; Pastor Ted bel ieved that New<br />Life helped chase the bad out of town. His church grew so fast there<br />were times when no one knew how many members to claim. So they<br />stopped tal king about “members.” There was just New Life. “Are you<br />New Life?” a person might ask. New Life moved into some corporate<br />o ce space. Soon it bought the land that had been prophesied,<br />thirty- ve acres, and began to build what Pastor Ted promised would<br />be a new Jerusalem.<br /><br /><br />JERUSALEM, COLORADO. To the east is sky, empty land, Kan-<br />sas. To the west, Pike’s Peak, 14,110 feet above sea level, king of a<br />jagged skyline of the lower forty-eight states’ tallest mountains. The<br />old city core of Colorado Spri ngs withers into irrelevance thirteen<br />miles south; New Life leads the charge north, toward fusion with<br />Denver and Boulder and a future of one giant front-range suburb, a<br />muddy wave of big-box stores and beige tract houses eddying along<br />roads so new they had yet to be added to the gas- station map I bought.<br />Sunday mornings, tra c backs up from the church half a mile in all<br />four directions. When parents nally pull into a space am id the thou-<br />sands of cars packed into a gray ocean of lot, their kids tumble out<br />and dash toward the ve silver pillars of the entrance to New Life,<br />eager to slide across the expanse of tiled oor, run circles around The<br />Defender, a massive bronze of a glowering angel, its muscular wings in<br /><br /><br />298 | JEFF SHARLET<br />ful l ex, and bound up the stairs to “Fort Victory,” whose rooms are<br />designed to look like an Old West cavalry outpost where soldiers<br />once battled real live Indians, back when Colorado still had Indians<br />to conquer and convert.<br />There were no kids in Fort Victory on my rst Sunday at New<br />Life, the rst Sunday of the year. It was a special day, “ Dedication,”<br />the spiritual anoi nting of the church’s new sanctuary. Metallic and<br />modern, laced with steel girders and catwalks, the sanctuary is built<br />like two great satellite dishes clapped belly to belly. It was designed,<br />I was told, to “ beam” prayer across the land. (New Lifers always turn<br />to metaphors to describe their church and their city, between which<br />they make little distinction. It is like a “training camp” in that its<br />young men and women go forth on “missions.” It is like a “ bomb” in<br />that it “explodes,” “gifting” the rest of us with its fallout: revival,<br />which is to say, “values,” which is to say, “ the Word,” which is to say,<br />as so many there do, “a better way of l ife.”)<br />At the heart of the sanctuary rises a four- sided stage, on either<br />side of which are two giant cross- shaped swimming pools with me-<br />chanical covers. Above the stage a great assemblage of machinery<br />hovers, wrapped in six massive video screens. A woman near me<br />compared it to Ezekiel’s vision of a metallic angel, circular and “full<br />of eyes all around.” When the lights went down and the screens<br />buzzed to life, the sanctuary turned a soft, silvery blue. Then the six<br />screens lled with faces of tribute, paying homage to New Life and<br />Pastor Ted: a senator, a congressman, Colorado’s lieutenant gover-<br />nor, the city’s mayor, and Tony Perkins, Dobson’s enforcer on Capi-<br />tol Hill; denominational chieftai ns, such as Thomas E. Trask, “general<br />superintendent” of the 51 million worldwide members of the Assem-<br />blies of God; and a succession of minor nobles from the nation’s<br />megachurches. These I know now by numbers: Church of the High-<br />lands, in Alabama—pastored by a New Life alumnus —that has<br />grown from 34 to 2,500 souls i n the last four years; a New Life<br />look- alike in Biddeford, Maine, that has multiplied to 5,000; Rocky<br />Mountain Calvary, the New Life neighbor that has swelled in a de-<br />cade from a handful to 6,000.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 299<br />Kyle Fisk, then the executive administrator of the National As-<br />sociation of Evangelicals, had guided me to a seat i n the front row,<br />which meant I had to crane my neck back ninety degrees to follow<br />the video screen above me. The worship band, dressed in black, goa-<br />teed or soul-patched or shag-headed, lay at on their backs, staring<br />straight up. To my right sat a m iddle- aged woman in a oor-length<br />ower-pri nt dress with shades of orange and brown. Her hair was<br />thick, chestnut, wavy, her face big-boned and raw and beautiful, her<br />eyelids electric blue with eyeshadow when she closed them in prayer,<br />her eyes dark and wide as she tilted her head back to watch the trib-<br />utes roll past. Her mouth hung open.<br />The band stood. A skinny, chinless man with a big, tenor voice,<br />Ross Parsley, directed the musicians and the crowd, leading us and<br />them and the choi r as the guitarists kicked on the fuzz and the drum-<br />mer pounded the music toward arena-rock frenzy. Two fog machines<br />on each side of the stage lled the sanctuary with white clouds. Pod-<br />shaped projectors cast a light show across the ceiling, giant spinning<br />white snow akes and cartwheel ing yel low owers and a shimmering<br />blue water-e ect. “Prepare the way!” shouted Worship Pastor Ross.<br />“Prepare the way! The King is com ing!” A man in a suit in the east-<br />ern front row shuddered and shot his right foot forward and fell into<br />a kickboxi ng match with the air, keeping time with the rhythm.<br />Across the stage teens began leaping straight up, a dance that swept<br />across the arena: kids hopped; old men hopped; middle- aged women<br />hopped. Spinners wheeled out from the ranks and danced like der-<br />vishes around the stage. The dark-eyed woman next to me swayed,<br />her hips lling one side of her dress, then the other, her hands wav-<br />ing like sea grass. The light pods dilated and blasted the sanctuary<br />with red. Worship Pastor Ross roared, “Let the King of Glory enter in!”<br />The woman beside me screamed, fell down to her knees, rocked<br />back and forth until her arms slid out before her and her forehead<br />tapped the carpeted oor. The guitars thickened the fuzz, and ushers<br />rushed through the crowds throwing out rainbow glow strings, glow<br />necklaces, glow crowns. The arena went dark, and 8,0 00 New Lifers<br />danced with their glow strings, like a giant bowl of rainbow sorbet.<br /><br /><br />300 | JEFF SHARLET<br />White light ared, blinding us, and then disappeared, leaving us<br />in darkness again. Fog pumped out double-time. We would have<br />been lost had it not been for the blue video glow of the six big screens.<br />All heads tilted upward again. Watching the screens, we moved in<br />slow motion through prairie grass. A voiceover announced, “The<br />heart of God, beating in our hearts.” Then the music and video<br />quickened as the camera rose to meet the new sanctuary. The woman<br />beside me gasped. Images spliced and jumped over one another:<br />thousands of New Lifers holding candles, and dozens skydiving, and<br />Pastor Ted, Bible in hand, blond head thrust forward above the Good<br />Book, smiling, nger-shaking, singing, more smiling, lling half of<br />his face with perfect white teeth. His nose is snubby and his brow<br />overhung, lending him an impishness crucial to the smile’s success;<br />without that edge he would look not happy but stoned. Now Pastor<br />Ted, wearing a pu y ski jacket in red, white, and blue, took us to the<br />suburban ranch house where he stayed on his fateful visit to Colorado<br />Spri ngs; then on to another suburban ranch house, nearly indistin-<br />guishable, where he made plans for the church. Then to a long suc-<br />cession of one- story corporate o ce spaces and strip-mall storefronts,<br />the “sanctuaries” Pastor Ted rented as his congregation grew, each<br />identical to the last but for the greater oor space.<br />The lights came up. Pastor Ted, now before us in the esh, intro-<br />duced a guest speaker, one of his mentors, Jack Hayford, founding<br />pastor of the ten-thousand- strong Church On The Way, in Van Nuys,<br />California. Hayford is a legend among evangelicals, one of the men<br />responsible for the revival that made Bible- believing churches—what<br />the rest of the world refers to as fundamentalist—safe for suburbia.<br />He is a white-haired, baldi ng, ea gle- beaked man, a preacher of the<br />old school, which is to say that he delivers his sermons with an actual<br />Bible in hand. (Pastor Ted uses a PalmPilot.) Pastor Hayford wanted<br />to “wedge” an idea in our minds. The idea was “Order.” The illustra-<br />tion was the Book of Revelation’s description of four creatures sur-<br />rounding Christ’s throne. “The rst . . . was like a l ion, the second<br />was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a<br />ying angel.” Look! said Pastor Hayford, his voice sonorous and<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 301<br />digni ed. “All wonderful, all angels.” The angels were merely di er-<br />ent from one another. Just, he said, as we have di erent “ethnicities.”<br />And just as we have, in politics, a “ hierarchy.” And just as we have, in<br />business, “di erent responsibi lities,” employer and employees. An-<br />gels, ethnicities, hierarchy, employers and employees—each cate-<br />gory must follow a natural order.<br />Next came Pastor Larry Stockstill, from Ted’s old church in Ba-<br />ton Rouge, presenting yet another variation of preacher. He took the<br />stage with his wi fe, Melanie, who wore a pink pantsuit. Pastor Larry<br />wore a brown pinstripe suit over a striped brown shirt and a golden<br />tie. His voice was Louisiana; the word pulpit came out as pull- peet.<br />“There’s a world,” he preached, pacing across the stage. “I call it<br />the Underworld.” The Underworld, he explained, is similar to what<br />he sees when he goes skin diving; only instead of strange shes, there<br />are strange people. Too many churches, he said, focus on the Over-<br />world. “That’s where the nice people are. The successful people. But<br />the Lord said, ‘I’m not sending you to the Overworld, I’m sending<br />you to the Underworld.’ Where the creatures are. The critters! The<br />people who are out of it. People you see in Colorado Springs, even.<br />You got an Underworld of people. The tattoo c rowd, the people into<br />drugs, the people into sex. You nd ’em . . . in the Underworld.”<br /><br /><br />After church, I crossed the parking lot to the World Prayer Cen-<br />ter, where I watched prayers scroll over two giant at- screen televi-<br />sions while a young man played piano. The Prayer Center—a joint<br />e ort of several fundamentalist organizations but located at and pre-<br />sided over by New Life—houses a bookstore as well as “corporate”<br />prayer room s, personal “prayer closets,” hotel rooms, and the head-<br />quarters of Global Harvest, a ministry dedicated to “spiritual war-<br />fare.” The atrium is a soaring hall adorned with the ags of the<br />nations and guarded by another bronze warrior angel, a scowling,<br />bearded type with massive biceps and, again, a sword. The angel’s<br />pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid<br />out i n muted red, white, and blue- black stone. Each point directs the<br /><br /><br />302 | JEFF SHARLET<br />eye to a contemporary pai nting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular<br />men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in<br />various states of u ndress. My favorite is The Vessel, by Thomas Black-<br />shear, a major gure in the evangelical-art world. Here in the World<br />Prayer Center is a print of The Vessel, a tall, vertical panel of two<br />nude, ample- breasted, white female angels pouring an urn of honey<br />onto the shaved head of a naked, olive- skinned man below. The<br />honey drips down over his slabl ike pecs and his six-pack abs and over-<br />ows the eponymous vessel, which he holds in front of his crotch,<br />oozing over the edges and spilling down yet another level, presumably<br />onto our heads, drenching us in golden, godly love. Part of what<br />makes Blackshear’s work so compelling is precisely its unabashed<br />eroticism; it aims to turn you on, and then to turn that passion to-<br />ward Jesus.<br />In the chapel are several computer term inals, where one can sign<br />on to the World Prayer Team and enter a prayer. Eventually one’s<br />words will scroll across the large at screens, as well as across screens<br />around the world, which as many as 70,000 other Prayer Team<br />members are watching in their homes or churches at any moment.<br />Prayers range from the mundane (real-estate deals and job situations<br />demand frequent attention) to the urgent, such as this prayer request<br />from “Rachel ” of Colorado: Danielle. 15 months old. Temperature just shy<br />of 105 degrees. Lethargic. Won’t eat.<br />Or this one from “Lauralee” of Vermont: If you never pray for any-<br />one else, please choose this one! I’m in such pain I think I’m going to die; pray<br />a healing MIRACLE for me for kidney problems (disease? failure?); I’m so<br />alone; no insurance!<br />One might be tempted to see an implicit class pol itics in that last<br />point, but to join the Prayer Team one must promise to refrain from<br />explicitly political prayer. That is reserved for the professionals. The<br />Prayer Team screen, whether viewed at the center or on a monitor at<br />home, is split between “Individual Focus Requests,” such as the<br />above, and “Worldwide Focus” requests, which are composed by the<br />sta of the World Prayer Center. Sometimes these are domestic —USA:<br />Pray for the Arlington Group, pastors working with White house to renew Mar-<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 303<br />riage Amendm. Pray for appts. of new justices. Pray for Pastor meetings with<br />Amb. of Israel, and President Bush. Lord, let them speak only your words,<br />represent YOU! Bless! But more often they are international—N. KO-<br />REA: Pray God will crush demonic stronghold and communist regime of Kim<br />Jung Il.<br />The Iraqis come up often, particularly with regard to their con-<br />version: Despite the e orts of the news media, believing soldiers and others<br />testify to the e ective preaching of the Gospel, and the openness of so many to<br />hear of Jesus. Pray for continued success!<br />Another prayer request puts numbers to that news: 900,000 Bi-<br />bles in the Arabic language distributed by Christians in Iraq. And one ex-<br />plicitly aligns the quest for democ racy in Iraq with the quest for more<br />Christians in Iraq: May the people stand for their rights, and open to the<br />idea of making choices, such as studying the Bible.<br />The most common Iraq-related prayer requests, however, are<br />strategic in the most worldly sense, such as this one: Baghdad—God,<br />press back the enemy.<br />Behi nd the piano player in the main hall of the World Prayer<br />Center, the front range of the Rocky Mountains stretched across a<br />oor-to-ceil ing, semicircular window with a 270-degree view. Above<br />him, a globe fteen feet in diameter rotated on a metal spindle. He<br />played songs that sounded familiar but unnamable, the sou ndtrack to<br />a sentimental movie I hadn’t seen. When he took a break, I sat with<br />him in the front row. His name was Jayson Tice, he was twenty- ve,<br />and he worked at Red Lobster. He wasn’t from Colorado Springs,<br />and he knew very few people who were. He’d grown up i n San Di-<br />ego, and once, he said, he’d been good enough to play Division I col-<br />lege basketball. But he broke his ankle, and because the marines<br />prom ised him court time, he joined. There didn’t turn out to be<br />much basketbal l for hi m in the marines, just what he described as<br />“making bombs and missiles,” so he didn’t re-up. Instead, he decided<br />to start over in a new city. His mother had moved to Colorado<br />Springs, so Jayson and his girlfriend did, too; his mother left after<br />three months, but Jayson had already decided that God, not his<br />mother, had called hi m to the mountai ns. He discovered that a lot of<br /><br /><br />304 | JEFF SHARLET<br />the people he knew, working as waiters or store clerks or at one of<br />the air force bases, felt the same way.<br />“Colorado Springs,” Jayson told me, “this particular city, this one<br />city, is a battleground ”—he paused—“between good and evil. This<br />is spi ritual Gettysburg.” Why here? I asked. He thought about it and<br />rephrased his answer. “This place is just a watering hole for Chris-<br />tians. For God’s people. Something extra powerful’s about to pour<br />out of this city. I hope not to stay i n Colorado Springs, because I want<br />to spread what’s going on here. I’m a warrior, dude. I’m a warrior for<br />God. Colorado Springs is my trai ning ground.”<br /><br /><br />“There was,” Pastor Ted said one afternoon in his o ce, “a signi -<br />cant in uence exerted on the [2004] election by Colorado Springs.”<br />He was meeting with me and another reporter, an Australian from a<br /> nancial paper.<br />“You mean,” the Australian asked, “almost like a force going out<br />from Colorado Springs?”<br />A force—Pastor Ted liked that. He smiled and o ered other ex-<br />amples. His favorite was the Ukraine, where, he claimed, a sister<br />church to New Life had led the protests that helped sweep a pro-<br />Western candidate into power. Kiev is, in fact, home to Europe’s<br />largest evangelical church, and over the last dozen years the Ukrai-<br />nian evangelical population has grown more than tenfold, from<br />250,0 00 to 3 mill ion. According to Ted, it was this army of Chris-<br />tian capitalists that took to the streets. “They’re pro–free markets,<br />they’re pro –private property,” he said. “ That’s what evangel ical<br />stands for.”<br />In Pastor Ted’s book Dog Training, Fly Fishing, & Sharing Christ in<br />the 21st Century, he desc ribes the church he thinks Christians want. “ I<br />want my nances in order, my kids trained, and my wife to love life.<br />I want good friends who are a delight and who provide protection for<br />my fam ily and me should li fe become di cult someday . . . I don’t<br />want surprises, scandals, or secrets . . . I want stability and, at the<br />same time, steady, forward movement. I want the church to help me<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 305<br />live life well, not exhaust me with endless ‘worthwhile’ projects.” By<br />worthwhile projects Ted means new bui lding funds and soup kitchens<br />alike. It’s not that he opposes these; it’s just that he is sick of hearing<br />about them and believes that other Christians are, too. He knows<br />that for Christianity to prosper in the free market, it needs more<br />than “moral values”; it needs customer value.8<br />New Lifers, Pastor Ted writes with evident pride, “ like the ben-<br />e ts, risks, and maybe above all, the excitement of a free-market so-<br />ciety.” They like the stimulation of a new brand. “Have you ever<br />switched your toothpaste brand, just for the fun of it?” Pastor Ted<br />asks. Adm it it, he insists. All the way home, you felt a “secret little<br />thrill,” as excited questions ran through your mind: “Will it make my<br />teeth whiter? My breath fresher? ” This is the sensation Ted wants<br />pastors to bring to the Christian experience. He believes it is time<br />“to harness the forces of free-market capitalism in our ministry.”<br />Once a pastor does that, his ock can start organizing itself accord-<br />ing to each member’s abilities and tastes.9<br />Which brings us back to “Order.” Key to the growth of evangeli-<br />calism during the last twenty years has been a social structure of cell<br />groups that allows churches to grow endlessly while maintaining or-<br />thodoxy in their ranks. Outsiders to evangelicalism often note the<br />seemingly anonymous experience of the megachurch and conclude<br />that such institutions prosper because they make so few demands,<br />moral or intellectual, on their congregants. But a strong network of<br />cells makes megachurch membership more all-encompassing than<br />traditional Sunday congregations. That was why Abram developed<br />the system for businessmen in 1935; he dreamed of a faith that would<br />address every aspect of a believer’s life, all the time. But Abram<br />didn’t imagine that such commitment could extend beyond his small<br />circle of elites. Ordinary people, he thought, had too little power<br />over the circumstances of their days—or too many distractions in<br />the form of a consumer society’s pleasures—to make such an inti-<br />mate involvement feasible. He may have been correct at the time.10<br />Pastor Ted’s i nsight was that the very growth of consumer soci-<br />ety itself had conditioned ordinary Americans to perceive themselves<br /><br /><br />306 | JEFF SHARLET<br />as decision makers. “Free-market globalization” has made Americans<br />so free, he concluded, that a populist cell-group system could func-<br />tion just like a market. One of Pastor Ted’s favorite books is Thomas<br />Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which he made required read-<br />ing for the hundreds of pastors under Ted’s spiritual authority across<br />the country. From Friedman, Pastor Ted says he learned that every-<br />thing, including spirituality, can be understood as a commodity.<br />Friedman may have been the transmitter, but it was elite funda-<br />mentalism’s belief that international capitalism is at the heart of the<br />Gospel that migrated from Abram’s cells into the seminaries and ser-<br />mons of populist fundamentalism. Ted grew up in a faith that began<br />and ended with moral control, but as he grew in power, so did the<br />complexity of his beliefs. Unregulated trade, he concluded, was the<br />key to achieving both worldly and spi ritual freedom. His real chal-<br />lenge became one not of policing individual morality but of persuad-<br />ing his working- and middle-class congregation that the deregulated<br />market that had driven so many of them to Colorado Springs in<br />search of fresh starts was both bibl ical and in thei r interest. The for-<br />mer was the easier task, as the Fam ily has long known; followers<br />with an uneven knowledge of scripture but a reverence for authority<br />are easily sold the idea of “biblical capitalism.” That’s all it takes for<br />the Family, since such laissez-faire economics really are in the inter-<br />est of its elite members, but Ted faced a more di cult challenge,<br />since the economics of globalization have not so much increased<br />competition and opportunity as squashed it, ushering in an age of<br />unpre ce dented corporate consolidation. T he cell-group system, which<br />functions much like consumer capitalism—o ering the semblance of<br />“choice” even as it forecloses genuine alternatives —proved the per-<br />fect means of persuasion.<br />The irony of both Ted’s and Abram’s embrace of the cell group,<br />an idea originally borrowed from communist revolutionaries, is that<br />both settled on the “truth” of laissez-faire economics by obsessing<br />over communism. In 1935, Abram saw communism as a menace<br />within his city; forty years later, Ted had to go looking for it. His rst<br />job in professional Christendom was smuggling Bibles into Eastern<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 307<br />Europe—a project with which the Fam ily had been involved since<br />the 1950s. As it had been to Abram, it was important to Ted not to<br />confuse America with Jesus, so instead of declaring the U.S. holier<br />than other nations, he blended Jesus’ teachings with American politi-<br />cal aims and then convinced himself that the hybrid was objective<br />truth, much l ike what Abram had once called the universal inevitable,<br />much like Sam Brownback’s conviction that free trade is foretold in<br />the Bible. The pro cess of economic globalization, Ted believed, is a<br />vehicle for the spread of Christ’s power.<br />By that, he meant Protestantism; Catholics, he believed, “con-<br />stantly look back. And the nations dominated by Catholicism look<br />back. They don’t tend to create our greatest entrepreneurs, inven-<br />tors, research and development. Typically, Catholic nations aren’t<br />shooti ng people into space. Protestantism, though, always looks to<br />the future. A typical kid raised in Protestantism dreams about the<br />future. A typical kid raised in Catholicism values and relishes the<br />past, the saints, the history. That is one of the changes that is happen-<br />ing in America. In America the descendants of the Protestants, the<br />Puritan descendants, we want to create a better future, and our<br />speakers say that sort of thi ng.”<br />For Ted, though, the battle boils down to evangelicals versus Is-<br />lam. “My fear,” he said, “is that my children will grow up in an Is-<br />lamic state.” That is why he believed spiritual war requires a virile,<br />worldly counterpart. “I teach a strong ideology of the use of power,”<br />he said, “of mil itary might as a public service.” He was for preemptive<br />war, because he believed the Bible’s exhortations against sin set for us<br />a preemptive paradigm, and he was for ferocious war, because “the<br />Bible’s bloody. There’s a lot about blood.”<br /><br /><br />Linda Burton, the woman next to whom I’d sat at the dedication<br />of New Life’s sanctuary, told me she’d been “speci cally called by<br />God” to Colorado Springs seventeen years ago. Linda was not a<br />Christian back then. She had married young and moved west from<br />Bu alo so her husband could work for Martin Marietta, a defense<br /><br /><br />308 | JEFF SHARLET<br />contractor. He wouldn’t let her go to church because he was deter-<br />mined to forget his Baptist past, and she was a Catholic, which he<br />considered simply “Roman” and bad. That was ne with Li nda.<br />Church didn’t feel m iddle-class. Linda never did nd out what<br />middle-class felt like, though, because her marriage fell apart. When<br />her husband left, he took their two daughters with him. After that<br />there were many men, and there was an abortion. With the man who<br />beat her she bore a son, whom she named Aaron Michael, the “strong<br />right hand of God.” Linda took the baby and ed to Colorado Springs,<br />which she remembered from a vacation she and her ex-husband had<br />taken with their daughters. They’d ridden one of those Old West<br />trains almost to the top of Pike’s Peak, a climb of more than two<br />miles. In her mind she drew a straight line from Bu alo to this point<br />high up in the Rockies, and there, for the rst time, she had felt close<br />to God. Years later, when she had to run, she went where she re-<br />membered God had been.<br />At rst, she and Aaron Michael lived in a shelter, and she got a<br />job at a Popeye’s Fried Chicken. She worked every hour they gave<br />her, but the money she made was barely enough to eat on. She took<br />another job, waiting tables at the best hotel in town, and another at<br />Red Lobster. She was worki ng seventy hours a week, and she was<br />still broke. A friend at the hotel invited her to New Li fe. She didn’t<br />want to be arou nd all these people weeping and babbling and shak-<br />ing. But then Pastor Ted started talking, and he sounded so ordinary<br />he made Linda feel ordinary, too: middle-class.<br />One day, Pastor Ted preached that all she had to do was pray for<br />what she needed, as speci cally as possible. She went right home and<br />got down on her knees in the kitchen and said, Lord, I need $2,500.<br />The next day, a check came. Her wages had been docked for child-<br />care payments to her ex- husband, but he had waived the payments<br />without telling her. The check was for $2,495. She wept.<br />Now Linda is an insurance agent, and she and Aaron Michael live<br />in a suburban home. Aaron Michael is sixteen. He wears his black<br />hair long, and his denim jacket is dirty. He likes violent movies—<br />“anything with blood,” he tells me—and video games and fantasy<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 309<br />novels. But he’s a good church boy: he loves most of all his youth cell,<br />and readi ng the Bible, and talking with his mom about how to be a<br />fol lower of Christ. His mom has grown strong in her faith. She hears<br />voices, but they do not disturb her. “The Holy Spirit is a gentleman,”<br />she told me over a basket of cinnamon mu ns she’d baked for my<br />visit, still warm from the oven. Sitting across from me in her kitchen,<br />she closed her big brown eyes and shushed herself. “I’m listening,”<br />she said quietly.<br />“To the TV? ” I asked. In the next room, Aaron Michael was<br />watching an action movie; the house was lled with the sound of<br />explosions.<br />“No,” said Linda. “ To my Spirit.” She opened her eyes and ex-<br />plained the pro cess she had undergone to reach her re ned state. She<br />called it spiritual restoration. Anyone can do it, she promised, “even a<br />gay activist.” Linda had seen with her own eyes the sex demons that<br />make homosexuals rebel against God, and she said they were grue-<br />some; but she did not name them, for she would not “give demons<br />glory.” They are all the same, she said. “It’s rad icalism.”<br />She reached across the table and touched my hand. “I have to tell<br />you, the spiritual battle is very real.” We are surrounded by demons,<br />she explained, reciting the lessons she had learned in her small-group<br />studies at New Life. The demons are cold; they need bodies; they<br />long to come inside. People let them in in two di erent ways. One is<br />to be sinned against. “Molested,” suggested Linda. The other is to be<br />in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could walk by a sin—a<br />murder, a homosexual act—and a demon might leap onto your bones.<br />Cities, therefore, are especially dangerous.<br /><br /><br />It is not so much the large populations, with their uneasy mi x of<br />sinner and saved, that make Christian conservatives leery of urban<br />areas. Even downtown Colorado Springs, presumably as godly as any<br />big town in America, struck the New Lifers I met as unclean. When-<br />ever I asked where to eat, they would warn me away from down-<br />town’s neat little grid of cafés and ethnic joints. Stick to Academy,<br /><br /><br />310 | JEFF SHARLET<br />they’d tell me, referring to the vein of superstores and prepackaged<br />eateries —P. F. Chang’s, Cali fornia Pizza Kitchen, Chili’s—that by-<br />passes the city. Downtown, they said, is “confusi ng.”<br />Part of thei r antipathy is literal ly biblical: the Hebrew Bible is the<br />scripture of a provincial desert people, suspicious of the cosmopoli-<br />tan powers that threatened to destroy them, and fundamentalists<br />read the New Testament as a catalog of urban ills: sophistication,<br />cynicism, lust. But the anti-urban sentiments of modern fundamen-<br />talists are also more speci c to the moment in which they nd them-<br />selves.<br />In the 2002 election, fundamentalists swept Georgia’s elected<br />o ces. They toppled an incumbent Democratic governor, a war-<br />hero Democratic senator, the Speaker of the state house, the Demo-<br />cratic leader of the state senate, and his son, the Democratic candidate<br />for Congress in a majority- black district that state Democrats had<br />drawn up especially for him. The new Republican senator, Saxby<br />Chambl iss, and the new governor, Sonny Perdue, both conservatives<br />and Christian, won not on “moral values” but on an exurban plat-<br />form. The mastermind behind the coup was Ralph Reed, once of the<br />Christian Coal ition, who had been reborn as Georgia’s Republican<br />chairman. Reed remains a fundamentalist, the same man who once<br />tested employees’ commitment to “Christian values” by asking them<br />if they supported the death penalty for adultery, but he was too canny<br />to talk like that in public. The term Christian, he’d learned, is a “di-<br />vider,” not a “uni er,” so he had left overt faith behind. He backed<br />candidates who ran under the mantra of the exurbs: “Shorter com-<br />mutes. More ti me with family. Lower mortgages.”<br />This troika of exurban ambition worked on multiple levels. Just<br />as Nixon used marijuana and heroin in the 1960s as code for hippies<br />and blacks, Reed devised a platform that con ated ordinary personal<br />goal s with fundamentalist values. Shorter commutes is a ploy that any<br />old-time ward heeler would recognize. It means “Let’s move the<br />good jobs out of the city.” Atlanta, like Colorado Springs, has an ur-<br />ban core that conservatives would just as soon see wither. More time<br />with family extends that prom ise of exurban jobs but al so speaks in<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 311<br />code to the fundamentalist preoccupation with “ family”—that is,<br />with de ning it, with excludi ng not just gay couples but any combi-<br />nation not organized around “ biblical” principles of “male headship.”<br />As for lower m ortgages, they are lower in exurbs because cities sub-<br />sidize them. The city pays the taxes that build the sewers and the<br />roads for the exurbs. The city provides the organization that makes<br />them possible. Exurbs are parasites. And what else does lower mort-<br />gages mean? More land. More space between you and your neighbors.<br />And this, too, is necessary for fundamentalism, which depends on<br />the absence of con ict—the Fam ily’s reconciliation—as one of its<br />main selling points. For all its talk of community, it is wary of com-<br />munity’s main asset: the con ict, and the resulting cultural innova-<br />tion, born of proximity. Such cultural innovation is death to today’s<br />populist fundamentalism, which tosses a gauzy veil of tradition over<br />the big-box consumerism of its megachurches, much as the Family’s<br />elite fundamentalism once cast big-business conservatism as “ rst-<br /> century” Christianity.<br />As contemporary fundamentalism, populist and elite, has be-<br />come an exurban movement, it has reframed the question of<br />theodicy—if God is good, then why does He allow su ering?—as a<br />matter of geography. Some places are simply more blessed than oth-<br />ers. Cities equal more fallen souls equal more demons equal more<br />temptation, which leads to more fallen souls. The threats that su use<br />urban centers have forced Christian conservatives to ee—to Cobb<br />County, Georgia, to Colorado Springs. Hounded by the sins they see<br />as rampant in the cities (homosexuality, atheistic schoolteachi ng,<br />ungodly imagery), they imagine themselves to be outcasts in their<br />own land. They are the “persecuted church”—just as Jesus prom-<br />ised, and just as their cell-group leaders teach them.<br />This exurban exile is not an escape to easy living, to barbecue<br />and lawn care. “We [Christians] have lost every major city in North<br />America,” Pastor Ted writes in his 1995 book Primary Purpose, but he<br />believes they can be reclaimed through prayer—“violent, confron-<br />tive prayer.”11 He e ncourages believers to obtain maps of cities and to<br />identify “power points” that “strengthen the demonic activities.” He<br /><br /><br />312 | JEFF SHARLET<br />suggests especially popular bars, as well as “cult-type” churches.<br />“Sometimes,” he writes, “particular government buildi ngs . . . are<br />power points.” The exurban position is one of strategic retreat, where<br />believers are to “plant” their churches as strategic outposts encircling<br />the enemy.<br /><br /><br />I returned to the World Prayer Center for a church sta meeting.<br />More than one hundred employees began with “worship”—which<br />means they started with a band, one of New Life’s many “worship<br />teams” of musicians. This one was composed of students in New<br />Life’s Worship and Praise School, a one-year college-credit program<br />created to train and sta churches around the country. The students<br />were all young and attractive, dressed in the kind of quality-cotton<br />punk cloth ing one buys at the Gap. “Lift up your h ands, open the door,”<br />crooned the lead singer, an ino ensive tenor. Male singers at New<br />Life and other megachurches are almost always tenors, their voices<br />clean and indistinguishable, R&B-in ected one moment, New Coun-<br />try the next, with a little bit of early 1990s grunge at the beginning<br />and the end.<br />The worship style was a ki nd of musical correlate to Pastor Ted’s<br />free-market theology: designed for total accessibility, with the illu-<br />sion of choice between strikingly similar brands. (Pastor Ted pre-<br />ferred the term avors and often used Baskin- Robbins, the chain of<br />ice cream stores, as a metaphor when explaini ng his views.) The<br />drummers all stuck to soft cymbals and beats anyone could handle.<br />Lyrics tended to be rhythmic and perfectly pronounced, the better<br />to sing along with when the words were projected onto movie<br />screens. There are no sad songs in a megachurch, and there are no<br />angry songs. There are songs about desperation but none about de-<br />spair; songs convey longing only if it has already been ful lled.<br />The idea of applying market economics to church origi nated not<br />within fundamentalism or evangelicalism, nor even in the petri<br />dishes of the laissez-faire think tanks in D.C., but with a sociologist<br />from the University of Washington named Rodney Stark, whose<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 313<br />work has won a broad readership beyond his discipline. Stark (who<br />now teaches at Baylor, a Baptist university i n Texas) and various col-<br />laborators began interpreting religious- a liation data through the<br />lens of neoliberal market theory in the 1980s.12 The very best sort of<br />religious economy, insists Stark, is one unregulated by either the<br />state or large denom inations. Left to form, change, and die organi-<br />cally, Stark believes, churches will naturally come to meet the popu-<br />lace’s diverse spiritual needs, which he divides into a spectrum of six<br />“niches” akin to a left/right political scheme. He argues that the law<br />of the market spurs new religious movements, which start out small,<br />in “ high tension” with the society around them, at the “ultraconser-<br />vative” end of the spectrum. As these sects grow, their tension usu-<br />ally decreases—that is, writes Stark, they dilute the “seriousness” of<br />their faith—until they eventually drift to the “ultraliberal ” end. Im-<br />plicit is that there is a natural and fairly steady demand for religion<br />that needs only to nd expression in a properly varied supply.13<br />Despite its academic prose, Stark’s work has won a wide reader-<br />ship among local pastors, who have propagated his ideas through the<br />cell-group structure. On the surface, at least, the evangelical enthu-<br />siasm for Stark’s work might seem somewhat puzzling. Certainly<br />Stark does celebrate the entrepreneurial, “ultraconservative” church<br />as the engine of religious vigor. And yet he also seems to promise<br />fundamentalists that their eventual fate wil l be moderation, or plu-<br />ralistic irrelevance, or both.<br />In fact, the analogy with free-market econom ics holds up quite<br />neatly. Stark is an economist of religion; his theory tells him that<br />unfettered markets will lead to competition, diversity, pluralism.<br />His fundamentalist adherents, by contrast, are like businessmen,<br />who understand and approve of where the theory leads in practice:<br />toward consolidation, control, manufacture of demand. What the<br />most farsighted are doing is fostering something like Stark’s spec-<br />trum of “niches,” but all withi n the con nes of their individual mega-<br />churches. They are building aisles and aisles in which everyone can<br />nd somethi ng, but behi nd it all a single corporate entity persists,<br />and with it an ideology.<br /><br /><br />314 | JEFF SHARLET<br />In devising New Life’s small-group system ( Pastor Ted preferred<br />small- group to cell, but he considered the terms interchangeable), Ted<br />asked himself and his sta a simple question: “Do you like your<br />neighbors? ” And, for that matter, “Do you even know your neigh-<br />bors? ” The answers he got—the golden rule to the contrary—were<br />“Not really” and “No.”14 Okay, said Pastor Ted, so why would you<br />want to be in a small group with them? Ted deduced a few “rules.”<br />One was, “ I Want to Meet with People I Like.” That is, he didn’t want<br />to be forced into fellowship with people who weren’t his type. That<br />wasn’t un-Christian, he decided; it was bibl ical. God loves everyone,<br />Ted decided, but God likes some people more than others. And so<br />did he. Another rule was, “I Don’t Want to Study Something I’m Not<br />Interested In.” Ted, for instance, got mad when he thought of all the<br />dull Bible studies he’d sat through that had ignored his passion, free-<br /><br />market economics.15 His point was that arbitrary small groups would<br />make less sense than self- selected groups organized around common<br />interests. Hence New Li fe members can choose among small groups<br />dedicated to motorcycles, or rock climbing, or homeschooling, or<br />protesting outside abortion cli nics. There are even stealth small<br />groups, such as a lm club created to draw in people unaware that<br />they’ve joined a Christian group, much less a New Life evangelical<br />e ort. The New Lifers involved simply “choose movies with subtle<br />Christian themes [and] gently nudge the conversation toward spiri-<br />tual themes.” An ostensibly secular group created to help young<br />couples with their nances teaches that the primary cause of poverty<br />is divorce; from there it’s a short leap to Christian “fam ily values”<br />such as male authority.16<br />Pastor Ted’s true genius lay in his organizational hierarchy, which<br />ensured ideological rigidity even as it allowed for individual expres-<br />sion. For all his talk about “ free markets,” Pastor Ted was oddly de-<br />termi nistic. Not just in his assumption that social networks should<br />remain entrenched along class lines, but in his belief that social sci-<br />ence provides the tools with which to quantify the condition of the<br />soul and to direct it—some might say “engi neer” it—accordi ngly.<br />Absent the societal vetting of the elites gathered in the Fam ily’s<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 315<br />prayer cells, the aspiring group leaders of populist fundamentalism<br />must undergo a battery of personality and spiritual tests, as well as an<br />o cial background check. Once chosen, they meet regularly with<br />their own leaders in the chain of command, and members are en-<br />couraged to jump the chai n and speak to a higher level if they thi nk<br />their leader is strayi ng into “ false teachings”: moral relativism, ecu-<br />menism, or even “Satanism,” in the form of New Age notions such as<br />crystal healing.<br />Whether the system is common sense or heresy itself—the Body<br />of Christ atomized—is beside the point; New Lifers found it power-<br />fully persuasive. Pastor Ted instituted a semester system, so that no<br />one needed to be locked into a group he or she didn’t like for too<br />long. And since New Life’s cell groups didn’t limit themselves to Bi-<br />ble study, they functioned as covert evangelizing engines. In return,<br />what Pastor Ted gave his ock, and American fundamentalism, were<br />lifestyle choices.<br /><br /><br />Commander Tom Parker and his family live a long way from New<br />Life, far south i n a neighborhood of postage- stamp yards and houses<br />without foundations and streets without sidewalks. Not because<br />they’re suburban but because nobody bothered to pour concrete.<br />Com mander Tom used to make computer chips; his wife is a maid.<br />Their l iving room set is comprised of two couches a leg-stretch apart,<br />with Commander Tom’s recliner between. An upright piano, painted<br />red-and-white, is backed against one wall; a TV, no longer much<br />used, squats agai nst the other. When I visited, Commander Tom’s<br />wife stayed in the kitchen, but his son, Junior Commander TJ, joined<br />us in the l iving room. The two men—TJ is only fteen, but he’s been<br />bar mitzvahed, about which more i n a moment—owe their o cer’s<br />ranks to the Royal Rangers, a Christian alternative to the Boy<br />Scouts.17 The largest “outpost” of the Rangers in the country, 475<br />boys and men, rallies at New Life.<br />Royal Rangers wear khaki military uni forms and black ties.<br />They study rope c raft and smallbore shoot ing and “American<br /><br /><br />316 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Cultures.” There is a badge for “Atomic Energy,” which boys can<br />earn by making scale models of a nuclear reactor. Mai nly, though,<br />Rangers earn merit badges for reading the Bible. Most boys go book<br />by book, which earns them a special vest stitched over entirely in<br />badges, but truly dedicated Rangers take it all i n one giant swallow,<br />a feat of reading for which they earn a si ngle Golden Achievement<br />Badge. TJ, who t raveled to Los Angeles last year to claim second<br />place in the regional Ranger of the Year competit ion, has such a<br />Golden Achievement Badge. He is a stu rdy boy, with a swimmer’s<br />shoulders and an honest, rectangular face, baby fat all gone but for<br />plump roses over his cheekbones. His blue eyes have more focus<br />than that of most boys his age, and his smi le is shy but sweet and<br />wide. In another setting, he’d be a teen dream, but TJ doesn’t meet<br />many girls. He is homeschooled, and most of his out-of-the-house<br />hours are dedicated to t he Rangers, an all-male organization. TJ’s<br />purity ring, which he wears on a delicate silver chain, is a symbol<br />of his commitment to virgi nity until marriage. It was given to him<br />two years ago by Commander Tom on the occasion of TJ’s bar<br />mitzvah.<br />The bar mitzvah was Tom’s idea. A heavier, darker-haired ver-<br />sion of TJ plus glasses and a mustache, Tom decided his son deserved<br />a ritual to mark his entrance into manhood, just li ke the Jewish peo-<br />ple have. TJ took as his text not a portion of Torah but the song<br />“Shine,” by a Christian rock band called the Newsboys.<br /><br />The Kind of Light<br />That might persuade<br />A strict dictator to retire<br />Fire the army<br />Teach the poor origami.<br /><br />TJ and Com mander Tom are both members of an elite Ranger<br />cadre known as the Frontier Christian Fellowship, in which boys and<br />men regress to pioneer li fe in pursuit of ultimate Christian manhood.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 317<br />Father and son are still Frontiersmen, which is the lowest level, but<br />they dream of becoming Buckskin Men. “ The problem,” said TJ, “ is<br />that it takes time and money. Because you have to make an out t.<br />And it has to be out of leather.”<br />“If you’re a Frontiersman, you can’t wear regular clothes,” Tom<br />explained.<br />“You don’t have to catch the deer yourself,” said TJ. “You can just<br />buy the leather at a store. But you gotta learn how to sew it.”<br />“And you gotta make up something you can live o .”<br />“A tr ade.”<br />“Like making candles,” said Tom.<br />You also have to choose a special name. TJ was thinking about<br />“White Flame,” to follow up on his bar m itzvah theme of “Shine.”<br />Tom had chosen “Rain Bolt.” Rain came from his favorite contempo-<br />rary Christian song. “Word of God speak,” he sings gently, “Let it fall<br />down like rain, open my eyes to see His majesty.” Bolt, he adds, “is<br />just the awesome power of God.”<br />Tom thought that power was misunderstood, even by his fellow<br />Christians. It’s about being in the Father, he said. In the sabbath,<br />too, but he couldn’t really explain this in-ness. “At the end of Hebrews<br />4, it has this verse”—he looked to TJ, who recited from memory:<br />“The Word of God is livi ng and active, sharper than any double-edged<br />sword, cutting until it divides soul from spirit, joints from mar-<br />row.”<br />TJ is the kind of boy who always has a book with him. Dickens’s<br />Old Curiosity Shop sat on the couch in case the conversation grew<br />boring, and on the co ee table between TJ and his father was a pile of<br />Christian thrillers Tom was reading on TJ’s recommendation. Mostly,<br />Tom read the Bible, and The Lord of the Rings, over and over. He<br />would have liked to have joined the Riders of Rohan, a New Life cel l<br />of suburban bikers that took its name from Tolkien’s noble horsemen,<br />but he couldn’t a ord a motorcycle. He couldn’t a ord much of any-<br />thing but religion itself. Tom’s favorite book of the Bible is the Gospel<br />of John. “It’s dying to yourself, so you can be with Jesus, going into<br /><br /><br />318 | JEFF SHARLET<br />the throne of God. It says don’t be ashamed, going into the throne of<br />God. But how can you not be ashamed? ”<br />One day the previous August, Tom had been at work, making<br />computer chips, when for no apparent reason his m ind said good- bye<br />to his body and left it standi ng there with no power to move. He told<br />it to turn, but it wouldn’t turn. Blink, but it wouldn’t blink. When<br />he regained control, the rst thing he did was take hi mself to the<br />doctor for an MRI. But the moment the nurse turned on the ma-<br />chine, his eyeballs felt as if they were popping; his hands clenched<br />into claws. All he could do was whisper, “ Turn . . . it . . . o .”<br />Electronics seemed to exacerbate the condition. “I’m allergic,” he said.<br />He believed that years of working with powerful magnets have bro-<br />ken his “polars.” His company moved him to a desk job, but the com-<br />puter made his eyes wobble. He can’t talk on a cell phone, and TV<br />causes a meltdown. His company pays hi m a modest sum for disabil-<br />ity. He wouldn’t dream of suing. New Li fe helps out when his -<br />nances get close to nothing. “God keeps saying to me, ‘Tom, this is<br />not about you. It’s about Me,’ ” he told me. “ There’s something going<br />on. And God is just trying to get me ready.”<br />In December, Tom received a vision. It is not unheard of for or-<br />dinary New Lifers to experience visions, but most are wary about<br />their provenance; what a secularist would call psychological they call<br />satanic. But Tom thought that this one was real. He told two New Life<br />pastors about it, and he told his mother, because, he said, “ it was so<br />threatening to me.” His voice trembled with the recollection, and<br />grew quieter, shy and childish, and he seemed close to tears. This is<br />what he had seen: “Complete darkness over all of America. But there<br />was a light coming down to the center of America,” that is, Colorado<br />Spri ngs. “And it was just a circle. And in it there were angels, and the<br />angels were battling. And they were ghting hard as they could”—<br />here Tom’s voice broke—“but they couldn’t hold back the dark, and<br />the Lord said to me, ‘America has to repent, or this hole will<br />close.’ ”<br />Tom returned to the moment. “I’m not even saying I know what<br />to do with it. It’s just—that’s what I see. And I pray. There’s some-<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 319<br />thing going on here, and God’s gonna explode it. There’s gonna be an<br />explosion from here bigger than anyone’s ever seen.”<br />New Life, he believed, would marshal the shock waves. “I think<br />Pastor Ted is Gandalf,” the wizard of The Lord of the Rings, he said.<br />Tom had received a few minivisions, just glimpses really, and in them<br />he saw a pastor kneeling, praying, in spi ritual battle with a demon<br />trying to pull him into a aming abyss.<br />I grew up reading Tol kien, too. “Who’s the Balrog? ” I asked, re-<br />ferring to a demon that nearly kills Gandalf. I expected Commander<br />Tom to reply with the usual enemies: “the culture” and the homo-<br />sexuals and the humanists. But the Balrog, he said, is inside Pastor<br />Ted, inside New Life, inside every follower of Christ.<br /><br /><br />On any night of the week in Colorado Springs, if one knows where<br />to look, one can join a conversation about God that will stretch late<br />into the eve ning. Some of these are cell groups, spin-o s from New<br />Life or from the city’s other churches, but others are more free-form.<br />On a Thursday, I joined one as the guest of a friend of a friend named<br />Lisa Anderson. Lisa is an editor at the International Bible Society. A<br />few nights earlier, after I bought her several rounds of mojitos, she<br />had promised to send me Our City, God’s Word, a glossy New Testa-<br />ment produced by the IBS and included not long before as an insert in<br />the local paper. “Colorado Springs is a special place,” declares the in-<br />troduction. “ The Bible is a special book.”18<br />Lisa’s Thursday-night group met in a town house owned by a<br />you ng couple with two children, Alethea (Greek for Truth), age<br />three, and Justus ( Justice), age one and a half. The father is assistant<br />to the president of the Navigators, a conservative parachurch minis-<br />try, and the mother works for Head Start. Also in attendance were<br />two graduates of the Moody Bible Institute and Lisa’s boyfriend, a<br />graduate student and a writer for Summit Ministries, a parachurch<br />organization that creates curricula on America’s “Christian heritage”<br />for homeschoolers and private academies. There was also a gourmet<br />chef.<br /><br /><br />320 | JEFF SHARLET<br />When I walked in, an hour late, they were tal king about Chris-<br />tian lm criticism—whether such a thing could, or should, exist.<br />Then they talked about the tsunami that had just hit South Asia and<br />wondered with concern whether any of the city’s preachers would<br />try to score points o it. When I mentioned that Pastor Ted already<br />had, they cringed. I told them that at the previous Sunday’s full-<br />immersion baptism service, Pastor Ted had noted that the waves hit<br />the “number-one exporter of radical Islam,” Indonesia. “That’s not a<br />judgment,” he’d announced. “It’s an opportunity.” I told them of<br />similar analyses from Pastor Ted’s congregation: one man said that<br />he wished he could “get in there” among the survivors, si nce their<br />souls were “ripe,” and another told me he was “psyched” about what<br />God was “ doing with His ocean.”<br />“That’s not funny,” one woman said, and the room fell silent.<br />James, an aspiring lm critic with oval glasses and a red goatee,<br />spoke up from the oor, where he’d been sitting cross-legged. “You<br />know that Bruce Springsteen song on Nebraska, about the highway<br />cop?” he asked. He was referring to a song called “Highway Patrol-<br />man,” in which the patrolman’s brother has left “a kid lyin’ on the<br />oor, lookin’ bad,” and the patrolman sets out to chase him down.<br />Instead, he pulls over and watches his brother’s “taillights disappear,”<br />thinking of “ how nothin’ feels better than blood on blood.”<br />“He can’t arrest his brother,” James said, and quoted the song: “a<br />man turns his back on fami ly, well, he just ain’t no good.”<br />“I think that’s how it is,” James continued. “That’s how I feel<br />about Dobson, or Haggard. They’re fam ily. We have loyalties, even i f<br />we disag ree.”<br />I told James about a little man I had met in the hallway at New<br />Life who, when I said I was from New York City, said, simply, “Ka-<br />boom!” I told him also about Joseph Torrez, a New Li fer I had eaten<br />dinner with, who, when describing the evangelical gathering under<br />way in Colorado Springs, compared it to “Shaquille O’Neal driving<br />the lane, dunking on you.” Torrez had said, “ It’s ti me to choose sides,”<br />a refrain I had heard over and over again during my time in Colorado<br />Spri ngs.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 321<br />“So which is it? ” I asked. “Which side are you on? Theirs? Are you<br />ready to declare war on me, on my city?”<br />“No —”<br />“Then choose.”<br />“I—”<br />“We can’t,” Lisa interrupted, from the corner.<br />“We can,” said John, another Bible Society editor. “ We do. Just by<br />being here.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-65432998378038387672009-07-12T02:45:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:57:27.656-07:00III The Popular Front - Interlude<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Interlude<br /></span></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Every revolutionary class mus t wage war on the cultural front. </span></span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">—LEWIS COREY, THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM (1934)<br /></span></div><br /><br />Lewis Corey, a journalist and radical political theorist who helped ght just such a battle, saw the shape, if not the tone, of<br />the future. I rst learned about Corey in a history of the United<br />States’ original cultural front, an alliance of radical workers, artists,<br />and intellectuals that brie y ourished in the 1930s, guided by Stal-<br />in’s invisible hand, and then was thought to have disappeared. Or so<br />held conventional wisdom, u ntil Yale scholar Michael Denning dis-<br />covered that the cultural politics of those years were an unstable mix<br />of totalitarian in uence and wild diversity that didn’t dead-end with<br />the close of the decade. Rather, the cultural front of the 1930s owed<br />into postwar American li fe in diluted but more widespread form.<br />The cultural front—the spirit of a more tightly de ned “Popular<br />Front” of antifascist pol itical parties, sects, and factions —transformed<br />class politics in America: it gave classes a sense of themselves as<br />struggling over not just wages but also ideas, aesthetics, rituals, cus-<br />toms, the imagination of things to come.1<br />The idea of “classes” disappeared from America following World<br />War II, absorbed into the great blob of the Cold War. And yet a cul-<br />tural front survived. The evidence? The so-called culture war fought<br />to this day between fundamentalism and secularism.<br /><br /><br />288 | JEFF SHARLET<br />That American fundamentalism contai ns within it a multitude of<br />beliefs, impulses, traditions, politics —just a few of which have been<br />explored here—must lead us to question the other side of the battle.<br />Secularism, of course, conceives of itself as rational and thus open to<br />all empirical data. And yet it, too, is subject to the broad brush with<br />which it’s easiest to paint social conditions. Culture war was a label<br />created by conservative elites who wanted to demand of the public<br />the old question of union battles: which side are you on? But the les-<br />son of elite fundamentalism is that the sides are not just blurry;<br />they’re interwoven.<br />The Cold War liberalism that led to American wars and proxy<br />wars, for example, ran parallel with elite fundamentalism’s sense of<br />its own divine universalism. The Family’s Worldwide Spiritual Of-<br />fensive infused America’s global mission—the economic reconstruc-<br />tion of Western Europe and the militaristic destruction of Southeast<br />Asia alike—and that imperial project in turn sparked the i magina-<br />tions of elite fundamentalists, providi ng them with an alternative to<br />traditional fundamentalist separatism. Domestically, the establish-<br />ment practice of containing political argument within such narrow<br />con nes that most Americans could barely conceive of the radical-<br />isms, left and right, that shape politics throughout the rest of the<br />world sat comfortably with the desire of elite fundamentalists for a<br />politics of no politics. The results include elections based on “charac-<br />ter” rather than ideas, debates as rituals meant to result in reconcili-<br />ation, the consensus of the powerful represented as a reasonable<br />pro cess in which everyone gets some small piece of the action. We<br />call this “comprom ise,” and consider our democ racy healthy.<br />During the 1960s and early 1970s, it was the Left that recognized<br />that American democracy was drifting toward empire, and that the<br />democratic project had never been anywhere near complete to begin<br />with. Since then, it has been the Right that discerned the cracks in<br />democracy’s veneer and the hollowness behind it. From that percep-<br />tion arose the conservative movement that declared culture war. Cul-<br />ture war as a slogan may be relatively new, but we can easily identify<br />its antecedents on the San Francisco docks in 1934, or with Jonathan<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 289<br />Edwards sitting beside Abigail Hutchinson’s bed in Northampton in<br />1735. In both cases—and now—culture war revolves around an im-<br />pl icit critique of what Abram called “materialism.”<br />Edwards saw as his enemy the unwitting banality of the Ameri-<br />can business society, fools who did not realize that they dangled over<br />an abyss. Harry Bridges and the men and women whom he fought<br />beside in San Francisco were all too aware of the abyss; they saw as<br />their enemy the economic system that held them precariously<br />suspended above it. The populist fundamentalism that in the late<br />1970s marched into the public square railed against the same familiar<br />enemy, but now de ned entirely as secularism. What does secularism<br />do, according to this fundamentalist front? It cheapens life, it sells<br />sex, it puts a price tag on the human soul. It makes people into com-<br />modities. And who will oppose this godless deviltry? “Followers of<br />Christ,” a term that requires quotes to distinguish it from the much<br />broader category of those who believe in or are born into one of the<br />many Christian traditions no longer considered valid by the new fun-<br />damentalists. Followers of Christ—those who cleave to a unique<br />American fundamentalism—de ne themselves more sharply. They<br />are a class, a revolutionary one, no less, dedicated, in theory at least,<br />to the transformation of American life and thus the world.<br />But they’re vague on the details. They’d like to abolish abortion,<br />and they’d l ike to pray in school and do away with pornography, and<br />drive queer people back into the closet (or “cure” them, say the opti-<br />mists among them). And then what? What about hunger, poverty,<br />the greed and bl indness that drives global warming? All important<br />concerns, concede American fundamentalism’s elites and populist<br />champions. Would the steps they’ve proposed bri ng an end to the<br />com modi cation of bodies, the pricing of souls, a culture in which<br />dollars pass for ideas? Hardly. But the believers, the fundamentalists,<br />those who would reshape society along lines of their idea of Christ’s<br />order, have no further solutions. They are a cultural front without a<br />politics. Where once there was a critique of what some might call<br />godlessness and others might call capitalism, there is a vacuum. And<br />in that empty space, the status quo remains unthreatened. Secular<br /><br /><br />290 | JEFF SHARLET<br />democracy, such as it is, faces no serious challenge. Nor, for that<br />matter, does the elite fundamentalism that for the last seventy years<br />has coexisted alongside it, ensuring that the United States was never<br />ful ly secular, nor democratic.<br />The story so far has been about how elite fu ndamentalism has<br />shaped domestic and foreign politics, how a theocratic strand ran<br />through the “American century” and remains taut in the new one.<br />Now the story turns inward, into the lives of ordinary Americans,<br />toward the cultural front of fundamentalism. It’s this cultural front,<br />converging with the political project of elite fundamentalism, that<br />justi es the label of “Popular Front.” In the United States in the<br />twenty- rst century, the Popular Front is that of fundamentalism,<br />the faith that prom ises that you can be born again, that m iracles still<br />occur, that we might yet revive the nation. This Popular Front will<br />no more rebuild the economic and structural foundations of America<br />or its soft empire than did that of the 1930s, but it has already trans-<br />formed the way we think, the way we live, the way we feel, the way<br />we know ourselves and the world.<br />Culture war, then, is a misleading term for such a metamorphosis.<br />What the elite and populist movements of American fundamentalism<br />have together wrought is not a culture war but a cultural evolution,<br />one that is adapti ng to the twenty- rst century much faster than<br />secularism. This religion isn’t an opiate of the masses; it’s the Ameri-<br />can Christ on methamphetam ine.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-67095470916424086752009-07-12T02:36:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:37:18.028-07:00II. Jesus Plus Nothing - Interesting Blood<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Interesting Blood</span><br /></div><br />The Reverend Rob Schenck, the founder of a ministry<br />called Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital—a knocko of the<br />Family, the theological equivalent of fake Gucci—is one of the most<br />unusual fundamentalist activists in Washington. He has the glad,<br />plastic face and quick wit of a Borscht Belt comedian and the big<br />brown eyes of a pitbull puppy. There’s an echo of Brooklyn in his<br />voice, which he ampli ed on my behalf. We had two things in com-<br />mon, we discovered when we met one day for sauerbraten at Schenck’s<br />favorite restaurant: a fasci nation with Jonathan Edwards and Charles<br />Finney, and the fact that we’re both “ half-Jews,” born of gentile<br />mothers and Jewish fathers. “Makes for very interesting blood!” said<br />Schenck. This realization was an occasion for Schenck to dust o his<br />Yinglish, the mix of Yiddish and English usually reserved for bar<br />mitzvahs, funerals, and Fiddler on the Roof revivals. It was probably the<br />only time Jonathan Edwards has been described as a luft mensch and<br />Finney as a schmoozer. (Between us, MOT, we agreed that Billy<br />Graham is a theological schlimazel.) Schenck was that rarest of crea-<br />tures: an ironic true believer.<br />Where I’d made sense of my half-Jew, half-Christian self by<br />writing about those without doubts or divisions, Schenck, seventeen<br />years old at the tai l end of the hippie “Jesus People” movement in the<br />early 1970s, decided to become one. With his twin brother, Paul, in<br />tow, he began attending late-night stoner prayer- and-gospel guitar<br />sessions. But that wasn’t enough. It’s a strange trut h of American<br /><br /><br />258 | JEFF SHARLET<br />fundamentalism that several of its public ideologues—Marvin Olasky,<br />the former communist who converted and coined the phrase compas-<br />sionate conservatism, and Howard Phillips, a Yiddish- speaker who<br />converted and recruited Jerry Falwell to create a “Moral Majority,”<br />and Jay Sekulow, the converted legal genius behind many of the<br />movement’s courtroom victorie s—came up i n the deradicali zed<br />world of postwar American Jewry. It’s as if, casting about for the<br />political passion of thei r immigrant fathers and mothers, they settled<br />on Christian fundamentalism as the closest approximation of that<br />vanished world, its socialist u nions and communist cells.<br />Schenck took it further than most: he helped or ganize Operation<br />Rescue, the militant anti- abortion crusade that special ized in gro-<br />tesque protests—the twin Schencks waved aborted fetuses like<br />ags—and “direct action,” such as a full-throated prayer vigil outside<br />the home of a Bu alo abortion provider, Dr. Barnett Slepian, in<br />1997. A year later, an Operation Rescue volunteer named James<br />Kopp shot Slepian to death. “My brother and I felt very badly about<br />the shooting,” Schenck told a reporter.1<br />It was true—by then Schenck had realized that there was a<br />quicker path to power. He had begun praying in Washington with a<br />risi ng star in the Senate from Missouri, John Ashcroft. He took to<br />riding what he called the “vertical chapel”—the elevators of congres-<br />sional o ce buildings—hoping to bump into more catches li ke<br />Ashcroft. Instead, he kept runni ng into members of the Family, on<br />their way to meetings not just with fundamentalist fellow travelers<br />such as Ashcroft but the entire spectrum of the political elite. “The<br />mystique of the Fellowship,” Schenck observed, “ has allowed it to<br />gain entrée into almost impossible places i n the capital.”<br />Schenck found a donor to buy him a town house across from the<br />Supreme Court, where he began practici ng a Coe- style ministry to<br />judiciary sta ers. In 20 00, he prayed with Justice Antonin Scalia a<br />day after the Supreme Court decision that made Bush president, and<br />since 2001, Schenck has been able to penetrate the White House with<br />ease, counseling sta ers on their spiritual responsibilities. He does<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 259<br />the same for congressmen in the quiet garden behind his town house,<br />and fundamentalist activists from the provinces make Schenck’s HQ<br />a regular stop on their pilgrimages to power. But he’s still, by his own<br />admission, third tier. He remains an outsider with inside connections.<br />As such, he has become a sharp study of how the power he wants<br />actually ows. In the rst rank of fundamentalist i n uence, there are<br />the old lions: James Dobson and Focus on the Fam ily; Pat Robertson,<br />batty but too rich to ignore; Chuck Colson, the “scholar in residence”<br />in the house of fundamentalism. “Then you have the B list,” which is<br />comprised of dozens of m id-sized organizations with big membership<br />rolls but little name recognition outside activist circles: American<br />Values, led by Gary Bauer, a former top Reagan aide who worked<br />with the Family in the 1980s; and the Traditional Values Coalition,<br />led by Louis P. Sheldon, a longtime Family ally who uses their C<br />Street House for “ faith- based diplomacy” in the ght against what he<br />calls the “Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition”—a clumsy<br />coinage that marks him as too crass for the Family’s inner circle.<br />“Where does the Family t on this scale?” I asked.<br />O the charts, said Schenck. Not more powerful; di erently<br />powerful. The big Christian lobbying groups push and shout; the<br />Fam ily simply surrounds politicians with prayer cells. They don’t try<br />to convert anyone. They don’t ask for anything. They’re as patient as<br />a glacier. “ It works. It works extremely well. Inside the beltway, if<br />you’re going to enjoy the platform of the National Prayer Breakfast—I<br />mean, really enjoy it, not be invited courteously to show up, if you’re<br />going to have the force of that thing behind you, Coe’s approval is a<br />big deal. It’s the kosher seal.”<br />Coe doesn’t demand doctrinal loyalty, only a willingness to do<br />business behind the scenes, and liberals are free to join him in the<br />back room. Testifying before Congress about global warm ing in<br />2007, Al Gore came under angry assault from Senator James Inhofe,<br />a longtime member of the Family. Gore blunted the attack by invok-<br />ing their “mutual friend, Doug Coe,” with whom, he suggested, he<br />and Inhofe ought to meet away from the cameras. “You know what<br /><br /><br />260 | JEFF SHARLET<br />I think of when I think of Doug Coe? ” Schenck asked, his voice thick<br />with admiration and laced with envy. “I think literally of the guy in<br />the smoky back room, you can’t even see his face. He sits in the cor-<br />ner, and you see the cigar, and you see the ame, and you hear his<br />voice—but you never see his face. He’s that shadowy gure. Nobody<br />ever sees him. At the Prayer Breakfast, he’s never on the dais, but he<br />puts the whole thing together. Nobody speaks from that podium,<br />including the president, without Doug’s nod of approval. It’s a deli-<br />cate play: He bri ngs everyone together.”<br />For instance, says Schenck, Senators Sam Brownback and Hillary<br />Clinton, partners in prayer at Coe’s weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast.<br />The Family is dedicated to spiritual war, not the intramural combat<br />of party politics, Schenck explained. Coe doesn’t have a systematic<br />theology, he has a vision of power. Not just to come, but as it exists.<br />“They’re into living with what is,” said Schenck. “But you don’t want<br />to alienate them, you don’t want to antagonize them. You need them<br />as your friends. Even Hillary will need them. They keep a sort of<br />cultural homeostasis in Washington. Washington right now is a town<br />where if you’re going to be powerful, you need rel igion. That’s just<br />the way it’s done.”<br /><br /> Sam<br /><br />The senator looks taller than he is, looks broader than he is. He is<br />slight, but you notice the narrow cut of his suits, the weightlessness<br />of the man, only after you have been with him for a while. His face is<br />wide and at and smooth across the cheekbones. His ski n is<br />Washington-pale but thick, like leather, etched by windburn and sun<br />from years of working on his father’s farm in Parker, Kansas (popula-<br />tion 281 and falling). You can hear it in his voice: slow, distant but<br />warm, almost a baritone, spoken out of the left side of his mouth in<br />half sentences with very few hard consonants. It sounds like the voice<br />of someone who has learned how to wait for rain.<br />As a freshman in the House, part of the Republican revolution of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 261<br />1994, he spoke with approval of his supporters’ feeli ngs about Con-<br />gress: “ blow it up,” they demanded. He refused at rst to sign the<br />“Contract With America,” Newt Gingrich’s right-wing manifesto,<br />not because it was too radical but because it wasn’t fast enough.<br />Don’t just reform government, he insisted; erase it. He wanted to<br />start by abolishi ng the departments of Education, Energy, Com-<br />merce, and the IRS. He wanted to do these things, he said, for the<br />poor. He topped the National Review’s list of rising stars. Less than<br />two years later, he was a senator. He grabbed his seat out from under<br />Bob Dole’s anointed successor.<br />He calls himself a “faith-journey man.” He considers human<br />rights his forte. He has been to Darfur and Iraq. He welcomes “pro-<br />American” refugees. (Those who don’t speak English, he has said,<br />“would not work well i n Kansas.”) He worries a great deal about<br />sexual slavery. He’d li ke to censor violent videos, but he’s steadfast<br />against making gay bashing a hate crime. “Religious freedom” is a top<br />priority, and it may require force. He has suggested Iran, Syria, Saudi<br />Arabia, and Sudan as military targets, and proposed sending troops<br />to the Philippines, where rebels killed two American m issionaries.<br />“T here’s probably a higher level of Christians [being persecuted] dur-<br />ing the last ten, twenty years than . . . throughout human history,”<br />he told Chuck Colson’s radio program. He takes solace from scrip-<br />ture. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,”<br />reads Matthew 5:10, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He be-<br />lieves he can feel it when people are praying for him.<br /><br /><br />Brow nback’s staff often seem puzzled by the intensity of his<br />religion. They worry when the only thing he eats for lunch is a<br />wafer, the Body of Christ, at the noontime mass he tries to attend<br />daily since his conversion to Catholicism. On weekends he gets up<br />early so he could catch a mass before meeting his fam ily at Topeka<br />Bible, the city’s biggest evangelical church. He calls this routi ne a<br />“great mixture of the feeding.” One Sunday morning I joined hi m.<br />His preferred seat was in the back row of the balcony. A guest<br /><br /><br />262 | JEFF SHARLET<br />preacher from Promise Keepers, a revival of nineteenth-century<br />“musc ular Christianity,” had arranged for two men to perform a<br />melodrama about golf and fatherhood. The senator chuckled when he<br />was supposed to, sang every song, nodded seriously when the preacher<br />warned agai nst “Judaizers” who would “poison” the New Testament.<br />After the service, Brownback i ntroduced me to a white-haired<br />man with a yellow Viking mustache. “ This is the man who wrote<br />‘Dust in the Wind,’ ” the senator announced proudly. It was Kerry<br />Livgren, of the band Kansas, born again. Brownback likes to take<br />Livgren on fact- nding missions. He wants to take him to Israel,<br />because he t hi nks songwriters are very spi ritual, and he thin ks Jews<br />are also very spiritual. “Carry on, my wayward son . . . ,” the sena-<br />tor warbled, trying to remember the words to the other big hit by<br />Kansas.<br />When he ran for the House, Brownback was a Methodist, simple<br />and proper. When he ran for the Senate, he was an evangelical, lled<br />with Holy Ghost power. Now he’s a Catholic, baptized not in a<br />church but in the “Catholic Information Center,” a chapel tucked in<br />between lobbyists’ o ces on K Street i n Washington, run by Opus<br />Dei, a secretive lay order founded by a saint who saw in Generalis-<br />simo Franco, the late dictator of Spain, an ideal of worldly power.<br />Brownback prefers Mother Teresa. He studies Torah with an ortho-<br />dox rabbi. “Deep,” says the rabbi. His daughter once told him that<br />di erent churches have di erent aromas, and that there is a scent for<br />everyone. Brownback wants to hu them all. “ I am a seeker,” he told<br />me, an u nderstatement of grand proportion. Brownback’s faith is<br />complicated, like American fundamentalism in the twenty- rst cen-<br />tury. The movement’s two great strands—the populist, pulpit-<br />pounding tradition of its masses and the mannered evasions of its<br />elite—are coming together, intertwi ning to become the mutant<br />DNA of men such as Sam Brownback, the next generation of spiri-<br />tual warriors.<br />“Politics is a false god,” Brownback once wrote. What he meant,<br />he explained to me, is that God doesn’t require brilliant leaders, eru-<br />dite lawmakers. All he wants is those who submit. It’s as simple as<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 263<br />the love between father and child. Love, not the sharp-edged coexis-<br />tence made possible by tolerance, is the fundamentalist covenant<br />with America. Love, not the never-ending arguments of democracy.<br /><br /><br />Whe n Brow nback was growing up, he was more concerned with<br />the weight of his hogs than the wages of sin. His parents still live in<br />the dusty white one- story farmhouse in which he was raised, on a dirt<br />road outside of Parker. Brownback likes to say that he ghts for tradi-<br />tional family values, but his father, Bob, was more concerned with<br />the price of grain, and his mother, Nancy, had no qualms about hav-<br />ing a gay friend. Back then, moral values were simple. “Your word<br />was your word. Don’t cheat,” his mother told me. “I can’t think of<br />anything else.” Her son played football (“quarterback” she said, “never<br />very good ”) and was elected class president and “Mr. Spirit.” Li ke<br />most kids in Parker, he just wanted to be a farmer. But that life was<br />already gone by the time he graduated from high school. If he couldn’t<br />be a farmer, Brownback decided, he’d be a politician. In 1975, he<br />went o to Kansas State University. There he joined a chapter of the<br />Navigators, a fundamentalist m inistry for young men and women<br />fou nded by Doug Coe’s rst mentor, Dawson Trotman. The summer<br />before his se nior year, Brownback worked in Washington as an in-<br />tern for Bob Dole. “ The Prayer Breakfast folks had rented a sorority<br />house for the summer, for people who were working on the Hill. I<br />made contact.” That was Brownback’s rst introduction to the Fam-<br />ily, and to Coe. That fall, Brownback returned to K State with a new<br />sense of the potential synergy between politics and rel igion.<br />In 1983, Brownback was fresh out of law school and considering<br />a career in politics. He searched through Kansas history for a role<br />model and settled on the forgotten Republican senator Frank Carl-<br />son. “ He stood at the center of power when the U.S. had no peer,”<br />Brownback remembers thi nki ng. In 1968, the last year of Carlson’s<br />Senate career—long before the term culture war was invented—he<br />wrote an article for U.S. News calling for a “man to stand” agai nst<br />what Brownback now term s de cadence. Brownback wondered, Could<br /><br /><br />264 | JEFF SHARLET<br />I be the one? Carlson was still al ive, so Brownback drove out to Con-<br />cordia, Kansas, and as the light died one summer eve ning he sat on<br />Carlson’s porch, listening to stories. Tales from the Senate, legends<br />of spiritual war, Carlson’s now-ancient Worldwide Spiritual O en-<br />sive. Brownback thought he’d found a mentor. “He became a model<br />to me.”<br />In the years that followed, he stayed in touch with Carlson, and<br />the Family stayed in touch with him, but Coe didn’t invite Brown-<br />back to join a prayer cell until he went to Washington as a congress-<br />man in 1994. “I had been working with them for a number of years,<br />so when I went into Congress I knew I wanted to get back into that,”<br />he says. The group was all Republican and all male. Conversation<br />tended toward the personal. Or, according to the old fem inist<br />maxim, the personal as political. “Personal transformation will in-<br />evitably have cultural and ultimately, political implications,” Brown-<br />back has said. He still meets with the prayer cell every Tuesday<br />eve ning. The rules forbid Brownback to reveal the names of his fel-<br />low members, but those in the cell likely include some of the men<br />with whom he lived in the Family’s C Street House for congressmen:<br />Representative Zach Wamp of Tennessee, former representative<br />Steve Largent of Oklahoma, and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma,<br />then a representative and a medical doctor who took the personal as<br />political to new depths when he shanghaied Hil l sta ers into a base-<br />ment o ce for a slide show of genitals mutilated by sexually trans-<br />mitted diseases, a warning agai nst sex outside of marriage that<br />Coburn underlined by advocating the death penalty for abortion pro-<br />viders.<br />Coe must have seemed like a voice of reason next to Brownback’s<br />new friends. He pointed out scripture verses to the congressman,<br />mailed him poems, gave him books to study. In a nation under Jesus<br />plus nothing, Coe explained, Brownback would ultimately have to<br />answer to only one authority. Everything—sex and taxes, war and<br />the price of oil—would be decided upon not according to democ-<br />racy or the church or even, strictly speaki ng, scripture. In a prayer<br />cell, Christ speaks directly to his anointed. “Typically,” Brownback<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 265<br />explained, “one person grows desirous of pursuing an action” —a<br />piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—“and the others pull in<br />behi nd.”<br />In 1999, Brownback teamed up with two other Family<br />associates —former senator Don Nickles and the late senator Strom<br />Thurmond—to demand a criminal investigation of Americans<br />United for Separation of Church and State. In 2005, Senator Coburn<br />joined Brownback in stumping for the Houses of Worship Act, to al-<br />low tax-exempt churches to endorse politicians. Brownback’s most<br />in uential e ort is as chair of the Senate Values Action Team, a cau-<br />cus that gathers on Tuesdays, before his Family cell meeting. Every-<br />thing that is said is strictly o the record, and even the groups<br />themselves are forbidden from discussing the proceedings. It’s a little<br />“cloak- and-dagger,” says Brownback’s press secretary. The VAT, as<br />it’s called, is a war council, and the enemy, says one participant, is<br />“secularism.”<br />The Senate VAT grew out of a House version chaired by Repre-<br />sentative Joe Pitts, a burly, white-haired conservative from Pennsyl-<br />vania Amish country who’s a regular at the Family’s Arlington<br />mansion. The VAT was then-Representative Tom DeLay’s creation, but<br />as far back as 1980, Pitts had been one of the regional activists who’d<br />helped push a relatively new concern for evangelicals—abortion—to<br />its place at the center of American politics. In 2002, Brownback,<br />whose concern with what he refers to as a “ holocaust” against a<br />womb- bound nation of fetal citizens, was the logical man for the job<br />of leading the VAT’s Senate version. The VAT demands a bridge<br />builder’s sensibility, the ability to convince fundamentalism’s popu-<br />lar front, which demanded its creation, that it’s taken seriously by<br />more elite conservatives.<br />The VAT uni es their message and arms congressional sta ers<br />with the data and language they need to pass legislation. Working<br />almost entirely in secret, the group has directed the ghts against<br />gay marriage and for school vouchers, against hate-crime legislation<br />and for “abstinence only” sex education, against diplomac y with<br />North Korea, and for war with Iran. The VAT is li ke a closed circuit<br /><br /><br />266 | JEFF SHARLET<br />between elite and popular fundamentalism, with Brownback at the<br />switch.<br />Every Wednesday at noon, he trots upstairs from his o ce to a<br />radio studio maintained by the Republican leadership to rally support<br />from Christian America for the VAT’s agenda. One participant in the<br />broadcast, Salem Radio Network News, reaches more than 1,500<br />Christian stations nationwide, and Dobson’s Focus on the Fam ily of-<br />fers access to an audience of 1.5 m illion. During the broadcast I sat in<br />on, Brownback explained that with the help of the VAT he hoped to<br />defeat a measure that would sti en penalties for violent attacks on gays<br />and lesbians. Members of the VAT mobilized their ocks: An e-mail<br />sent out by the Family Research Council warned that the hate-crime<br />bill would lead, inexorably, to the criminalization of Christ. When it<br />comes to “impacting policy,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family<br />Research Council, told me, “day to day, the VAT is instrumental.”<br />The VAT’s e orts often go beyond strictly spiritual matters, rally-<br />ing fundamentalism’s popular front around laissez-faire pol icies—tax<br />cuts, deregulation—in line with elite fundamentalism’s long- standing<br />dream of not just a nation but an economy under God. At its best, that<br />makes for a paternalistic capital ism where bosses placed in authority<br />by God, according to Romans 13, treat their employees with respect<br />and compassion, to which the employees respond with devotion, lead-<br />ing to big pro ts, high wages, and smiles in every cubicle. More<br />often—well, the world we live in is the “more often,” an economy in<br />which employers treat their employees as com modities and employees<br />respond with fear and boredom. Only the big pro ts are the same.<br />In 1999, Brownback worked with Pitts to pass the Silk Road<br />Strategy Act, designed, Brownback told me, to block the growth of<br />Islam in Central Asian nations, essentially buying their oil and natu-<br />ral gas resources for American corporations through lucrative trade<br />deals, granted with little concern for the abysmal human rights rec-<br />ords of the region’s dictatorships. Brownback also sits on the board<br />of trustees of the U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, an organi-<br />zation created by the Azeri government with funds from eight oil<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 267<br />companies, including Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron. Current and for-<br />mer members include Henry Kissinger, Dick Cheney, Iraq War ar-<br />chitect Richard Perle—a neoconservative trinity too cynical for<br />prayer cells—and two of Brownback’s Fam ily brothers: Pitts and<br />former attorney general Ed Meese. One of the Silk Road Act’s provi-<br />sions, which Brownback fought for, li fted U.S. sanctions on Azerbai-<br />jan, imposed in response to the Azeri blockade against neighboring<br />Armenia. Azerbaijan is 94 percent Muslim; Armenia is predomi-<br />nantly Christian. Brownback apparently issues indulgences where oil<br />is concerned.<br />Brownback’s biggest nancial backer is Koch Industries—the<br />largest privately held company in the United States, with extensive<br />oil and gas interests around the world. “The Koch folks,” as they’re<br />known around the senator’s o ce, are headquartered in Wichita, but<br />the company is one of the worst polluters across the country. In<br />2000, the company was slapped with the largest environmental civil<br />penalty in U.S. history for i llegally discharging 3 million gallons of<br />crude oil in six states. That same year, Koch was indicted for lying<br />about its emissions of benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia, and<br />dodged criminal charges in return for a $20 million settlement with<br />the federal government, an inexpl icably cheap price to pay. Brown-<br />back has received nearly $121,000 from Koch and its employees.<br />During his neck- and-neck race in 1996, a shell company called Triad<br />Management provided $410,00 0 for last-minute advertising on<br />Brownback’s behalf. A Senate investigative committee later deter-<br />mined that the money came from the two brothers who run Koch<br />Industries.<br />With Brownback, it’s nearly impossible to draw the line be-<br />tween the interests of his corporate backers and his own moral pas-<br />sions. Everyone applauds his ght to keep the murder of hu ndreds<br />of thousands of Sudanese refugees prioritized in U.S. foreign pol-<br />icy. And by standing up to the regime in Sudan, he’s also send ing a<br />warning to China, which has been willing to overlook the Sudanese<br />government’s murderous campaign in exchange for access to the<br /><br /><br />268 | JEFF SHARLET<br />country’s oil. Of cou rse, Koch Industries might be i nterested in<br />that, too.<br />Is that all there is to Brownback? Cash in an envelope? No—there<br />is not even that. A Kansas businessman who calls Brownback his<br />friend and has known him for years told me that the de facto price of<br />doing business with the senator—the cost of admission for a single<br />meeting—was, last he checked, $2,00 0. In that, Brownback is unex-<br />ceptional. Many congressmen expect just as much from those who<br />want face ti me. It’s not illegal, just slimy. The di erence with Brown-<br />back, said the businessman, is that he never touches the money. The<br />businessman is used to putting a check directly i nto the hands of the<br />politician whose help he needs. But whenever he visited Brownback’s<br />o ces, a sta er always quietly intervened, relievi ng the businessman<br />of the check beyond the senator’s sight lines. “Sam,” the businessman<br />told me, “doesn’t talk money.”<br />One afternoon, I met Brownback in his corner o ce to talk Bi-<br />ble. On his desk, there was a New Testament open to the Gospel of<br />John. I sat on a sofa beneath a portrait of Mother Teresa. There was<br />also a painting of a little blond girl in a eld of sun owers. “What can<br />I help you with? ” Brownback asked, sm iling. Two scripture passages,<br />I said. Leviticus 20:13, and Romans 1, the proof texts on which most<br />Christian conservatives base their opposition to homosexuality. Brown-<br />back frowned. He wasn’t aware of the passages. His hatred of homo-<br />sexual ity derived not from an engagement with scripture—which<br />academic Bible scholars say is not actually clear on the matter—but<br />on what he considered direct revelation. “It’s pretty clear,” he said,<br />his ngers folded into a temple beneath his chin, “what we know in<br />our hearts.” Brownback calls this knowledge “natural law.” To legis-<br />late against it or any other practice his heart tells him is sin is not<br />theocratic, it’s “natural.”<br />“There’s a sacredness to it,” he said. He meant heterosexuality.<br />“You look at the social impact the countries that have engaged in ho-<br />mosexual marriage.” He shook his head in sorrow, thi nki ng of Swe-<br />den. “You’ll know ’em by their fruits.” He paused, and an awkward<br />silence lled the room. We both knew he was citing scripture—<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 269<br />Matthew 7:16—but he’d just declared gay Swedes “ fruits.” He re-<br />gretted that. Hate the sinner, love the si n, Brownback believes. In<br />the Family, he’d learned to love everybody.<br /><br /><br />Although Brow nback’s 20 02 Catholic conversion was through<br />Opus Dei, an ultra-orthodox order that, like the Family, specializes<br />in cultivating the rich and powerful, the source of much of his reli-<br />gious and political thinking is Chuck Colson. “When I came to the<br />Senate,” Brownback remembers, “I sought him out. I had been listen-<br />ing to his thoughts for years, and wanted to get to know him some.”<br />The admiration was mutual. Colson spotted Brownback’s potential<br />not long after Brownback joined a Family prayer cell. At the time,<br />Colson was holding classes on “ biblical worldview” for leaders on<br />Capitol Hill. Colson taught that abortion is a “threshold” issue, a<br />wedge with which to i ntroduce fundamental ism into every question.<br />Brownback, who’d been quietly pro- choice before he went to Wash-<br />ington, recognized the political utility of the anti- abortion ght and<br />developed what is now a genuine hatred for the very idea that a wom-<br />an’s body is her own. It is not, he learned from Colson; it belongs to<br />God, just like that of a man, a line of reasoning by which Colson<br />claims that his fundamentalist faith is more egalitarian than femi-<br />nism, an analysis he extends beyond the womb into an implicit cri-<br />tique of democracy itself. The two men began coordinati ng their<br />e orts: Colson provided the philosophy, and Brownback translated it<br />into legislative action.<br />For all his talk of moral values, much of Brownback’s real work<br />as a senator revolves around the same kind of “quiet diplomacy” prac-<br />ticed by his forebears in the Fam ily, the art of backroom dealing<br />perfected by Senator Frank Carlson. Liberals dismiss him as a prud-<br />ish hayseed from Kansas, but to do so is to underestimate both the<br />man and the place. Brownback, like Carlson before him, is yet an-<br />other wheeler- dealer from the plains, possessed of a savvy in interna-<br />tional a airs that is faith-based and rooted in the corn elds of<br />Kansas.<br /><br /><br />270 | JEFF SHARLET<br />In 2002, Brownback followed his pastor onto the stage of Topeka<br />Bible—the minister had just told a joke about Muslim terrorists and<br />vi rgins—to talk about a recent trip to Israel and Jordan. Jordan,<br />Brownback explai ned, matters not just spiritually but strategically.<br />The “person of Jesus” is a key diplomatic tool in winning its coopera-<br />tion with the United States. Brownback said he’d met with King<br />Abdullah about starting a fellowship group, a fellowship group around<br />the person of Jesus. It wasn’t a casual suggestion. Brownback gave<br />Abdullah the name and number of a Christian brother with whom he<br />wanted the king to meet. Before Brownback left Jordan, Abdullah let<br />him know that he’d made contact with the senator’s man and agreed<br />to “ fellowship” with him on a regular basis. “His father, King Hus-<br />sein,” mused Brownback, “was really quite interested in Jesus, and<br />attended the National Prayer Breakfast several times.” Since then, so<br />has Abdullah. In 2005, he came to the prayer breakfast to conduct<br />diplomacy, so he said, with American evangelicals.<br />Brownback doesn’t demand that everyone bel ieve in his God—only<br />that they bow down before Him. The senator is part holy warrior,<br />party holy fool. The faith he wields in the public square is blunt and<br />heavy, brass knuckles of the spirit. But his intentions are only to set<br />people free. He is utterly sincere in his belief that his particular idea of<br />God is as universal as his faith in the free market. The religion of his<br />heart is that of the woman whose story led him deep into his unearthly<br />devotion, Mother Teresa; it is a kiss for the dying. He sees no tension<br />between his intolerance and tenderness. Indeed, their successful recon-<br />ciliation in his political self is the miracle, the cold fusion, at the heart<br />of the new fundamental ism, of Hallmark and hell re. “I have seen him<br />weep,” says Colson, his own voice thick with admiration. There can be<br />no higher praise for a man of power who proclaims his own humility.<br /><br /><br />The rst day I met Brownback, I was to bear witness to him among<br />his interns at a luncheon in the Senate dining room. But when his<br />press secretary and I arrived, there were no interns. Brownback saw<br />me, though, and led me i nto the Senate dining room, where the<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 271<br />maître d’ seated the three of us at a table set for eight. Brownback began<br />speaki ng about his faith. Only, he called it his cancer. This wasn’t a<br />metaphor; it was a melanoma on his side he discovered in 1995.<br />Brownback’s green- black eyes opened wide. He took his jacket o .<br />His shoulders slumped. He began to talk about “solitude,” about<br />“meditation,” about the dark night of the soul.<br />Once, he said, he was a bad man, just any other politician, in it for<br />himself. And then came cancer, li ke a message from heaven. Only at<br />rst it brought not certainty but doubt. Brownback found himself<br />wonderi ng, What does anything mean?<br />For a short spell i n his youth, Brownback was a radio broadcaster.<br />It’s easy to imagine his voice on the radio dial, deep in the darkness<br />on a Kansas highway, not preaching so much as whispering to itself<br />across the airwaves, creating a cocoon around the listener. The Sen-<br />ate di ning room faded into silence. I saw Hillary Clinton, but I<br />couldn’t hear her. I saw John McCain slapping backs, but he seemed<br />very far away. The powerful and the ugly swam past us like sh in the<br />ocean, and Brownback kept talking, completely lost in the strangely<br />serene recollection of his former fear. The doctors scooped out a<br />piece of his esh, a m inor procedure, but in his mi nd, he had lost<br />hold of everything. He asked himself, “What have I done with my<br />life? ” The answer seemed to be nothi ng.<br />“I went in search of things,” he said. “I went in search of things<br />that are eternal,” he murmured.<br />One night, he got up while his family was sleeping. “I remember<br />going over my résumé.” Sitting in his silent house, in the middle of<br />the night, a scar beneath his ribs where death had, for the time bei ng,<br />been carved out of his body, he looked down at that piece of paper<br />and thought, “This must be who I am.” And then he thought, “What<br />is this paper?” And then, “ It’s not going to last.”<br />Brownback turned, held my gaze. “ So,” he said, “I burned it.”<br />He paused. He was waiting to see if I understood. He had cleansed<br />himself with re. He had made himself pure.<br />“I’m a child of the living God,” he said.<br />I nodded.<br /><br /><br />272 | JEFF SHARLET<br />“You are, too,” he said.<br />He pursed his lips as he searched the other tables. “Look.” He<br />pointed to a man across the room, a Democratic senator from Minne-<br />sota. “He’s a liberal.” But you know what else he is? “A beautiful child of<br />the living God.” He continued. Ted Kennedy? “A beautiful child of the<br />living God.” Hillary? Yes. Even Hillary. Especially Hillary.<br />Once, Brownback said, he hated Hillary Clinton. Hated her so<br />much it hurt him. But he reached in and scooped that hate out like a<br />cancer. Now, he loved her. S he, too, is a beautiful child of the living God.<br /><br />Hillary<br /><br />Hillary may well be God’s beautiful chi ld, but she’s not a member of<br />Coe’s Fam ily. Rather, I’d been told at Ivanwald, she’s a “friend,” less<br />elect then a member, but more chosen than the rest of us. A fellow<br />traveler but not a sister. Her goals are not their goals; but when on<br />occasion they coincide, Hillary and the Family can work together.<br />Such collaborations, as much as the endeavors of true believers such<br />as Brownback, are a measure of the mainstreaming of American fu n-<br />damentalism. The theology of Jesus plus nothing is totalitarian in<br />scope, but diplomatic in practice. It doesn’t conquer; it “infects,” as<br />Abram used to preach. Within the body politic, it doesn’t confront<br />ideas, it coexists with them, its cells multiplying by absorbi ng ene-<br />mies rather than destroying them. It’s not cancerous, it’s loving. In<br />place of con ict, love. In place of debate, love. In place of tolerance,<br />love. In place of democracy, loudmouthed, sim mering mad and crazy<br />hopeful democracy—love, all- encompassing.<br />In her memoir Living History, Hillary describes her rst encounter<br />with the Family. It was at a lunch organized on her behalf in February<br />1993 at the Cedars, “an estate on the Potomac that serves as the<br />headquarters for the National Prayer Breakfast and the prayer groups<br />it has spawned around the world. Doug Coe, the longtime National<br />Prayer Breakfast organiz er, is a unique presence in Washington: a<br />genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 273<br />party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with<br />God.”2 Or with the kind of politically useful friends one might not<br />make otherwise. For the eight years she lived in the White House,<br />Clinton met regularly with a gathering of political ladies who lunch:<br />wives of powerful men from both parties, women who put aside po-<br />litical di erences to seek—for themselves, for thei r husbands’<br />careers —an even greater power. Among Clinton’s prayer partners<br />were Susan Baker, the wife of Bush consigliere James and a board<br />member of James Dobson’s Focus on the Fam ily; Joanne Kemp, the<br />wife of conservative icon Jack, responsible for introducing the pol iti-<br />cal theology of fundamentalist guru Francis Schae er to Washing-<br />ton; Eileen Bakke, an activist for charter schools based on “character”<br />and the wife of Dennis Bakke, then the CEO of AES, one of the<br />world’s largest power companies; and Grace Nelson, the wife of<br />Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat. The women<br />sent her daily scripture verses to study, and Baker, the wife of one of<br />the Republican Party’s most cutthroat strategists, provided Hillary<br />with spiritual counsel during “political storms.”<br />Hillary’s Godtalk is more sincere than it sounds, grou nded in the<br />in uence of a Methodist minister named Don Jones whom she met<br />when he was a twenty-eight-year-old youth pastor in Park Ridge, Il-<br />linois. Jones continues to counsel Hillary to this day. He calls the<br />theological worldview behind her pol itics a third way, a reaction<br />against both old-fashioned separatist fundamentalism and the New<br />Deal’s labor-based liberalism. He describes the theology he taught as<br />in the tradition of “Burkean conservatism,” after the eighteenth-<br />century reactionary philos opher’s belief that change should be slow<br />and come without the sort of “social leveling” that o ends class hier-<br />archy. Elites rule because they rule; tradition is its own justi cation,<br />a tautology of power neither left nor right but circular.<br />Under Jones’s mentorship, Clinton learned about theologians<br />such as Reinhold Niebu hr and Paul Tillich. Liberals may consider<br />Niebuhr their own, but the Niebu hr whom Hillary Rodham studied<br />with Jones and later at Wellesley College was a Cold Warrior, dis-<br />missive of the progressive politics of his earlier writing. “ He’d thought<br /><br /><br />274 | JEFF SHARLET<br />that once we were unionized, the kingdom of God would be ushered<br />in,” Jones says, explaining Niebuhr as he and Hillary came to see<br />him. “But the e ect of those two world wars and the violence that<br />they produced shook [his] faith in liberal theology.” The late Niebuhr<br />replaced his devotion to messianic unionism with a darker view of<br />humanity and replaced his emphasis on domestic social justice with a<br />global realpolitik, easily hijacked by liberal hawks in rhetorical need<br />of a justi cation for aggressive American power.<br />Tillich also enjoys a following among conservative Christian in-<br />tellectuals for arguments on behalf of revising the once-radical Social<br />Gospel to favor individual redemption, the heart of conservative<br />evangelicalism. Hillary once said she regretted that her denomina-<br />tion, the Methodists, had focused too much on Social Gospel<br />concerns —that is, the rights of the poor—“to the exclusion of per-<br />sonal faith and growth.” Abram, once a Methodist himself, had made<br />the very same observation a half century before. The spirit, conser-<br />vative Christians believe, matters more than the esh, and the salva-<br />tion of the former should be a higher priority than that of the latter.<br />In worldly terms, religious freedom trumps political freedom, moral<br />values matter more than food on the table, and if might doesn’t make<br />right, it sure makes right, or wrong, easier. Taken together, Niebuhr<br />and Tillich as Hillary encountered them represent the most reaction-<br />ary elements of her “worldview”: a militantly aggressive approach to<br />foreign a airs and a domestic policy of narrow horizons. Under the<br />spiritual tutelage of the Family, Hillary moved further rightward,<br />drifting from traditional liberalism toward the kind of privatized so-<br />cial welfare the Family has favored ever since Abram reacted in hor-<br />ror to the New Deal.<br />The Reverend Rob Schenck’s favorite example? Clinton’s collab-<br />oration with Brownback on anti–sex tra cking legislation con-<br />demned by the very activists it should have helped. Brownback and<br />Chuck Colson, one of the leading thinkers behind the law, were<br />more interested in extracti ng pledges of purity than in helpi ng the<br />already fallen. That resulted in the de-funding of longtime federal<br />partners that, for instance, provide health care for prostitutes, and<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 275<br />increased funding for faith- based groups that simply preach Christ<br />and abstinence to foreign sex slaves. And it’s not just those who are<br />trapped in involuntary sex work who are ill served by the switch;<br />epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, notoriously resistant to<br />sermonizing, ripple out into the general population. It’s bad law for<br />everyone. But Clinton was willi ng to lend her name, and her funda-<br />mentalist friends noticed. “I welcome that,” says Colson.<br />Hillary ghts side- by- side with Brownback and others for legisla-<br />tion dedicated less to overturning the wall between church and state<br />than to tunneling beneath it. Practically speaking, such work ap-<br />peased evangelical elites without drawing the notice of liberals who<br />thought Hillary stood for separation, but such tunnels genuinely un-<br />dermi ne the foundations.<br />For instance, a law she backed to ensure “religious freedom” in<br />the workplace that so distorts the meaning of the words that it makes<br />even Republicans such as Senator Arlen Specter uneasy about its en-<br />croachments on First Amendment freedoms. It’s a sort of Bartleby<br />option for those “who prefer not to”: pharmacists who refuse to ll<br />birth-control prescriptions, nurses who refuse to treat gay or lesbian<br />patients, police o cers who refuse to guard abortion cli nics. And<br />then there was the passage, during Bill’s presidency, of the Interna-<br />tional Religious Freedom Act, a move supported by Hillary. Like the<br />workplace bill, it seemed sensible. Who’s opposed to religious free-<br />dom? But in reality it shifted the monitoring of religion in other<br />countries from the State Department to an independent, evangelical-<br />dominated agency that drew much of its leadership from the Chris-<br />tian Legal Society, creating a platform for U.S. evangelicals to use<br />religious freedom ratings as leverage for a sort of shadow foreign<br />policy. Hillary’s stance toward Iran, more hawkish than that of many<br />Republicans, is just one example of a position long held by elite fun-<br />damentalists mainstreamed through the work of an ostensibly liberal<br />ally.<br />Liberals, says Clinton’s prayer partner Grace Nelson, are wel-<br />come in the Family as long as they submit to “the person of Jesus.”<br />Jesus, not ideology, “is what gives us power.” But the Jesus preached<br /><br /><br />276 | JEFF SHARLET<br />by the Fam ily is ideology personi ed. For all of the Family’s talk of<br />Jesus as a person, he remains oddly abstract in the teachings they<br />derive from him, a mix of “ free market” economics, aggressive<br />American internationalism, and “leadership” as a fetishized term for<br />power, a good in itself regardless of its ends. By eschewing the poli-<br />tics of the moment—party loyalties and culture wars—Family cells<br />cultivate an ethos of elite unity that allows long-term political trans-<br />formation, whereby political rivals aren’t ipped but won over grad-<br />ually through fellowship with former enemies, as in the case of<br />former Representative Tony Hall.<br />Hall, one of the few Democrats appointed by Bush in his rst<br />term (he was made ambassador to the UN for hunger issues, a posi-<br />tion he used to push the Monsanto corporation’s genetically modi ed<br />crops onto African nations) was brought into the Family i n the 1980s<br />by Jerry Regier, an ultra-right Reagan administration o cial in the<br />Department of Health and Human Services who went on to work<br />with James Dobson. Upon his conversion, Hall abandoned his liberal<br />social views and became a vocal opponent of abortion and, eventu-<br />ally, same- sex marriage. He also championed a bill establishi ng a<br />National Day of Prayer with an event at the White House organized<br />by Dobson’s wife, Shirley. But he didn’t switch parties, and the Fam-<br />ily would never ask him to. Hall isn’t a Republican; he’s a Democrat<br />who called on his fellow party members to follow President Bush’s<br />example by injecting more religion into their rhetoric. Hillary did<br />just that in 20 07, boasting of the “prayer warriors” who carried her<br />through Bill’s in delities, a bit of spiritual warfare jargon instantly<br />recognizable to evangelicals who worried about her femi nism.3<br />The Family wants to “transcend” left and right with a faith that<br />consumes politics, replacing fundamental di erences with the unity<br />to be found in submission to religious authority. Conservatives sit<br />pretty in prayer and wait for liberals looking for “common ground”<br />to come to them in search of compromise. Hillary, Rob Schenck<br />noted, became a regular visitor to the Fam ily’s C Street House in<br />2005. “She needs that nucleus of energy that the Coe camp produces.”<br />That summer, she appeared as part of a threesome that shocked old<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 277<br />school fundamentalists: Bill, Hil lary, and Billy, live in New York for<br />Graham’s last crusade. Before tens of thousands, the patriarch of<br />Christian conservatism said Bill “ought to let his wife run the coun-<br />try.” Bonhomie and cheap blessing, maybe, but it was the kind of en-<br />dorsement that Bill never won, despite Graham’s custom of speaki ng<br />sweet nothings to power.<br /><br />A Thing and Its Shadow<br /><br />How much power can a movement have i f it’s su ciently vague in its<br />principles to encompass both Sam Brownback and Hillary Clinton? If<br />measured only according to the advocates of domestic “moral values”<br />who choose ghts in part for the clarity of their “sides”—abortion,<br />yes or no? homosexuality, yes or no?—it would seem like the Family<br />doesn’t have much in uence at all. Neither abortion nor sex will be<br />legislated away soon. But the fact that fundamentalism, a faith that by<br />de nition aims to address the totality of human experience, is mea-<br />sured according to a handful of issues decided by a yea or a nay is,<br />itself, evidence of the broad success of Abram’s Idea.<br />Following the Scopes trial of 1925, American fundamentalism<br />split in two. One branch busied itself with the creation of new insti-<br />tutions, Bible colleges, and “parachurch” ministries, the foundation<br />for a populist faith that could stand on its own in the face of secular<br />ridicule—often enough, a real problem—and ght for control of<br />the public sphere. The second, elite branch concerned itself with<br />what believers saw as threats to the nation itself. That was a move<br />that con ated the nation with the faith. This new civil religion was<br />what enabled Cold Warriors, liberal as well as conservative, to pro-<br />ject the shadow of American freedom around the globe.<br />But a thing and its shadow are not the same. Even as American<br />power fueled nightmares in Vietnam, in Indonesia, i n Haiti, in dozens<br />of other nations whose histories disappeared into the blob of the Cold<br />War, real freedom has endured and even prospered within the borders<br />of the United States. It’s the relatively bright prospects of domestic<br /><br /><br />278 | JEFF SHARLET<br />democracy —even at its most endangered moments—that have<br />bli nded us to the shadow it casts. “Freedom,” more than one general<br />has declared from the pulpit of the National Prayer Breakfast, comes<br />at a cost. Liberals sco at such an apparent oxymoron, but the lesson<br />of elite fundamentalism is that it’s true; for that matter, the last sev-<br />enty years of history prove even the Christian doctrine of blood atone-<br />ment. Only, the blood is not Christ’s, and despite the very notable<br />exception of tens of thousands of American soldiers kil led overseas,<br />it’s not ours, either. It’s the rest of the world that pays for American<br />fundamentalism’s sins, and for the failure of American liberalism to<br />even recognize the fundamental ist faith with which it has all too<br />often—in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in Haiti—made common cause.<br />We m ight quibble that point. We might ask, Which came rst,<br />American fundamentalism or the Cold War? Is American fundamen-<br />talism the essence of the econom ic policies by which we unraveled<br />the New Deal, or is it simply a coincidental phenomenon of the Rea-<br />gan Revolution and then “global ization”? Don’t the good intentions<br />with which America gives bill ions in foreign aid for food for the<br />starving and medicine for the sick and, yes, weapons for govern-<br />ments that actually use them in defense m itigate—outweigh, even—<br />the trillions spent on weapons for governments that put them to<br />other ends, and the uncountable sums reaped by corporations depen-<br />dent on the American global order? Then again, how di erent are<br />such questions from that of Greg Unumb, the Family oilman who<br />thought Doug Coe’s culpabil ity in the crimes of the killers for whom<br />he served as a matchmaker depended entirely on whether they killed<br />before or during their fellowship with Coe? Such a strange concern. As<br />if one might be excused for giving a gun to a mass murderer be-<br />cause his rst victims were already buried; as if Christ’s injunction to<br />forgive demanded also that we forget. That is, in fact, exactly what<br />the Family believes, the complexities of “reconciliation” reduced to a<br />gross equivalence of sins. The center slouches rightward, and the<br />faithful forget that anyone ever dreamed otherwise.<br />Dick Halverson preached as much once during his tenure as Sen-<br />ate chaplain. He framed it as a story relayed to him by Coe and Senator<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 279<br />Harold Hughes after a visit to the Philippines, during which he,<br />in turn, heard the story from the Phil ippines’ Archbishop Jaime Car-<br />dinal Sin.4 Archbishop Sin was a moderate with a mixed record in<br />relation to the Marcos regime; at its end, he helped lead the “People<br />Power” revolution, but for years before that he preached obedience<br />to dictatorship. “He told Harold and Doug this true story,” Halver-<br />son sermonized. One of Sin’s nuns said to him that Jesus was coming<br />to her bed at night. Sin decided to test the apparition. “Ask Him”—<br />Halverson, the old actor, pretended to be the Filipino clergyman—<br />“What sins did the archbishop commit before he became an<br />archbishop? ” The nun did so and reported back to Sin. Christ’s an-<br />swer? “I can’t remember.”<br />Did this suggest to Sin or Halverson that the nun had simply been<br />dreaming? Just the opposite. Their Christ did not just forgive the sins<br />of Archbishop Sin; he couldn’t remember them. That, Halverson<br />thought, was as it should be, Christ’s mercy not a balance to justice<br />but a gift for the powerful. The church loves the down and out, but<br />who loves the up and out? Jesus of the Family, the Christ of Coe’s<br />“social order.”<br />“Love,” preached Halverson, “forgets. T hat’s what God does with<br />your sin and mine when it’s under the Blood. He forgets all about it.”<br /><br /><br />Here’s one last Family story love forgot, from a country so<br />blighted by misfortune and misrule that it’s not really a country any-<br />more. Somalia, lost in the shadow of American fundamentalism’s<br />freedom. Somalia—one of the last cases I found in the Family’s ar-<br />chives before they began closing them—is, i n the correspondence I<br />retrieved, nothi ng more than a web of “facts” that I’m hard-pressed<br />to make sense of. What they add up to is too bleak, too broken. The<br />dead who haunt the name of Siad Barre, the dictator Coe called<br />“ brother,” seem uncountable. All I can be sure about is the answer to<br />the question Greg Unumb asked me when I told him about Coe’s<br />support for another dictator gui lty of murder: before or during? Be-<br />fore, during, after. I will relate t he facts as brie y as I can.5<br /><br /><br />280 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Somalia, shaped like an upside- down musical note, wraps around<br />the Horn of Africa, across from the Arabian Peninsula. Granted inde-<br />pendence in 1960, it should have been a success story; its people<br />were linguistically uni ed and, while poor, were heirs to a tradition<br />of pastoral democracy that had survived colonialism roughly intact.<br />Then General Siad Barre seized power in 1969, and the Soviet Union<br />poured money into Siad’s regime to make it a counterweight to Ethio-<br />pia, which under Emperor Selassie was the major bene ciary of Amer-<br />ican military aid in Africa. When a Marxist coup overthrew the<br />Ethiopian emperor, Siad saw a chance to distract his own discon-<br />tented people by seizing part of Ethiopia in its moment of weakness,<br />using his Soviet- armed military. But the Soviets backed now-<br />com munist Ethiopia, deemi ng its new regime more useful than du-<br />plicitous Siad, who announced that he was in the market for a new<br />patron. After the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah, the U.S.<br />puppet just across the water from Somalia, the United States put its<br />money on Siad and his ports, which would become essential if Aya-<br />tollah Khomeini cut o the oil supply. By late 1980, the United<br />States and the USSR had switched proxies: once-red Somalia had<br />become an American outpost, while Ethiopia had turned i nto a So-<br />viet satellite.<br />It would have been absurd if it hadn’t been so bloody. Siad, freed<br />from even his veneer of socialism, devolved from an autocrat into the<br />worst thing that had ever happened to Somalia. His heroes, he de-<br />clared, were Kim Jong Il and the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceau-<br />s ¸escu. He decided to allow American- style democracy, then killed his<br />opposition as well as those he suspected of opposing him, and those<br />who might grow up to be opponents. His secret police developed<br />techniques to spy even on nomads. He sent his troops to machi ne-<br />gu n their herds. He poisoned their well s. For his urban enemies, he<br />developed torture chambers he considered world-class, and his men<br />concluded that rape proved especially productive of useful informa-<br />tion.<br />To his neighbors, he preached the virtues of the United States,<br />but his creed was “Koranic Marxism,” illustrated by a triptych of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 281<br />portraits hung throughout the nation depicting Marx, Lenin, and<br />Siad as the new Muhammad. His o cial portrait shows him as a<br />you ng general i n a khaki uniform and a mustache he seems to have<br />copied from Hitler. He bombed more civilians than rebels, reduced<br />an entire city to rubble, and directed his air force to strafe refugees.<br />He turned his country into a garden of land m ines that continue to<br />blossom to this day.<br />Before Coe found Siad through a West German Bundestag mem-<br />ber, Siad waged war on Ethiopia. After they met, he waged war on his<br />own nation. For the past seventeen years, there has been no nation,<br />only war. If Coe ever said a word about the kill ings, it was not re-<br />corded in the documents I found. “ I don’t wish to embarrass people,”<br />Coe said of his relationships with dictators in 2007. “I don’t take po-<br />sitions. The only thing I do is bring people together.”<br />In 1981, Family members made contact with Siad on behalf of<br />his then-enemy, Kenyan dictator Daniel arap Moi—a brutal Ameri-<br />can ally—whom Siad agreed to meet. The Family took this news to<br />General David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta (and a<br />Family member), who in thanks invited Siad to the Pentagon, a visit<br />that resulted in a special breakfast in America for the dictator, with<br />General Jones, members of congress, and Department of Defense<br />o cials. In 1983, Coe arranged for the dictator his own interna-<br />tional prayer cell, which included the Bu ndestag member, Rudolf<br />Decker; a defense contractor, William K. Brehm; and the outgoing<br />chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta . A year later Coe strengthened<br />Siad’s hand by proposing Mogadishu as the site for a “fellowship<br />meeting” with two other anti-Soviet dictators, arap Moi and Gaafar<br />Nimeiry of Sudan.<br />From America, Coe sent Siad Senator Chuck Grassley, ultraright<br />Iowa Republican (still serving as of 2008). But Coe was distracted;<br />his twenty- seven-year-old son, Jonathan, was ghting lymphoma. He<br />rallied, though—Doug, that is—when he put Christ’s social order<br />before his father, his mother, his brother, his sister, and even his own<br />grief to use what must have been one of the saddest days of his life to<br />reach out to the general: “You are much in my thoughts today,” wrote<br /><br /><br />282 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Coe. “Jonathan my son to whom you were so kind died this morning.<br />You in uenced his life for God and he never forgot you.”<br />“I did not have the occasion to meet him,” Siad wrote by way of<br />condolences.<br />A document titled “ Siad Barre’s Somalia and the USA,” prepared<br />for the Fam ily and marked “Very Con dential,” is one of the rare<br />Family documents to move beyond what Elgin Groseclose called “the<br />facade of brotherhood.” It is undated but appears to have been writ-<br />ten near the beginni ng of the relationship. Siad, it begins, is the only<br />head of state to have expelled the Soviets, and the only regional<br />leader to o er “ full military, air, and naval bases.” He pledges, too,<br />to provide for a pro-American successor, and to purge his govern-<br />ment of al l o cials linked to Somalia’s former patron, excepting<br />himself, presumably. Then he notes that he has already supplied the<br />Pentagon with a list of armaments he needed to ght the Cubans.<br />Received.<br />In 1983, Somalia’s minister of defense went to Washington at<br />Coe’s invitation to meet with the new chairman of the joint chiefs,<br />General John J. Vessey. The United States nearly doubled m ilitary<br />aid to the regime, pouring guns i nto a country that before the decade<br />was out would achieve a moment of unity it has not seen si nce, when<br />nearly everyone—pol iticians, warlords, children—united in opposi-<br />tion to Siad. He ed in 1991, taking refuge in Kenya with arap Moi.<br />One of his last acts as Somalia’s key man was to scorch as much of his<br />enemy’s land as he could, a biblical punishment for a nation that had<br />resisted God’s appointed authority. Three hundred thousand died in<br />the famine that followed. It’s considered Siad’s legacy. It was also the<br />Fam ily’s gift to Somalia.<br /><br /><br />On one of my last days at Ivanwald, a group of brothers returned<br />from a trip to the movies. They’d gone to see Black Hawk Down, the<br />story of nineteen American soldiers killed in 1993 in a battle with<br />one of the Somali militias that have terrorized the country for most<br />of the seventeen years si nce Siad’s downfall. The movie had made such<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 283<br />an impression on the brothers that Je C., one of the house leaders,<br />decided to convene the boys to talk about the responsibilities of fol-<br />lowers of Christ. Some of the men took a hard lesson from the lm:<br />you can’t help savages. But Je C. corrected them. There was an in-<br />ternational crew there at the ti me—men from Ecua dor, Paraguay,<br />the Czech Republic, Benin—but this, Je C. knew, was an Ameri-<br />can a air. “We help people,” he said. “That’s what we do. Even if<br />they’re, I don’t know, ‘savages.’ We’ll just keep loving on ’em.”<br /><br /><br />Doug Coe did not pull any triggers in Somalia, did not poison any<br />wells, and the Family was not one of the warring clans that obl iter-<br />ated what was left of the nation’s infrastructure. For all the Fam ily’s<br />talk of the “man-method,” of “relationships,” its members did not<br />know Somalia very well. They treated it as a piece on a playing board.<br />This Somalia wanted friends in Washington, so the Family became<br />Somalia’s friend. This Somalia wanted guns, so the Family helped it<br />get guns. This Somalia wanted to be called “brother,” so the Family<br />called Siad Barre “brother.” Families, as Coe would be the rst to<br />point out, are about love. Not accountability, ultimately, and there<br />does not seem to have been any for Brother Siad.<br />Jesus plus nothing, remember, does not depend on scripture, its<br />nuances, its hard lessons. Jesus plus nothing does not include, for<br />instance, the ninth verse of the fourth chapter of the Book of Gene-<br />sis. God asks Cain, who has just murdered Abel, where his brother<br />is. “I do not know,” replies Cain. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It’s a<br />genuinely di cult question. God never answers it directly, instead<br />responding with what sounds like divine distress: “What have you<br />done?” To Cain’s existentialism, God answers with a demand for his-<br />tory. That’s a more straightforward query, one I’ve attempted to an-<br />swer with regard to the Family. But Cain’s question, that one’s too<br />hard for me. To one who proclaims fellowship, as do the members of<br />the Family, the answer is simple: “Yes, I am my brother’s keeper.”<br />That was Je C.’s answer. But the Fam ily has more often served as an<br />accomplice, not a keeper. Where does that leave the rest of us? The<br /><br /><br />284 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Family works through the men and women we put in power. Sam<br />Brownback. Hillary Clinton. Pick your poison. In the calculus of party<br />politics, these two do occupy distant coordinates, but in the geom-<br />etry of power politics, the Family knows, they are on the same plane,<br />and the distance between them is shrin king. They mean well, both of<br />them, and I’m more partial to the views of one of them, but I can’t<br />help looki ng at that narrowing spectrum and thinking, This is an aw-<br />ful tight space into which to t a democracy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-44109306733023357382009-07-12T02:33:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:35:39.742-07:00II. Jesus Plus Nothing - Jesus + 0 = X<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Jesus + 0 = X</span><br /></div><br />In 2003, I published a portion of the account of Ivanwald<br />with which I begin this book in Harper’s magazine. I might have left it at<br />that, were it not for a series of phone calls. In June of that year, I re-<br />ceived an e-mail from a man named Greg Unumb, who wrote that<br />he’d read my article and wanted to talk to me. “I grew up with the<br />Coe family, went to school with their sons (that is, from elementary<br />school to through college), and was a part of the original group at<br />Ivanwald; however, I had a fal ling-out with them a number of years<br />ago.” Greg thought I was correct i n “some of [my] conclusions, but<br />certainly not on al l of them.” He wanted to o er me “insight.”<br />Greg was nance manager for Pride Foramer’s operation in oil-rich<br />Angola. Pride Foramer is a division of Pride International, which<br />drills in or o the coasts of more than thirty nations. The Pride Fo-<br />ramer division took care of business in ve countries besides Angola:<br />Brazil, Indonesia, India, South Africa, and Ivory Coast. Al l six, as it<br />happens, have long been of special interest to the Family. But Greg<br />didn’t want to talk about any of that. It was hard to tel l what he did<br />want to talk about. When I reached him on the phone in Angola (ask<br />for “Mr. Greg,” he wrote, “not Mr. Unumb”), he did not seem to re-<br />call any “falling-out.” In fact, he was more interested in me. Such a<br />fascinating subject, he said—was I writing a book? Where did I live?<br />How much had I been paid for the article? How had I gotten in to Ivan-<br />wald? Who recommended me?<br />At the time, I lived on top of a hill in rural upstate New York. As<br /><br /><br />242 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />I talked to Greg, I sat in a lawn chair, looki ng out across miles of<br />farmland, shooing bees away from my ankles. Ivanwald, the Family,<br />its intrigues—beneath the bright summer sun, it all seemed hard to<br />take seriously.<br />Greg wasn’t the only one who got in touch. There was a corpo-<br />rate lawyer from Seattle, who claimed to have no connection to the<br />Family but asked the same questions Greg had; I discovered that he<br />had worked with several of the Family’s visible fronts. End of conver-<br />sation.<br />There were many devout Christians who contacted me. There<br />was a Presbyterian pastor named Ben Daniel, a former member of<br />the Fam ily who’d quit after his rst National Prayer Breakfast, where<br />he was horri ed to encounter the very same Central American death<br />squad politicos he’d been reading about in the papers. There was an<br />old, well-connected Republican lawyer named Clif Gosney, who on<br />his visits to New York has introduced me to some of the city’s most<br />beautiful churches. After years of high-level service to the Family as<br />a liaison to Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Zulu nation, he started<br />drifting out in the early 1990s. When he asked Coe why almost no<br />liberal Christian leaders were included in the National Prayer Break-<br />fast, Coe raged at him, a rare instance of the sphinx’s anger. Clif re-<br />members hanging up the phone and realizing he’d just been purged.<br />When I went to Germany to speak on a panel about fundamen-<br />talism at the University of Potsdam, my German host told me that<br />the U.S. embassy, a cosponsor of the lecture series, had refused to<br />cover my expenses. I was, in the alleged words of Ambassador Dan<br />Coats, a former Republican senator from Indiana, “an enemy of Je-<br />sus.” If Coats really did say that, it didn’t faze the German Christians<br />with whom I shared a delicious meal that night.<br />And then there was Kate.* She wrote asking to have co ee with<br />me because she was a fan. When a gorgeous blonde walked into the<br />restaurant we’d agreed on and immediately said she loved my article,<br /><br /><br />* After she’d revealed her tr ue purp ose in contacti ng me, the woman I call “Kate” asked that I not<br />identify her.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 243<br />I thought, journalism has its rewards. But an hour into our conversa-<br />tion, I started making connections. She’d been living in An napolis,<br />Maryland, where the Family has a group of homes much li ke the<br />compound in Arlington. She’d recently left a job at the National<br />Security Agency. She’d been raised fundamentalist, but she’d left it<br />behind; she wanted a relationship with Jesus untainted by tradi-<br />tion. So I asked her, “Do you know anyone i n the Fami ly? ” Silence. I<br />asked her again. For whatever reason— Christian conscience?—she<br />confessed that she did know someone in the Family, David Coe.<br />“He’s like a father to me.” In fact, she admitted, she’d been sent to<br />spy on me.<br />We ended up talki ng for three more hours and drinking a lot of<br />wine. I tried to persuade her that the Family was a secretive, undemo-<br />cratic organization that aided and abetted dictators. She agreed, only<br />she thought that was a good thing. She said the Fami ly still loved me.<br />I told her about some of the killers the Family had supported. She<br />rallied by pointing out that we’re all sinners, and thus shouldn’t judge<br />those whom God places in authority. “Je ,” she said, holding my<br />eyes, twisting her wine stem between her ngers, “ in your heart,<br />have you ever lusted for a woman? Isn’t that just as bad? ”<br />So by the time Greg Unumb called, I wasn’t too concerned about<br />Family surveillance, which seemed to lead to nothing but good meals<br />and bizarre come-ons. I answered Greg’s questions as if he was the<br />jittery one, the reporter looking over his shoulder. Relax, I wanted<br />to say. Eventually, he did. For a moment, our conversation stalled.<br />Then he said, “You know, I used to run Ivanwald.” And, he<br />added, other Family houses just like it. That was a long time ago,<br />before his oil career. He’s since married a Frenchwoman, and he va-<br />cations in Sicily, and he goes to Washington only on business, the<br />nature of which he said he’d rather not talk about. He remembered<br />Ivanwald fondly, but now—“Generally, I don’t see the Coes unless I<br />run into them.” He wouldn’t explain why he’d broken o from them<br />or why he conti nued to run into them.<br />But he still respects them. Their problem, he said, is one merely<br />of “screening.” They let “con artists” in. Scam mers. People who raise<br /><br /><br />244 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />money and disappear. People who “use an endorsement improperly.”<br />These are nothing but “relational problems.”<br />All that other stu , he said, just talk. Like the Hitler “stu .” “I<br />heard those same illustrations used twenty years ago.” The goal wasn’t<br />emulation but distillation. To look at “what they accomplished for<br />evil, and turn it to good.” I didn’t say anything. I’d learned not to ask<br />what a “good ” genocide looked like.<br />He adm itted that “sometimes, what they say is not what they do.”<br />And then there is the question of what they don’t say. “What’s secret<br />is the top guys working with the leadership. It’s not unlike a busi-<br />ness. Busi ness is a network. This is a Christian network, with a few<br />people running it.” Same deal as Pride International, he explained.<br />There are people responsible for cities, and above them people re-<br />sponsible for regions, and above them people responsible for coun-<br />tries. And above them, there is Doug Coe.<br />“He’s l ike [St.] Paul,” Greg explained. He wanted me to under-<br />stand Coe’s famous $500 bet: that if a man prayed for something for<br />forty days, he’d get it. Belief didn’t matter. Jesus doesn’t need your<br />belief; he demands only your prayers, by which Greg seemed to<br />mean obedience. Legend holds that Coe has never lost the bet. If you<br />wager with him, he prays for you, so you can’t lose. “He’s con dent<br />enough in his relationship with Christ that he can ask for things,” said<br />Greg. And he’ll get them. “Doug talks to Jesus man-to-man.”<br />“Je ,” Greg said, “I advise you to explore that pro cess. The pro-<br />cess of becoming intimate with God.” I was a smart guy. I could do it.<br />For a lot of men, that relationship with God, it was nothi ng but per-<br />sonal. For a few, though, it meant something greater. “There are two<br />types of people at Ivanwald. Sharp guys, with leadership potential,<br />and problem kids. The sharp ones use Ivanwald to build their net-<br />work. If they do become successful, there’s an emphasis on maintain-<br />ing contact.<br />“That,” he said, “is how Doug uses Ivanwald.”<br />By now I was out of my lawn chair and pacing with the phone in<br />hand. Was I actually being recruited back to Ivanwald? It seemed<br />impossible. But I didn’t know how else to interpret it. Greg thought<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 245<br />I might have “leadership potential,” might be someone Doug Coe<br />could “use.”<br />For what?<br />“The leadership work is secretive,” Greg said. “ It has to be. There<br />is the problem of separation of church and state. And you can get so<br />much more accomplished in secret.” He boasted of the Family’s<br />behi nd-the- scenes negotiations with Israel, of Yasir Arafat’s visit to<br />the Cedars —an o -the-record event that had taken place long after<br />Greg claimed to have broken with the Family. “Or Suharto,” he said.<br />The fact that Suharto had murdered 500,0 00 of his countrymen, as<br />I’d written, was news to him. But so what? “ Say he did kill a half mil-<br />lion people. Let me ask you this: did he kill them before or during his<br />relationship with Doug?”<br />Suharto’s killing started before he knew Coe. In fact, it was the<br />killing that caught the Family’s attention. Since I’d left Ivanwald, I’d<br />been doing some research on Indonesia; I thought that in the Fam ily’s<br />relationship with a Muslim dictator there might be a clue to solving<br />the problem of Jesus plus nothi ng. This is what I found out.<br /><br /><br />In September of 1965, a communist-led rebellion attempted to<br />topple the aging hero of Indonesian independence, Sukarno, by then<br />withered into an incompetent dictator. It fell to young General Su-<br />harto to beat back the rebellion, which he did easily, and to prevent a<br />recurrence. This he accomplished by leading a nationwide slaughter<br />of communists. “Communist” schoolchildren, babies, entire villages.<br />When it was done, Suharto was untouchable—especially with his<br />newfou nd friends, the Americans. LBJ, dom inoes on the mind, was<br />willing to cut deals with any devil God gave him if it meant he could<br />move at least one Southeast Asian nation permanently out of the<br />communist column.<br />American fundamentalists were even more enthusiastic about<br />the Muslim dictator. In 1968, Abram declared Su harto’s coup a “spir-<br />itual revolution,” and Indonesia under his rule an especially promis-<br />ing nation, hope for the future i n Abram’s last years.1 The CIA would<br /><br /><br />246 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />eventually admit that the Indonesian massacre was “one of the worst<br />mass murders in the 20th century.” But that wasn’t the mood at the<br />dawn of Suharto’s reign, as Clif Robinson, the Fam ily’s chief Asian<br />representative, discovered in 1966, when he visited the American<br />ambassador to Indonesia, Marshall Green. “ The emergency,” as Rob-<br />inson called it, made demands on the ambassador’s time, but the two<br />men spent an afternoon together. Robinson wasn’t able to see the<br />Indonesian diplomat who’d originally introduced him to Jakarta pol-<br />itics though. He was in prison, one of 750,000 Indonesians jailed or<br />sent to concentration camps for political crimes.<br />Robinson didn’t try to intervene on behalf of his friend. But then,<br />the ambassador would hardly have been the man to ask for help. In<br />1990, Green acknowledged the long- suspected fact that the American<br />embassy had been busy at that time compiling for Suharto what one of<br />Green’s aides called a “shooting l ist”: the names of thousands of leftist<br />political opponents, from leaders identi ed by the CIA to village-level<br />activists, the kind of data only local observers—conservative mission-<br />aries, classically—could provide. “We had a lot more information<br />about [them] than the Indonesians themselves,” Green boasted. Green<br />and his aides fol lowed the results of their gift closely, checking o <br />names as Suharto’s men killed or imprisoned them. “No one cared, so<br />long as they were communists, that they were butchered,” said one of<br />Green’s aides. Another, acknowledging that the list had left “a lot of<br />blood ” on American hands, argued, “But that’s not all bad. T here’s a<br />time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”2<br />One such moment occurred for Suharto in December 1975,<br />when Portugal relinquished its claims to the ti ny island nation of East<br />Timor. It declared independence; nine days later Suharto’s army in-<br />vaded, on the pretext that its neighbor was com munist. Two hundred<br />thousand people—nearly a third of the island’s population—were<br />killed during the long occupation, to which the United States gave its<br />blessing. Gerald Ford, the only president to have been a member of<br />an actual prayer cell (when he was in Congress, with Representatives<br />John Rhodes, Al Quie, and Melvin Laird, a cell that reconvened in<br />1974 to pray with Ford about pardoning Nixon),3 told Suharto, “We<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 247<br />will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand<br />the problem and the intentions you have.” K issinger, with Ford in<br />Jakarta, added, “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly<br />[because] the use of U.S.-made arms could create problems.” Suharto<br />did not succeed quickly—the killing continued for decades—but he<br />never lacked for champions in the U.S. Congress, which saw to it<br />that American dollars kept his regime in bul lets until he was driven<br />out in 1998.<br />The massacre of Indonesia preceded Suharto’s friendship with the<br />Fam ily, but the slaughter and slow strangulation of East Timor coin-<br />cided with it. A document in the Family’s archives titled “Important<br />Dates in Indonesian History” notes that in March 1966, the Commu-<br />nist Party was banned and Campus Crusade arrived in April. Suharto<br />wasn’t a Christian, but he knew that where missionaries go, investors<br />follow. He also wanted to use God—any God—to pacify the popula-<br />tion. In 1967, Congressman Ben Reifel sent a memo to other Fellow-<br />ship members in Congress noting that a special message from Suharto<br />calling on Indonesians to “seek God, discover His laws, and obey<br />them” was broadcast at the same time as a Fellowship prayer session in<br />the Indonesian parl iament for non-Christian politicians. T he Fellow-<br />ship never asked Indonesians to renounce Islam, only to meet around<br />“the person of Jesus”—considered a prophet in Islam—in private,<br />under the guidance of the Fel lowship’s American brothers.<br />By 1969, the Fellowship claimed as its man in Jakarta Suharto’s<br />minister of social a ai rs, who presided over a group of more than<br />fty Muslims and Christians i n parliament. Another Fellowship as-<br />sociate, Darius Marpaung—he’d later claim that God spoke through<br />him when he told a massive rally that the time had come to “purge<br />the com munists,” an event that helped spark the massacre—led a<br />similar group in Indonesia’s Christian community.4 “President Su-<br />harto is most interested and would like to increase his contact through<br />this medium with the other men of the world,” wrote Coe’s rst fol-<br />lower, Senator Mark Hat eld, in a memo to Nixon that year. “He has<br />indicated he would like to meet with the Senate [prayer] group if and<br />when he comes to the United States.”5<br /><br /><br />248 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />In the fall of 1970, Suharto did both. Coe often boasted that no-<br />body but congressmen, himself, and maybe a special guest attended<br />such meetings, but this time Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and<br />Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta ,<br />joined the Indonesian dictator.6 In October 1970, Coe wrote to the<br />U.S. ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry. Suharto had just become<br />the rst Muslim to join the Fellowship’s o -the-record Senate prayer<br />group for a meeting “sim ilar to the one we had with Haile Selassie,”<br />the emperor of Ethiopia. Korry was too busy to celebrate; October<br />1970 was the month his plot to overthrow Chile’s democratically<br />elected president, Salvador Allende, came to a botched end, opening<br />the door to the more murderous scheme that brought General Au-<br />gusto Pinochet to power three years later.7 (“The sun is just now be-<br />gi nning to shine again,” the Family’s key man in Chile, the head of a<br />right-wing civil ian faction cal led the “O cialists,” wrote Coe, prom-<br />ising to tell him the “real story” of Pinochet’s coup in person.)<br />In 1971, Coe entertained a small gathering at the Fellowship<br />House with stories from his most recent round of visits to interna-<br />tional brothers, “men whom God has touched in an unusual way.”<br />Among them was General Nguyen Van Thieu, the president of South<br />Vietnam, who arranged for Coe to tour the war zone in the personal<br />plane of his top military commander; the foreign mi nister of Cambo-<br />dia, “most eager to carry on our concept”; and Suharto. In Clif Rob-<br />inson’s telling, “Doug and I were escorted up the steps of the palace,<br />no attempt to make any secret of it, and the president there so<br />warmly welcomed us and the rst thing he said as I walked i nto the<br />room was to express his appreciation for what had been done, and to<br />say that the momentum that we have seen started in this must not be<br />allowed to slacken . . . Along toward the end, one of the men sug-<br />gested it would be good if we had prayer together. And Darius Mar-<br />paung and Colonel Sombolem were present with us. And Darius<br />Marpaung suggested that the businessman who was there would lead<br />us in a prayer. And I think I have seldom been in a meeting where the<br />prayer was so <br />God-inspired.” 8<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 249<br />Coe and Robi nson weren’t the only representatives of the Fel-<br />lowship to seek such inspiration with Suharto. In 1970, a memo to<br />Fellowship congressmen from Senator B. Everett Jordan, a North<br />Carol ina Dixiecrat, reported that Howard Hardesty, the executive<br />vice president of Continental Oil, listed as a key man in the Fellow-<br />ship’s con dential directory, had traveled to Indonesia to spend a day<br />with the Fellowship prayer cells and join Su harto for dinner.9 The<br />followi ng year, Senator Jordan himself traveled to Jakarta on the<br />Fam ily’s behalf, where a special prayer breakfast meeting of forty<br />parliamentary and m ilitary leaders was assembled for him by the vice<br />president of Pertami na, the state oil and gas company that functioned<br />like a family business for Suharto. Such corporate/state/church chum-<br />miness was hardly limited to dictatorial regimes. Jordan may well<br />have traveled to the meeting on an ai rplane provided that year for<br />congressional members of the Family by Harold McClu re of Mc-<br />Clure Oil, and the year previous, he’d boasted in a memo to congres-<br />sional Fam ily members, oil executives and foreign diplomats had<br />used the National Prayer Breakfast in Washi ngton to meet for “con -<br />dential” prayers.10<br />By 1972, some of Abram’s old hands were concerned about the<br />moral vacuum the Family now called home. Elgin Groseclose, the<br />American economist who’d helped the Shah ru n Iran in the 194 0s,<br />worried that Muslims who saw through the facade of the “ brotherhood<br />of man” would ask, “Down what road am I being taken? ” And, per-<br />haps, decide to take Americans for a ride instead. “ This has been one<br />of the aspects of the . . . movement that has long troubled me,” con-<br />cluded Groseclose. “Where does pol itics end and religion begin?”11<br />Poor Groseclose. He could not grasp power. Suharto got it. “We<br />are sharing the deepest experiences of our lives together,” Clif Rob-<br />inson wrote of his brother the dictator. “It was at this point when I<br />was with President Suharto of Indonesia that he said, ‘In this way we<br />are converted, we convert <br />ourselves—No one converts us!’ ”12<br />In the spring of 1975, Bruce Sundberg, a Family missionary to<br />the Filipino government of the dictator Ferdi nand Marcos, began<br /><br /><br />250 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />planning with Marcos’s chief nancial backer for a summit in Jakarta.<br />Included would be Marcos, Suharto, and General Park, the South<br />Korean dictator. Sundberg called it “The Jakarta Idea,” the “Idea” to<br />be pondered the same one that had come to Abram forty years earlier<br />in Seattle. That it had not evolved since 1935 was, to the men of the<br />Family, proof of its eternal truth: the Idea that God’s method is the<br />“man-method,” that God chooses His key men according to His con-<br />cerns, not ours. That conviction enabled Coe to ignore Elgin Grose-<br />close’s concern about foreign nationals using them for their<br />connections. People didn’t use people, according to the Idea. People<br />didn’t do anything. Rather, they were used by God, and their only<br />two choices were to struggle against the inevitable, or to allow God<br />to pull their strings. Was Su harto using them? Only if God wanted<br />him to. Everything the Family did for Suharto—the connections,<br />the prayers, the blessings —they did for God.<br />On December 6, 1975, G erald Ford blessed Suharto’s invasion of<br />East Timor. Twelve hours after Ford left Jakarta, Suharto’s forces,<br />armed almost entirely with American weapons, attacked East Timor’s<br />population of 650,00 0 on the premise that the island nation was<br />planning a communist assault on Indonesia, a nation of 140 million<br />people.<br />Here are the words of the last broadcast from East Timor’s na-<br />tional Radio Dili, in the nation’s capital: “Women and children are<br />being shot in the streets. We are all goi ng to be killed, I repeat, we<br />are all going to be killed. This is an appeal for international help.<br />Please help us . . .”<br /><br /><br />The conservative estimate of Suharto’s death toll, in East Timor<br />and Indonesia proper, is 602,000, but most scholars of Indonesia be-<br />lieve it is two or even three times greater, ranking Suharto next to<br />the Cambodian madman Pol Pot as one of the worst mass murderers<br />of the twentieth century. What role the Family played, or did not<br />play—which of their “deepest experiences” they shared—in the long<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 251<br />occupation of East Timor that followed the invasion, a period during<br />which it was transformed into “islands of prisons hidden with is-<br />lands,” I can’t say. The Family restricted its archives before I could<br />follow the story into the next decade. All I know is that in 20 02 my<br />Ivanwald brothers proudly proclaimed that one of Suharto’s succes-<br />sors, President Megawati, had bent her knee to the Jesus of the<br /> Cedars.<br />I shared some of Suharto’s story with Greg. I wanted to make<br />some kind of connection. Not of politics to religion but between us,<br />“man-to-man,” as the Fam ily likes to say. I knew almost nothing<br />about him, but his tone reminded me of Bengt Carlson, one of his<br />successors as leader of Ivanwald, and that made me think that like<br />Bengt, Greg was probably a decent sort absorbed into a movement<br />the awful shape of which he simply didn’t see. It wasn’t that I wanted<br />to school hi m. I wanted him to know that I got it. That I understood<br />good intentions and where they could lead. That I appreciated that<br />diplomacy requires doing business with bad men. That I knew there<br />had been honorable Cold Warriors—my father, a Sovietologist who<br />advised the CIA near the end of Eastern Europe an communism, was<br />one of them—who believed that the threat of the Soviet Union justi-<br /> ed terrible alliances.<br />But what I wanted him to say—and I admit it, I wanted him to<br />answer for Coe, for Carlson, for the whole goddamn bunch, because,<br />after all, here he was, apparently asking me to join them—was that<br />making Suharto a brother, at least, had been a mistake. Why hadn’t<br />Coe risked his access, risked the Family’s friendships in big oi l,<br />risked even his certainty about the biblically sanctioned authority of<br />whichever strongman ends up in charge, to tell Suharto —after a<br />prayer, maybe—to stop killing his own people? To hold him ac-<br />countable, as the Family likes to say. For if the Family had not done<br />so—if they had, in fact, greased Suharto’s economic machine, voted<br />for weapons, praised him to the world as a champion of freedom —<br />they were accomplices. Brothers i n blood, yes, but not that of the<br />lamb.<br /><br /><br />252 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Greg preferred to look on the bright side. “If not for Doug,” he<br />said, “maybe Suharto would have killed a m illion.”<br /><br /><br />Greg’s math wa s the calculus used by Stalin when he said that a<br />single death is a tragedy, but a million is no more than a statistic.<br />Stalin, monster that he was, spoke not of esh-and- blood murder but<br />of politics by narrative, the stories to which even a dictator must re-<br />sort if he is to wield the power he takes by the gun. As a human be-<br />ing, Stalin may have been worse than worthless, but as a fabulator, he<br />was astute. A single death does make a better story. Suharto’s<br />victims— 602,0 00, 1.2 million, or 1.8 m illion—may never nd a<br />place in literature. But they deserve a place in history, and to win<br />them that, one small problem must be solved here i n America, that of<br />Jesus plus nothing, the logic of faith that allows American politicians<br />to contribute to the nightmares of other nations, and the rest of us to<br />vote for them.<br />Jes us plus nothing. Phrased like that, as Coe puts it, it doesn’t<br />sound like a problem at all. One who preaches Jesus plus nothing<br />claims to be in possession of pure Godhead. Not Jesus plus the his-<br />tory of his believers and what they’ve done in His name, or Jesus plus<br />the culture through which we view Him now, or Jesus plus the best<br />e orts of the m inds God, presumably, gave us, or Jesus plus human-<br />ity itself. Not Jesus plus scripture, since scripture, after all, contains<br />a great deal besides Jesus. No burning bush, no voice in the whirl-<br />wind, no Daniel, no lions. Coe and his inner circle do believe in the<br />trinity; a Washington fundamentalist activist told me, “but they’ll<br />give the Father and the Holy Ghost the weekend o . Because they<br />clutter the conversation. Jesus is so easily presented.”13<br />And what is it about Jesus that Coe presents? Not the teachings of<br />Christ; simply the fact of His being, “the Person of Christ,” as Coe<br />called it in a four-part lecture series he presented to a conference of<br />evangelical leaders in January 1989, recorded on two videotapes lent<br />to me by an evangelical scholar distressed by Coe’s peculiar concept<br />of God. The lectures took place at the Glen Eyrie Castle i n Colorado<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 253<br />Spri ngs, the Navigators headquarters at which Coe rst conceived of<br />Jesus plus nothing. With a great stone hearth lit by two murky yel-<br />low lanterns behind him, Coe, in a dark suit and tie, his black hair<br />slicked across his skull, doesn’t drive toward his points; he ambles up<br />to them. He tells a story about touring forty-two small nations in the<br />Paci c with a member of Reagan’s National Security Council, an<br />Australian politician, and some American businessmen. On the tar-<br />mac of each country’s airport, they pray for a key man, a power bro-<br />ker, and then they go o to meet a top man, the one with the<br />power.<br />What am I supposed to say to them? asks the Australian.<br />“We wanna be your friend,” says Coe.<br />Okay, says the Australian, but how?<br />“Tell ’em, ‘By learni ng to love God, together, centered around<br />Jesus Christ.’ ”<br />The Australian, who used to work i n the foreign ministry, doesn’t<br />think he can say that. He’ll sound crazy. He’ll sound stupid. So Coe<br />makes him a bet: i f it doesn’t work after two countries, they’ll go<br />back to Australia and play golf. But there’s to be no golf in his near<br />future, because on every little island they visit, Yap and Truk and<br />Palau, this delegation of First World power nds prime m inisters,<br />presidents, parliamentarians, strangely receptive to their message.<br />The NSC man, David Locke, a veteran of a similar trip with Coe,<br />described it once. “It reminded me of the story in World War II,<br />where the British sent an OSS type i nto Borneo . . . And this guy<br />parachuted out of the sky and they had never seen anything like this<br />so they looked on him as—he had blonde hair and white skin and he<br />was a white god who had come out of the sky to mobilize them. Ob-<br />viously his side was going to win so they had no trouble aligning<br />themselves. Well, from the point of view of a lot of these l ittle island<br />countries, we were something akin to that.”14<br />“All through these last forty years,” Coe continues, “I’ve had the<br />privilege of traveling to countries, I’ve been in China, in Vietnam<br />with the Vietnamese, the Vietcong, Communists in Panama, Com-<br />munists in Rus sia, the Red Guard in China, Nazis in Germany.”<br /><br /><br />254 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />(Coe’s rst visit to Germany was in 1959. Did he know more about<br />the past of Abram’s key men in Germany than they liked to acknowl-<br />edge?) “And you know, I discovered that the same things that they<br />make people give vows to keep, are the same things that Jesus<br />said . . . The only thing that was changed was the goal, the only thing<br />that changed was the purpose. In essence, it was all the things that<br />Jesus taught in private to the disciples. I began to realize why they were<br />so successful in human terms.”<br />Coe cites one of his favorite scripture verses, Matthew 18:20,<br />“When two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in<br />the midst of them.” “Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler were three men.<br />Think of the im mense power these three men had, these nobodies<br />from nowhere. Actually, emotional and mental problems. Prisoners.<br />From the street. But they bound themselves together in an agree-<br />ment, and they died together. Two years before they moved into Po-<br />land, these three men had a study done, systematically a plan drawn<br />out and put on paper to annihilate the entire Polish population and<br />destroy by numbers every single house”—he bangs the podium, dop,<br />dop, dop—“and every single building in Warsaw and then to start on<br />the rest of Poland.”<br />It worked, Coe says; they killed 6½ m illion “ Polish people.” (The<br />actual sum was closer to 5½ million, 3 million of whom were Polish<br />Jews. But that, as Stalin would say, is just a statistic).<br />“These three men by their decision alone.” What he’s trying to<br />explain, Coe says, is the power of friendship: between a man and<br />Christ, between brothers in Christ. Once, he says, a friend who’d<br />been France’s foreign minister during its war with Vietnam told him<br />he should try to meet Ho Chi Minh. “ ‘Even though he was our en-<br />emy, he was amazing.’ He said, ‘[Ho] knows what it means, to be<br />brothers.’ ” What does it mean to be brothers? It means, Coe learns<br />when he nally meets one of Ho’s, a foreign minister Coe says he<br />happened to bump into in Mauritania, to be wil ling to—happy to—<br />die for your cause.<br />It’s late; the room is gloomy; Coe’s brothers and sisters are sitting<br />on hard chairs. He needs to make it very clear for them.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 255<br />“These enemies of ours,” he says, “they have taken the very words<br />of Jesus Christ and used them for themselves.” What words is Coe<br />talking about? The ones about “social order.”<br />“That’s all that matters.” The social order: “Jesus says, ‘You have<br />to put me before other people, and you have to put me before your-<br />self.’ Hitler, that was the demand of the Nazi Party.” Coe slaps the<br />podium, and the Führer creeps into his mannerisms: “You have to put<br />the Nazi Party and its objectives in front of your own li fe and ahead<br />of other people!” Now he’s Coe again. “I’ve seen pictures of young<br />men in the Red Guard of China,” he says. “A table laid out like a<br />butcher table, they would bring in this young man’s mother and fa-<br />ther, lay her on the table with a basket on the end, he would take an<br />axe and cut her head o .” Now he’s Mao, punctuating his words by<br />slappi ng his pulpit: “ They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard<br />ahead of the mother-father- brother- sister—their own l ife!”<br />He pauses, makes the st. “That was a covenant. A pledge. That<br />was what Jesus said.” Now he’s Jesus: “If you do not put me, before<br />your father”—bang—“your mother”—bang—“your brother” —<br />bang—“your sister”—bang—“you cannot be my disciple.” Now as<br />Coe: “If you’re gonna have any movement that moves men and move-<br />ments, that’s” —he clenches his st again at the end of the<br />phrase—“you have to have that kind of commitment. Jesus knew<br />that. That’s the way the social order is run.”<br />In America, Coe says, “Today. In this country. This very day”—<br />that vision of social order is lost.<br />The next morning, Coe explains to the crowd how it can be re-<br />gained. Remember, he says, he is talking about love. A necessary re-<br />minder, perhaps, since he continues to use Hitler and Lenin, and,<br />today, Stalin, to illustrate the shape of the love he pursues. Why such<br />monsters? Why not speak of the church? Coe removes a pair of eye-<br />glasses from a pocket, but instead of putting them on, he twirls them<br />on one nger. “There is nothing in the Bible about the Christian<br />church. That isn’t the name of it. The name of it is the body.” The<br />Body of Christ, of which all believers are cells. “ His body functions<br />invisibly.” Coe draws an analogy to a tree. All you see are the leaves;<br /><br /><br />256 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />“you don’t know what’s going on underground.” But look at the<br />churches, he says, with all their pomp and circum stance, all their ti-<br />tles, every full-time church worker stuck in a hierarchy. It depresses<br />people, Coe explains, when they can see who their master is. A<br />movement that is visible is weak, vulnerable. It’s an organization, not<br />love. But the Body of Christ—“The Family,” Coe says—“we are<br />bound by the strongest power in the world ”—love, I think, but I’ve<br />lost hold of the con nections—“and the whole world is afraid of it.”<br />Let’s return to our problem. Let J stand for Jesus. J + 0 = X. Is X a<br />body of cells, or a social order, or a vision? Yes. All three. X = a vision.<br />The vision isn’t the Sermon on the Mount; it’s not the beatitudes; it’s<br />so simple it hurts (remember the Red Guard’s axe): the vision is total<br />loyalty. Loyalty to what? To the idea of loyalty. It’s another M. C.<br />Escher drawing, the one of a hand drawing the hand that is drawing<br />itself. The Com munist Party, plus Jesus. The Nazi Party, plus Jesus.<br />The Red Guard, plus Jesus. What is the common denominator? Je-<br />sus? Or power? Jesus plus nothing equals power, “invisible” power,<br />the long, slow, building power of a few brothers and sisters. J + 0 = P.<br />We have our formula. Now let’s run the equation for the twenty- rst<br />century. J + 0 = P divided by the many permutations of the Fam ily’s<br />present, its latest incarnation.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-44318603923564652952009-07-12T02:31:00.001-07:002009-07-12T02:33:18.507-07:00II. Jesus Plus Nothing - Vietnamization<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Vietnamization<br /></span></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Rivals<br /></div><br />Saigon, 1966. At t he Hotel Caravelle, t he swankiest address in the<br />city, a middle- aged missionary named Clifton J. Robinson slips out<br />a page of hotel stationery to write a report on his conquests for<br />Christ in Vietnam. R obinson is big and br oad-chested, dark-br owe d,<br />looks good i n a suit, at the rooftop bar popular with reporters from<br />NBC, CBS, and the New York Times, ashing a smile of absolute<br />certainty. He’s associate secretary general for the Fellowship in<br />Southeast Asia. That means he’s Abram’s man. He’s writing back<br />to Abram’s headquarters in Washington—although Abram, his<br />beautiful voice gone soft and sleepy with age, spends most of his<br />time in a retirement community called Leisu re World. Robinson<br />is writing to than k Senator Carlson, who’s sent a stri ng of letters of<br />introduc tion to precede Robinson on his grand tour of t he region’s<br />friendly regimes. In each country Robinson visits, the American<br />ambassador stands ready to receive hi m and pass him along to local<br />power brokers. Robi nson feels as if Jesus himself is opening doors,<br />a neatly trimmed savior in a linen suit. He knows, however, that<br />the name of a U.S. senator on the Foreign Relations Committee,<br />not Christ’s, is the reason the diplomatic corps genu ects before<br />him. A “capital” notion, thinks Robinson. “Invaluable ‘inside’ help<br />they’ve been able to be to us,” he scrawls beneath the Hotel Cara-<br />vel le’s logo.1<br /><br /><br />206 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Among his most fruitful meetings was time spent with William H.<br />Sullivan, U.S. ambassador to Laos. As chair of the State Department’s<br />Vietnam Working Group in 1963, Sullivan had been one of the archi-<br />tects of the war, a de facto “ eld marshal,” according to General Wil-<br />liam Westmoreland.2 Such a man was an unlikely source of inspiration<br />for Robinson, who called himself a Quaker. But preaching Abram’s<br />Idea overseas had put him at odds with the Society of Friends. Like<br />another lapsed Quaker, Richard Nixon, Robinson had no patience for<br />paci sm. He saw himself as a man of action, a “ jungle” missionary on<br />the move. He spoke with the quick velvety voice of an old-time radio<br />announcer and used it to dispense axioms and analogies about the need<br />for key men in the Cold War, Bruce Barton jingles as interpreted by<br />James Jesus Angleton, top man religion as geopolitical strategy. Sulli-<br />van provided fodder for Robinson’s commando theology.<br />“He said the strategy of the VC was the same as International<br />Christian Leadership’s,” gushed Robinson, “except applied physically<br />and militarily.” Robinson’s vision of Worldwide Spiritual O ensive<br />could not yet accommodate Ho Chi Minh’s tactics, but Sullivan con-<br />vi nced hi m their enemy was a worthy one. “They spend hours, days,<br />weeks, whatever time is necessary setting up for the LEADERS and<br />then either by ambush, assassination, or other i ntrigue, they do away<br />with them—not the people, the leaders. He said to kill 32 top level<br />people”—as the Vietcong had done the previous month—“was tan-<br />tamount to immobilizing thousands.”<br />The lesson was that the Fellowship should understand itself as a<br />guerrilla force on the spiritual battle eld. Speci cally, Sullivan, who<br />directed the CIA’s “secret air war” in Laos and turned its Hmong<br />minority into cannon fodder against the North Vietnamese, wanted<br />the Fellowship to recruit Buddhist businessmen to collaboration by<br />matching them with Jaycees u nder the guise of a “ ‘brotherhood of<br />leadership’—or some such slogan.” But Robinson also took Sullivan’s<br />words as an endorsement of Abram’s key man strategy.<br />“The strength of the wolf is the pack,” Abram reminded his dis-<br />ciples that year, retreating into parable as he advanced into his last<br />days, “ but the strength of the pack is the wolf.”3<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 207<br />Evangelical steamrollers such as the Billy Graham Crusade might<br />win millions, but the Fellowship could neutralize the enemy—“ bold<br />Satanic forces,” as Abram described it, the Vietcong’s “sweep of com-<br />munism,” America’s “secular cyclone”—by conquering the select few<br />souls of the strong. “Assassination” was just a gure of speech to Robin-<br />son; Abram wanted elites to “die to the sel f,” to subm it totally to Jesus<br />of their own volition even as they held on tightly to the power that<br />could advance His kingdom. Long after Abram’s death—and Ho’s to-<br />tal victory in Vietnam—the Fellowship would distribute a tract pur-<br />porting to be “ten steps to commitment from a Viet Cong soldier.” 4<br />Robinson was writi ng not to Abram but to Doug Coe. Abram<br />was technically retired, although he still maintained top spiritual<br />authority in the Fellowship. The question of succession was one no-<br />body discussed, but Robinson was surely thinking of it. He’d recently<br />opened a wedge for the Idea in India by recruiting the nation’s minis-<br />ter of defense productivity into a Christian prayer cell. Whether that<br />led to the kind of results Abram would have called “tangible” —a re-<br />lationship with a Fellowship- approved defense contractor, a commit-<br />ment to pul ling India’s left-leani ng government rightward—it at least<br />provided the Fellowship with the kind of bragging rights that im-<br />pressed American congressmen: the Fellowship had connections<br />everywhere, even in non- Christian nations. Robinson may have imag-<br />ined himself the man for Abram’s job.5 But three years earlier, he’d<br />angered Abram when he wrote that Indians are “more adept than wet<br />eels in squirming out” of responsibility. “ I feel we need to let the In-<br />dians know the ‘world’ is our battle eld.” With the stakes so high,<br />they were “expendable.”6<br />Abram agreed—except for the part about letting the Indians know<br />their place in the Fellowship’s hierarchy. As the Fellowship grew along<br />the military trade routes of the Cold War, its “ eld representatives”<br />learned to ape and polish the politics of attery by which powerful na-<br />tions make weak ones feel crucial to the cause. But Robinson was too<br />hot for the Cold War Christ. He genuinely believed he was spreading<br />old-time religion revamped for the space age, not a new empire in<br />democratic disguise. “Is this ICL message a kind of Christian fringe<br /><br /><br />208 | JEFF SHARLET<br />bene t, a casual sophistication, a pink tea variety of discussion sub-<br />ject?” he demanded of the Fellowship. “Or is it a revolution? ”<br />Writing for Abram, a third would-be heir named Richard Halv-<br />erson responded sharply. 1. Stop challenging Abram’s vision. 2. You<br />don’t understand Abram’s vision, anyway. 3. Here’s what it’s really<br />about: “A revolution can be anarchy, Clif, or it can be tyranny. It can<br />be noisy and rambunctious and spectacular like a Fourth of July re-<br />works celebration, or it can be quiet and penetrating and thorough<br />like salt, like benevolent subversion.” 7<br />That was the key—subversion. There was bad subversion, like that<br />of the Vietcong, and good subversion, also like that of the Vietcong,<br />only in the name of Jesus, a subtle practice of persuasion. Robinson<br />took the lesson, committing himself to raising funds directly for the<br />Indian work so that its costs wouldn’t be on the Fellowship’s books,<br />and inviting in Fellowship speakers, such as a British member of Parlia-<br />ment named John Cordle, who lectured the Indians on “Corruption,”<br />a subject about which he knew more than he let on. He would later be<br />exposed as one of Britain’s most amboyantly crooked politicians.<br />Another speaker was Halverson, who lectured to a ve-man “core<br />cell ” of U.S. embassy personnel on “In ltrating Secular Society with<br />the Spirit of Christ.”8 It wasn’t a matter of proclaiming the gospel<br />boldly; it was a trick of getting the heathen to ght your battles for you.<br /><br /><br />Robinson fa iled in his succession bid; as would Halverson. Robi n-<br />son’s mistake was to take the Fellowship’s internationalism too<br />literally—far o in Asia, he failed to court Abram’s favor personally.<br />When he swept in from the eld, he’d regale rooms full of Fellowship<br />men with his adventures, forgetting that his audiences were composed<br />of politicians used to being the center of attention themselves. Robin-<br />son extended the Fellowship’s reach across Asia at a time when Amer-<br />ican power most wanted behind-the- scenes men in the Far East, but<br />never understood that he also needed to be a behind-the-scenes man<br />in Washington, too. The details of Doug Coe’s victory are murky—at<br />the time, few suspected quiet Coe would be Abram’s heir—but Coe,<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 209<br />alone, seems to have understood that in an organization that denies<br />being an organization, power goes to the man least visibly concerned<br />with pomp and circumstance. And yet Robinson and Halverson still<br />matter to the story of the Fellowship. In part because they remained<br />signi cant players, representatives of American fundamentalism to<br />government around the world. And in part because they illustrate the<br />di erent streams feeding into Coe’s vision. Robinson was the publ ic<br />man, the character you put in the front of the room to tell stories.<br />Halverson was more complicated.<br />Halverson’s story, like that of the Family’s, began in 1935, when<br />he got o a bus in Hol lywood fresh from North Dakota, where he’d<br />grown up with the unl ikely ambition of being an actor. Blandly hand-<br />some by small-town standards, in Los Angeles he hardly looked like<br />movie star material: his lips were too full, his cheeks too chubby, his<br />eyes too deeply set. He wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t Clark Gable,<br />either. His strength was a certain gee-whiz sincerity, an earnestness<br />augmented by intelligence. Dick Halverson wasn’t a good guy because<br />he didn’t know any better; he was a good guy because he’d calculated<br />the angles and concluded that decency was his best bet in this world.9<br />Thereafter, he pursued it mightily. In later years, Halverson would<br />help build up one of the world’s largest relief agencies, World Vision,<br />a Christian out t that supplies food for the starving and medicine for<br />the wounded and gospel tracts only to those who ask. Although it has<br />long been plagued by acc usations of serving as a CIA front, World<br />Vision’s veri able record is admirable—the sort of Christian e ort<br />to which Abram paid lip service and nothing more. But Halverson<br />also helped build the Fellowship i nto a network of truly international<br />scope, introducing the American Christ to any number of nations.<br />Halverson, in other words, was an imperialist of the old school,<br />bringi ng light to the natives and clearing the way for other men to<br />extract a dollar. He was no hypocrite. He believed with all his heart<br />he was helping, and he never thought too deeply about whom. Halv-<br />erson loved public speaking, and he was good at it, too, i nvited to<br />preach in pulpits around the world. He wrote popular books and<br />mailed out newsletters and presided over a conservative Presbyterian<br /><br /><br />210 | JEFF SHARLET<br />church outside of Washington that was popular with politicians. In<br />1981, Ronald Reagan would make him Senate chaplain, the pinnacle<br />of his career.10<br />Coe, meanwhile, was all along studying Abram, learning the<br />methods of self-e acing persuasion. And studying, too, other sources<br />of authority, strong men of history whose biographies he consumed<br />and distilled into the leadership lessons he dispensed to his disciples<br />the same way he cited, always smil ing, scripture verses intended to<br />“ break” the powerful men to whom he ministered, the jujitsu of an<br />alpha male proclaiming his desire to serve. God’s word, not his; so it<br />was written.<br />Coe brought to the Fellowship a radically di erent spirit than<br />Halverson’s, a darker appeal. Raised in a small town, middle-class<br />home in Oregon, he’d gone to college at Willamette in the state<br />capital of Salem, where he majored in physics and got serious about<br />God. He’d been something of an Elmer Gantry—a good-looking<br />irt, friendly with everyone, close to none—according to Roy Cook,<br />his sidekick for the last six decades. It was Cook, then an unsmil ing,<br />bespectacled boy with a crooked pompadour, who led Coe to Jesus.<br />What kind of Jesus? In a talk to a group of fundamentalist activists<br />years later, Coe ticked o what he gave up for his new Lord: smoking,<br />drinking, dancing, and most of his friends. At twenty, he married an<br />eighteen-year-old girl named Jan. Soon they had the rst of six chil-<br />dren, all born before Coe reached his early thirties. And as the 1950s<br />opened, that might have been all: a pulpit, maybe, in rural Oregon, a<br />brood of children, a stern but conventional God.<br />But Coe had fallen under the “discipleship” of Dawson Trotman,<br />the founder of a worldwide ministry called the Navigators. Daws was<br />a square-jawed, wavy-haired, bear-hugging man, a cruder version of<br />Abram. Like Abram, who called him a “very dear friend,” Daws<br />scorned old-school fu ndamentalists who considered themselves “sep-<br />arate” from the culture, and like Abram, he’d begun his ministry in<br />the 1930s, in opposition to the economic liberalism of the New Deal.<br />Both men had little use for denom inational distinctions, but Daws,<br />unlike Abram, didn’t understand them to begin with. He hated ideas;<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 211<br />he loved “ jokes.” He installed a remote control for his doorbell be-<br />neath his dining room table so he could send underlings running to<br />answer it over and over, and he planted recrackers set to explode in<br />umbrellas when they opened. He actually wore a squirting ower in<br />his lapel. And yet he’d publicly rebuke sta ers he thought were “play-<br />ing games with God,” and he could drive even the manly men with<br />whom he surrounded himself to tears. In place of a traditional minis-<br />try, Daws o ered a pared-down concept of “ discipleship” by which<br />an evangelist picks a target and sticks with him until his “disciple”<br />submits totally to Jesus as the discipler teaches him, the theological<br />equivalent of hazing. Daws wasn’t stupid; he was a strategist who<br />understood that fundamentalism was too intellectual for the men he<br />wanted to reach, men li ke him —or, more often, men who wanted<br />to be l ike him. He boiled it down to Jesus plus nothing. “Daws really<br />had only one string on his guitar,” wrote an adm iring biographer,<br />“and he plunked it often and loud.”11<br />That brute simplicity was what Coe, newly born again, missing his<br />old habits and his old friends, wanted to hear. He went on a retreat to<br />Daws’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, a gothic castle called Glen<br />Eyrie, moated and inhabited by suits of armor and graced by very little<br />sun; it was deep in a canyon, and the sky above it was narrow. There<br />Coe prayed to Jesus for a way out of what seemed the small but over-<br />whelming life of a father and a churchman. How can I do it, God? How<br />can I nish school and provide for my fam ily and make time for the<br />Bible and pray every day? Coe thought his faith demanded the memori-<br />zation of a rule book over a thousand pages long. He couldn’t do it. He<br />couldn’t keep Nehemiah and Jeremiah and Esther straight. You do n’t<br />have to, Jesus told him. What then? Coe asked. That was when Coe<br />discovered, or decided, that all of Christianity, 2,000 years of faith and<br />ideas and mistakes and miracles and arguments and signs and wonders,<br />could be reduced to one word: love. And what did love mean? “Obey.”<br />That’s what Jesus told him. “Obey, then teach.”12<br />Coe taught. At Willamette, he led one of his professors, a young<br />political scientist named Mark Hat eld, into evangelicalism. Hat eld,<br />in turn, led a parade of students singing hym ns to le his candidacy for<br /><br /><br />212 | JEFF SHARLET<br />the state legislature. Stories would later circulate that it was Hat eld<br />who, when he moved up to the U.S. Senate, invited Coe to Washing-<br />ton, but it was the younger Coe who nudged Hat eld onto the national<br />stage and Coe who went to the capital rst. And yet, outside of evan-<br />gelical circles, he made little impression as a college man; his picture<br />appears in yearbooks only once, a gangly, unsmiling dark-haired boy<br />with big features, posing with the gol f team. An odd man out, wearing<br />hunter’s plaid, a townie among the preps. It was an image of modesty<br />he’d use to advantage in the years to come as he pledged himsel f to<br />older men in the Fellowship—Halverson, Robinson, Germany’s Gus<br />Gedat, and most of al l Abram—and then supplanted them.<br />Coe is, in fact, a striking man in both appearance and personality,<br />gifted with a force eld of charisma far greater than the more conven-<br />tional appeal of Halverson and Robinson, backslappers both. He is<br />tal l, with strong facial bones and dark skin; he has been mistaken for<br />an American Indian more than once. He is both ugly and handsome,<br />in the manner of Lincoln, his features oversized and his entire being<br />dominated by his broad smile. He dresses in golf shirts—after Jesus,<br />gol f has always been his passion—or in suits that look like they had to<br />be pinned together around him, as if he’s some loping, natural crea-<br />ture not meant to be bound by jacket and tie. He speaks with<br />slow-motion intensity, his words languid and separated by silences in<br />which listeners can ponder their meanings. There is something about<br />his voice, a resonant, solid sound like an old oak tree talking, that<br />makes you want to listen even if you disagree with everything he’s<br />sayi ng. His fascination with the leadership secrets of Hitler extends to<br />the Führer’s speaking style, made over in Coe’s loose-limbed manner-<br />isms. He emphasizes his points by making his right hand into a st and<br />shaking it, even as his left hand slips into his pocket, a m ixture of ego<br />and insecurity that suggests an inner conversation the speaker would<br />like to keep private. It is perhaps a tribute to his magnetism that a<br />smal l group of fringe fundamentalists have dedicated themselves to<br />investigating the question of whether he is the anti-Christ, believed to<br />be a charming fellow with international inclinations. Coe would not<br />be insulted; almost nothing insults him.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 213<br />After college, he moved so quickly into leadership, spiritually<br />“discipling” not just other recent graduates but business executives,<br />politicians, even se nior pastors, that it’s hard to bel ieve he needed<br />much mentoring from Daws or, eventually, Abram. He was a natural<br />leader: amiable, casual, not intim idated by anyone and interested in<br />everyone, or so it seemed to those at whom he directed his devotion.<br />Like Abram, he did not demand theological orthodoxy of his re-<br />cruits. “Doug hates church,” one of his followers, a former aide to<br />Hat eld, told me. (Coe considers church irrelevant to the real Jesus<br />encountered in one’s prayer cell.)13<br />One of his associates later noted that Coe’s wife, Jan, deserved<br />much of the credit for her husband’s work; he’d rarely met a woman<br />“so uncomplaining and one who stayed put and waited patiently.”<br />Not as much could be said for the evangelical enterprises Coe left<br />behind when he went to Washington in 1959 to work for Abram.<br />The communal homes he’d organized, early prototypes of Ivanwald,<br />were in danger of collapse, their i nhabitants lost without Coe’s ef-<br />fortless authority; churches were splitting over Coe’s new doctrine;<br />worst of all, young wives were in revolt, acting out the fears of all<br />those who bel ieved that Alfred Ki nsey’s 1953 report, Sexual Behavior<br />in the Human Female, would set in motion chain reactions of feminine<br />hysteria. “ I de nitely believe Jewell . . . is demon possessed,” one of<br />the Oregon brothers wrote Coe. “In fact, I have talked with her (in<br />Helen’s presence) and the demon coursed through her.” That wasn’t<br />all. “I have also come to believe that Jim’s wife is in the same boat. In<br />fact she said she was, but you would have to see and talk to them to<br />appreciate this. The other night she went into a rage when Jim was<br />just sitting on the davenport and tore his shirts o of him. Then she<br />said she was out to get love and had solicited the devil’s help. You can<br />imagine Ji m is having a tough time.”14<br />Spiritual war had changed since the early days of the Fellow-<br />ship. Whereas for Abram the ght manifested itself physically be-<br />tween godless strikers and the forces of law and order, for Coe it<br />was more personal, a matter of marriages, a battle fought i n bed-<br />rooms. Such was the changing tone of American fundamentalism,<br /><br /><br />214 | JEFF SHARLET<br />echoes of Jonathan Edwards’s fascination with Abigail Hutchinson<br />suddenly ampli ed as feminism emerged to challenge fundamental-<br />ism. Coe’s correspondence with his demon-plagued friend, as with<br />all his old Salem associates, was at once blandly pious and marked by<br />a new militant mysticism. Coe regularly received news from Oregon<br />of individual men, churches, whole companies tipping over from<br />“lukewarm” Christianity into on- re faith. “We are still facing some<br />opposition,” a Baptist pastor wrote Coe, and families were breaking<br />o , but “in the main we are all divi ning the will of God.”15 Coe oc-<br />casionally responded with advice, but more often he sent his friends<br />form letters. The Salemites did not complain. “Mr. Douglas Coe, Big<br />Wheel, City of the Wheels” one man addressed a letter in full ear-<br />nestness.16 They sent him checks, new suits, shoes in which they<br />liked to think of him walking the halls of Congress and parliaments<br />in distant lands. Coe’s response would be a canned account of a<br />meeting with “top men,” who were being “used” by God to put him<br />in touch with more top men. Senator X or Ambassador Y or Mr.<br />Sm ith, president of ACME Products, was here, he’d respond. “Please<br />pray he will understand the idea of saturating every community and<br />every state with the gospel of Jesus Christ.” There’d be a word about<br />golf; he’d ask for their prayers; and then he’d sign o with scripture,<br />a citation without explanation. “Amos 8:11–12,” he closed one batch<br />of letters, a passage that reads like a warning: Behold, the days come,<br />saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of<br />bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they<br />shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall<br />run to and fro and seek the word of the LORD, and shall not nd it.<br />17<br />What did it mean? Coe did not explain. His admirers were left to<br />wonder: Would they nd it? Were they exempted from God’s, from<br />Coe’s, judgment on a secular nation? Who among them would enter<br />the circle of the saved, the elect, with Coe and his mysterious “top<br />men” in Washington, in London, in Berlin, and in other more exotic<br />cities Coe mentioned, Jakarta, Addis Ababa, Brasil ia?<br />Shortly after Coe arrived in Washington, D.C., he wrote home<br />to his parents to tell them of his immediate success; or, rather, that of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 215<br />Jesus, working through him. “God has gone before us to prepare<br />hearts,” he wrote, noting that he followed in one of several private<br />planes that had been put at his disposal.18 One of his rst conquests<br />was Haiti, then just entering a long darkness of dictatorship that still<br />reverberates today. Winning Catholic Haiti’s acquiescence to U.S.-<br />style Cold War evangelicalism had been a Fellowship ambition si nce<br />1955, when an Abram associate had declared it a “soft spot of com-<br />munism” that would require the ministrations of “Magni cent Amer-<br />icans” preaching a new equation of Christ and free markets. “I have<br />been expecting to hear that you are making this your personal pros-<br />pect,” joked one of Coe’s Oregon friends, a man who claimed to have<br />been led by the Lord into building a small trucking parts empire. It<br />wasn’t God, though, who the trucking boss thought would draw Coe<br />to the island nation, one of the poorest in the world. “Am told they<br />have wonderful golf courses.”19<br />Coe counseled a Haitian senator and then Haiti’s ambassador to<br />the United States, easing both into commitments to a Christ-led na-<br />tion, with the understanding that the Christ Coe preached led not to-<br />ward the socialism that tempts any bitterly poor people but toward an<br />economics of “ key men” who would share their wealth as God in-<br />structed them. Senators Frank Carlson and Homer Capehart, both<br />members of the Foreign Relations Committee, did the follow-up work,<br />leading a Fellowship delegation of twelve businessmen to instruct the<br />Haitian parliament in prayer cell politics. François “Papa Doc” Duva-<br />lier, who would declare himself not only president for life but also the<br />nation’s o cial “Maximum Chief of the Revolution” and “Electri er of<br />Souls”—he was the weirdest and most vicious dictator in the Western<br />Hemisphere —impressed the senators with his spirituality.<br />Perhaps he told them, as he was fond of saying, that he literally<br />personi ed Haiti, that he was a stand-in for God. A personality! That<br />was the Fellowship’s whole theology in a nutshell, so they didn’t<br />bother to ask questions about his Vodoun-driven militia, the Tonton<br />Macoute assassins. Instead, they promised to twist arms in Washing-<br />ton on Papa Doc’s behalf: foreign aid, exemptions on sugar tari s. It<br />wouldn’t be a hard sell. The Cold Warriors in State, under Ike and<br /><br /><br />216 | JEFF SHARLET<br />every administration that followed, preferred Papa Doc’s public<br />proclamations of Christian brotherhood to a free black nation that<br />might seek support from the Soviet Union.20<br />And so it went through the 1960s, Coe and Halverson and Robin-<br />son and dozens of lesser brothers traveling the world for the Fellow-<br />ship, almost always nding their way through Christ’s leading to the<br />next hot spot in the Cold War. Not only did South Korea host a prayer<br />breakfast, but its dictator, General Park Chung Hee, tried to use the<br />Fellowship to channel illegal funding to congressional candidates of<br />Nixon’s selection. (Nixon’s representative, a Fellowship man named<br />John Niedicker, declined.) Coe and Carlson double-teamed Emperor<br />Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, a strategic prize in the struggle between the<br />United States and the Soviet Union. Selassie, who like Papa Doc con-<br />sidered himself an embodiment of the divine, depended on his Fel-<br />lowship brethren to represent his interests in the United States.<br />Those interests were considerable. For two decades, the United<br />States provided more aid to Ethiopia than to the entire rest of the<br />continent. In return, the emperor granted the National Security<br />Agency basing rights for the largest overseas i ntelligence facility in<br />the world, a high-tech “listening post” from which the United States<br />could keep tabs on the Middle East. He also deeded the Fellowship a<br />prime parcel in downtown Addis Ababa from which to proselytize<br />the rest of Africa. Just like dominoes, Coe wrote home to Salem.<br />Coe was as much of an elitist as Abram, but di erently so. Aris-<br />tocracy didn’t impress him; more important, he never lied to himself<br />about the virtues or lack thereof of the top men he was courting. Coe<br />understood early on that he would be deali ng with violent charac-<br />ters, and that didn’t bother him. Indeed, it seemed to excite him. He<br />dreamed of their power harnessed to the new American fundamen-<br />talism, a fascination with strength and in uence given clearest voice<br />in the words of one of his disciples, attempting to grasp Coe’s vision.<br />“I have had a great and thrilling experience reading the condensed<br />version of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” a protégé wrote Coe,<br />fol lowi ng up on reading advice Coe had given him. “Doug, what a<br />lesson in vision and perspective! Nazism started with 7 guys around<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 217<br />a table in the back of an old German Beer Hall. The world has been<br />shaped so drastically by a few men who really want it such and so.<br />How we need this same kind of stu as a Hitler or a Lenin.”21<br />Abram had thought as much, albeit phrased in stu er terms. “An<br />epochal opportunity is ours,” one of his tracts had advertised to the<br />new men of his congressional Fellowship back in 1942, “to control<br />the future of America by the simple strategy of controlling the char-<br />acter and ideals of [a] relatively small minority of [college- age] men<br />and women. Hitler long ago perceived this strategy, and established<br />his elaborate system of . . . leadership training. The democracies<br />have been asleep.”22 Indeed—asleep to the Hitler method of disci-<br />plining youth into a revolutionary cadre, a concept that absent the<br />Führer’s bloodlust would lead to Abram’s later support for groups<br />such as the Navigators and Campus Crusade. Neither was fascist any<br />more than Coe actually subscribed to the philosophies of Hitler or<br />Lenin. It was the myth of brotherhood that Coe thought such men<br />exempli ed, the “7 guys around a table” that would become a trade-<br />mark of his teaching. That such a view bore little correspondence<br />with history—both Hitler and Lenin brutally pitted their supporters<br />against one another—was of no concern. What mattered was the<br />model, the seven or the twelve, circles of access to a power de ned<br />by a personality at the center: Jesus. Contrasting American funda-<br />mentalism to secularism at a Fellowship meeting in 1962, Bill Bright,<br />the Fellowship fel low traveler who founded Campus Crusade, one of<br />the biggest popular fu ndamentalist groups in the world, put it suc-<br />cinctly: “We worship a person, they worship ideas.” 23 That was<br />American fundamentalism’s Christ: a person, purged of the ideas<br />that de ned hi m, as i f what mattered most about Jesus was the color<br />of his eyes and the shape of his beard.<br />Coe understood the cult of personality better than Clif Robinson<br />and Dick Halverson. He may even have understood it better than<br />Abram, who, after all, was moved rst and foremost by “the Idea.”<br />Not Coe. For Coe, it was Jesus plus nothing—a formula into which<br />he could plug any values. It was a theology of total malleability, per-<br />fect for American expansion.<br /><br /><br />218 | JEFF SHARLET<br />From the start of Coe’s tenure, the Fellowship began turning away<br />from its old Europe an allies. The German Gus Gedat found Coe im-<br />petuous; Wallace Haines, Abram’s longtime man in Paris, despaired of<br />pleasing him. “I have retreated step by step before your desires,” he<br />wrote the new leader. Not my desires, Coe corrected him; God’s.<br />Haines accused Coe of tearing down the neat organization of Europe an<br />aristocrats and merchant-princes Abram had spent years building.<br />“Wallace,” Coe replied. “I am not against structure. I am for<br />structure. I just think it needs to be underground.”<br />Other men “caught” Coe’s vision of a decentralized web that<br />would reach not just between Europe and the United States but around<br />the world. “I regard the program . . . as being the most e ective for<br />promoting the basic ideology for which the United States stands,” an-<br />nounced an enthusiastic supporter of Coe’s new emphasis on nations<br />Abram had ignored. He didn’t de ne that ideology, but its broad out-<br />lines were known to all in the Fellowship. First and foremost, there<br />was “free enterprise,” unrestrained capitalism, property—the foun-<br />dation, fundamentalists believed, of all other freedoms. Those free-<br />doms were more unde ned. T he American ideology was as amorphous<br />as its empire, de ned not by borders but by in uence, invisible threads,<br />transcendent alliances. It was, to Coe, an empire of spirit, and Coe<br />took Worldwide Spiritual O ensive to mean more than conferences in<br />The Hague and prayer meeti ngs in Bavarian castles; Jesus must rule<br />every nation through the vessel of American power.<br />Robinson and Halverson also saw the importance of smaller<br />countries, but it was Coe who dispensed with any concern at all for<br />politics in the Fellowship’s expansion; he would pray with anyone,<br />and he would bless anyone, so long as they had the strength to subm it<br />their nation to God. That was his greatest virtue in Abram’s eyes: he<br />never complained, never insisted on honors, never questioned whether<br />Jesus really cared most for men with power.<br /><br /><br />What was it they wanted? What drove Coe and his spiritual broth-<br />ers to con ate the Gospel with the needs of a nation expanding into<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 219<br />empire? Over “ lamb chops and hash- browned potatoes and fried ap-<br />ples and fried tomatoes,” reported the Washington Post i n 1966, Billy<br />Graham followed LBJ to the podium of the National Prayer Breakfast<br />to preach the fury of Christ down on America’s enemies in Vietnam.<br />“I am come to send re on the earth!” he quoted Christ. “ Think not<br />that I am come to send peace but a sword!” “There are those,” Gra-<br />ham continued, “who have tried to reduce Christ to a genial and in-<br />nocuous appeaser; but Jesus said, ‘You are wrong—I have come as a<br />resetter and a <br />sword-wielder.’ ”24<br />A resetter—were they revolutionaries after all? Or did they<br />fantasize a new Holy Roman Empire, recast in the terms of the twen-<br />tieth century as an empire of in uence, not territory? Maybe it was<br />more trivial, pious posturing as cover for petty cri mes.<br />Sometimes, at least, it was just that. In attendance for Graham’s<br />thundering warcry were two generals who devoted their free time to<br />Fellowship work, crisscrossing the nation to lecture prayer cells and<br />prayer breakfasts on the need for revival. One of them, General Har-<br />old K. Johnson, chief of sta of the army, ordered the other, General<br />Carl Turner, to work with Coe, “quietly, and I repeat quietly,” to give<br />the army’s “substantial” assistance to the production of the Prayer<br />Breakfast. That in itself may have been a violation of the First Amend-<br />ment’s establishment clause, but it paled beside General Turner’s real<br />sideline: reselling mothballed army weapons to Third World gangs, a<br />crime for which he was sentenced to prison in 1971 after General<br />Johnson’s attempt to help failed.<br />Is that all it was? A spiritual alibi for get-rich-quick schemes? A<br />Fellowship tract titled Studies for Public Men, 10,00 0 of which were<br />printed up by a Chevron Oil executive, claimed that such abuses are<br />inevitable, but not attributable to the piety with which such men<br />cloaked their misdeeds. When pious men committed crimes, went<br />the thinking, godlessness was to blame—“secularism in its worst<br />form!” In a section titled “Accountability,” the tract explained why the<br />Fellowship should not be held accountable for the actions of its indi-<br />vidual members, the American generals, General Turner and General<br />Johnson, the overseas divines on Coe and Carlson’s government gravy<br /><br /><br />220 | JEFF SHARLET<br />train, Papa Doc and Emperor Selassie, General Park in Korea, Gen-<br />eral Suharto in Indonesia, General Medici in Brazil: “Persisting in the<br />accusation of collective guilt nal ly immobilizes a society,” advised the<br />tract. Perhaps, but the Fellowship denied individual guilt as well, de-<br />nied the very concept of guilt for the powerful. T hat was a legalistic<br />notion, an encroachment on God’s sovereignty as expressed in Ro-<br />mans 13: “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Who was Coe to<br />question them?<br />Romans, declared a Fellowship study guide for bankers, is “the Bi-<br />ble in miniature in a layman’s words.” The layman is Paul, formerly<br />Saul, who on the road to Damascus saw the light and abandoned the<br />law, for better and worse. “With the Jew in mind,” declared the study<br />guide, “not to mention the memory of his own experience, Paul shows<br />that the purpose of the law was not to save but to reveal sin.”25 Elite<br />fundamentalists, unl ike the moral istic masses of popular crusades, did<br />not care much about sin; they cared about salvation, a concept they<br />understood in terms of nations, not souls, embodied by the rulers to<br />whom God had given power, whether through ballots or bullets.<br />Senator Carlson, writing to President José Joaquín Trejos Fernán-<br />dez of Costa Rica in 1967, made that explicit. As a spiritual guide for<br />the Catholic nation’s National Prayer Breakfast, he wrote, the Fel-<br />lowship was sending Representative Wil liam Jennings Bryan Dorn, a<br />South Caroli na Dixiecrat who advocated extendi ng the Monroe<br />Doctrine, by which the United States dominated Latin America, to<br />the entire world. Romans 13, Carlson rem inded the Latin American<br />leader, lest he bal k: “For there is no authority except from God, and<br />those that exist have been instituted by God.”26<br />In the decade that followed, Costa Rica, the region’s most stable<br />government, became increasingly a base for Fellowship operations<br />and increasingly submissive to God’s instituted authority. “The pro-<br />gram to expand the activities of the Movement have been ful lled<br />according to schedule,” the Fel lowship’s Costa Rican key man, a<br />well-connected lawyer named Juan Edgar Picado, wrote Coe in 1976,<br />assuring him that the leaders of both the nation’s minority and major-<br />ity parties had been absorbed into prayer cells. “We have achieved the<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 221<br />objectives as programmed.” Coe never sent Picado anything but prayer<br />suggestions, but one of his assistants forwarded Henry Kissinger’s<br />plan for the protection of U.S. investments in the region, which Pic-<br />ado promptly made a matter for consideration in his men’s prayers.<br />Po litical brokers li ke P icado work in a loop of power. The more he did<br />for the Fellowship, the more the Fellowship did for him, and the more<br />powerful he became. “Through [a] private world Christian organiza-<br />tion,” reported a Costa Rican paper, “Picado [has] had the opportu-<br />nity to meet in Washington with . . . Dwight Eisenhower, John<br />Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.”27<br />“Why does God look for one man who will listen to Him? ” asked<br />the Fellowship’s Studies for Public Men. “What e ect can one man have<br />in a group, community, city, nation, and world? ” Good question.<br />What e ect, for instance, did General Suharto hope for when he<br />turned his army loose on his own people, a half mill ion civil ians<br />murdered as “com munists” in a year? What e ect did Coe hope for<br />when in 1971, he helped Suharto organize his rst Indonesian Na-<br />tional Prayer Breakfast to celebrate the fth anniversary of the March<br />11, 1966, decree by which he seized power and commenced slaugh-<br />tering hundreds of thousands of his own people?<br />The simple answer would be that it was nothing but cynicism,<br />war by other means, Cold War conquests for the American way. It<br />was that, but it was also more. The prize was never Indonesia or<br />Haiti or Costa Rica. The prize was the Promised Land. Not Israel—<br />like Abram, Coe didn’t seem to care about Zionism one way or the<br />other. The Fellowship’s Promised Land was as it had been for Jona-<br />than Edwards: the New World. Edwards could hardly have been a<br />nationalist before the American nation existed, but Coe was no na-<br />tionalist, either. The Promised Land was America. Not a destination<br />but a concept to be perfected and spread around the world. His Jeru-<br />salem, the New Jerusalem, was an idea, not a place. “My Jerusalem,”<br />one of Coe’s men wrote to him from a businessmen’s revival he’d<br />sparked in Billings, Montana.28 By that he meant the Kingdom of<br />Heaven at home: rst-century Christianity reconstructed, restored,<br />resurrected on whatever ground you claimed as your own. To raise<br /><br /><br />222 | JEFF SHARLET<br />that ancient real ity from the mythological depths—to seize hold of<br />Christianity’s platonic shadow—Coe’s Fellowship adopted the strat-<br />egy with which Edwards ended his days, the strategy with which,<br />centuries later, a decade after Coe reinvented it, the new Christian<br />Right would claim power in the public sphere. It was simple: Con-<br />vert the weak. Encircle the strong.<br />Edwards dreamed of doing so by leading Native Americans to<br />Christ, thus shaming the colonials into the piety even “savages” could<br />attain. One day, hoped Edwards, Boston and New York and the<br />Northampton that had driven him from his pulpit would wake up to<br />discover a frontier of saintly natives. In the late 1970s, the Christian<br />Right wedged its way into Washington not by massive national cam-<br />paigns but through local elections, PTAs, town councils, precinct<br />captains. One day the Republican Party woke up to discover its base<br />was Christian, fundamentally inclined, Edwards’s America achieved<br />at last. The Fellowship’s strategy was—is—sim ilar, but on a global<br />scale. To work, though, it must be a surprise. Secularism must be<br />confronted with overwhelming numbers, a host of believers i n every<br />direction. Unexpected, unimagi nable in this modern age.<br />Coe used the power of the American ag to win subm ission (if<br />not delity) to the fundamentalist God of key men in little nations<br />nobody cared about and big nations nobody understood. There was<br />Somalia’s Siad Barre, a sel f- styled “Koranic Marxist” for whose alle-<br />giance in the 1980s Coe won access to Reagan and a military aid bud-<br />get nearly doubled in size. There was Jonas Savimbi, the brutal rebel<br />of Angola cultivated by other key men from the United States and<br />apartheid South Africa.29 There was Brazil’s General Costa e Silva,<br />the Catholic dictator who acquiesced to a secret cell of Brazilian leg-<br />islators organized by Coe and subsequently won the good graces of a far<br />more powerful group of American congressmen, who helped pour a<br />billion dollars in aid i nto Brazil’s long dictatorship of the generals.30<br />“I never invite them,” Coe said in 20 07 of his dictator friends. “They<br />come to me. And I do what Jesus did: I don’t turn my back to any<br />one. You know, the Bible is full of mass murderers.”31<br />Coe has always claimed he’s not a nationalist, and it’s true—unl ike<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 223<br />immigrant Abram, who cared most for America, Coe, Oregon- born,<br />cares most for the American Christ, His power spread throughout the<br />world even as the homeland is denied Him in the secular fol ly of<br />church/state separation. One day, Coe believes—not yet—America<br />(and Old Europe, too, the Germans and French and Ital ians who<br />drifted from Christ once their prosperity was assured) will wake up<br />and nd itself surrounded by a hundred tiny God-led governments:<br />Fiji, a “model for the nations” under a theocratic regime after 2001, a<br />Fam ily organiz er boasted to me; and Uganda, made over as an experi-<br />ment in faith- based initiatives by the Family’s favorite African brother,<br />the dictator Yoweri Museveni; and Mongolia, where Coe traveled in<br />the late 1980s to plant the seeds for that country’s postcommunist<br /> laissez- faire regime.<br />Nobody notices; nobody cares what happens in small places. This is<br />what George H. W. Bush praised in 1992 as Coe’s “quiet diplomacy.”<br />In 1966, with the Christian Right just starting to emerge as a vis-<br />ible front for fundamentalism, Coe decided to go in the opposite di-<br />rection. “The time has come,” he instructed the Core, “to submerge.”<br />Thereafter, the Fellowship would avoid at all turns any appearance of<br />an organization, even as Coe crafted ever more complex hierarchies<br />behi nd-the- scenes. Business would be conducted on the letterhead of<br />public men, who would testi fy that Fellowship initiatives were their<br />own. Finances would be more “man-to-man,” which is to say, o the<br />books. The Fellowship was going underground.32<br />The decision was not so much conspiratorial, as it seemed to<br />those among Abram’s old-timers who responded with confusion, as<br />ascetic, a humbling of powers. Or, rather, of power’s visible expres-<br />sion. The Fellowship had long been protected from scrutiny by the<br />fact of its membership’s elite positions; not since the days of the<br />muckrakers had the press re al ly pressured the country’s “top men” of<br />a airs. The same principle that forbade photographers to picture<br />FDR’s shriveled legs prevented reporters from asking for details<br />about the private devotions of public men. But such protections were<br />withering. Assassination, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam<br />War demanded tougher questions, and it wasn’t just the press that<br /><br /><br />224 | JEFF SHARLET<br />was asking them; ordinary citizens called for answers, marched for<br />them, fought for them. Power—political, cultural—appeared to be<br />democratizi ng beyond the scope of God’s anointed leaders, just as it<br />had duri ng the 1930s, when Abram rst conceived of his backroom<br />brotherhood. The decision to “submerge,” to make the Fellowship<br />“i nvisible,” was, then, merely a rea rmation of Abram’s founding<br />principles, recast in response to a new populism, deepened, even, to<br />suit the needs of Coe’s new internationalism.<br /><br /><br />Coe announced the decision in a series of letters to the old guard of<br />Abram’s Europe an leadership: Pierre Harmel, the foreign minister of<br />Belgium; Edmond Michelet, a former hero of the French resis tance<br />who’d gradually sul lied his reputation for integrity through a series of<br />cabinet positions in General de Gaulle’s government; and, in Europe’s<br />sphere if not its territory, Charles Malik, a Lebanese Christian. To<br />anyone who is familiar with the United Nations’ Universal Declara-<br />tion of Human Rights, which Malik helped write, his name may be<br />the most surprising of all those to emerge from the Fellowship’s ar-<br />chives. Yet Malik had been party to Abram’s schemes for almost two<br />decades. In 1949, Abram and a retired U.S. admiral, C. S. Freeman,<br />waged a secret diplomatic o ensive against Israel. Christian Zionism<br />as a feature of American fundamentalism was still decades away;<br />Abram and Freeman—and their strongest ally in the United Nations,<br />Mal ik—saw the Jewish state as an obstacle to the “gradual readjust-<br />ment of pol itical and economic control in the Near East in line with<br />the divine plan as declared in the Bible,” a plan they bel ieved best<br />served by U.S. power in Lebanon.33 In Israel’s place they proposed an<br />ostensibly neutral international zone. Of course, to Abram, neutrality<br />would only lead to Jesus, the “universal inevitable,” as he called his<br />God. The plan was a total failure but for one detail: Abram’s acquisi-<br />tion of Malik’s name for his letterhead, an impressive declaration of<br />elite fundamentalism’s international connections.<br />The connection seemed to seduce Malik. By the time Coe joined<br />the Fellowship i n 1959 and began pushing for the evangelization of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 225<br />African, Asian, and Latin American leaders, Malik, then the presi-<br />dent of the thirteenth session of the United Nations’ General Assem-<br />bly, had veered from his own sense of “universal human rights” to the<br />Fellowship’s, declaring that Christians had a responsibility to eradi-<br />cate “tribal and national deities” in Africa and Asia.34 As Coe’s in u-<br />ence in the Fellowship grew, so did Mali k’s intolerance. Christians,<br />he declared, “worship a person,” while “they”—everyone else—<br />“worship an idea”—words that Campus Crusade’s Bill Bright would<br />convert into mainstream American fundamentalism. Christians, Ma-<br />lik went on, worshipped Christ’s “strength,” and in the end, Mali k<br />worshipped strength, indeed, becom ing one of the founders of the<br />Lebanese Front, the right-wing alliance of Christian militias in Leb-<br />anon’s long and awful civil war. Mali k’s old internationalist friends<br />may have been surprised, but it’s hard to imagine that Coe was.<br />Through Malik’s involvement with the group, his name became pop-<br />ular with mainstream American fundamentalists like Bright, happy<br />to add Mal ik’s intellectual credentials to their case.<br />In 1963, Coe collected a group of other people’s speeches he la-<br />beled “T houghts on Prayer,” as close to a statement of his beliefs as one<br />were well represented,<br />can nd from his early years.35 Malik’s ideas <br />just one clue that Coe’s ideas about what prayer was for were interna-<br />tional in scope, despite his own personal mysticism. “T houghts on<br />Prayer” began with Senator Strom Thurmond railing against the 1962<br />Supreme Court decision Engle v. Vitale, which outlawed o cial school<br />prayer. Following Thurmond came the once moderate John Mackay,<br />president of the Princeton Theological Semi nary, declaring that the<br />nations of the world could now be divided into three categories: the<br />secular (increasingly, Western Europe), the “demonic” (the Commu-<br />nist bloc), and the “covenantal,” an echo of the old “City upon a hill”<br />thinking that understood the United States not so much as a country<br />as a holy m ission. But pride of place in “Thoughts on Prayer” belonged<br />to a speech by Bill Bright, based on Malik’s ideas and delivered to a<br />1962 Fel lowship prayer breakfast for the governor of Arizona.<br />Bright, a candy maker before he launched Campus Crusade, was<br />not a charismatic man. He wore a pencil-thin black mustache that<br /><br /><br />226 | JEFF SHARLET<br />made him look like a cartoon, and he was so sti that next to him Pat<br />Boone, his musical apostle, seemed like a genuine rocker. Bright’s ge-<br />nius was organi zational discipline. To the world, Campus Crusade was<br />as simple as Bright’s “Four Spiritual Laws,” a dumbing-down of the<br />gospel that made even his allies uneasy. Internally, Crusade organizers<br />were required to adhere to a book-length set of rules for fundamental-<br />ists that ranged from evangelism techniques to what kind of socks to<br />wear (argyle was forbidden) to the proper way to pick up girls.<br />Bright took the same approach to politics. He publicly declared<br />that Campus Crusade had none, and since Crusade didn’t donate<br />money to candidates or lobby for speci c legislation, the press ac-<br />cepted Bright’s contention. Among friends, he told a di erent story.<br />“The house is on re,” he raged to the Arizona governor’s prayer<br />breakfast, “and there is no time to x the pictures.” The “house” was<br />America; the “pictures” were niceties of the Bill of Rights, such as<br />the First Amendment’s establ ishment clause separati ng church and<br />state. Citing Malik, Bright declared that only Christians could save<br />American government from communism. The time had come for<br />America to embrace 2 Chronicles 6.<br />What did this mean? That was a question the businessmen and poli-<br />ticians assembled that spring day in Arizona must have asked, too, for in<br />the collection of Bible verses bandied about by fundamentalists—as<br />if scripture was Bartlett’s Quotations—2 Chronicles 6 had little standing.<br />It was Old Testament, and unlike the prophecies of Isaiah, it could<br />not, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to foretell Christ. In-<br />stead, it promised a new political order. It’s the story of Solomon’s<br />construction of a temple to be the heart of an Israelite nation, to<br />house the mythic ark of the covenant, “the ark of your might,” as<br />Solomon called it, that would make his kingdom undefeatable in<br />battle.<br />The Jewish temple was destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago, in 70<br />CE. The ark is now nothi ng but a story. Within Judaism, 2 Chroni-<br />cles 6 is both history and mystery, scripture to be studied and pon-<br />dered and parsed for ancient meanings. To Bright, though, guided by<br />Malik, 2 Chronicles 6 was a bluepri nt for a new God-led nation.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 227<br />Bright wanted to rebuild the temple, but in Washington, not Jerusa-<br />lem. The prayer arm ies he dreamed would be unstoppable were<br />those of American fundamental ism. To the world, Bright’s Campus<br />Crusade preached Bible studies for college kids, ice cream socials,<br />and even Christian dance parties. To the movement, he preached<br />spiritual war. Like Coe, he anticipated the coming Jesus wave, and<br />recognized that for the movement to be successful, it would need<br />men to work the deeper currents. Bright organized the masses; Coe<br />cultivated the elite. And Coe’s most successful protégé, Charles W.<br />“Chuck ” Colson, would soon do both, combi ning Bright’s populist<br />style with Coe’s political sophistication.<br /><br /><br />At the 1970 National Prayer Breakfast, a Washington lawyer named<br />James Bell led a seminar for college men who’d been selected by<br />were told only that they’d<br />their institutions’ presidents.36 The men <br />be having breakfast with Richard Nixon, but in Washington, Fellow-<br />ship brothers handed them from one instructor to the next, alternat-<br />ing fundamentalist theology with “private” lectures from politicians<br />and businessmen. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird explained that<br />Christ had a special message for elites. The former student body<br />president of Stanford, just back from Vietnam, spoke of the dedica-<br />tion of the Viet Min h as a model for evangelizing Washington. Paul<br />Temple, a Standard Oil executive, explained how the Fellowship had<br />won him access to key men in General Francisco Franco’s govern-<br />ment in Spain. “Public events” had two purposes, said Bell: (1) to<br />declare to the world “the relevancy of God in the Establishment’s<br />life”; (2) to recruit “the up and outer.” The real work of the Fellow-<br />ship that the college men had been chosen for took place in small<br />groups, where, away from publicity, men “attack the basic social<br />problems of America.” Bell didn’t list those problems, but he gave a<br />hint of his meaning: “All of us cry over our martinis about law and<br />order, but very few of us do a blooming thi ng about it.”37<br />The Fellowship did. How? Not through proposing laws or cam-<br />paigning. Its politics were cultural, in the broadest sense; its method<br /><br /><br />228 | JEFF SHARLET<br />the capture of leaders’ souls, the eradication of their egos, the replace-<br />ment of their will with Christ’s. Their goals were not the rollback of<br />the 1963 school prayer decision, or antiporn laws, or the “Christian<br />Amendment,” a perennial proposal to formally dedicate the nation to<br />Christ. It was bigger, deliberately vague, and so long-term—think<br />generations—that the Fellowship would never have to answer for its<br />successes and failures. Coe made the strategy of deferral into Fellow-<br />ship doctrine. T he distant goal was “a leadership led by God,” said Bell.<br />“Period.” Few men in the Fellowship expected to see it in their life-<br />times. But the college boys could get in on it if they felt so called—by<br />conscience or career. “If you want some doors opened . . . there are<br />men in government, there are senators who literally nd it their plea-<br />sure to give any kind of advice, assistance, or counsel.”38<br />Three years later, Chuck Colson, destined to become one of the<br />leadi ng theorists of American fundamentalism, would discover as<br />much as he faced the prospect of prison. Colson was no ordinary<br />criminal. He was one of Richard Nixon’s closest aides, the smartest,<br />toughest man on his sta , Nixon’s “hatchet man”: responsible for<br />Nixon’s “enemies list,” said to be the brai ns behind schemes to re-<br />bomb the Brookings Institution and hire Teamsters to beat up anti-<br />war protesters. He was, the court would soon rule, a Watergate<br />felon, the most powerful of the Nixon “dirty tricksters” to be sent to<br />prison.<br />He wouldn’t go alone, though; accompanying him would be the<br />Jesus of the Fellowship, whom he’d discovered was a good friend,<br />indeed. The Fellowship, he’d write in his 1976 memoir, Born Again,<br />comprised a “veritable underground of Christ’s men all through gov-<br />ernment.” 39 Colson would later claim that it was news to him, but he<br />was a man who understood the power of friends and the politics of<br />religion.<br />A former marine from Massachusetts, a scholarship student at<br />Brown, and a Harvard lawyer by dint of brain power and no silver<br />spoons, Colson was (and is) a beefy, square-headed man with thick<br />black square- shaped glasses. He’s always had the jowls of a bulldog<br />and a natural sneer like that of late- stage Elvis—the same bloated<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 229<br />cockiness but without any sex appeal. His job for Ni xon was not to<br />look pretty but to cut deals with constituencies Republicans had ei-<br />ther ignored or taken for granted. He brought i n the working-class<br />vote by playing to poor men’s fears of hippies, feminists, black power,<br />and, as always, the red tide. And he brought in the religious vote in a<br />way no American pol itician had attempted to do until then: he ar-<br />ranged for Nixon to hold church services directly in the White<br />House, “quasi- spiritual, quasi-political,” he’d call them. Colson rec-<br />ognized the political power of religion years before he was born again,<br />before he joined the Fellowship. He brought in a di erent religious<br />leader every Sunday, a photo op every week that put Nixon’s mug in<br />the pastor’s o ces of the nation’s most powerful churches. St. Dick<br />of the Second Chance, the most enduring man on the American po-<br />litical scene. Billy Graham’s best political buddy; a friendship, Colson<br />understood, worth more in a changing America than the waning<br />power of the old city machi nes that had stolen the White House from<br />Nixon in 1960. The machines were rusting; their troops were mov-<br />ing to the suburbs; and the suburbs were getting religion. And Col-<br />son got them, because he understood what they wanted, visible<br />access. Proof that they mattered. Image was everything, and they<br />wanted pictures of themselves in the White House, a new visual nar-<br />rative about the distribution of power in America.<br />There was something almost democratic about it. Only, Colson<br />didn’t let the multitudes in; he simply made room for the bosses, the<br />men who ran the old machines and the new and improved ones. The<br />unions, grinding into irrelevance, and the Jesus-engi nes, revving,<br />revving, ready to bring the war home, indeed, and ght it with the<br />discipline of the Viet Minh, the stealthiness of the Vietcong, and the<br />revolutionary fervor of rock and roll. What Colson recognized was<br />that in America the time for sermons was past. A new politics, raw<br />and emotional, was being born (again), and Colson did what he could<br />to make it work for the most overcooked, overcalculated president in<br />history.<br />So, did this political xer really not know about Abram and Coe<br />and the dozens of congressmen networked i n prayer cells before he<br /><br /><br />230 | JEFF SHARLET<br />faced prison time? Was he unaware of the White House cell that met<br />weekly under Nixon’s Federal Reserve chief, Arthur Burns, a Jew for<br />Jesus before anyone had heard of such a notion? Did he not know that<br />Gerald Ford, the House Republican leader, his soul saved by a<br />preacher named Billy Zeoli, had for years been in a prayer cell with<br />Melvin Laird, now Nixon’s secretary of defense?<br />Well, he says so. White House correspondent Dan Rather found<br />shy Colson’s sudden discovery of prayer for himself as well as the<br />rubes. At a 1973 press conference, Rather demanded to know why,<br />after Colson had left the White House in disgrace, he continued to<br />pop in on a regular basis. For prayer meetings, answered an embar-<br />rassed press secretary. Come on, Rather replied, we all know what<br />goes on when pol iticians get together to talk about their souls. The<br />press secretary shrugged, Rather gave up, and Colson continued on<br />his amazing spiritual journey. Later that year, a syndicated columnist<br />discouraged further i nquiries into Colson’s “u nderground prayer<br />movement,” lest the press undermine its ability to humbly arrange<br />for the redemption of “ big” men: “they meet in each other’s homes,<br />they meet at prayer breakfasts, they converse on the phone. . . .<br />They genuinely avoid publicity. In fact, they shun it.” 40<br />Colson wasn’t the only Watergate conspirator to nd solace in<br />the Fellowship as the indictments began. James W. McCord, the ex-<br />CIA man who served as “security director” of the Committee to Re-<br />Elect the President, CREEP (sentenced to two and a hal f to eight<br />years), received “spiritual undergi rding” from Halverson; Egil “Bud”<br />Krogh, the chief of the “plumbers” (sentenced to six months), who<br />tried to silence Daniel Ellsberg, prayed with a Fellowship prayer cell<br />right before heading o to prison; and Jeb Magruder (sentenced to<br />four months to ten years), who blamed his participation in the plot<br />on the liberal ethics he’d been taught at Williams College by the Rev-<br />erend Will iam Sloane Co n, joined a Fellowship cell just as he was<br />pleading guilty, albeit only to get “the best possible deal.” But Colson<br />was the one who actually made something real of his new faith—<br />indeed, he transformed it.41<br />Colson’s rst contact with the Fellowship came through Tom<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 231<br />Phillips, the CEO of the m issile manufacturer Raytheon. Back in<br />private practice after leaving the White House under a black cloud,<br />waiting to go to trial, Colson was pumping his Republ ican network<br />hard for new clients. One such was the International Brotherhood of<br />Teamsters under Frank “Fitz” Fitzsimmons, the ma a-friendly suc-<br />cessor to Jimmy Ho a and one of Nixon’s staunchest allies. Nixon<br />was no friend to worki ng people, but with Colson’s help, he managed<br />to seduce right-wing union bosses by turning a blind eye toward<br />their looting of their own treasuries (Nixon ordered the Justice De-<br />partment to drop its investigations of the Teamsters after Fitz took<br />over in 1971) in exchange for their muscle at the ballot box and in the<br />streets, as when Colson asked the Teamsters to crack skulls at an<br />antiwar rally. (From the Nixon tapes: “Haldeman: Colson’s gonna . . .<br />do it with the Team sters. Nixon: They’ve got guys who’ll go in and<br />knock their heads o . Haldeman: Sure. Murderers . . . They’re<br />gonna beat the [expletive deleted] out of some of these people. And,<br />uh, and hope they really hurt ’em.”)<br />Fitz would remain a Colson client well into Colson’s “born again”<br />phase; the dissonance between his newfound piety and “friends” l ike<br />Fitz angered liberal Christians, but it wasn’t a problem for the Fel-<br />lowship. When Phillips raised the subject of Jesus with Colson at<br />Phillips’s Massachusetts home one summer night in 1973, he didn’t<br />speak of accountabi lity or Christian ethics; instead, he read Psalms<br />to Colson and told hi m that Jesus, alone, could make the frightened<br />dirty trickster feel whole again. Colson wept all the way home, lled<br />with repentance for his godlessness but not for his crimes. He denies<br />them to this day, despite having pled guilty. “Had I fought [the<br />charges] I would have won,” he boasts to fellow fundamentalists.<br />“But, no, God had a plan for my life.”42<br />Soon after Colson’s t of weeping, Coe paid him a visit in Wash-<br />ington. Colson had no idea who he was. Coe simply walked into Col-<br />son’s law o ce, threw o his raincoat, draped himself sideways over a<br />leather chair, and informed Colson that Phillips had been sharing his<br />private, confessional letters about his growing religiosity with Coe. “I<br />hope you don’t mind,” Coe said. Colson did mind, but “there was such<br /><br /><br />232 | JEFF SHARLET<br />kindness in his eyes my resis tance began to melt.” Coe reached across<br />Colson’s desk, held his hand, and asked him to pray. Thereafter, Col-<br />son was his brother, a member of the underground, eligible for advice,<br />assistance, and counsel from all its members, not just Republicans but<br />Democrats as well—especially a popular l iberal senator from Iowa<br />named Harold Hughes, well known for his opposition to the Vietnam<br />War in general and Nixon very much in particular.<br />Hughes was a perfect frontman for Coe, su ciently liberal that<br />Coe could claim to have transcended politics, but also so kooky that<br />his actions were easily manipulated. He was a former truck driver<br />and a recovered alcoholic who turned to Jesus after spiritualism and<br />ESP failed him. He was said to have the demeanor of an evangelist<br />and the eyes of a mystic. In unpublished portions of his memoir,<br />Hughes wrote that his encounters with UFOs were the source of his<br />d eep sen se o f p ersp ect ive. Th at “per sp ec t ive,” c omb ined wit h Hu gh es’s<br />faith—and, perhaps, the diminution of his career after a failed 1972<br />presidential bid—led Hughes to view Colson, under investigation for<br />Watergate, as an underdog who needed his help. Hughes vowed to do<br />all that he could to see that Colson got o lightly; a bout of<br />on-their-knees prayer the two had u ndertaken had su ciently re-<br />deemed Colson in Hughes’s eyes. Hughes lobbied hard for his new<br />“ brother,” as he called Colson, and even broke ranks with Democrats<br />to keep Watergate pardons in the pipel ine under Ford. Once Colson<br />was in prison, Coe and Hughes worked hard for his early release. It<br />worked; Colson ended up serving less than seven months of his one-<br />to three-year sentence for his role i n Watergate. It wasn’t hard time.<br />“If you think what you’ve done was done for the right reasons,” he<br />boasted shortly before he began his sentence, “then the consequences<br />are easy to live with.” 43<br />In prison, Colson claims, he gave up politics for God. But in a<br />June 11, 1974, letter defending his conversion to his parole board,<br />Colson wrote, “That which I found I could not change or a ect in a<br />political or managerial way, I found could be changed by the force of a<br />personal relationship that men develop in a common bond to Christ.”44<br />Doug Coe, in a letter to the board dated one day later, wrote that<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 233<br />Colson’s freedom was necessary so that a group of Christian men<br />could put him to work on a program for “reaching youth” in juvenile<br />del inquent homes. Upon his release, the two men collaborated on<br />what would become the model and inspiration for what may well be a<br />generation or more of “faith- based” governmental activism.<br />The story of Prison Fellowship—the largest m inistry for prison-<br />ers in the world, with 50,0 00 employees and volunteers dedicated to<br />helping convicts become law abiders —has been recounted in short,<br />inspirational bursts many times since Colson founded it with Coe’s<br />help and the Fellowship’s money shortly after his own release from<br />prison i n 1975. So many times, in fact, that it’s not a story anymore<br />but a myth, a legend of how a brilliant but bad man got God in prison<br />and came out a babe in Christ; of how the liberals and the cynics<br />didn’t believe Colson at rst but soon saw the l ight. Say what you will<br />about Prison Fellowship’s fundamentalist Jesus, the story goes, but<br />Colson’s Christ works. He saves souls. And, more important, he trans-<br />forms rapists, murderers, and thieves into docile “followers of Jesus.”<br />Even nonbelievers would rather ex-cons thump Bibles than their fel-<br />low se nior citizens.<br />And yet Prison Fellowship—indeed, compassionate conservatism<br />writ large—is implicitly political. Colson sees it as a bulwark against<br />“moral decadence,” he told me, and even as an almost governmental<br />institution. “Government, theologically, has two major roles: to pre-<br />serve order—we can only have freedom out of order—and to do jus-<br />tice, to restrain evil.” The evil that most concerned Colson at the<br />beginning of his Prison Fellowship days was black radicalism; today it’s<br />“Islamofascism,” a word that in Colson’s usage functions as a warning<br />against secularism. “To the extent that we become a decadent society,”<br />he explained to me, “we feed Islamofascism.” What disturbs Colson<br />most, though, isn’t “Islamofascism” or black power or any particular<br />dissident faction; it’s simply the concept of authority being challenged,<br />Romans 13—a key text for Colson that only begins to outline the<br />scope of theological and political power, he told me—disobeyed. Dis-<br />cipline and obedience, Colson writes in Against the Night: Living in the<br />New Dark Ages, were the foundations of the Roman Empire, just as<br /><br /><br />234 | JEFF SHARLET<br />“ biblical obedience” should be—must be—the cornerstone of “the<br />West’s” stand against the “new barbarians,” whether they come in the<br />form of Musl ims or secular schoolteachers.<br />Colson’s message breaks with the classic Christian concept of<br />redemption through humility, argues Paul Apostolidis, a political<br />scholar who has studied Colson’s extensive archive of radio broad-<br />casts. In its place, Colson o ers a “ fundamentalist logic according to<br />which salvation is dispensed according to obedience—and, if neces-<br />sary, outright humiliation—before authority.” Colson fragments and<br />then co-opts that which could otherwise be a potentially anarchic<br />class of the disenfranchised. In keeping with the principles of evan-<br />gelicalism, the same as those of compassionate conservatism, Prison<br />Fellowship works on a one- by-one model, transforming adherents of<br />“radical Islam” and other threats to the Republic—black power ac-<br />tivists, white power supremacists, plain old thugs, prisoners who get<br />an education—into an atomized class of isolated individuals, praying<br />to be “ broken” by God, to be “used” by His Son, to be “nothing” be-<br />fore the Holy Ghost.45<br />If this strikes men who’ve already been broken by the state as just<br />one more humiliation, Colson reminds them that he o ers the same<br />counsel to CEOs and congressmen. Prisoners and senators, he tells<br />convicts, are equal in God’s eyes—a nice sentiment that neatly sepa-<br />rates those who accept it from the realities of a world in which the<br />power is in somebody else’s hands. Had Colson directed his new pious<br />energies at any other segment of society—had he tried to convert<br />union members, for instance, or joined Bill Bright at Campus<br />Crusade—he real ly might have been cruci ed. But Colson chose the<br />lowest of the low, men and a few women on whom it has long been<br />acceptable to experiment. Colson experimented, bludgeoning his way<br />through bureaucracy with his political skills and his new Fel lowship<br />political allies to set up fundamentalist ministries in prisons around<br />the country. A great story, according to conventional thinking. Col-<br />son must mean it; what could he have to gain from prisoners?<br />Colson knew the answer to that one. First there was a best-<br />selling book, and then another one, and now there are literally doz-<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 235<br />ens, books spinning out of Prison Fellowship every year. There was a<br />movie, a comic book, and the secular press, which was not so secular<br />after all when o ered evidence of genuine jailhouse conversions.<br />Even as the mainstream media fretted about the risi ng power of the<br />new Moral Majority and the televangelists so bent on beaming their<br />message, the mainstream media itself beamed Colson’s message.<br />What did Colson have to gain from the prisoners? The press didn’t<br />bother to ask, because it was the press that supplied him with his re-<br />ward: more power than he’d ever had worki ng for mean old Richard<br />Nixon. “The kingdom of God will not arrive on Air Force One,” he<br />has declared, dismissive of his old obsession with party politics.<br />What he meant by this, he told me, was that he had learned through<br />fundamentalism to pursue pure power, not partisanship. Now, Colson<br />boasts of his access to leaders arou nd the world through Prison Fel-<br />lowship, strongmen who would have looked at him as a diplomatic<br />challenge in his White House days. Today, according to the elite<br />evangelicals who responded to a survey by the sociologist D. Michael<br />Lindsay, Colson has more political in uence than James Dobson or<br />Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.46 In a 1980 letter<br />to Coe, Colson puts it as plainly as possible. He’s describing a Fel-<br />lowship cell in Bonn with which he had met at Coe’s request. “It is a<br />fabulous group of men. In fact, I’ve never met any group quite like it.<br />I think we should arrange to use them as a model for leadership<br />groups around the world. We’d better do it in a hurry, however, be-<br />fore they lead the next Nazi takeover out of Germany.”47<br />And yet the Jesus at the heart of Prison Fellowship is not the com-<br />monplace Christ of mainstream evangelicalism, but a distinct entity<br />growing out of Colson’s political past and his subsequent philosophi-<br />cal passions. Colson’s work is shot through with a cagey regard for<br />Plato’s “noble lie,” by which the elite must govern masses who don’t<br />know what’s good for them, and a reverence for “ leadership” as a<br />semimystical quality bequeathed to a small elect who already possess<br />the ki nd of con dence others might call arrogance. The idealization of<br />strength that manifests itself even in Colson’s peculiar sense of humor<br />is the foundation of Colson’s faith. “We should look at our churches<br /><br /><br />236 | JEFF SHARLET<br />exactly the way you look at Marine Corps training for combat because<br />that’s what it is!” he instructs his followers. “ That is how we are prepar-<br />ing today for the spiritual combat in which we live, and we should take<br />it every bit as seriously as soldiers in the Marines preparing to go to<br />war.”48 His rst literary step as a fol lower of Christ was not the Bible<br />but some of the mor e overlooked pages of C. S . Lew is, in which L ewis<br />decries “men without chests.” Colson preaches Lewis’s “manly” Christ<br />with the moral authority of a man who does, after al l, dedicate his life<br />to prisoners, and the political savvy of one who has been in the<br />trenches of the culture wars since before the battle had a name. That<br />combination allows Colson to escape the scrutiny a orded James<br />Dobson or the Southern Baptist Convention.<br />It has also resulted in what might be best understood as a powerful<br />new religious movement. Faith-based initiatives, compassionate conserva-<br />tism, and servant-leadership, a term popular with evangelical politicians<br />who insist that they consolidate power the better to help widows and<br />orphans, can all be traced back to the model of Colson’s Prison Fel-<br />lowship, a radical revision of the “Social Gospel” of the early twenti-<br />eth century. Evangel icals have always been at the forefront of aid<br />work with the poor and the su ering, but they traditionally came<br />from the left wing of the movement—the branch that seemed to die<br />with William Jennings Bryan, the “Great Commoner,” back in 1925. In<br />the years that followed, evangelicals, and especially fundamentalists—<br />elite and populist—disdained “good works,” aid to the poor, as ir-<br />relevant to salvation. The only help the poor needed was Jesus. Colson<br />thought so, too, but he understood that for people to accept the rule of<br />Christ, they’d need some prep work. But it wasn’t his idea; it was<br />Coe’s.<br />To understand where it came from, we must go back several<br />years to 1968, the morning of April 4, when an assassin’s bullet<br />slammed i nto Martin Luther King Jr. while he stood on a motel bal-<br />cony in Memphis. King was a Christian like Coe. Like Coe, he be-<br />lieved in the “ beloved community,” the Kingdom of God realized<br />here on Earth, and like Coe, he was willing to work with those who<br />didn’t share his beliefs. But that is where the similarities end. Coe<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 237<br />preaches a personal, private subm ission; King fought and died in<br />public for collective liberation. Coe believes Jesus has a special mes-<br />sage for the powerful; K ing believed God has a special message for<br />everyone. Most important, in 1968, as Coe was constricti ng the al-<br />ready narrow vision of the Fellowship, King was doing as he had<br />done his whole life: broadening his dream. K ing died just as he was<br />raising his voice to speak out not only for racial justice but also for<br />economic justice. He would pursue it not through private prayer<br />cells but through public solidarity. And when James Earl Ray mur-<br />dered him, m illions of Americans expressed their sol idarity with the<br />dead not through polite mourning but through fury.<br />Following King’s murder, the Fellowship’s city on a hill, Wash-<br />ington, D.C., burned. More than 200 res roared throughout the<br />capital. White suburbanites in Arlington and Alexandria looked<br />across the river and saw a sunrise at midnight, a terrifying new day<br />dawning. Many white residents of the District had feared it for years.<br />White ight from Washington began not with the civil rights move-<br />ment but in the 1940s; it actually slowed down in the 1960s, but<br />only because so many white people had already retreated to the sub-<br />urbs. Even so, between 1960 and 1970, those suburbs grew in popu-<br />lation by 61 percent, putting their numbers far higher than those of<br />Washington proper, which remained static at around 80 0,000. In<br />1967, the city got its rst black mayor since Reconstruction, the aptly<br />named Walter Washi ngton; but in 1968, twelve dead in the street<br />after clashes between the people and the police (and then the Na-<br />tional Guard), whole neighborhoods smolderi ng like they were part<br />of Hanoi, the city seemed doomed.49<br />For Coe, this would not do. The Fellowship’s Christian Embassy<br />remained in the heart of the city. It had to be saved. Perhaps, too,<br />Coe felt some modicum of guilt; even as he and his underlings<br />courted the strongmen of Africa, he had paid almost no attention to<br />African Americans. A letter to Coe during his early days in Washing-<br />ton suggests that his neglect was a conscious choice: “Are any of your<br />[converts] Negroes,” wrote a friend from Oregon, “or are you still<br />discriminatory?”50 Coe did not bother to answer. But i n 1968, faced<br /><br /><br />238 | JEFF SHARLET<br />with what appeared to be revolution—Stokely Carmichael, dressed<br />like a guerrilla commander to promote his book Black Power: The Poli-<br />tics of Liberation in America, told Howard University, “I’ve come to<br />Washington to stay, baby . . . this is our town.”—Coe turned the<br />Fellowship’s considerable resources toward those closest at hand,<br />Washington’s African Americans.51<br />Working with Halverson, a group of wealthy white businessmen,<br />a black preacher named William Porter, and a former professor of<br />Carmichael’s, John Staggers, Coe oversaw the recruitment of “street<br />dudes,” black ex-cons, to become a paramilitary security force called<br />the Black Bu ers —the Fellowship’s answer to black power. Like the<br />Panthers, the Bu ers patrolled inner-city streets. They even wore<br />dashikis, bought in bulk on Coe’s orders. But their African garb and<br />their two-way radios were paid for by white businessmen, and Coe’s<br />counselors trained them to preach not black power but black capital-<br />ism. “They called us a spy group,” remembers Reverend Porter, the<br />rst supervisor of the program, “ because we’d nd out what was<br />happeni ng”—in terms of black militance—“and shut it down if it<br />happened.”52<br />Drawing funds from the city government and the U.S. Labor<br />Department (through the intervention of Fellowship brother Con-<br />gressman Al Q uie, who at the time was spearheading the GOP at-<br />tack on federal aid for schools), the Bu ers were supposed to be<br />secular. They weren’t. Everything they did—from running after-<br />school martial arts classes for boys and “charm school” for girls, to<br />monitoring street corners for m ilitance, to violently enforci ng disci-<br />pline within their own ranks—was ltered through the fundamen-<br />talism of Jesus plus nothing.<br />“The biggest problem that blacks face in this country today hap-<br />pens to be the black man himself,” Staggers would say. “Racial con-<br />icts do exist in our country. Their solutions are not to be found in<br />the passing of laws and other kinds of legislation, but only when man<br />accepts God totally in his life.”53<br />That was the idea the Bu ers began with in 1968, the rst seeds of<br />what would become compassionate conservatism. The Bu ers were a<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 239<br />fundamentally right-wing organization—authoritarian, violent, and<br />dedicated to the maintenance of established power—but they some-<br />times functioned l ike left-wing radicals, acting as literal bu ers be-<br />tween black Washingtonians and the nearly all-white police force.<br />About the police, they harbored no illusions. “If you ever have a con-<br />frontation with the police,” Reverend Porter counseled the Bu ers,<br />“make sure there’s ve or six of you. Don’t start nothing but defend<br />yourself. He might kill one of you, but make sure you get him.”<br />In the end, Coe got them. Not long after they were up and run-<br />ning, Coe installed a white sta er from the evangelical group Young<br />Life in authority over the Bu ers. Revered Porter realized that the<br />Bu ers were losing local control; the goal, he suspected, was to fold<br />them into Young Life as a diversity program the almost all-white<br />or ganization could boast about. He couldn’t be sure; Coe surrounded<br />his intentions with secrecy. Sec recy, in fact, was o cial policy. Coe<br />and the white businessmen who nanced the Bu ers wanted tight<br />control of the group, but they didn’t want credit. Instead, they<br />wanted to create the impression of spontaneous outbreaks of black<br />submission (to Christ) instead of black power. They thought it might<br />catch on. When it didn’t, the nanciers pulled the plug after not<br />much more than a year, satis ed t hat order had at least been re-<br />turned to Washington. Compassionate conservatism, beta version, was<br />complete.<br />Staggers went to work for the Republican senator Richard Lugar.<br />Coe began staking out suburban properties for the Fellowship, and in<br />keeping with his new Ozzy and Harriet white- ight ethos, began<br />calling it the Family. The Bu ers drifted apart, and some went back<br />to prison. Porter moved on to a pulpit in Maryland, although he kept<br />attending Coe’s inner-city prayer breakfasts until he nally grew<br />tired of what he heard as Coe’s broken-record message of “reconcili-<br />ation” without substance. Porter was a theologically conservative<br />Christian. He believed in prayer. But he also bel ieved in power, and<br />he quit the Fellowship—or the Fam ily—when he realized that the<br />men who ran it would never really share any with a brother who had<br />nothing to trade, not even a whispered threat of revolution.<br /><br /><br />240 | JEFF SHARLET<br />And Colson? He was just getting started. At the beginning, he<br />seemed to enjoy boasting of his new Fam ily connections, the smooth-<br />est political machine he’d ever encountered. But he soon learned the<br />art of quiet diplomacy, Coe- style. He Vietnamized. In 1977, he ap-<br />peared on Pat Robertson’s 700 Clu b program with his newest brother<br />in Christ: Eldridge Cleaver, a founder of the Black Panthers. On the<br />run in revolutionary Algeria, lost and far from home, Cleaver experi-<br />enced a vision of Jesus that would have been immediately recogniz-<br />able to the Family. “ I was looking up at the moon,” he’d later recount,<br />“and I saw the man in the moon and it was my face.” Then the face<br />began to morph, becoming rst one of Cleaver’s strongman heroes,<br />then another. From Cleaver himself to Castro to Mao to the stron-<br />gest man of all, Jesus Christ, glowering down from the African<br />night. Cleaver fell to his knees and wept, praying the Twenty-third<br />Psalm, com mitted to memory as a child, and then the tears dried and<br />Cleaver was ready at last to repent for black power—to surrender to<br />American justice and the American Jesus.54<br />Cleaver, Colson told Pat Robertson, had joined a prayer cel l with<br />him, former senator Harold Hughes—by then worki ng full time for<br />the Fam ily—and Tommy Tarrant, a former Klansman in prison for<br />bombing a Jewish family. Cleaver, declared Colson, was reconciled.<br />In 1980, Cleaver, Panther no more, endorsed Ronald Reagan.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-81382885773867876642009-07-12T02:29:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:31:07.653-07:00II. Jesus Plus Nothing - The Blob<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">The Blob<br /></span></div><br />The most unexpected early fruit of Abram’s prayer breakfasts <br />was The Blob, a 1958 B-movie about the creepi ng horrors of<br />com munism. “Indescribable . . . Indestructible! Nothi ng can stop<br />it!” warned the tagline. It is mindless glop f rom outer space. T he Blob<br />absorbs the residents of a small town, growing bigger, grosser, and<br />more ravenous until the townspeople discover they can defeat the<br />Blob by freezing it—the Cold War writ small and literal. The Blob<br />was the result of an unlikely collaboration between a screenwriter<br />named Kate Phillips and an evangelical m inister named Irvi n “ Shorty”<br />Yeaworth. The two met at the 1957 Presidential Prayer Breakfast.<br />Phillips, a former actress who’d appeared in forgotten lm s such as<br />Free, Blonde, and 21 and Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise, wasn’t known for<br />her faith. She attended the Prayer Breakfast as a guest of a friend<br />from Islip, Long Island—probably Abram’s patron, Marian Aymar<br />Johnson, at whose Islip estate Abram did much of his planning.1 Phil-<br />lips was accustomed to Hollywood glamour, but she felt lost am id the<br />crowd of congressmen and business titans gathered for breakfast in a<br />ballroom of Washington’s May ower Hotel. “All of a sudden,” Phil-<br />lips later told a fan, “a chap came out of the hotel and said that some-<br />body had suggested he talk to me because I was a writer.”<br />The chap was Yeaworth, a di rector of “Christian education” lms<br />looking to subliminally broadcast his message into the mainstream.<br />Shorty had backi ng for a full-length science ction ick. The catch<br />was that it had to be “wholesome.” And as if by providence, here was<br /><br /><br />182 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />a screenwriter at a prayer breakfast. “I would like to have you be a<br />part of the picture,” Shorty declared, and a few days later he traveled<br />up to Phillips’s Long Island home to show o a two-pound co ee can<br />full of the blob stu that would come to serve as the Cold War’s most<br />ridiculous metaphor for communism.<br />If picturing the Red Army as a carnivorous mass of Jell-O was ab-<br />surd, the symbolism t the bigger concept of Co ld War, an amorphous<br />ght that absorbed ideological nuance as it grew bigger, grosser, and<br />more ravenous for the hearts, minds, and economies of two dueling<br />empires. Between the rebirth of fundamentalism in the 1930s and ’40s<br />and its emergence as a visible force during the Reagan years sits the<br />historical blob of the Cold War, an era as bewildering to modern minds<br />as any in American history. There is, to begin with, the question of<br />whether the United States won this war or the Soviet Union lost it. A<br />third school of thought wonders if both sides were losers. And then<br />there is the more vexing question of just what we mean by Cold War.<br />To today’s conservatives, it was a philosophical stance—better<br />dead than red—that resulted in “our bloodless victory.”2 For liberals<br />eager to reclaim a mantle of muscular progressivism, meanwhile,<br />Cold War refers to an abstract strategy of containment—as if the Cold<br />War didn’t explode into dozens of “regional” con icts strategized in<br />Moscow and Washington, “civil wars,” fought with the empi res’<br />weapons, that killed m illions. Most memorably, the dead, American<br />and otherwise, of Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but also the<br />forgotten losses of the Shah’s Iran, Suharto’s Indonesia, Mobutu’s<br />“Zaire,” Pinochet’s Chile, Papa Doc’s Haiti, the United Fruit Com-<br />pany’s Guatemala, and many more. One could draw up just as long a<br />list to lay at the Krem lin’s door or Beijing’s, but it’s our own sins that<br />most require recollection, that fade to nostalgia in the sepia-toned<br />memories of both liberals and conservatives.<br />Even those terms—liberal and conservative—befuddle us. Which<br />was which, for instance, when Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson<br />in 1952 on a campaign promise of decreasing military spending, while<br />Stevenson boasted that “the strange alchemy of time has somehow con-<br />verted the Democrats into the truly conservative party of this country”?3<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 183<br />How do we categorize Cold Warriors such as Senator Mark Hat eld—a<br />Republican from O regon, vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, and<br />staunch advocate of evangelical political power—versus his colleague<br />to the north, Senator Henry “ Scoop” Jackson of Washington, a “god-<br />less” Democrat whose relentless mil itarism inspired neoconservative<br />protégés such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, architects of the<br />Iraq War?<br />That the ideological spectrum in America more closely resembles<br />a Mobius strip, left and right twisting into one another, than it does a<br />radio dial is a basic truth of political history. But what of religious<br />history?4 What of the role of Christianity, and particularly that branch<br />of the faith dedicated to “fundamental” principles, whether they’re<br />those of Christ’s sovereignty over all, or of America’s divine destiny?<br />How did American fundamentalism intertwine with the new inter-<br />nationalism to create the DNA of a Cold War in which one of the<br />nation’s most militant commanders in chief—I am thinking here of<br />Kennedy, not Reagan—reduced the issue to one of a belief in God,<br />“ours,” versus the Soviets’ lack thereof?<br /><br /><br />The Christianity of American fundamentalism is a faith for futur-<br />ists, the sort of people who delight in imagining what is to come<br />next, even if it’s awful. World War II had changed the steady plod of<br />Christian futurism, quickened it. Christendom had at times raced<br />toward apocalypse before, but never with such technology at its<br />disposal—no rockets, no bombers, no nuclear missiles. The stakes<br />were higher in the new era, the enemy stronger. Fundamentalism<br />responded with great imagination, not just following the popular<br />trend of spotting ying saucers and aliens among us, but driving it.<br />The al iens among us were not green men from Mars; they were red,<br />at least on the inside, and they could be your neighbors. On the out-<br />side, they looked just like good Christian Americans. Many of them<br />were Christians, in fact, or so supposed the conservative m ind. By<br />the end of the decade, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover would declare that<br />com munist stealth operatives, “schooled in atheistic perversity,” had<br /><br /><br />184 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />made Christian pulpits a main objective—and tool—of their propa-<br />ganda. A “ deadly radioactive cloud of Marxism-Leninism,” he preached,<br />was fogging America’s liberal houses of worship.5<br />Hoover kept les on liberal churches; Abram kept friendlier les<br />on Hoover, a man who seemed to naturally speak the language of<br />holy cause- and-e ect Abram had re ned before the war. “The crimi-<br />nal is the product of spiritual starvation,” Hoover was quoted in a<br />pamphlet Abram saved, The J. Edgar Hoover You Ought to Know. The<br />pamphlet’s author was an ally of Abram’s, Edward L. R. Elson, a<br />mainline Presbyterian whose paranoia placed him at the far end of<br />the religious spectrum. Elson joined another friend of Abram’s,<br />Charles Wesley Lowry, to create the Foundation for Religious Ac-<br />tion in the Social and Civil Order, and Lowry, in turn, joined Abram<br />in behind-the- scenes council of upper-crust Christian conservative<br />leaders known as “the Twelve.”<br />Before the war, such initiatives were the stu of the fringe, disaf-<br />fected Babbits, America Firsters. After the war, they were main-<br />stream. In the 1950s, the soldiers of Christ didn’t wear armor; they<br />wore cu inks. Consider this convention of Fellowship worthies,<br />gathered in a hotel lobby for a group portrait. On the left is Abram in<br />his customary double- breasted suit, lapels like bat wings, his silk ker-<br />chief neatly folded in his breast pocket and a slim leather Bible spread<br />open in his right hand. To his right stands Billy Graham, his famous<br />blue eyes glowering between his rock jaw and a wave of blond hair,<br />almost good looking enough to play a gun ghter. And rising between<br />them stands a fascinating character named Kenneth M. Crosby.<br />Crosby was literally our man in Havana, or at least one of them.<br />He’d been a spy throughout Latin America during the war. O cially<br />retired at its end, he took over Merrill Lynch’s Cuban operation in<br />1946 and stayed until 1959, when Fidel Castro drove out the dictator<br />Fulgencio Batista, reporting all the while back to U.S. intelligence, a<br />happy double posting which also allowed him time to set up prayer<br />cells for Abram. His “ Havana Group” consisted of American embassy<br />personnel, representatives from American banks and the United<br />Fruit Company. Cuban sugar cartels boasted openly in the Havana<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 185<br />Pos t of the prayer cell’s use as a lobbying tool, noting that one of the<br />International Christian Leadership o cers, Congressman Brooks<br />Hays, returned home from a spiritual session in Cuba ready to ght<br />for Cuban sugar in the House Foreign A airs Committee. Crosby<br />was even more loyal to the regime, serving as an i ntermediary be-<br />tween Batista’s Palacio Presidencial and American businessmen in<br />Havana and New Orleans.<br />At the time, eve n Christianity Today considered Fidel preferable to<br />the profoundly corrupt Batista.6 But to Crosby, Castro was “another<br />Hitler.” It was Crosby, brie ng CIA director Allen Dulles, who laid<br />one of the rst bricks in the Cold War construction of the island na-<br />tion as one of America’s greatest enemies. These were the days of<br />citizen soldiers, spooks and “psyops” commandos, and, for the rst time<br />in American history, preachers on the front lines. Front lines of what?<br />“Total cold war,” Eisenhower would call it, a battle not of bullets—<br />although plenty of those would y—but of ideas, many of which<br /><br />wouldn’t.7 Against communism’s promise of “People’s Democracy,”<br />for instance, Madison Avenue, at the behest of Eisenhower, coined<br />“People’s Capitalism,” a catchphrase that somehow failed to inspire<br />even the Americans who practiced it, much less Soviets supposed to<br />be seduced by it.8<br />Preachers provided the ammo capitalism couldn’t manufacture.<br />“Your government,” one of Abram’s British protégés wrote, “ is aware<br />of the need of much greater propaganda to Rus sia and her satellites if<br />we are to control the Communist menace.” The Brit hoped to obtain<br />Abram’s help with a plan to smuggle New Testaments into the East-<br />ern Bloc under diplomatic cover. The aim was “to place dynam ite<br />just where it is needed.” 9 Bible smuggling boomed in the 1950s, but<br />very few e orts to sneak Western wisdom into the Soviet bloc made<br />as much impact on their intended targets as on the West itself, which<br />reveled in its crusades. Some of the schemes were truly quixotic: the<br />use of hot- air balloons to drop lea ets on Albania, for i nstance, an<br />e ort that probably did more to spread the American love of UFO-<br />logy than the Cold War double- dogma of God and private property.10<br />Such is one of the overlooked legacies of the Cold War: the weirding<br /><br /><br />186 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />of American fu ndamentalism. Abram’s was a space- age faith, thrill-<br />ing to the vibrations of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” and throb-<br />bi ng to the conviction that God would guide our missiles, if only we<br />could conform our national will to His. That was the stated goal,<br />repeated over and over: conformity. Conform or die. Nuclear anni-<br />hilation, should it occur, would be the result of rebellion, the “e ect<br />of the tragic choice of disobe dience.”<br />Abram’s religion was sleek and powerful, an aerodynamic update<br />on the clumsy bombs dropped by fundamentalism’s old angry ranters.<br />Two of Abram’s “ eld representatives,” Dr. Bob Pierce and J. Edwi n<br />Orr—both to achieve fame of their own as major twentieth-century<br />revivalists —coached young Billy Graham in the mores and manners<br />of overseas operations and educated society. Harald Bredesen, another<br />eld representative who’d go on to build a powerful ministry of his<br />own, performed a di erent service for a youthful Pat Robertson,<br />teaching the senator’s son a fol ksy appeal that would complement his<br />political acumen. One Abram understudy, Dr. Elton Trueblood, made<br />a career of packaging militant fundamentalism in the language of<br />country club banal, churning out best sel lers that con ated spiritual<br />war with Cold War; he also drew a paycheck from the United States<br />Information Agency, for which he headed up the O ce of Religious<br />Information. On his watch “spiritual roots”—Christian ones, that<br />is—as the foundation of American democracy became government<br />policy, channeled through private organizations so that the o ce’s<br />plans would not look l ike a “propaganda gimmick.”<br />Abram’s closest ally in the Senate, Frank Carlson, Republican of<br />Kansas, coined the Fellowship’s slogan, “Worldwide Spiritual O en-<br />sive.” Carlson was a farmer from Cloud County, Kansas, who rst<br />made a national name for himself in 1936 when as a young congress-<br />man he double-crossed his patron, Governor Alf Landon, by ripping<br />into the New Deal as a subversion of American principles. Landon<br />had hoped to pitch his policies as a more moderate version of FDR’s<br />vision, and here was his protégé, declaring the sitting president un-<br />American. Not that Landon had a prayer, anyway; he became the<br />losingest presidential candidate in American history. But Carlson<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 187<br />prospered. Over the next decade, he rebuilt the Landon machine<br />under his own name. He took the governor’s o ce in 1946, and<br />when three years later one of Kansas’s senators died in o ce, Carl-<br />son inserted as a placeholder a unky who then dutifully stepped<br />aside when Carlson was ready to return to Washington in 1950 as a<br />member of the nation’s most exclusive club.<br />In the early days of his career, Carlson cultivated a myth of him-<br />self as a modern-day Cincinnatus who entered politics only at the be-<br />hest of a delegation of smal l businessmen that found him literally<br />tilling his elds and begged him to help stop Dictator Roosevelt—the<br />“destroyer of human rights and freedom,” as Carlson called him. By<br />then, Carlson was chairman of the Interstate Oil Compact and he had<br />denounced not only the New Deal but also Hoover’s business-friendly<br />policies before it as an “insidious attack” on “free enterprise” —by<br />which he meant government subsidies for Big Oil.11<br />And yet Carlson enjoyed a reputation as a moderate and even, in<br />the surreal political landscape of the 1950s, a “liberal” Republican. His<br />face was tanned and leathery, anked by white wings of hair and<br />almost-pointed ears, framed by arched eyebrows and a broad, lipless<br />mouth, all of it centered on a nose the shape of a mushroom; he looked<br />like a sunburned Bela Lugosi. It was hard to imagine this comically<br />featured man as an ideologue in the mold of hammerhead Joe McCar-<br />thy of Wisconsin. Carlson was a backslapper, an arm gripper. A Baptist<br />teetotaler himself, he presided over the end of “Dry Kansas” and joined<br />two other Fellowship senators in raising funds for a Republican club in<br />Washington that would feature the best cigars and the nest Scotch<br />whiskey. He was a Republican wise man, “sagacious,” according to the<br />columnist Drew Pearson, “the ‘No Deal’ Dealer,” in the words of an-<br />other pundit. It was Carlson who in 1951 coined for his friend and fel-<br />low Kansan Ike the double-duty slogan of “No Deal.” Eisenhower, then<br />the electoral underdog even though he was the most popular man in<br />America, meant that he wouldn’t horse-trade with crooked local GOP<br />organizations, most of which were in the back pocket of “Mr. Republi-<br />can,” Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, the presumed front-runner. But the<br />slogan also implied a none-too-subtle rebuke to FDR’s New Deal and<br /><br /><br />188 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Truman’s more conservative Fair Deal. No Deal meant more than the<br />“rollback” of progressivism, as Carlson claimed, a conventional conser-<br />vative assault on social welfare. By No Deal, Carlson and Eisenhower<br />meant no politics. That is, they hoped to capitalize on Eisenhower’s<br />popularity as a victorious general, incorruptible in peacetime, to replay<br />the Cincinnatus story on a national scale.<br />Carlson spread the rumor that he and a shadow cabinet of more se-<br />nior senators led by Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts were push-<br />ing Ike for the White House without Ike’s permission. Eisenhower<br />privately wondered, meanwhile, whether it would be legal to win the<br />nominations of both political parties. It wasn’t that Eisenhower tran-<br />scended ideology—history has revealed him to be one of the most<br />masterful politicians of the postwar era—but rather that he believed<br />that he could best achieve his goals by pretending not to have any.<br />Eisenhower was the great literate of midcentury politics, the<br />man who knew how to parse a moment, to respond to the masses as<br />if they were all individuals, each unique in his sameness. Eisenhower<br />was a PR man; he had learned on the battle eld the secrets of psyops,<br />of psychological warfare. “Don’t be afraid of that term,” he advised<br />the voters. He was a bridge player; he knew how to blu and win. He<br />blu ed the Republicans, in whose traditional ranks he did not prop-<br />erly belong, and the Democrats, who, having lost thei r chance to<br />nominate him, dismissed him as an amateur. Eisenhower knew what<br />Americans were looking for and he let them see it in him, a hero both<br />grand and ordinary. “The sort of prince who could be ordered from<br />a Sears Roebuck catalogue,” as Saul Bellow described him.<br />In 1952, Carlson and a small group of like-minded Republicans<br />put i n their order, and Ike delivered. The ri ngleader was ostensibly<br />Senator Lodge, but Carlson ran Ike’s Washington campaign head-<br />quarters, and his sidekick and former senatorial substitute, Henry<br />Darby, ran the nominal HQ on the second oor of the Jayhawk Hotel<br />back i n Topeka. Carlson’s abandoned patron Alf Landon brie y tried<br />to swing his state to Taft, but Carl son e ectively smeared Taft—and<br />Landon, his more moderate former mentor—as reactionaries none-<br />theless too soft for “total cold war.” Carlson had laid the groundwork<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 189<br />for his new middle-ground reputation the year before. And he did it<br />with the help of Abram.<br />In April 1951, Abram enlisted ICL president Ed Cabaniss, a<br />wealthy manufacturer, to round up some businessmen interested in<br />the Idea who could help create an advisory prayer cell for every gov-<br />ernor who wanted one, to be organized by Carlson. Cabaniss, a hold-<br />over from the pre–1950s Fellowship, was an Old Guard conservative.<br />He had a V-shaped head, a tiny jaw, and a giant brow; he looked like<br />a praying mantis, and his a ect was that of one as well, slow and<br />chilly. For his latest undertaki ng, Abram wanted more dynamic men.<br />He speci cally requested that two of the most e ective red hunters<br />in his circle be included: Howard Coonley, the former president of<br />the National Association of Manufacturers who’d helped win him ac-<br />cess to big business during the 1940s, and Merwin K. Hart, a wealthy<br />member of his board of directors who recruited businessmen for the<br />Fellowship through his pet project, the National Econom ic Council.<br />The council was little more than letterhead, a desk in the Empire<br />State Building, and Hart himself, a goggle-eyed, tuxedoed blue blood<br />with a fringe of hair around his narrow skull and more than a hint of<br />fascism around his politics. “ If you nd any organization containing<br />the word ‘democracy,’ ” Hart declared, “ it is probably directly or in-<br />directly a liated with the Com munist Party.” Hart wasn’t kidding;<br />e ective in his deregulation crusades, he was never able to achieve<br />one of his fondest ambitions, the disenfranchisement of the poor,<br />whom he considered spiritually un t for voti ng.<br />The war had made Hart toxic for a spell, si nce unlike Lindbergh,<br />who’d abandoned his own fascist incl inations to y for the United<br />States, Hart never repented for his prewar fascist position. But the<br />Cold War changed everything, Cabaniss wrote Abram. “It seems to<br />me there is a growing proportion of the public, particularly in the<br />political world, who are coming to a realization that Merwin Hart is<br />not so far ‘o the beam’ in his thinking.” The business world was<br />coming around, too; Hart counted among the supporters of his Na-<br />tional Economic Council’s program of God and laissez-faire capital-<br />ism top men from Standard Oil, DuPont, and General Motors.<br /><br /><br />190 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />This theology of the dollar was not quite as cynical as it sounds.<br />Abram was expanding his Europe an operation into Greece’s upper<br />crust, an experience that was teaching him to re ne the stealth evan-<br />gelism he’d learned in Germany. First came capitalism; then came<br />Christ. Capitalism, preached his friend Norman Grubb, was the<br />wedge. “ICL,” he commented to Abram, “is a bold attempt to reach a<br />certain unreachable class with Christ, and is therefore not primarily<br />concerned with presenting itself as sound in a ‘fundamental’ doctri-<br />nal basis; it is after sh who might refuse the bait if this fundamental<br />doctrinal basis was aunted in front of them.”12<br />Hart, Coonley, and Cabaniss were to line up nancial backers for<br />the group (who, as it turned out, agreed to raise $100,000 for the proj-<br />ect); Abram would explain the Idea; and the public face of the initiative<br />would be two former governors who’d made the leap to the big leagues,<br />Carlson and Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. Kerr was a Democrat,<br />thus blunting the growing concern within the Fellowship that it ap-<br />peared to be simply a subsidiary of the Republican Party, and he was<br />Carlson’s kind of Democrat—“the chief of the wheelers- and-dealers,”<br />according to the journal ist Milton Viorst, “a self-made millionaire who<br />freely and publicly expressed the conviction that any man in the Senate<br />who didn’t use his position to make money was a sucker.”<br />Like Carlson, Kerr was an oilman. Or, more precisely, oil’s man.<br />He knew a good investment when he saw one; he sent Abram a check<br />for $50 0. Other senators fell in li ne: Robertson of Virgi nia contrib-<br />uted a fund-raising letter, Republican Ralph E. Flanders of Vermont<br />gave $200 and the use of his name, and Pat McCarran of Nevada,<br />McCarthy’s Democratic m irror, wrote asking what would be most<br />helpful—money or contacts (or both). That fall, the president of the<br />ultraright William Volker Fund chipped in $500 from his own<br />pocket. The Volker Fund had helped Friedrich von Hayek, until<br />then an obscure Austrian economist, become a national celebrity in<br />America by subsidizing editions of his Road to Serfdom. First published<br />in the United States by the University of Chicago Press, the book ap-<br />peared in shortened versions produced by Reader’s Digest and Look<br />magazine, which illustrated Hayek’s argument that any attempt at<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 191<br />“central planning” (including FDR-style government regulation of<br />big busi ness) would send a society down a “road to serfdom”—and<br />mass murder along the lines of Hitler and Stalin—from which there<br />was no return. Hayek’s economic ideas were considerably more<br />complex than the uses to which they were put, but as understood by<br />the American public —and by Abram, who recoiled from serfdom<br />even as he embraced what he happily termed slavery to God and his<br />markets—they seemed to lend a scienti c i mprimatur to the Man-<br />ichaean worldview of the country’s most rabid red hunters. A decade<br />later, the Volker Fund would hire Rousas John Rushdoony, a theolo-<br />gian who was to the far right of fundamentalism what Hayek was to<br />economic conservatism; it was Rushdoony who helped marry the<br />two with extensive writings on theonomy, a jargony term for what<br />Abram’s descendants would come to call biblical capitalism.<br />Both theonomy and biblical capitalism suggest an equal yoke be-<br />tween scripture and currency, but there can be l ittle doubt about<br />which was the driving force behind this new plan to surround gover-<br />nors with prayer warriors vetted by Abram and his friends in corporate<br />America. And yet it was Carlson, who disliked even acknowledging<br />the existence of dollars, who quietly climbed Abram’s chain of com-<br />mand. The following spring, he took time o from Eisenhower’s<br /> still- uno cial campaign to travel to The Hague, where Holland’s Queen<br />Wilhelm ina anointed him as the new chair of International Council for<br />Christian Leadership, the overseas division of Abram’s ICL composed<br />at that point mainly of Germans who didn’t want to talk about their<br />pasts and French businessmen just as eager to smooth over history in<br />the service of pro ts. Three fellow GOP congressmen, al l Abram dis-<br />ciples, accompanied Carlson. They ew on the public tab, and the trip<br />occasioned sharp questions from the press. Why had the secretary of<br />defense given the four use of a U.S. military plane for private travel?<br />The ICLer’s mission, said a spokesman for the secretary, was in “ direct<br />relationship to the national interest.”13<br />At The Hague, Queen Wilhelmina, a strong monarch famous for<br />bypassing Holland’s parliamentary system,14 presided over this Amer-<br />ican interest, and the inner circle of the Fellowship’s trans-Atlantic<br /><br /><br />192 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />organization elected Carlson their new chairman. Carl son looked<br />like a stand-in, though, for the general running the Allied command<br />in Paris. That seemed to be as Carlson wanted it; he was in Holland<br />to recruit allies for an American campaign. Besides Abram, there<br />were industrialists who’d line up behind Eisenhower, including the<br />automobile titan Paul G. Ho man, who’d become one of Ike’s eco-<br />nomic advisers; a pair of ultraright congressmen to shore up Ike’s<br />conservative ank; and, in addition to GOP heavies such as Senators<br />Wiley and Flanders, a delegation of “Dixiecrats,” Southern Demo-<br />crats to the right of most Republicans. That summer, Carlson declared<br />that Eisenhower would contest the traditional ly sol id-Democratic<br />South, a quixotic quest that anticipated Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”<br />by more than a decade.<br />Far more troublesome to Eisenhower than the Democratic South,<br />though, was a singular m idwestern Republican, the de facto party<br />boss, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. To the uninitiated, Taft did not<br />appear be a form idable obstacle. He was a dull speaker, unmemora-<br />ble in appearance, indi erent to the public. But no politician could<br />claim a more perfect pedigree: grandson of a secretary of war, son of<br />a president, rst in his class at Yale and Harvard Law. “The best m ind<br />in Washington,” went a popular Democratic jab, “until he makes it<br />up.” And yet he played the part of a common man. Not li ke Roo se-<br />velt, who’d disingenuously claimed to be a farmer, but rather, in the<br />name of an ill-de ned middle class —in reality, the managerial class,<br />small businessmen and second bananas who dreamed one day of be-<br />ing bosses themselves —that would become a template for conserva-<br />tive “populism” long after Taft’s name was forgotten.<br />If Taft was hardly just another Rotarian-on-the-make, he truly<br />was in every sense a provincial man, and proud of that fact. A son of<br />Ohio beholden to neither the New England aristocracy nor the solid<br />South, wary of Wall Street, contemptuous of Europe and its wars, he<br />was a conservative at the last time in American life when such views<br />connoted a kind of paci sm. His enemies murmured of fascist sym-<br />pathies because he did not want to ght Hitler, but it was war itself<br />that he loathed. When World War II ended and the Cold War began,<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 193<br />he opposed it even more strongly, opposed the draft and opposed<br />military spending and opposed what he feared, correctly, was the<br />com ing age of American empire, an era in which the United States<br />would wage the wars the old colonial powers could no longer a ord.<br />In 1952, Taft was known as the champion of the “Old Right,” an<br />anachronism in the day of the atom. He was the engineer of the New<br />Deal’s deconstruction, the author of the 1947 Taft- Hartley Act which<br />spelled the end of labor’s brief reign as the de nitive power in American<br />life. Taft- Hartley reduced labor to an “interest group”—eliminated the<br />vision of solidarity as a force that gave people meaning. Maybe Taft<br />dreamed that with labor rebound, the nation’s economic life would re-<br />turn to its pre- Depression condition. But that world was as long gone as<br />the fantasy of the United States as an island, immune from the troubles<br />of other nations. A New Right, New Liberalism, New Middle were ris-<br />ing, shaped by the war and by Europe, by the hunger of an economy that<br />had grown fat on weaponry, by the idea of totalitarianism. Total Cold<br />War was coming. Ideology, technology, and—overlooked by the man-<br />darin historians of the period—theology were converging.<br />Taft had the support of the old GOP local party operations, but<br />he did not have God and he did not have Fran k Carlson. He would<br />not recruit public piety as a banner for his campaign. His lieutenants<br />were not wily; they were hedgehogs, nudging Taft’s Old Right views<br />along, decrying the possibility of a “garrison state” as if the Cold War<br />hadn’t already led the United States to embrace a permanent m ilitary<br />footing, spiritual warfare thinly secularized as “psyops” and arms<br />races against a godless enemy. Such was the method of foxes. Carlson<br />slinked from delegate to delegate behind the scenes, the “ ‘No Deal’<br />dealer” smili ng and speaking of spiritual things, one nation under<br />God, unity, a general (not a politician!), never speaking ill of old<br />“Mr. Republican” but prom isi ng patronage to those who’d abandon<br />him. “The Kansan is clearly the man to see if you want an ‘under-<br />standing,’ ” cooed an admiri ng reporter.15<br />At the Republican convention in Chicago, enough delegates “ca-<br />ressed by personal letters, wined & dined at party shindigs, promised<br />a secure future by politicos,” reached such “understandings” with the<br /><br /><br />194 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />general’s lieutenants and sold out their man to the new order.16 To<br />the populist Right, the activists who’d sent delegates to Chicago to<br />stop Ike from entangling America i n more of Europe’s troubles, the<br />convention took on “mythic proportions,” a stab in the back of con-<br />servatism by Ike and his internationalists.17 Carlson, as conservative<br />as Taft, understood that anger—and how to turn it to his man’s ad-<br />vantage. Jesus, Carlson believed, had been a “psyops” man like Ike,<br />and Christ and the general both taught the same lesson: it was the<br />spi rit, not the material, that mattered. Emotions, not facts. Carlson<br />and Eisen hower did not need to crush the anger in Taft’s supporters;<br />they only had to redirect it toward international communism.<br />After Eisenhower routed Adlai Stevenson—the electoral vote<br />was 442 to 89, with Ike poaching four states of the Old Confederacy—<br />Carlson set about ensuring Taft’s loyalty to the new regime. His<br />method, though, left some wondering about Eisen hower’s loyalty to<br />the broad middle ground he’d staked out in his campaign. First,<br />Carlson brokered a breakfast between his man and Taft, at which<br />Taft agreed to stand aside while Eisenhower waged Cold War abroad<br />if the general would commit to a war on the New Deal at home. Taft<br />had decided that if he could not be president, he would like to be<br />majority leader; after all, he and Ike shared a distaste for organized<br />labor, indi erence to civil rights, and a rm conviction that capital-<br />ism constituted a natural law more certain than the physics of nuclear<br />ssion. The next afternoon, Carlson met with Taft after church and<br />cut a deal. His—and, implicitly, Ike’s—backing for Senate majority<br />leader, a betrayal of promises already o ered to Senator Styles Bridges<br />of New Hampshire. “An amazing political feat,” the columnist Drew<br />Pearson wrote of the Taft revival. “Carlson sold the idea.”18<br />The idea Carlson sold was the Idea: Abram’s dream of a big tent<br />conservatism, a political philosophy that denied the reality of the politi-<br />cal and disdained “philosophy” as the province of eggheads. In a Sep-<br />tember 1952 mass mailing, Abram had directed his two-hundred-plus<br />prayer cells across the nation to devote themselves to spreading “alert-<br />ness to the right choice and vote in the November elections.” God, he<br />wrote, had spoken these words to him: “Your mission is to concentrate<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 195<br />on a few men in leadership capacity.” One of his new lieutenants, a<br />Lithuanian named Karlis Leyasmeyer who claimed to have escaped a<br />death sentence at the hands of the Soviets (with the help of the Nazis),<br />added that such men could become a “sixth column,” the secret coun-<br />terweapon with which the establishment could ght communism. The<br />sixth column would transcend pol itics. In a voter’s guide prepared for<br />the state of Washington by Abram’s men—a tactic that would be re-<br />peated decades later by the Christian Coalition—God tapped both<br />Democrats and Republicans. His slate, however, was of su cient po-<br />litical conformity for a bipartisan co alition to raise charges of fascism.<br />But the ‘f’ word had lost its power. Most of Abram’s candidates won.<br />“Red” was the new brown, against which all Christian soldiers must<br />ght together. One God, one nation, one ideology.<br /><br /><br />During the winter following Eisenhower’s election, the United<br />States did not even have an ambassador in Moscow. It was in that par-<br />ticularly cold season that Abram—with the help of Carlson, Billy<br />Graham, and Eisenhower himself—made his master move, follow-<br />ing the president’s inauguration with what would become an annual<br />political ritual, the Presidential Prayer Breakfast (later to be renamed<br />the National Prayer Breakfast). Not for Abram the clash of politics<br />or even the intellectual battle of theology. His ambition for the<br />breakfast—hosted by Conrad Hilton, presided over by Carlson,<br />blessed by Graham, and sancti ed by Ike’s blandest speech yet—was<br />that it serve as a chance to lop o the left end of the political spec-<br />trum and cauterize the wound. “Their di erences,” wrote the Chris-<br />tian Herald of the several hundred assembled politicians, Democrats<br />and Republicans, “are fused into a striki ng sim ilarity.”<br />Billy Graham had been summoned to the Eisenhower campaign<br />by Carlson. The senator had concluded that the young preacher<br />would be an asset, especially given that some Democrats were actu-<br />ally oating the notion that it was Republ icans who were soft on<br />com munism and cold toward Christ.19 Although Graham himself<br />was a registered Democrat, he had decided for Eisenhower before<br /><br /><br />196 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />the general even announced, and had prayed on the matter with one<br />of his supporters, an oil baron named Sid Richardson. (This period of<br />Graham’s career might be called his oil phase. In 1953, with backing<br />from yet another oil baron, he would release a feature lm called<br />Oiltown U.S.A., a tribute to the free market’s ability to foster the vir-<br />tuous exploitation of God-given resources.) Carlson called Graham<br />to the Chicago GOP convention for an o -the-record meeting. “Carl-<br />son had sold Eisenhower on the idea that I could contribute a reli-<br />gious note to his campaign speeches,” Graham would recall.<br />“Frankly,” the preacher told the general, “I don’t think the Amer-<br />ican people would be happy with a president who didn’t belong to<br />any church or even attend one.” (In fact, there have been several.)<br />“As soon as the election is over,” Eisenhower promised, “I’ll join<br />a church.”<br />Graham wanted more. He’d been talking with Abram about a<br />Presidential Prayer Breakfast, a parachurch ritual they hoped would<br />settle the question once and for all of whether the United States was<br />a Christian nation and the New Testament, not the Constitution, its<br />ultimate authority. Abram had long dreamed of such an event, a pub-<br />lic dedication of the governing class to the service of the Christian<br />God, but no president previous to Eisenhower would cooperate. It<br />was Graham, according to his own curiously im modest account,<br />who made it happen. He arranged with Conrad Hilton (to whom<br />he’d been introduced by Carlson) to sponsor the event, and he gave<br />the main address—at most of the rst fteen annual breakfasts. But<br />Carlson was Abram’s pipeline to the White House, and Abram’s invi-<br />tation to the president-elect went through the No Deal Dealer. Ike<br />declined. “He did not want to set a pre ce dent,” Graham recalled. But<br />Graham i ntervened, and Ike called Carlson over to say that he would<br />show, after all. There were debts to be paid. Eisenhower was the rst<br />twentieth-century Republican to come to power in part through an<br />alliance of populist evangelicals (led by Graham) and of elite funda-<br />mentalism. Now Graham and Carlson wanted their return.20<br />“The only one thing,” Ike warned Carlson, “let’s not have any tele-<br />vision or radio around.” That suited the man to whom Carlson reported<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 197<br />this news. Abram did not much care what the masses saw or did not<br />see. He was playing to an audience of power; “up and out” went his<br />spiritual broadcast. Eisenhower, meanwhile, was wary of advertising<br />his foray into the no-man’s-land between church and state. “You can<br />tell the Cabinet I’ll be there,” Eisenhower instructed Carlson. “I sup-<br />pose that’s tantamount to telling them to come.” Come, they did, and<br />with the exception of those tapped for Abram’s table, they found their<br />own seating. There were no arrangements, Abram boasted; all were<br />left to fend for themselves, “regardless of rank,” just as in the Kingdom<br />of God—supposing, that is, that such a kingdom were inhabited only<br />by men of high rank, the powerful pretending at egalitarianism within<br />the con nes of the most exclusive breakfast club in the land.<br />There were 4 00 such men at the rst Prayer Breakfast. It was<br />8:00 a.m., Thursday, February 5. The theme was “Government Un-<br />der God.” Abram wore his trademark bow tie. He was sixty-seven<br />that year, and he would soon su er a heart attack, and soon Stalin<br />would die, and Kinsey would publish his report on Sexual Behavior in<br />the Human, and Fortune magazine would crow over a “spiritual awak-<br />ening” among top businessmen. At the May ower, Conrad Hilton<br />hung above the dais a painting of Uncle Sam on his knees, “not beaten<br />there by the hammer and sickle” but submitting America to Christ, a<br />sentiment the Senate’s chaplain admired. “There are signs,” he ob-<br />served of the pai nting-i n-lieu of a cross, “that once again, as in the<br />former days of the Nation’s true glory, America is bending its knees.” 21<br />Printed beneath Uncle Sam was a prayer of Hi lton’s own composi-<br />tion. Hilton was a Catholic, but he thril led most to the religion of<br />anticommunism. “Be swift to save us, dear God, before the darkness<br />falls.” There was no darkness i n the May ower, only bacon. Abram<br />presented Eisenhower’s cabinet to God. “Save them from self-<br />deception, conceit, and the folly of independence of Thee, oh God.”<br />Eisenhower mumbled up to the podium, the pulpit.<br />He said, “Al l free government is rmly founded in a deeply felt<br />religious faith.” And then, “As long as you feed me grits and sausage,<br />everything will be all right.” These were the twin doctrines of a<br />prosperity doctrine.<br /><br /><br />198 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />“There is the sound,” observed the Senate chaplain, swept away<br />by the deep spirituality of these words, “of a going in the tops of the<br />mulberry trees,” a supernatural sound. He thought it might be Eisen-<br />hower’s prayers, winging up to heaven like B–52s.<br /><br /><br />Twenty years later, Abram’s successor, Doug Coe, would explain<br />his pre deces sor’s calm at the Presidential Prayer Breakfast: “It is only<br />one-tenth of one percent of the iceberg,” he’d say. “[It] doesn’t give a<br />true picture of what is going on.” 22 The Fellowship’s true work was<br />always both great and small, an accumulation of symbolic gestures<br />and actual legislation. Sentiment and policy cohered into a religiously<br />motivated movement, mostly Republican but also Democratic, that ab-<br />sorbed politicians and ordinary businessmen into its mass so smoothly<br />that the townspeople never noticed; never rallied to resist or to even<br />question the growing blob of political fundamentalism. The Fellow-<br />ship, wrote one of Abram’s eld representatives, “should be primarily<br />an organism and not an organization.”<br />“The idea of a Christian lobbyist program m ight well emanate<br />through the Breakfast Groups,” one of Abram’s original Seattle broth-<br />ers wrote him. It’s worth noting that the “Christian” issues of the day<br />were not pornography or abortion; they were surveillance and weap-<br />ons, the perceived need for more of both. Abram’s correspondent<br />wanted “more unity on civil defense” —read, anticommunism—“and<br />foreign policy.” Abram wrote back to say that he’d already moved the<br />Fellowship beyond anything so crass and li mited as a lobby. In the<br />1960s, it began distributing con dential memos to involved members<br />of Congress on its progress around the world. The memos stressed<br />that “the group, as such, never takes any formal action, but individu-<br />als who participate in the group through their initiative have made<br />possible the activities mentioned.” The Fellowship was not a con-<br />spiracy; it was a catechism, its questions asked in the privacy of<br />Abram’s prayer cells and answered in the public arena.<br />In 1954, “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, an<br />initiative sponsored in the Senate by Homer Ferguson, a Republican<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 199<br />ICL board member, and nanced by ICLer Clement Stone, and “In<br />God We Trust” was added to the nation’s currency by a bill spon-<br />sored by a Dixiecrat congressman named Charles E. Bennett, also a<br />member of the Fellowship’s inner circle.23 Ben nett, a sel f-styled eth-<br />ics crusader, saw himself as a small-government man; God and the<br />dollar would redeem the nation, i f only Congress would unshackle<br />them. “Congress can’t remake the soul of America,” he’d say, a no-<br />tion he evidently thought justi ed his opposition to civil rights.24 It<br />was Bennett who prayed the opening prayers at Abram’s second<br />Presidential Prayer Breakfast that February, at which Supreme Court<br />chief justice Earl Warren—then still a conservative—declared that<br />separation of church and state was ne, so long as “men of rel igious<br />faith” were i n charge of a country he described as “a Christian land,<br />governed by Christian principles.”<br />That same year, Abram’s old ally Alexander Wiley, now chai r of<br />the Senate Foreign Relations Com mittee as wel l as the upper house’s<br />weekly prayer meeting, decided to extend those principles south-<br />ward. He declared a democratically elected government in Guate-<br />mala a front for communist invasion and quietly green-lighted U.S.<br />participation in its overthrow, an action that culminated in a ticker-<br />tape parade in New York City for the dictator installed in its place by<br />America, and a banquet in his honor at Hilton’s Waldorf-Astoria.25<br />And that year a Vietnamese Catholic named Ngo Dinh Diem,<br />“directly and personally aided by God,” by his own account, came to<br />America to appeal to a nation i n the grip of religious revival for its<br />support in a ght against godless communism. A year later, Eisen-<br />hower obliged, installing Diem’s Christian—and profoundly corrupt—<br />regime over a Buddhist nation when the French lost their hold, the<br />rst great step toward the American war in Southeast Asia that Rob-<br />ert Taft had feared. Wiley, a former Taft- style conservative trans-<br />formed by Abram’s Christ and Ike’s Cold War into a militant<br />internationalist, was the president’s point man in the Senate, bully-<br />ing liberals and conservatives alike into backing “ hard and fast mili-<br />tary commitments” to South Vietnam, no questions asked.26<br />Nineteen fty-four was also the year that several Fellowship<br /><br /><br />200 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />brothers steered Joe McCarthy o the national stage. It was a matter of<br />politics, not ideology; Tailgunner Joe—raw, red-nosed, thick- browed,<br />uncouth, uncontrolled, hungering Joe —made anticommunism look<br /> low- class.<br />McCarthy’s downfall and Ike’s disdain for him have been chronicled<br />at great length elsewhere. Less noticed was Eisenhower’s careful use of<br />McCarthy during his campaign. Carlson was the middleman. “I fully<br />expect that Senator McCarthy will be speaking vigorously for the<br />ticket,” Carlson told the press in September 1952. McCarthy did so,<br />lashing out at Ike’s opponent, Adlai Stevenson, as surrounded by com-<br />munist sympathizers. Weapon deployed. Mission accomplished. “Sen.<br />Frank Carlson of Kansas,” the press dutifully reported, “commented<br />that the General did not owe anything to McCarthy for the speech, and<br />was still a ‘no deal man.’ ”27 After the election, the press assumed that<br />Carlson would be rewarded for his services with a cabinet post. Instead,<br />Carlson stayed in the Senate of his own volition, where he chaired a<br />seemingly obscure subcommittee on civil service employees. It was a<br />job that allowed him to quietly purge government of far more “security<br />risks”—most of them guilty of no more heinous a crime than loyalty to<br />the New Deal—than McCarthy had ever dreamed of, thousands erased<br />from the rolls through backroom bureaucratic maneuvers.<br />Carlson also served on the special committee appointed to<br />consider McCarthy’s censure after he went too far by slinging mud at<br />other senators. But the man who rst wrote the resolution to cen-<br />sure was Carlson’s pre deces sor as president of the Fellowship, Sena-<br />tor Ralph E. Flanders of Vermont. Flanders was a genteel Republican,<br />an engi neer, an industrialist, a banker. His wife collected New En-<br />gland folk songs. Smooth-domed and whiskered, his spectacles slip-<br />ping down his nose and his pipe in hand, he looked like a professor<br />and was sometimes mistaken for a liberal. But his record was as right-<br />wing as many of the Senate’s more outspoken rebrands. In 1954,<br />the year he moved to censure McCarthy, he revived an old funda-<br />mentalist favorite: an amendment to the Constitution that would<br />have rewritten the United States’ founding document to declare,<br />“This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 201<br />Christ.” And yet, because of his resolution against raving McCarthy,<br />he is remembered as a sane man in paranoid times, footnoted in his-<br />tories of the Cold War as one who stood up for common sense.<br />Only the radical journal ist I. F. Stone perceived otherwise. Flan-<br />ders, he wrote in 1954, did not challenge McCarthy’s paranoia but<br />rather his e ectiveness in its promulgation. “To doubt the power of<br />the devil, to question the existence of witches,” Stone wrote follow-<br />ing Flanders’s ostensibly heroic gesture, is<br /><br />to read oneself out of respectable society, brand oneself a<br />heretic, to incur suspicion of bei ng oneself i n league with the<br />powers of evil. So all the ghters against McCarthyism are<br />impelled to adopt its premises . . . The country is in a bad<br />way indeed when as feeble and hysterical a speech [as Flan-<br />ders’] is hailed as an attack on McCarthyism. Flanders talked<br />of “a crisis in the age-long warfare between God and the<br />Devil for the souls of men.” He spoke of Italy “as ready to fall<br />into Communist hands,” of Britain “nibbling at the drugged<br />bait of trade pro ts.” There are passages of sheer fantasy, like<br />this one: “Let us look to the South. In Latin America, there<br />are . . . spreading infections of communism. Whole coun-<br />tries are bei ng taken over.”28<br /><br />This last, si ngular point would soon be made true in Guatemala,<br />albeit the result of a more genteel anticommunism expressed through<br />a U.S. bombing campaign. Whereas McCarthy used anticommunism<br />to promote himself, men such as Flanders and Carlson and Eisen-<br />hower believed it should be reserved for the construction of empire.<br />The ethos of Abram’s “Worldwide Spiritual O ensive” ran parallel<br />to and often infused American Cold War tactics. Secretary of Defense<br />Charles E. Wilson—whose “New Look” policy of nuclear weapons<br />and air power consolidated the “military-industrial complex” Eisen-<br />hower himself would lament at the end of his presidency—embraced<br />Abram’s Idea of strength through spiritual conformism, al lowing<br />prayer cells to proliferate within the Pentagon and signing o on a<br /><br /><br />202 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Fellowship project called “Militant Liberty,” developed by a fundamen-<br />talist propagandist on Abram’s payroll named John C. Broger. Broger,<br />also an ill-de ned “consultant” on the Pentagon payroll, was promoted<br />to the Department of Defense’s O ce of Information and Education, a<br />post from which he’d control the Pentagon’s propaganda on more<br />than 1,00 0 military radio and television stations and in 2,000 news-<br />papers for almost three decades. In 1958, Abram made him a vice<br />president of the Fellowship, bringing Broger’s propaganda to the elites<br />even th e Pentagon couldn’t reach. “Th e seed,” Br oger would say, speak-<br />ing of his fundamentalist faith, “was dropped thousands of times.”29<br />A tall, jowled man, balding and mustachioed, a squinter, Broger<br />learned how to propagandize as an American aide to Filipino guerril-<br />las in World War II. In December 1945, he turned those talents to-<br />ward the Gospel, incorporating the Far East Broadcasting Company<br />to bring the Good News to Asia. In 1948, from a patch of Philippines<br />jungle littered with the scraps of war, he rst sang “All Hail the<br />Power of Jesus’ Name,” live on KZAS, “Call of the Orient” radio. He<br />built more stations, scouting them out himself from planes made of<br />corrugated tin in which he’d y over China, Vietnam, Cambodia. In<br />1950, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, a zealous Presbyterian, asked for<br />a brie ng; Broger would now get his chance to combine his passions<br />for propaganda and evangelism.30<br />The year before, Radford had been caught circulating a secret<br />memo tearing down Truman’s defense secretary. That led to exile in<br />Honolulu, where he met Broger. But in 1952, he caught President-<br />Elect Eisenhower’s attention with a plan for battle by proxy, a blue-<br />print for decades of dirty wars. Let’s use Chiang Kai-shek’s troops in<br />Korea, he told Ike on a walking tour of Iwo Jima. Ike liked the idea<br />enough to go gol ng with the admiral and i ntroduce him to General<br />Motors CEO Charlie Wilson, about to become Ike’s defense secre-<br />tary.31 In 1953, with Wilson’s sponsorship, Radford came in from<br />the islands to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta , and a year<br />later he brought Broger to join him. By then Broger was working for<br />Abram. The adm iral and the preacher bankrolled Broger’s ideologi-<br />cal c rusade.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 203<br />A statement of its goals can be found in the Fellowship’s archives:<br />the recruitment of “ indoctri nated personnel who will form nucleus<br />groups for the implementation of . . . the highest concepts of free-<br />dom, whether socially acceptable or not.”32 By highest concepts of free-<br />dom, Broger meant the American Jesus, a Christ of strict order;<br />“Social Order,” “Law and Order,” “Economic Order,” and “Religion”<br />were among the main topics of indoctrination. But Broger’s own<br />sense of order was more than a little skewed, as evidenced when he<br />came under scrutiny for a peculiar Pentagon scheme to recut a movie<br />called Operation Abolition, itself already a dizzying collage of newsreels<br />and lm clips which, through a series of unconnected images, im-<br />plied that Abram’s old foe, the union organiz er Harry Bridges, was<br />behi nd a plot to violently assault the House Un-American Activities<br />Com mittee. Broger wanted to make Operation Abolition into an even<br />weirder movie, modeled on a theory of his that behind even Harry<br />Bridges was yet another, more insidious enemy: Japanese commu-<br />nists bent on taking over the m inds of American teenagers.33<br />Operation Abolition was a bust; even the most ardent red hunters<br />fou nd it kooky. But throughout much of the 1950s and ’60s, Broger<br />broadcasted his notions into the hearts and minds of millions of U.S.<br />troops and an unknowable number of foreign nationals—“articulate<br />natives,” as Broger referred to his “targets.” These would be either<br />Christians or those who were willing to convert to the faith, located<br />across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, “traditional<br />cultures [that] have become u nable to furnish an acceptable compre-<br />hension of existence.”34<br />If O peration Abolition was aborted, Broger had better luck with his<br />other lm ventures. Early on, he managed to recruit more talented<br />collaborators. Some of the most talented in America, in fact: the di-<br />rector John Ford, John Wayne, and Merian Cooper, the producer<br />who paired Fred Astaire with Ginger Rogers.<br />Ford had worked as a spy during the war, photographing guer-<br />rilla warfare in occupied Europe; Cooper had fought Pancho Vil la in<br />Mexico and own against Germany i n World War I; and John Wayne<br />was John Wayne.35 In 1955, Broger ew to Hollywood for a series of<br /><br /><br />204 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />daylong meetings with the moviemakers, and Ford asked for eighteen<br />copies of the Militant Liberty program to distribute to his screen-<br />writers. He also suggested that Broger insert Militant Liberty into<br />the movie he was directing at the time, The Wings of Eagles, in which<br />Wayne played a navy ier battling naive paci sts in Congress for<br />funding. Broger obliged; thankfully, the movie has disappeared from<br /> l m h i s t o r y .<br />As has Broger’s most successful e ort: the big-screen, epony-<br />mous adaptation of Militant Liberty, nanced by the Fellowship and<br />shown not just to the m ilitary but to schools, church groups, and<br />prayer cells ac ross the country, and made available to all of Abram’s<br />disciples. Blunt in his beliefs—the Constitution, Broger once lec-<br />tured in the Pentagon’s “Protestant Pulpit” series, was “ hewn and<br />shaped to the spiritual concepts of biblical truths,” a guarantee of<br />“Christian freedoms”—he subscribed to Abram’s philosophy when it<br />came to the exercise of power. Each key man spreads the Idea through<br />the means available to him: the Senate, the Pentagon, a radio tower<br />in the Philippines. “Christian Action,” as he and Abram called their<br />activities, should be behind the scenes, i n the air.<br />That ephemeral sense, along with the legacy of the Cold War to<br />which it contributed some small portion of fear and misinformation,<br />appears to be all that remains of Militant Liberty, the movie. A declas-<br />si ed Defense document tells us that it was in color and hints at its<br />story. Broger was its hero, presenting Militant Liberty to an all-star<br />panel of brass and political power that included Congressman Charles<br />Bennett, Frank Carlson, and Abram.36 Beyond that, nothing more. I<br />have not been able to nd a copy of the lm; I have only the rec ords<br />of its existence in Abram’s les, the press reports of the day, and that<br />picture of Broger with Defense Secretary Charlie Wilson, accepting<br />the “ Spi ritual Values” award at the Freedoms Foundation’s headquar-<br />ters i n Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Standing with them are Carlson<br />and the two producers of the lm, an assistant to Abram, and a hand-<br />some, sandy-haired man, visibly proud to be counted among such<br />august company: Irvin “Shorty” Yeaworth, just months away from<br />the Prayer Breakfast at which The Blob will be born.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-4802444210344149322009-07-12T02:28:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:29:39.726-07:00II. Jesus Plus Nothing - The Ministry of Proper Enlightenment<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">The Ministry of Proper Enlightenment<br /></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">He did not want to be one of those who now pretended that “they had </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">always been against it,” whereas in fact they had been very eager to do </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">what they had been told to do. However, times change. </span></span><br /><br />—HANNAH ARENDT, EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM: A REPORT<br />ON THE BANALITY OF EVIL (1963)<br /></div><br /><br /><br />Manfred Zapp, a native of Düsseldorf by way of Pretoria, merited a line in the news when he stepped from an ocean<br />liner onto the docks of New York City on September 22, 1938, a<br />warm, windy day at the edge of a South Atlantic hurricane. Just a few<br />words in the New York Times’ “Ocean Travelers” column, a list of trav-<br />elers of note buried in the back of the paper. By the time he left the<br />United States, his departure would win headlines.<br />Zapp quickly established himself, settling rst at the Gladstone<br />Hotel and later in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, surveying his options<br />for o ce space before moving on to East Forty-sixth Street, just o <br />Fifth Avenue, where a sta of ten soon joined him, Germans and Ger-<br />man Americans, a dull-looking lot in whose company Zapp fairly<br />gleamed.1 He was thirty- ve years old with Berl in behind him and the<br />sea of Manhattan society before him, and when he spoke, the swells<br />tittered or growled with approval for the Wagnerian vitality they imag-<br />ined in his German-in ected Americanese. “I regard myself as having<br />arrived in the place I always wanted to be,” he exulted.2 His chestnut<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 145<br />hair was thinning and his cheeks swelled out into jowls, but big bones<br />beneath and a strong cleft chin kept him handsome. He wore elegantly<br />tailored pinstripes and shirts of slightly eccentric design. With the arch<br />of a brow, he made smoking a pipe look more mysterious than<br />old-fashioned. He was heir to a modest coal fortune, but he did not<br />consider himself a businessman. He had earned an advanced degree,<br />but he did not insist on being called “doctor,” in the German fashion.<br />He thought of himself as a journalist—“a respectable newspaperman!”<br />he would spit at interrogators after he’d been captured.<br />Zapp had been given charge of the American o ces of the Trans-<br />ocean News Agency, ostensibly the creation of a group of unnamed<br />German nanciers. He had recently left a similiar post in South Af-<br />rica. “It is of paramount importance,” the German chargé d’a aires<br />in Washington had written Zapp the month before his arrival, “that a<br />crossing of wires with the work of the D.N.B.”—Deutschland News<br />Bureau—“ be absolutely avoided.” DNB was transparently the tool of<br />the Nazi regime and thus under constant scruti ny. Transocean, as an<br />allegedly independent agency, m ight operate more freely. “My task<br />here in America is so big and so di cult,” Zapp wrote the German<br />ambassador to South Africa a month after he arrived, “that it de-<br />mands all my energies.”3<br />What was Zapp’s task? During his American tenure, he itted in<br />black tie and tails from Fifth Avenue to Park Avenue enjoying the<br />hospitality of rich men and beautiful women—the gossip columnist<br />Walter Winchell wrote of Zapp’s “madcap girlfriend,” a big-spending<br />society girl who seemed to consume at least as much of Zapp’s atten-<br />tion as the news. He avoided as much as he could discussions of what<br />he considered the tedium of politics. His friends knew he had dined<br />with Cordell Hull, the secretary of state, and Roo sevelt himself, and<br />some must also have known that he had worked quietly—and ille-<br />gally, if one must be technical —against the president’s reelection.<br />But one did not ask questions. He traveled, though no one was quite<br />sure where he went o to. One moment he was hovering over the<br />teletype in Manhattan; the next he was to be found in Havana, on the<br />occasion of a meeting of foreign m inisters. Some might have called<br /><br /><br />146 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />him a Nazi agent, there to encourage Cuba’s inclinations—a popular<br />radio program, transmitted across the Caribbe an, was called the The<br />Nazi Hour—but Zapp could truthfully reply that he rarely stirred<br />from the lobby of the Hotel Nacional, where he sat sipping cocktails,<br />happy to buy drinks for any man—or, preferably, lady—who cared<br />to chat with him.4<br />The fact was that Zapp was a man with little interest in political<br />machinations. He thought of himself as an empirical man. He loved<br />details and statistics—his idea of news ran toward almost artistic<br />stacks of data and systemized summaries of man-in-the- street<br />interviews—and he considered the conclusions he drew from them<br />not ideological but factual. He was a commonsense man. Consider<br />his rebuttal to a widely reported speech by Monsignor John A. Ryan,<br />the “Right Reverend New Dealer” whose Catholic social justice writ-<br />ings i nspired much of Roo sevelt’s program. “The German Reich,”<br />declared Zapp, irritated by the monsignor’s partisan Catholicism,<br />“with its new conception of the State, is i n the last analysis nothing<br />more than the national community itself.”5<br />To Zap p, totalitarianism—the term he preferred to fas cism —was,<br />once pruned of its absurdities, a sensible and lovely idea. The torches<br />and the “long knives,” the death’s-head and all that red-faced singing<br />and table pounding, these activities Zapp did not care for. He actu-<br />ally preferred life in America, the canyons of Manhattan and the gin-<br />lit balconies of the city’s best people, conversations that did not begin<br />and end with barking devotion. “Heil Hitler!” Zapp signed his letters<br />with this invocation, and a portrait of the Führer hung in his o ce,<br />but Zapp the journalist was too sensitive a recording device to enjoy<br />all that arm snapping. If only Manhattan and Munich, Washington<br />and Berlin, could be merged. It was a matter not of warfare but of<br />harmony, democracy’s bickering and bile giving way to the “new<br />conception,” in which power and will would be one.<br />Within a year, however, Zapp found cause to resist returning to<br />that ne new system. After a series of unsolved murders and per-<br />plexing explosions and i ntercepted transmissions led the FBI to raid<br />Nazi front organizations in Boston, Baltimore, Bu alo, Denver, New<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 147<br />Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Zapp’s spartan o ce o Fifth<br />Avenue, where they found what they bel ieved to be evidence of the<br />orchestration of it all, Zapp began to reconsider his enthusiasm for<br />Hitler’s new order. He had failed the Fü hrer. How would his will<br />judge him? What power would be exerted in the Gestapo “ beating<br />room s” that Transocean employees had once considered themselves<br />privileged to tour?<br />The FBI seized him and his chief deputy and whisked them away<br />to cold, bare rooms, on Ellis Island, no less, where not long before,<br />the rabble of Europe had been pro cessed into “mongrel ” America,<br />land of “ degenerate democracy,” as Roosevelt himself quoted Z app in<br />a speech denouncing Germany’s “strategy of terror.”6<br />This last phrase as appl ied to Zapp’s pursuits was perhaps unfair.<br />“We now know why Nazi sabotage e orts failed,” the Washington Post<br />would announce after the war. Zapp and his fellow Nazi spies had<br />been too busy bickering.7<br />On one side were saboteurs of the “old line,” men who planted<br />little bombs disguised to look like chewing gum and set giant res<br />meant to be understood by Washington as arson, skulking and hulk-<br />ing gures who photographed munitions factories and murdered<br />German American informants they suspected of disloyalty to their<br />dishone st cause.<br />On the other were men such as Zapp. Along with a D.C.- based<br />diplomat named Ulrich von Gienanth (whom he would rejoin after<br />the war in Abram’s prayer meetings), Zapp considered the coming<br />con ict between the United States and the Reich one to be resolved<br />through quiet conversation, between German gentlemen and Ameri-<br />can “ industrialists and State Department men.”<br />Von Gienanth, a muscular, sandy-haired man whose dull expres-<br />sion disguised a chilly intelligence, “seems to be a very agreeable fel-<br />low,” Zapp wrote his brother, who had studied i n Munich with the<br />baron-to- be. Only second secretary in the embassy, von Gienanth<br />maintained a frightening grip over his fel low diplomats. He was an<br />undercover SS man, the ears and eyes of the “Reichsministry of<br />Proper Enl ightenment and Propaganda,” charged with keeping watch<br /><br /><br />148 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />over its secret American operations. He was, in short, the Gestapo<br />chief in America. While Zapp worried about his legal prospects in<br />the Indian Sum mer of 1940, von Gienanth was l ikely waiti ng for<br />news of a major operation in New Jersey: the detonation of the Her-<br />cules gunpowder plant, an explosion that on September 12 killed<br />forty-seven and sent shockwaves so strong that they snapped wi nd<br />into the sails of boaters in far-o Long Island Sound.8<br />Von Gienanth did not approve of such gestures. So rmly did he<br />oppose them as counterproductive, in fact, that he even attempted<br />to denounce to Berlin the Nazi agents who perpetrated such deeds.<br />Double agents or worse, his faction suggested, secret Jews bent on<br />smearing the honor of the Reich.<br />Von Gienanth’s i nitiatives were whimsical by comparison. Once,<br />for i nstance, he paid a pilot to dump pro-Nazi antiwar iers on the<br />White House lawn. He devoted himself to changing Goebbels’s gold<br />into dollars, and those dollars into laundered “donations” to the<br />America First Committee, where unwitting isolationists—Abram<br />allies such as Senator Arthur Vandenberg and America First presi-<br />dent Robert M. Hanes among them—stumped for recognition of the<br />“fact” of Hitler’s inevitability.<br />Like Zapp, von Gienanth considered himself a commonsense man.<br />And Zapp —Zapp simply reported the news and sold it on the<br />wire. Or gave it away. To the papers of Argenti na, Mexico, Brazil,<br />and to the small-town editors of America’s gullible heartland, Zapp<br />o ered Transocean reports for almost nothing. In some South Amer-<br />ican countries, 30 percent or more of foreig n news—the enthusiastic<br />welcome given conquering German forces, the Jewish cabal in Wash-<br />ington, the moral rot of the American people—was produced by or<br />channeled through Zapp’s o ce s. On the side, he compiled a report<br />on Soviet-inspired “Polish atrocities” against the long- su ering Ger-<br />man people and distributed it to thousands of leadi ng Americans, the<br />sort sympathetic to the plight of the persecuted Christian. Zapp’s<br />sympathetic nature would prove, after the war, to be as genuine as<br />his distorted sense of history’s victi ms.<br />Not long after Zapp’s capture, the Gestapo seized two American<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 149<br />reporters in Germany. The United States traded. With a Coast Guard<br />plane keeping watch overhead, Zapp and von Gienanth sailed with<br />several hundred other deported fascist agents aboard the USS West<br />Point, bound for Lisbon.9 When soldiers from the American 89th Di-<br />vision captured him again in April of 1945 —an occasion for national<br />headlines i n the United States —he pled his failure on behalf of the<br />Führer as his defense, as if his ultimate incompetence as a German<br />spy in America before the war proved that he’d always been a secret<br />enemy of Hitler’s regime.<br />But Zapp had been heard plying his version of journalism through-<br />out the war, broadcasting the “new conception” into Vichy France<br />along with a bittersweet tune about his forsaken love, America—a<br />land, he now lamented, thick with gangsters and Jews. A Democratic<br />congressman from New York demanded that Zapp—along with<br />“Little Al e” Krupp, the “munitions king” captured that same week<br />in his eight-hundred-room palace—be tried for war crimes immedi-<br />ately. Like Krupp—who actually was tried and convicted, but re-<br />turned to high places by the occupation government—Zapp had a<br />brighter future to look forward to.<br />The September 1951 issue of Information Bulletin, the magazine of<br />the U.S. occupation government, marked Zapp’s next appearance in<br />the American press. By Zapp’s standards, Information Bulletin was a<br />publication of crass obviousness—an article in the previous edition<br />was headlined “I Hate Communism”—but he must have appreciated<br />the irony of a pictorial feature titled “German Newsmen Tour Army<br />Bases.” In a photo of twenty-two newsmen gathered around an Amer-<br />ican o cer at an ordnance depot, Zapp can be seen just to the o -<br />cer’s right; he looks like he’s rocking back on his heels. His tie is<br />short, his pants ill tting, and he’s wearing shades —but he still<br />smiles for the camera, an Aryan Zelig, born again into the Cold<br />War.10<br /><br /><br />“There is still a lot of misery in this part of the world,” Zapp wrote<br />Abram in 1949. “ Every day between one thirty and two o’clock the<br /><br /><br />150 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />radio is broadcasting the names of lost persons.” What did Zapp do<br />about it? Nothing. “I say to myself,” Zapp wrote, “carpe diem, enjoy<br />your life.”<br />Over the next seven years, Zapp would write Abram tens of<br />thousands of words, the musings of a man speaking for a nation he<br />believed to be the war’s true victim. By far the most proli c of what<br />would grow to be Abram’s deep pool of German correspondents,<br />Zapp was also the most cogent in his description of Germany’s suf-<br />fering, and the most plain in his statement of the bargain he bel ieved<br />Germany still had the power to strike with America: its loyalty i n a<br />united front against communism—aka “materialism,” radicalism,<br />and that old byword, degeneracy—i n exchange for desperately needed<br />American dollars.<br />Abram was hardly alone in thinking this unwritten contract mutu-<br />ally bene cial. Such was the deal struck by Harry Truman, the Marshall<br />Plan the Faustian trade of food for faith made at the hinge between<br />wars, the one just ended and the Cold War which would stretch across<br />the next ve decades. But in 1949, nobody believed it would last that<br />long. “Now,” Zapp wrote Abram as North Korean troops massed along<br />the Thirty-eighth Parallel in 1950, “everybody sees clearly that a great<br />war between USA and Soviet Rus sia cannot be avoided.”<br />Zapp understood as well as any Cold Warrior that the battle would<br />be fought in faraway places. “Now it is Korea, tomorrow it might be<br />Formosa, or China, or Indochina.” One day, he feared, it would be<br />Berlin. He was skeptical of America’s chances. Had not the Wermacht<br />slaughtered 20 million Slavs? And still they had come, the Red Army<br />growing in numbers even as the ranks of its dead swelled to the size of<br />a nation. Hitler could not stop them. German civilians thought the<br />Americans would succeed where the Reich had failed. “Oh, the Rus-<br />sians can’t do anything,” Zapp summarized his man-on-the- street in-<br />terviews. “Because as soon as a war starts the Americans will drop a<br />chain of Atom bombs from the Baltic to the Black Sea and create a ra-<br />dioactive curtain right across Western Rus sia.” But Zapp, who under-<br />stood American propaganda and prom ises for what they were, knew<br />better. “ This optimistic opinion sounds to me like the whispering<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 151<br />campaign Dr. Goebbels started at the end of the war, when he spoke of<br />new decisive weapons, of which nobody knew anything.”<br />Abram agreed. The “steel bath” of armaments alone would not<br />protect them. Only the solution that had saved Seattle in 1935 would<br />su ce. “The totalitarianism of God is the only answer,” as one of the<br />Cold War academics routinely trotted about by Abram had lectured a<br />conference of diplomats in 1948. The gathering was the work of<br />Donald C. Stone, director of administration for the Marshall Plan, a<br />man who hardly seemed a likely candidate for fundamentalist cru-<br />sades. Stone was a blue-blooded bureaucrat inspired by noblesse oblige,<br />one of the many authors of Eu rope’s reconst ruction who never<br />made headli nes. But in the postwar era he had come to believe that<br />the West stood for Christ-like perfection while communism was<br />“ hate” i ncarnate. Stone’s ambition for the Marshall Plan was to con-<br />form the Western bloc “politically, economically, psychologically,<br />and spiritually,” to a “global o ensive” of ideas. The idea, for Stone,<br />was God. “My main use,” he told Abram, “is to try to get the Chris-<br />tian Spirit i nto [the Marshall Plan]. I have worked at that constantly.<br />It is vital.”11 In 1948, the newly formed National Security Council<br />had issued a secret menu of covert actions to be pursued with Mar-<br />shall Plan funds, with the only restriction being plausible deniability:<br />“propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including<br />sabotage, anti- sabotage, de mo li tion, and evacuation mea sures; sub-<br />version against hostile states, including assistance to underground<br />resis tance movements, guerillas, and refugee liberation groups; and<br />support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened coun-<br />tries of the free world.”12 The most important battlegrounds, Stone<br />concluded, were the souls of the undecided, who must either give<br />their absolute loyalty or be destroyed.<br />Stone, Zapp, Abram. Just three small men in the Cold War, they<br />might be said to stand in for the three branches of America’s ideologi-<br />cal army. Establishment Cold Warriors of Stone’s ilk dominate the<br />history books. Zapp, the al ly with an ugly past, is his dark shadow. But<br />Abram and the in uence of his fellow fundamentalists would remain<br />invisible for decades, their in uence unmarked by media and academ ic<br /><br /><br />152 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />establishments. The role played by fundamentalists in refashioning the<br />world’s greatest fascist power into a democracy would go unnoticed.<br />So, too, would the role of fascism—or, rather, that of fascism’s<br />ghost—in shaping the newly internationalist ambition of evangelical<br />conservatives in the postwar era.<br />Between the Cold War establishment and the religious fervor of<br />Abram and his allies, organizations that came of age in the postwar<br />era—the National Association of Evangelicals, Campus Crusade, the<br />Billy Graham Crusade, Youth For Christ, the Navigators, and many<br />more—one nds the unexplained presence of men such as Zapp,<br />adaptable men always ready to serve the powers that be. From Amer-<br />ican Christendom, Zapp and his ilk took the cloak of redemption,<br />cheap grace, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoe er, one of their most<br />famous victims. To it, they o ered something harder to de ne. This<br />is an investigation of that transmission; the last message from the<br />Ministry of Proper Enlightenment; the story of American funda-<br />mentalism’s German con nection.<br /><br /><br />On Christmas Day, 1945, one of Abram’s men wrote him a letter<br />about the world waiting to be made. “Well, Abram, D-Day is at<br />hand.” The letter writer, a member of one of Abram’s cells called the<br />“Lindbergh Group”—possibly that of Charles Lindbergh—referred<br />not to the actual D-Day, eighteen months past, but to the battle for<br />what Abram would soon take to call ing the “new world order.”<br />“We must move now,” wrote Abram’s correspondent. “You have<br />been raised up for a job like this.”<br />And yet the following spring God and Abram’s appendix laid him<br />low, nearly killing him in the m idst of a speaking tour of the Midwest.<br />Lying on an operating table in Minneapolis, about to go under, he lis-<br />tened with unfrightened curiosity to the worldly disinterest of his doc-<br />tors, one of whom thought the sixty-one-year-old silver-haired man<br />would momentarily “shake hands with St. Peter.” He may have. After<br />the operation, Abram would say that he had spent his time hovering up<br />near the ceiling of his hospital room, looking down at his body. Then<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 153<br />Jesus came and bobbed along next to him, oating on the stale currents<br />of hospital air. This was not a dream, Abram would insist, but direct<br />communication. Together they discussed esh and “personality.” The<br />body, they concluded, is no more than “our means of contact with the<br />physical world.” Abram and the Jesus of his hallucination had rein-<br />vented the Gnostic heresy, the belief that bodies possess no essence of<br />humanity, that esh is meat, the su ering of which matters little or not<br />at all. Such convictions have very worldly rami cations when wielded<br />by the powerful —those in positions to make decisions about the suf-<br />fering of others. Abram, of course, didn’t think about that.13<br />Abram’s mystical experience marked a transformation in his mis-<br />sion. Gone were any vestiges of the Social Gospel, any old-fashioned<br />Christian notions of feeding the poor—food, that is, not scripture—<br />as a matter of rst concern. The Cold War and spiritual war would<br />be one in his eyes, but this battle would be ideological, fought for<br />hearts and m inds, those of the leaders who could set terms for the<br />unknowing masses. Thereafter Abram’s religion, the faith of the fun-<br />damentalist elite, would be global in scope, with Washi ngton, D.C.,<br />“the world’s Christian capital.” Fundamentalism could no longer<br />simply defend its own ground; it must, as Finney had done, conquer<br />new territory.<br />In 1947, an evangelical theologian named Carl F. H. Henry would<br />publish a startling book titled The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Funda-<br />mentalism, since interpreted as a reconciliation of fundamentalism<br />with the postwar world, a eulogy for William Jennings Bryan and<br />Billy Sunday and the Bible thumpers of old that allowed fundamental-<br />ism to bury its dead and move on to an easier relationship with soci-<br />ety at large. And yet The Uneasy Conscience still “ breathes with re,” an<br />editor of Christianity Today (the agship evangelical magazine Henry<br />started) wrote just a few years ago, “rejecting the failed theology of<br />liberalism, discredited by the devastation of two wars.”14<br />That one could view the ruins of Europe and the dead of Aus-<br />chwitz, Bergen- Belsen, Dachau—or, for that matter, Dresden or<br />Hamburg or Hiroshima—and conclude in 1947, or today, that liber-<br />alism was the problem, that Locke’s tradition of tolerance had led to<br /><br /><br />154 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />the slaughter, that what the world needed more of was the gospel of<br />no compromise, was, whatever else we might make of it moral ly or<br />historically, a bold assertion. It was American fundamentalism com-<br />ing i nto its own, ful lling the evangelical promise it claimed to up-<br />hold, no longer defending itself against modernity’s encroachments<br />so much as expanding into modernity’s sphere. Henry’s call for “pos-<br />itive engagement” with politics laid the foundation for a pop u lar front,<br />to borrow a term from the American Left of the previous decade: an<br />ideological army of common cause, with “Christianity” the battle cry<br />rallyi ng the troops well beyond the con nes of fundamentalism.<br />“I believe honestly,” Harry Truman had announced at war’s end,<br />“that Almighty God intends us to assume the leadership which he<br />intended us to assume in 1920, and which we refused.” Truman was<br />a hard-nosed liberal who borrowed heavily from American funda-<br />mentalism even as he held it at a distance. It took hi m another two<br />years to fully blend the two in his 1947 “Truman Doctrine” —a man-<br />date for massive m ilitary aid arou nd the world—on behalf of a Greek<br />government riddled with fascist collaborators, ghting a civil war<br />against the very same mountain partisans—communists, indeed—<br />who had been the chief resisters against the Germans.<br />Before the war, Truman had been such a devotee of Buchmanism<br />that he had attempted (unsuccessfully) to corner FDR into an im-<br />plicit endorsement of the Moral Re-Armament guru. In 1947, Sena-<br />tor Absalom Wil lis Robertson, a ercely conservative Democrat from<br />Virginia (and Pat Robertson’s father) met with Truman to invite him<br />to expand his sphere of piety to the Fellowship’s meetings. Robertson<br />would tell Donald Stone that Truman seemed excited by the idea,<br />but nothing came of it. By then, Truman was o cially distancing<br />himself from MRA lest he be tainted by its prewar enthusiasm for<br />fascism. It seems more likely that it was Truman’s hardheadedness<br />that in uenced the Fellowship rather than the other way around,<br />leadi ng toward a more mil itant realpolitik than Abram, enamored of<br />pomp and status, had yet imagined.15<br />Unlike Abram —who considered King Paul of Greece a messen-<br />ger from God—Truman wasn’t addled by royalty. The doctrine that<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 155<br />began by making client states of Greece and Turkey, the old “impe-<br />rial interests” as FDR had dismissed them, was too ambitious, too<br />abstract, to be starstruck by Europe’s quaint nobil ity. It was at best<br />and at worst an ontological division of the world into heaven and hell,<br />with the United States declared to be not only on the side of the an-<br />gels but responsible for enforci ng their dictums. “Worldwide Spiri-<br />tual O ensive,” Senator Frank Carlson would call this strategy at a<br />twentieth- anniversary meeting of the prayer breakfast movement.<br />He meant to summon the uni ed forces of politics and religion—<br />power and will, as Manfred Zapp, a propagandist of a blunter re-<br />gi me, might have phrased the idea. “Moral Doctrine for Free World<br />Global Planning,” was how another Abram disciple, a Pentagon di-<br />rector of “ information” named John C. Broger, would frame it i n the<br />barely secular terms of midcentury Cold War.16<br />Such was the language of the times: aggressive but vague. Five<br />years before Carl F. H. Henry published his Uneasy Conscience, the<br />denominational leaders of America’s conservative Protestant factions<br />had come together to form the National Association of Evangelicals.<br />It was an alliance of orthodox fundamentalists, such as Bob Jones Sr.,<br />and “ free enterprise” apostles, such as Abram’s friend J. Elwin<br />Wright. The NAE would ght “real dangers” threatening America, a<br />category of menace su ciently broad that it included both Roo se-<br />velt’s “managerial revolution” and the separatist fury of fundamental-<br />ists too pure for politics. The NAE saw socialism and separatism as<br />opposite ends of the spectrum of the beast known as secularism, which<br />the NAE considered the unnatural division of believers and Ameri-<br />can power. “Personal legalisms” —this church doesn’t approve of<br />dancing, that one won’t play cards—would thereafter be just that,<br />personal, not to i nterfere with the war for a Christian nation. “Christ<br />for America,” proclaimed the NAE’s president in his second annual<br />address. Come on in, said the populist front, whether you speak in<br />tongues and wave your hands on Sunday or sit on them and tsk, tsk at<br />the sweat and tears of the holy rollers. Its fundamentalism was not<br />theological; it was American. The totalitarianism of God, unlike that<br />of man, welcomed all true believers.17<br /><br /><br />156 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br /><br />• • •<br />During the war years, Abram had acquired a new patron, a young-<br />ish widow named Marian Aymar Johnson, heiress to the fortunes of<br />both her late stockbroker husband and of her old, Hudson River fam ily.<br />A lovely if empty-headed beauty raised between Newport, London,<br />and Manhattan, she was a second cousin to FDR, but her isolationist<br />politics were far to his right. Before the war, she’d been fond of Buch-<br />manite house parties, hosting one herself at her Long Island estate —an<br />event of su cient gossip value to rate an article in Time. Tall and<br />blue-eyed with a broad, open sm ile, after her husband died she resolved<br />to develop greater gravitas. She gave up the life of a social butter y for<br />what she called Abram’s “total Christianity.” Her goal was the estab-<br />lishment of “spiritual beach heads” from which to evangelize leaders.<br />Only by accepting the same Christ, the “ Supreme Leader” she had<br />come to serve, could they save America from communism.18 With her<br />help, Abram bought a four- story mansion on Embassy Row in Wash-<br />ington at 2324 Massachusetts Avenue. He hoped it would be a head-<br />quarters for politicians and diplomats of all denominations, a place for<br />businessmen visiting Washington (by this point, Abram’s inner circle<br />included the president of the National Association of Manufacturers) to<br />share their concerns with brothers-in-Christ in spiritual, not material,<br />terms. A “Christian Embassy.”19<br />Abram kept o ces on the third oor, and there was a reception<br />hall, a library for small gatherings, a formal dining room, and a din-<br />ing room for servants on the second oor. There were guest rooms<br />above and drawing rooms suitable for soul surgery—a term Abram<br />borrowed from Buchman—below. It quickly “became natural” for<br />ambassadors “looking for a Christian approach and solution” to drop<br />in for lunch, but Abram delighted even more i n “drifters in from a<br />pagan legal ism” —what nonbel ievers call ethics—who, sitti ng with<br />Abram on the back porch during a summer meal, might catch the<br />“contagion” of the Idea.<br />A magni cent garden in the back grew upon the green ridge of<br />Rock Creek Park, the narrow gorge that separated the property from<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 157<br />the sculpted grounds of Dumbarton Oaks. It was there, in 1944—<br />the same year that Abram and his wife, Mattie, at last risen from her<br />sickbed in Seattle, moved to the Christian Embassy—that Roo sevelt<br />and his advisers began planning the United Nations.20 Abram at rst<br />interpreted the United Nations as the result of divine intervention<br />leadi ng the secular world toward international acknowledgment that<br />the truths of the world’s religions were best summarized in the per-<br />sonality of Jesus. He turned his weekly congressional prayer meet-<br />ings i nto lobbying sessions on the organization-to-be’s behalf, and<br />his most conservative prayer disciples—especially the old arch-<br />isolationist Senator Arthur Vandenberg, converted to Cold War i n-<br />ternationalism before World War II had even ended—helped quiet<br />American resis tance to the endeavor.<br />History, not his Christ, would disappoint Abram. After the war<br />ended, after it dawned on him that the UN would not become an<br />international Christian congress, after the atom bombs fell, after<br />the Red Army boi led up to the edge of Western Europe and did not<br />stop so much as simmer, waiting, Abram was certain, for Stalin’s<br />command, for Satan’s whisper—after he had taken stock of the<br />war’s victories and defeats, his anxieties and his enthusiasms grew<br />more warlike than the UN could accommodate. Communism no<br />longer meant the c reed of i nsu ciently submissive workers; now it<br />was as great and grand as Luc ifer’s kingdom, an evil empire that had<br />launched “World War III,” Abram decided. “Most of these commu-<br />nists are in fact rebels and should be treated as rebels,” he said, wav-<br />ing the black ag of no mercy for those who disobeyed God—a<br />sentiment his followers in developing nations would later make real<br />by murdering hundreds of thousands of leftists. Abram’s fundamen-<br />talism was polite only within the con nes of Washington; projected<br />onto the world, it thrived on violence and raised up those most ca-<br />pable of it.<br />In 1946, Abram undertook a mission to scou r t he Allied pris-<br />ons in Germany for men “of the predictable type” ready to tu rn<br />their allegiance from Hitler to Christ, and thus, in Abram’s thinking,<br />Americ a. In later years, Abram would say he had gone at t he U.S.<br /><br /><br />158 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />State Depart ment’s request, and while it’s true t hat the State De-<br />partment did send Abram and provide any support he needed, it<br />was Abram who in itiated the trip, writing to Undersecretary of<br />State Major John H. Hildri ng that the men of the Senate and House<br />prayer groups had insisted that Abram carry “the Idea” to defeated<br />Germany. Abram sailed on the Queen Mary in June, launched a<br />prayer cell of Swiss bankers in Zurich, and ew from F rankfurt to<br />Berli n on the private plane of General Joseph T. McNarney, com-<br />mander in chief of t he U.S. Forces of Occupation, to meet with<br />General Lucius D. Clay, soon to take over from Eisenhower as<br />military governor. Everywhere, he met with the “Christian forces<br />of Germany”—those who saw Germany’s su ering as penance for<br />its embrace of the totalitarianism of a man rather than that of God.<br />He found them all weeping, he wrote his wife, c rying for thei r<br />Führer, for the thousand-year Reich in the grave at age twelve, for<br />the dead and the missing and t he blank-eyed boys who had stum-<br />bled home in retreat from the Rus sians. In the West he wept with<br />them; in East Berlin, he prayed with “secret cells” of Christians<br />determined to overthrow communism. Even in the West, he be-<br />lieved, “atheistic devotees” of subversion—that is, those with strong<br />anti- Nazi rec ords, concentration camp survivors—had been ele-<br />vated by an American military government blind to the threat<br />posed by its eastern ally. “Nominal membership” in the Nazi Party<br />was being held agai nst good Christians wit h the necessary experi-<br />ence to govern. A co alition of leading German churchmen begged<br />him to intervene, asking only that none but Christians be given<br />authority.21<br />In Frankfurt Abram, with the churchmen and the pi llars of the<br />Third Reich to whom they introduced him, “the most intelligent,<br />honest and reliable people of Germany,” settled on a plan. They<br />would provide Abram with a list of imprisoned men, “war crim inals”<br />according to the view of a certain un-Christian “element” among the<br />Allies. Abram’s friends i n the military government and back home in<br />Washington would certify them as “men not only to be released but<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 159<br />to be used, according to their ability in the tremendous task of re-<br />construction.” That September, U.S. secretary of state Jimmy Byrnes,<br />under the advice of General Clay, delivered in Stuttgart a<br />world-changing address, “Restatement of Policy on Germany.” The<br />burden of reparations would be lessened, Germany would be allowed<br />to keep more of its industrial base, and the purge of National Social-<br />ism would soon come to an end: “ It never was the i ntention of the<br />American Government to deny to the German people the right to<br />manage their own internal a airs as soon as they were able to do so in<br />a democratic way.” 22<br />In Frankfurt, Abram claimed, God personally revealed to Abram<br />a key man to quietly help manage the internal a airs of Germany’s<br />elite: Dr. Otto Fricke, an austere German churchman with an un-<br />com fortable past. “You are God’s man for this hour in Germany,”<br />Abram told him.23 Had Abram asked about Fricke’s role in Germa-<br />ny’s previous hour, Fricke would have begged o explai ning his ac-<br />tivities during the Third Reich. As a radio preacher, he’d been<br />recruited by Goebbels to propagandize, charged with explaining to<br />the German people the decadence of jazz. “Terrible disharmonies,”<br />he warned. He presented as evidence of moral degeneracy the jazz<br />standard “Dinah.”24<br /><br />Dinah,<br />Is there anyone ner<br />In the state of Carolina?<br />If there is and you know her,<br />Show her!<br /><br />History does not know if the recording Fricke played for a nation<br />of secretly thrilled Aryans—the German love a air with jazz pre-<br />dated the nation’s fetish for Hitlerian opera—was of Ethel Waters,<br />Louis Armstrong, or a bare-chested, shimmying Josephine Baker.<br />Abram would not have asked.<br />He never asked.<br /><br /><br />160 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br /><br />• • •<br />If we are to understand the ease with which former Nazis and fas-<br />cist sympathizers were born again as Christian Cold Warriors, we<br />must consider for a moment the meaning of memory within the new<br />religion—Christ at its center, no earthly Führer to serve—o ered<br />up by the Americans. And we must remember that this religion, a<br />“spiritual Marshall Plan,” as Wallace E. Haines, Abram’s chief Amer-<br />ican representative in Europe, called it in a speech delivered at one of<br />King Paul of Greece’s palaces, was new not just to the former fascists<br />who received it but to the Americans who gave it, transformed by the<br />sight of su ering. Not of the Jews, invisible to Abram’s men. Not of<br />the Japanese—a missionary wrote Abram dozens of letters from the<br />radioactive ruins, but he never received a reply. It was to Germany,<br />the front line of the Cold War, that Abram’s heart turned; Germany<br />that raised for American fundamentalism the question of theodicy: if<br />God is both good and all-powerful, why does he permit the su ering<br />of i nnocents? That is a question with which all faiths must struggle—or<br />learn to ignore.<br />Abram’s German brethren chose the latter path. In Germany,<br />after the war, sleep. Hunger and terrible labor, yes, months and then<br />years of clearing rubble, bent- back human chains of men and women<br />and children carting away pieces of the country in which they once<br />lived brick by brick. But it was starving, red-eyed slumbering work,<br />a dead sleep without dreams. No one could a ord dreams. No one<br />wanted history, the past translated by the night-mind into a land-<br />scape of guilt and shame. In Nuremberg, a little girl asked her mother<br />where the Jews of “Jew Street” are. Hush. There are none, darling,<br />there never were. In Frankfurt a group of American o cers, concen-<br />tration camp survivors, and the kind of Germans Abram considered<br />“subversive” gathered in a small theater standing among ruins on a<br />darkened side street and screened a twenty-m inute lm they were<br />considering showing to the German people. More bodies, many more<br />bodies, great piles of them, and gold, buckets of gold teeth, and then<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 161<br />more bodies, joyful, cheering, marching Germans at torch-lit rallies,<br />and a voice-over in German, “You remember, I was there, you were<br />there . . .” The lights came up in the theater, and the Americans and<br />the German subversives promised one another, “This we will show<br />to every adult German. We will make attendance compulsory.” The<br />lm played in every theater; but in the dark, Germany shut its eyes,<br />literally, millions squeezing theirs shut until the short lm was over<br />and the main feature came up, a romance, a comedy, a subtitled<br />Western. Anythi ng but the German past.25<br />“At times,” a German named Hans Kempe wrote Abram, “ there<br />are hours when I have to lie on the oor, as I can go no further.”<br />Kempe ran a camp for 500 German men displaced by the war, men<br />to whom Abram in America was drawn. They were once so strong<br />and now so broken. Kempe sent Abram stories: one man, a former<br />government o cial—a Nazi o cial, but what does that mean<br />anymore?—came to Kempe and told him he could no longer believe<br />in a God who would allow Germany to su er.<br />Their su ering was sweet. They had no fat and no meat, Kempe<br />reported, but they’d gotten hold of sugar. That was thei r food. Kempe<br />worked fourteen hours, eating sugar, and then collapsed. He lay on<br />the oor, staring at the ceiling. There angels gathered. Angels and<br />demons, “streams of grace” and a monster he called Hiob, sent by<br />Satan to talk with him. Kempe rose. The men needed a mirror for<br />shaving. This became his m ission. He dispatched two to beg for one,<br />and they returned with one and perhaps the men gathered round and<br />stared at their re ections, Kempe stari ng at them stari ng. “Want,<br />death, su ering, griefs and cares. Wherever I go, it is always the<br />same.” He lay on his oor, stared at his ceili ng, waited for Hiob. He<br />heard a storm coming. His men thought it had passed, but he knew it<br />was comi ng. They were sleeping, and they must open their eyes, not<br />to the past, which must be forgotten—put a mirror between yoursel f<br />and history—but to the future. “Whoever does not already realize<br />that we are at the midnight hour will awake too late,” he wrote<br />Abram. “ The storm bells ring loudly.”26<br /><br /><br />162 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />George Kennan heard them in Moscow. In 1946, the American<br />diplomat padded through the embassy on a cold Rus sian winter night<br />and sent his “Long Telegram” to Washington, “an eighteenth century<br />Protestant sermon,” he’d call it, a warni ng, a prophecy, a prescrip-<br />tion, the language of diplomacy channeling the spirit of Edwards: we<br />are as spiders, dangling over the abyss; the ames are rising. The So-<br />viet Union was greater than the men in Washington i magine. They<br />could not see what Kennan saw, could not imagine what he imag-<br />ined, when he lay in his bed at night, staring at his ceiling. The storm<br />bells rang loudly in his ears, and so he rang them for Washington.<br />“Containment,” he declared, a great clanging word. “Counterforce.”<br />The bell cracks. This, say the history books, was the beginning of the<br />Cold War.27<br />But for Abram it had al ready started, and Kempe’s demons and<br />bells were simply con rmation of the crisis he believed had long been<br />com ing, the notorious “B” of his nightmares now writ large. For<br />Abram the Cold War began the moment Germany’s defeat was cer-<br />tain. By the time Kennan published the new creed of containment,<br />under the pseudonym “X,” the rst great public statement of Ameri-<br />can strategy, the American vision for the coming decades, Abram<br />had already been gathering his forces.<br />“The demand for this hour is for America to awake,” declared<br />one of his many manifestos, a 1945 agenda for a meeting of govern-<br />ment o cials Abram had organized. “Awake” —as if warti me mobi-<br />lization had been nothi ng but a bleary-eyed prayer before morning<br />co ee. “With faith in God and con dence in t he Christian people of<br />America, the u ndersigned, representing various national agencies,<br />believe that the time has come when we should unite our forces in<br />an e ort to promote such an awakening.” They would do so by es-<br />tablishing prayer cells rst in every congressional district in the<br />country and then overseas.28 Germany, on the front lines, must<br />awaken, not to its past, to its destiny. Even in 1945, when “destiny”<br />was dust in the German rubble, Abram believed that Germany sti ll<br />had one. And Germany’s destiny, he was certai n, was in t he hands of<br />the Americans.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 163<br /><br />• • •<br />Only once, ever so delicately, would Abram raise the subject of<br />Germany’s recent unpleasantness. In 1948, Fricke wrote to Abram<br />that he would be sending him a man named Gustav Adolf Gedat, a<br />Lutheran pastor who had been a popular writer before World War II.<br />Gedat was the honorary president of the German YMCA, an enthusi-<br />ast for “ boys’ work,” as it was called. He was a towering man, his<br />shoulders sharp and so broad that his hairless head looked like a<br />boiled egg made to stand on its narrow end between them. He be-<br />lieved as a matter of pri nciple in big grins and bonhomie, but his face<br />was made for sternness and his soul for discipline; the toothy, lipless<br />grimace that emerges in photographs from his succession of chins<br />calls to mind a malevolent giant in a nursery rhyme. At war’s end,<br />Gedat was a staats end, declared an enemy of the Nazi regime, and on<br />this basis he built a brilliant postwar career, not to mention a castle in<br />the Black Forest for his boys’ work, reconstructed with funds from<br />American backers eager to support “good Germans.”29<br />Maybe that’s what Gedat had become. But even Abram, deter-<br />mined to believe in the goodness of all men granted status by Jesus,<br />wondered otherwise. “We have had some negative reports,” Abram<br />wrote Fricke about Gedat in a letter marked “CONFIDENTIAL,”<br />“ because of his former Nazi connections and publications.” Abram<br />did not care to know details one way or the other. Rather, he wanted<br />to know if Gedat’s past would interfere with his work for the organi-<br />zation Abram had by then rechristened the International Council for<br />Christian Leadership.<br />“Dear Brother Vereide,” responded Fricke, an unusually intimate<br />greeting for the German pastor. He thanked Abram for arranging the<br />attendance of John J. McCloy, the high commissioner of the Ameri-<br />can Military Occupation, at Fricke’s most recent gathering of “really<br />leading people.” But, he went on, he could not tolerate such an inqui-<br />sition. Gedat “ did what we all tried to do in 1933 and ’34,” he wrote,<br />“ nd a synthesis between the new party and Christianity.” For this,<br />other German churchmen, “willi ng to be the tools of Satan,” had<br /><br /><br />164 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />denounced Gedat as a Nazi. Fricke’s “tools of Satan” would have in-<br />cluded the martyr Dietrich Bonhoe er had he survived, but such<br />Christian resis tance to Nazism meant nothing to Fricke. T he truth, he<br />argued, was that Gedat was a victim—of those unwilli ng to forget the<br />past. “Even if Gedat had been a Nazi—which he has not been—and if<br />he saw his failures, let us say only in 1945, and if he repented, would<br />there not be the way of forgiveness from God and men?”<br />Is this a clue to the actual date of Gedat’s repentance? In 1935,<br />apparently still searching for synthesis, Gedat gave a speech in which<br />he declared that “God ordered hunters to chase Jews to where God<br />wants them.” Two years previous, he had welcomed the new regime<br />as the kind of full- strength disinfectant needed to rid Germany of<br />“materialism,” a concern that plagued him well into his postwar<br />years. Gedat may have hoped that the Christian wing of National<br />Socialism would triumph over its pagan mirror image.30 When it did<br />not—the two strands of fascism remained intertwined throughout<br />Hitler’s regime—Gedat turned against Hitler as a false prophet, a<br />man bent on usurping Christ’s rightful place at the head of the na-<br />tion. Gedat took his totalitarianism seriously, could not stand to see<br />it reduced in the personality of this uncouth little Austrian. He did<br />not bel ieve the problem with Jews was racial. It was biblical. He did<br />not believe in a master race; he believed in a master class of key men<br />from all nations. For this, Hitler banned him from speaking and even<br />imprisoned him, and then “materialists” shadowed him with accusa-<br />tions. Yes, Gedat was a victim.<br />Would Abram join the materialists? Fricke wanted to know. Was<br />Abram consumed by the “spirit of vengeance,” the “spirit of Morgen-<br />thau,” as Germans had taken to calling the tough policies of the Jew-<br />ish American secretary of the treasury, the strongest advocate of<br />denazi cation? Germans like Fricke struck a delicate balance with<br />such implicit accusations. All ied justice e qualed vengeance, they sug-<br />gested, and vengeance was the stu of the Old Testament. Putting<br />their meaning more plainly would have been disastrous; even Abram<br />would have recoiled, in 1948, from a German who blamed the Jews<br />for his current troubles. Abram preferred the positive approach, the<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 165<br />New Testament, New World, American method: reinvention. He<br />called it reconciliation. To argue for anything else, he’d insist—to de-<br />mand justice—was un- Christian.<br />What did Morgenthau really want? No more than accountabil-<br />ity. Not every German was a “wil ling executioner,” as the historian<br />Daniel Jonah Goldhagen puts it—indeed, many were themselves<br />executed—but the Third Reich was not something imposed on an<br />innocent German nation, as Abram and other American fundamen-<br />talists believed, but something it had brought about.<br />“It should be brought home to the Germans,” declared a directive<br />from the Joint Chiefs of Sta delivered to Eisenhower in April 1945,<br />“that Germany’s ruthless warfare and the fanatical Nazi resis tance has<br />destroyed the German economy and made chaos and su ering inevi-<br />table and that the Germans cannot escape responsibility for what they<br />have brought upon themselves. Germany will not be occupied for the<br />purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation.”31<br />This attitude, believed millions of Germans, was the true<br />crime against human it y. They had said they were sorry; wou ld the<br />Americans behave like Bolsheviks and Slavs—purveyors of “Asi-<br />atic nihilism,” as one of Fricke’s political allies wrote Abram—and<br />refuse to forgive? “The world is playing a very dangerous game<br />with the German people,” wrote Fricke, “if that repent ance is not<br />accepted.”32<br />Abram replied i mmediately. The charges against Gedat had come<br />from the liberal Federal Council of Churches. Not worth a dime. “I<br />responded by pointing out how natural it would be for a man in Ger-<br />many to look with hope to any aggressive leadership that could unite<br />the forces against the Communistic i n ltration . . . I am thrilled<br />with the progress that is bei ng made in Germany.”33<br /><br /><br />Gedat was a mong the least tainted of the men that Abram and<br />Fricke, and later Gedat himself, gathered into prayer cells to help<br />forge the new West German state. But they were repentant men,<br />this they testi ed to at every session. Repent ant for what? It was<br /><br /><br />166 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />hard to say. Every one of them claimed to have su ered during the<br />war years. Men such as Hermann J. Abs, “Hitler’s banker” and a<br />vice president of Abram’s International Christian Leadership<br />(ICL), German division; Gustav Schmelz, a manufacturer of<br />chemical weapons; Pau l Rohrbach, the hypernational ist ideologue<br />whose con ation of Germany with Christian it y, and most of Eu-<br />rope wit h Germany, had inspired the Nazis to understand t heir<br />war-hu nger as divine; and General Hans Speidel, who had ac-<br />cepted the surrender of Paris on behalf of the Fü hrer in 1940, in-<br />sisted that he had never believed Hitler, had been forced into his<br />arms by the Red Menace, had regretted the u nfortunate alliance<br />with such a vulgar fool, a disgrace to God ’s true plan for Ger-<br />many. They had done not hing wrong; they, too, if one gave it some<br />thought, were victims.<br />Perhaps some of them were. That is one of the many clever strat-<br />egies of fascism: persecution belongs to the powerful, according to<br />its rules, both to dole out and to claim as the honor due martyrs.<br />Abram did not ask questions; he simply took out his washcloth and<br />got busy with the blood of the lamb. He scrubbed his “new men”<br />clean. Did it work? Abs, “Hitler’s banker,” became “Adenauer’s<br />banker,” a key gure in the West German government’s nancial<br />resurrection. Schmelz kept his factory. Rohrbach wrote on, author-<br />ing tributes to Abram’s International Christian Leadership in the<br />Frankfurter Allgemeine.<br />And Speidel? He was a special case, a coconspirator with Rom-<br />mel in the attempted assassination of Hitler, the “July Plot” of 1944.<br />There was somethi ng almost American about him; like Buchman,<br />like Barton, he considered Hitler’s racial policies a distraction from<br />his really good ideas. For this ambivalence, the Allies rewarded him:<br />he served as commander in chief of NATO ground forces from 1957<br />to 1963, when Charles de Gaulle, unpersuaded of his reconstruction,<br />insisted on his ouster.34<br />Such men are only a few of those whom Abram helped, and by no<br />means the worst. There were Zapp and von Gienanth, there were<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 167<br />“little Nazis” Abram championed for U.S. i ntelligence positions, and<br />there were big ones: Baron Konstantin von Neurath, Hitler’s rst<br />foreign m inister, and General Oswald Pohl, the last SS commander<br />of the concentration camps, among them. For those beyond hope of<br />blank-slate rei nvention, Abram and his web of Christian cells pled<br />medical mercy (von Neurath, sentenced to fteen years for crimes<br />against humanity, was released early in 1953; Abram took up his case<br />upon learning from von Neurath’s daughter that her father, classi ed<br />as a “Major War Criminal,” was receiving less than exemplary dental<br />care in prison) or expediency (it was unjust, they felt, that Pohl, who<br />while imprisoned by the Allies wrote a memoir called Credo: My Way<br />to God—a Christ- besotted path that did not include acknowledging<br />his role in mass murder—should be left wonderi ng when he would<br />be hanged).35<br />When occupation forces charged Abs with war crimes, he of-<br />fered a novel defense. He did not deny what he had done for Hitler;<br />he simply declared that he had done it for money, fascism be damned.<br />He would gladly do as much for the Al lies. And so he did, a task at<br />which he so excelled that he would come to be known as the wizard<br />of the “German Miracle.” His past was forgotten—a phrase that<br />must be written in passive voice in order to suggest the gentle elision<br />of history in the postwar years, undertaken by those eager to see a<br />conservative German state rise from the ashes, a sober son of Hitler’s<br />fatherland that would inherit the old man’s hatred for one radicalism<br />but not his love of another.<br />When, in 1982, the Simon Wiesenthal Center del ivered to the<br />public a massive case detailing Abs’s crimes—among them the loot-<br />ing of the Third Reich’s riches on behalf of Nazis eeing to South<br />America—Abs, not long retired from his spot at the helm of the<br />Deutsche Bank, must have felt a sense of annoyed déjà vu. Would the<br />world condemn his nancial machinations for the glory of the Reich?<br />Then it must also reject those on behalf of capitalism’s easternmost<br />bulwark in Europe, America’s most crucial ally in the Cold War, the<br />Federal Republic of Germany: a nation in which the past became the<br /><br /><br />168 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />crass obsession of “materialists,” those who preferred brute “mem-<br />ory” to more modern, more spiritual a airs.<br /><br /><br />“Humility begets power,” Congressman Clyde Doyle of Cal ifornia<br />preached at a prayer meeting convened by Abram to consider the<br />problem of “reconciliation” as V-Day approached. Let us take the<br />gentleman from California at his word. Let us suppose that the politi-<br />cians Abram gathered to dedicate themselves to the “su ering” of the<br />German people—men such as Senator Alexander Wiley, the Wiscon-<br />sin Republican who’d declare even Kennan’s muscular manifesto<br />“panty-waist diplomacy”; Senator Homer Capehart, the Indianan who<br />became the most vocal defender of former fascist “rights” after the<br />war; Representative Walter Judd, the ex-missionary from Minnesota;<br />and Representative O. K. Armstrong, a jol ly Missourian who thrilled<br />to the sound of Bavarian oompah bands—were true believers, humble<br />and powerful and eager to be of service for their su ering brethren.36<br />Consider Capehart, a Hoosier who’d invented the mass-production<br />jukebox. “The embodiment of Senator Snort with his vast paunch<br />and triple chin, a large cigar xed permanently i n his round face,<br />Senator Homer Earl Capehart was a cartoonist’s dream,” the South<br />Bend Tribune would later eulogize him. Capehart was no Nazi; he was<br />a Christian, a spiritual warrior, a red hunter, a vice president of<br />Abram’s organization, and a member of the Committee on Foreign<br />Relations. Like Abram, Capehart only wanted to soothe the heart-<br />ache of the most broken.37 “The rst issue” of the postwar situation,<br />Capehart declared in a 1946 broadside against an unspeci ed “vicious<br />clique” withi n the Truman admi nistration, “ has been and continues<br />to be purely humanitarian.” Capehart spoke of the “tragedy in<br />Germany”—the rubble of Berlin, the empty stomachs of Hamburg—<br />with such pathos that one might be forgiven for m istaking which side<br />he had been on. Subsequent generations of neo-Nazis have done just<br />that, endlessly recycling his speeches. “Those who have been respon-<br />sible for this deliberate destruction of the German state”—he meant<br />not the policies of the Reich itsel f but Morgenthau’s short-lived plan<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 169<br />to “pastoralize” the fatherland i nto a second infancy—“and this crim-<br />inal mass starvation of the German people have been so zealous in<br />their hatred that all other interests and concerns have been subordi-<br />nated to this one obsession of revenge.” 38<br />To Frankfurt and Berli n, Senator Snort and Abram and the Fel-<br />lowship of the Senate dining room sent new suits, so that the Ger-<br />mans could dust themselves o and emerge from the rubble clothed<br />like gentlemen, and overcoats to protect them from the chill of a na-<br />tion that burned what was lef t of its f urniture to stay warm. What do<br />you need? Abram asked Fricke, promising to take up any matter in<br />the Senate dining room. “ Though I hardly like to say it aloud,” Fricke<br />wrote back, “shoes.” So Abram gathered donations and sent shoes.<br />And he arranged passports, so that restricted Germans could<br />travel out of their country. In August 1947, he convened at Lake Ge-<br />neva a council of nations to befriend the Germans, forgiving French-<br />men and Dutchmen and Czechs and Poles and Britons and a delegation<br />of Americans led by Senator Wiley, a member of the Foreign Rela-<br />tions Committee. “Choose two or three promising leaders,” Abram<br />had advised Fricke for the German contingent. The Swiss m inister of<br />nance would send the invitations, which the Germans should then<br />take to a certain American in the occupation government, who would<br />see to their arrangements for leaving Germany. At the head of the<br />table Abram placed Alfred Hirs, director general of the Bank of<br />Switzerland and a key gure in Abram’s Europe an calculations. Hirs<br />had credentials. His wife was a Bible teacher in Zurich, and his home<br />was a destination for traveling missionaries. The year previous he<br />himself had sought out Abram. A Youth for Christ missionary would<br />recall meeting Hirs at a “Christian businessmen’s” convention in<br />Washington in 1946, at which Hirs had apparently complained of the<br />tepid temperature of the religiosity on display. Someone steered Hirs<br />to the Christian Embassy, where he found Abram and presumably<br />prayers of a more satisfying fervor.<br />Hirs was a man in need of consolation. He had come to Washing-<br />ton not to bask in American Christendom’s good feeli ngs but to ght<br />over the spoils of war, and it seemed, then, that he was losing. The<br /><br /><br />170 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Americans were demanding that he reveal the secrets of Swiss bank-<br />ing, and worse, that deposits be returned, not to Nazi depositors —<br />suicides, Argentine exiles, men who would not ask for their<br />money—but to Jews.<br />“Do you want to take 500 mil lion Swiss francs of gold and ruin<br />my bank?” he screamed at representatives of Morgenthau’s Treasury<br />Department. This sum—500 million Swiss francs in Hirs’s bank<br />alone, 1.25 billion dollars, money to be fought over for the rest of the<br />century—no one in Washington had imagined that Hitler had ex-<br />tracted such a rich vein from the bank accounts, jewel boxes, the<br />jaws of Europe’s Jews.<br />Back in Zurich, Hirs found more understanding friends. Nathan-<br />iel Leverone, the vending-machine ki ng of America, reported on<br />what he learned in Zurich to American bankers and the National As-<br />sociation of Manufacturers. The German guests spoke on the need<br />for solidarity among men of free enterprise if the dollar was to stand<br />as a bulwark against Stalin’s tanks. Christ or com munism was the<br />choice they o ered Leverone. By Christ, the German contingent<br />meant to imply them selves.<br />And then there was Senator Wiley, a good friend for a man like<br />Hirs to have. A Republican from Wisconsin, he was a pleasingly<br />round-faced man of sixty-three years, dapper in a tux, and skilled in<br />the use of a hawkish eye and a sly smile. He was, more than anything<br />else, an opportunist: an isolationist before the war when indignant<br />cries of dictatorship —FDR’s, not Hitler’s—could raise a man in the<br />Republican Party, but an internationalist after it, when ghting com-<br />munism won more votes than keeping our boys safe at home. He en-<br />joyed a pulpit, and he didn’t much care what faith it belonged to. “ The<br />Jews and the Arabs,” he once declared, “should settle their dispute in<br />the spirit of Christian charity.” Such a faith had no trouble absorbing<br />Hirs and the Germans, since Wiley was a deep believer i n the moral<br />relativism of anticommunism. During the war, he had been an advo-<br />cate of the Jewish cause, cal ling for a Jewish “foreign legion” of exiles<br />and Palestinian Jews. Afterward, Jewish gold was of no concern when<br />weighted against the strength of the Red Army. That threat, real and<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 171<br />imagined, drove Wiley to distraction. The Rus sians would rape the<br />womanhood of Europa. In Korea Mao’s Chinese would swarm like<br />ants. In the union halls of Milwaukee honest Americans would turn<br />like werewolves into godless monsters. Everywhere, he thought, com-<br />munism was about to bubble out of its cauldron. He didn’t want to<br />just put a lid on it; he wanted to blow up the kitchen.<br />That had already been tried. Europe in 1947, the year of its cold-<br />est winter in decades, remained a rubble of roo ess buildi ngs and<br />bridges into thin air. “At night,” one German American returnee<br />wrote in his journal, “you see ever so often the dim sky through the<br />walls of a building: the ligree of chaos. Then it seems beautiful in a<br />weird way and you forget that houses are good only when they pro-<br />tect people from rain and cold.”39 That thin li ne of indigo was a stron-<br />ger barrier to hostilities than the “ iron curtai n” Winston Churchill<br />had warned of.<br />Senator Wiley wanted total war. Take the men of Hitler’s old<br />panzer divisions, bless ’em under Christ, and point ’em toward Mos-<br />cow. Abram’s German point man, Otto Fricke, wasn’t so blood-<br />thirsty; he merely wanted twenty- ve rearmed German divisions to<br />slow the Rus sian invasion he saw coming. “What Do We Christians<br />Think of Re-Armament?” was the theme of one of Fricke’s cell meet-<br />ings in 1950. They were con icted, tempted to take “malicious joy<br />that the ‘Allies’ are now forced to empty with spoons the bitter soup<br />that has been served by the Rus sians.” The judgments at Nuremberg<br />had dishonored the Wermacht, and the dismantling had insulted and<br />robbed Germany’s great industrial ists, Krupp and Weizäcker and<br />Bosch—all well represented i n Fricke’s cells. By al l rights they should<br />stand down, refuse to rearm, let the Americans defend Christendom<br />from the Slavs. But there it was: Christendom. They were Christian<br />men, chosen not by a nation but by Jesus himself to lead thei r people<br />into the “Order” God revealed to them in their prayers. “To accom-<br />plish these tasks,” the Frankfurt cell concluded, “the state needs<br />power and this powerfulness is indispensable for the sake of love.”40<br />But the Rus sian blitzkrieg wasn’t actually coming. The Soviet<br />Union quickly realized its interests were best served in Western<br /><br /><br />172 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Eu rope by parliamentary democracies, in which communists un-<br />tainted by collaboration could seize power without a shot red. Or<br />so Stali n thought. Across the continent in those cold, hungry days,<br />middle- and upper-class conservatives regained the power they’d lost<br />to the fascist rabble. They were not, however, mi litarists, at least not<br />of the operatic breed. The Germans did rearm under Chancellor<br />Konrad Adenauer, the most pious politician in all of Europe, but<br />much more than militarization, Germany threw itself into making the<br />tools of Cold War. It was the nonpolitics of Krupp and Hirs, quiet<br />men who knew how to hold on to money not properly theirs, that<br />conquered Western Europe as Hitler never had.<br />“I am modernizing my factory,” Baron Ulrich von Gienanth,<br />Zapp’s old Gestapo colleague, boasted to one of Abram’s aides in<br />1952.41 He had 800 workers in his employ, he went on, men orga-<br />nized according to Christian principles. And he was opening a new<br />factory in Switzerland. His ICL brother-in-Christ, Baron von der<br />Ropp, a “prophet” according to Abram, provided men such as von<br />Gienanth with a new Christian management theory. Von der Ropp,<br />before the war a Prussian propagandist for a “greater” Germany, was a<br />Christian nationalist who had resented Hitler’s cult of personality—a<br />vulgar parody, he thought, of the Christian destiny for Germany pro-<br />claimed by Martin Luther. In a stroke of luck, he had been banned<br />from public speaking just before the war’s end, and on that thin moral<br />basis rei nvented himself, like Gedat, as an instructor of boys.42<br />Von der Ropp specialized i n young working-class men, or “the<br />Stirred,” as he referred to those distracted by “social problems” from<br />the masculi ne model of Jesus. On one hand, von der Ropp’s religion<br />was straightforward American fundamentalism, remarkable only for<br />the t horoughness with which he transplanted it to German soil. But<br />he also anticipated the middle-class fundamentalism of the Ameri-<br />can future, the point at which Abram’s upper-class religion and the<br />popular front would converge. A geologist by training, he preached<br />that “too much science” would lead to “i ntellectual shallowness,” a<br />foreshadowing of the claims of today’s fundamentalism, intellectu-<br />ally critical and anti-intellectual at the same time. He taught that the<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 173<br />poor, with their demands for government services —which he un-<br />derstood as a failure to trust that God would provide—were “ the<br />adversaries of the church.” But not through their own doi ng; rather,<br />absent some modicum of prosperity, they were too bitter to prop-<br />erly appreciate Christ’s providence. This, i n essence, was the faith<br />that would thrive in future decades, when both the cell group and<br />the megachurch became staples of evangelicalism, the mic roscope<br />and the telescope of American fundamentalism. It certainly did not<br />take hold in Germany; but it evidently made an impression on<br />Abram.<br />Perhaps, too, on von der Ropp’s fellow aristocrat, Baron von<br />Gienanth. The two would have met often at Abram’s private conven-<br />tions of Germans and Americans. The di erence was that von der<br />Ropp, never a Nazi o cial, could travel and spread his ideas at<br />Abram’s international meeti ngs. Von Gienanth was bound to the Fa-<br />therland. This, he complai ned to Abram, was an impediment to re-<br />construction. He’d wanted to attend a conference in Atlantic City<br />with further ideas of expansion i n m ind. Would the American mili-<br />tary really say that a man of his stature would blemish the boardwalk?<br />He was on a list of undesirables, he had learned from certain<br />connections—probably ICL men within the occupation. This would<br />be “understandable,” he thought, if he had been a communist. “But I<br />don’t see any sense in including people of my attitude”—ex-fascists<br />ready to make common cause with the United States.<br />Among the many testimonies von Gienanth collected on his own<br />behalf was a letter from an American diplomat’s wife who insisted<br />the baron had not been a Nazi so much as an “idealist.” Eventually,<br />von Gienanth had bel ieved, “the good and conservative element of<br />the German people would gain control.” Fascism had been like strong<br />medicine, unpleasant but necessary to what von Gienanth had always<br />believed would be the reestablishment of rule by elites li ke himself.<br />“In the com ing years of reconstruction,” his advocate wrote, “such<br />men will be needed who can be trusted.”43<br />Abram contacted the Combined Travel Board that decided on<br />which former Nazis could be allowed to leave the country. The baron<br /><br /><br />174 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />was needed, Abram insisted. There were high Christian councils to<br />be held in The Hague. “Expedite the necessary perm it.”<br />Should that argument prove inadequate, Abram hired von Gien-<br />anth’s wife, Karein, as a hostess on call for Americans traveling on<br />Christian missions. She was an American citizen, though she’d spent<br />the war with her SS o cer husband. Now her American passport<br />was being threatened. Abram saved it. That summer, he sent the<br />baron and his wi fe a gift of sorts: a congressman from California, to<br />be a guest on the baron’s estate. The following winter Senator Frank<br />Carlson visited. “As you know,” Abram advised Karein, “ he is one of<br />the closest friends and advisors to Eisenhower.”<br />A “serene con dence has lled me,” she replied, “as to President<br />Eisen hower’s guidance by God.” That summer, her husband ew<br />with her to England, his passport evidently restored.<br /><br /><br />The Castle of the Teutonic Order sits on the eastern edge of a smal l<br />island in Lake Constance, a Bavarian gem at the intersection of Ger-<br />many, Austria, and Switzerland. Shaped like a sh, the waters are<br />emerald, sapphire, and amber, depending on the time of day. The is-<br />land itself, called Mainau, is even more dazzling, the “island of ow-<br />ers,” a botanical garden formed according to the whimsy of the<br />Swedish princes who have lived within this fortress for generations.<br />Since the nineteenth century they have been col lecting blossoms and<br />butter ies for their retreat, and, most of all, trees, giant redwoods<br />and cedars from Lebanon and pal ms, more palm trees, surely, than in<br />all the rest of Germany combined, gathered from around the globe.<br />The crest emblazoned on the castle is a bristle of swords and<br />spears and gray ags that resembles a charging, heavy-tusked bull el-<br />ephant with a purple crown between his great ears. But the castle<br />itself, raised in 1746 on the ruins of older castles, celebrated as an<br />ideal of the architectural style known as Southern Bavarian baroque,<br />looks like a giant cake made of pale orange sorbet. Its walls are<br />smooth and creamy, its windows like the ornamentation of sugar<br />cookies. “You would have liked the surroundings,” Abram’s chief<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 175<br />representative in Europe, Wallace Haines, wrote him in June 1951.<br />Haines had just presided over an international meeti ng which Abram’s<br />health had prevented him from attendi ng. Mainau, he gushed, was a<br />“fairy island,” and the conference, judging by his letter alone, might<br />have been something out of a fairy tale: owers sculpted into the<br />shapes of strange creatures, great candle-lit halls, “ divine services” in<br />the chapel, ornate and glittering as a Faberge egg’s interior.44<br />The rst meeting at Castle Mainau had taken place in 1949, the<br />same year the Allies allowed Germans to begin governing themselves<br />again. The 1951 meeti ng was planned to mark what Abram consid-<br />ered the complete moral rehabilitation—in just two years —of Ger-<br />many. Abram wanted the Americans to go to them, a grand contingent<br />of senators and representatives. Gedat, now the uno cial leader of<br />the German organization, was thrilled. But when word came that<br />o cial duties i n Paris prevented the American delegation from at-<br />tending, he was furious. There was more bad news. Chancellor Ad-<br />enauer, Gedat’s keynote speaker, was called away to a crisis. And<br />Abram himself, slowed down by more bad health, would not be<br />there. His representatives could take notes.45<br />“For our God is a consuming re”—Hebrews 12:29—was the<br />conference’s theme. What did this mean? “God is the God of power,”<br />said one of the rst speakers. God is not the God of ethics, of moral-<br />ity; God is great, God made this order and chose its leaders. Prince<br />Gottfried Hohenlohe opened the meeting on a Thursday eve ning.<br />“God gave me my place in the world,” he told 150 assembled wor-<br />thies, a statement not of pride, in his mind, but of humility, a mod-<br />esty shared by his audience, men and women now trained for several<br />years, through weekly cell meetings, in Abram’s religion of key men<br />and destiny.<br />General Speidel was there, as was Rohrbach the propagandist:<br />There were representatives from the major German banks and from<br />Krupp and Bosch, and there was the president of Standard Oil’s Ger-<br />man division. There was at least one German cabinet member, par-<br />liamentarians, mayors, a dozen or more judges. A U-boat commander,<br />famed for torpedoi ng ships o the coast of Virginia, cut a dashing<br /><br /><br />176 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />gure. A gaggle of aristocrats, minor princes and princesses, barons<br />and counts and margraves, were intimidated by some of the best<br />minds of the old regime. There was the nancial genius Hermann J.<br />Abs, and a fascist editor who had once been a comrade of the radical<br />theorist Walter Benjamin before throwing his lot in with the Nazis.<br />Wallace Haines spoke for Abram. He stayed up all night before<br />his lecture, praying for the spirit that spoke aloud to his mentor. The<br />Americans, God told him to say, were thrilled with the “eagerness”<br />of the Germans to forget the war. The Americans came to the Ger-<br />mans humbled, he told them. Haines brought proof of their new-<br />found wisdom: a letter of repentance for the sins of denazi cation<br />signed by more than thirty congressmen including Wiley and Cape-<br />hart and a young Richard Nixon.<br />On Saturday night, Theophile Wurm, the former Lutheran bishop<br />of Württemberg, spoke in the White Hall, a confection of gold gilt<br />dully shining by the light of candles. First there was music, cembalo<br />and violin, “old music,” reported one of Abram’s Germans, a former<br />Nazi propagandist named Margarete Gärtner. Blue darkness fell on the<br />lake, and Bishop Wurm began to speak. All felt sacred, for here was a<br />man of deep character. He’d been an early and enthusiastic supporter<br />of national socialism, had helped purge the German church of dissent-<br />ers, had drawn up lists of the weak, the deformed, the degenerate.<br />This, as Fricke had said, was simply as they “all” had done. But Bishop<br />Wurm was di erent; Bishop Wurm did not believe in killing. Not<br />more than necessary, anyway. This watery conviction, he thought,<br />made him a “resister.” His identity at the end of the war, when the clock<br />sprang back to zero in 1945, stunde null, the Germans called it, was his<br />identity forever. He was the man who wrote Berlin a letter asking the<br />Reich to spare some Jews. “Not from any predisposition for Jewry,”<br />he’d written, “whose immense in uence on cultural, econom ic, and<br />political life was recognized as fatal by Christians alone, at a time when<br />almost the entire press was philosemitic.” No, Bishop Wurm wrote,<br />his version of truth to power, “the struggle against Jewry” was correct;<br />but shouldn’t the Reich rst try to convert them?<br />In the White Hall Bishop Wurm stood before a great window,<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 177<br />the snow-covered Alps glowing purple in the dusk. A thunderstorm<br />rolling in over the lake split the sky and boomed through the castle,<br />setting the candles aquiver, silhouetting Wurm when lightning ashed.<br />He spoke of the mechanization of man and the loss of faith i n free<br />enterprise, God’s delicate weavings, the idea, the promise, that God<br />helps those who submit totally. The lightning cracked, and Frau<br />Gärtner, Bishop Wurm, the barons and the generals and the captains<br />of industry submitted, totally. “We are children of fear,” Prince Ho-<br />henlohe had proclaimed at the meeting’s beginning, but that night,<br />forti ed by the spirit of Wurm and electri ed by lightning glaring o <br />the lake and over the mountains, their bel lies full of warm stories<br />and good wishes from around the world, the children of fear felt like<br />children of God, and for this ne sensation, wrote Frau Gärtner and<br />Wallace Haines and Gedat, they sent their thanks to Abram.<br /><br /><br />For years, Manfred Zapp had been Abram’s harshest correspon-<br />dent, constantly warning that the “man on the street” with whom he<br />seemed to spend a great deal of time had had enough of America’s<br />empty promises. America had committed “mental cruelty,” he charged,<br />holding “so-called war crim inals” i n red coats —the uniforms of the<br />Landsberg Prison—awaiting execution inde nitely.<br />Abram agreed, and sent to the occupation government letters<br />signed by dozens of congressmen demanding action.<br />America prevented German industry from feeding the nation,<br />Zapp argued.<br />Abram agreed, and intervened time and again on behalf of German<br />factories. He saved as many as he could, though a steel foundry named<br />for Herman Göring was beyond even his powers of redemption.<br />America had put leftists and trade unionists and Bolsheviks in<br />power, Zapp complained.<br />Abram agreed. The cleansing of the American occupation gov-<br />ernment became an obsession, the subject of his meetings with the<br />American high commissioner John J. McCloy and his weekly prayer<br />meetings with congressmen.<br /><br /><br />178 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />“Idealists” were prevented from serving their people, said Zapp.<br />The man on the street was losing faith in the American religion.<br />“Freedom in their interpretation is the ideal for which we shall ght<br />and die but the reality is nothing else but a beautiful word for ser-<br />vices for Western powers . . . The word freedom is not taken seri-<br />ously anymore.”<br />Within a few years, nobody cared. The “Morgenthau Boys” were<br />as much a part of the past as the history no German cared to speak of.<br />“Tab ula rasa,” declared Konrad Adenauer when he took power as the<br />Bonn Republic’s rst post-<br />Hitler ruler.46 Abram met with Adenauer<br />on several occasions, but the “Old Man of Europe,” a creature of the<br />Weimar Republic’s forgotten tradition of conservative reformers,<br />never took to him; Adenauer was a Moral Re-Armament man, a<br />great friend of Buchman’s. But by then Buchmanism had diluted its<br />fundamentalist avor, had become 100 percent Cold War spirits,<br />suitable for men and women of any faith who hated Bolshevism.<br />More, Adenauer was too Roman Catholic to really embrace Abram’s<br />religion—even, one might say, too Christian. A former mayor of<br />Cologne, he had been deposed as soon as the Nazis took power in<br />1933, and had spent most of the next twelve years gardening and<br />reading theology. At the heart of Europe an politics for two decades<br />after the war, by inclination he was a monastic, his face dis gured by<br />an accident i n his youth, his old bones subject to chills that led him to<br />wrap himself in blankets on long journeys. His Christian Democratic<br />Union (CDU)—the German equivalent of the Republican Party—<br />was ascetic in its devotion to purging Germany of leftist tendencies<br />but liberal i n its economy. Adenauer did not like to see his Germans<br />go hungry.<br />Given Abram’s in uence in postwar Germany—if Adenauer kept<br />his distance, many of his m inisters did not—what kept the nation<br />from falling into the orbit of American fundamentalism? Why did its<br />Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s most powerful party, not<br />become part of a Christian bloc within the Western bloc, the founda-<br />tion of an evangelical supranationalism beside which the strength of<br />the contemporary movement would pale?<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 179<br />Part of the answer lies in its Christianity, essentially Catholic,<br />and its Democracy, which was, with occasional hiccups, actually<br />democratic, in the most pedestrian sense—that of dull bureaucratic<br />order. More, it was a political party; in the United States fundamen-<br />talism grew during the 1950s and ’60s by presenting itself as a greater<br />force, to which men of either party could pay tribute i n return for<br />divine favors.<br />But most of all there was old, wrinkled Adenauer himself, more<br />blatantly Christian in his pronouncements than any American politi-<br />cian could ever be, but also more cautious. Keine Experimente, “No<br />Experiments,” was an o cial campaign slogan. The “values and sense<br />of justice of Western Christendom”47 was the political plank on which<br />he plodded forth, but it was the very lack of such a sense that made of<br />Adenauer’s Germany a secular nation. For it was a nation with no<br />concept of sin. That had gone into the dustbin right along with his-<br />tory when Adenauer in his rst act as chancellor dropped all charges<br /> against—privileged was the o cial term—nearly 800,0 00 minor<br />Nazi o cials, many of whom would become the functionaries of his<br /> blank- slate regime.<br />In place of the very real dangers of German romanticism, the<br />bloodlust of Wagner, Adenauer o ered modest family values. A depo-<br />liticized philosophy of inward-looking house holds, the moral conform-<br />ism of proper Germans. The man-on-the- street in the era of Adenauer,<br />lamented Zapp, nostalgic for the thunder of the “new conception” now<br />past, wants only “his job, his food, his movie, and his sport.”48<br />In the end, Abram and the Americans learned more from the<br />Germans than the other way around. It was after the CDU turned<br />family into cultural code that American fundamentalism found a way<br />to make the term both modern and traditional, used to describe—and<br />shape—the postwar suburban world as well as that of a mythical<br />small-town past. Abram nally retired normalcy, the Harding-era ne-<br />ologism that for two decades had de ned his mission, his Christ, and<br />his pol itics. It was a notion to which postwar Americans studiously<br />subscribed even as they celebrated the myth of themselves as rugged<br />individuals, but family captured that paradox more neatly, a nation of<br /><br /><br />180 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />cozy little kingdoms ruled by Father. And the new evangelical alli-<br />ances, forged along the lines of spiritual war rather than the eradi-<br />cation of vices traditionally considered masculine—drinking,<br />gambling—made sure that Father knew best about not only his little<br />unit’s material welfare but also its spiritual morale, once the prov-<br />ince of Mother. “Men must reclaim the Bible from their wives,”<br />Abram’s “prophet,” Baron von der Ropp, taught the workers of the<br />Ruhr, a succinct statement of the old ni neteenth-century muscular<br />Christianity that took on new meani ng in the postwar era.<br />And then there were the questions of sin and of history, inescap-<br />able in Europe and thus ignored. But sin and history presented more<br />nuanced dilem mas to American fundamentalism. Not its prewar mild<br />sympathy for fascism—the blood of D-Day had wiped that record<br />clean as far as most Americans were concerned—but the drag the<br />actual, awful past put on the movement’s new global ambitions. What<br />were they? Nearly the same as those of the nation’s. For a muddled<br />period after the war, the United States had pretended that it could<br />shrink back to its prewar isolationist ways, but by 1947, with the<br />Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan in place, it was rmly com-<br />mitted to the “new world order” hoped for by Abram and Senator<br />Wiley and their bipartisan alliance of Christian internationalism.<br />“The United States has been assigned a destiny comparable to<br />that of ancient Israel,” Harold Ockenga, the president of the National<br />Association of Evangelicals, had declared at its inception, reviving<br />the old notion of manifest destiny and extending it around the globe.49<br />But manifest destiny, the original westward thrust that erased a con-<br />tinent of Native souls, burns history like coal and knows no sin but<br />that of its enem ies. So, too, Abram’s dream, in both its religious and<br />secular manifestations. And in this regard, too, the Americans learned<br />from the Germans, who understood that mythology makes of the<br />past a parable, smooth and enigmatic, best understood by those who<br />ask no questions.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-1547294623793586452009-07-12T02:26:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:27:43.922-07:00II. Jesus Plus Nothing - The F Word<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The F Word</span><br /></div><br />The defenders of the status quo,” Henry K issinger wrote in <br />his doctoral dissertation, published as A World Betrayed in 1957,<br />“. . . tend to begi n by treating revolutionary power as if its protesta-<br />tions were merely tactical.” That this comment is su ciently ambig-<br />uous to be wor thy of the sl ippery car eer th at followed it tak es noth ing<br />from the weight of its i nsight, and, more, its double meaning.<br />Kissinger himself provides a perfect illustration. Like most brilliant<br />political players, he became both a defender of the status quo and a<br />revolutionary, a champion of American hegemony where it already<br />existed and a clever tactician of revolution on behalf of that power<br />where it had not yet been achieved. The vast array of actors that com-<br />prise American fundamentalism do not include any single tactician of<br />Kissinger’s caliber, and yet they have, as a movement, functioned i n<br />just such a fashion, building on the foundation of American Protes-<br />tantism’s traditional power to strategize both its expansion and, in<br />true revolutionary fashion, its transformation.1<br />In one sense, the men Abram Vereide gathered for bacon and eggs<br />and Bible were defenders of the status quo. They sought not so much<br />spiritual sustenance as stabil ity, an end to the Depression’s hurdy-<br />gurdy years. Men, women, and children dwindled into thin and hope-<br />less creatures, listless and dull-witted and red-eyed. Then would come<br />a strike or a street ght or a mob that had decided to take vegetables<br />from a moving train, or to march on city hall, and out came the bulls<br />like it was Pamplona. And there were words in the air, and a family<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 115<br />cold and huddled around a radio, heads bent toward the voice of a man<br />such as Father Coughl in, the “radio priest” from Detroit, the Shrine of<br />the Little Flower, preaching and ranting to more m ill ions than the<br />president himself some eve nings. What did he want? He was no com-<br />munist, that was for certain. He called them the “Red Fog.” But he was<br />no friend of things as they were, either. He was a furious man, his voice<br />dulcet but his words full of hatred for the capital ists who had lined<br />their silk pockets. Coughlin, as much as or more than the communists,<br />seemed like he might call for blood one day, and soon.2 It was against<br />that threat, as much as com munism, that Abram schemed.<br />Abram’s men did not consider themselves blameless. But they<br />believed their folly didn’t l ie in the economics of do- as-you-will that<br />had brought the nation and the city to those days of breadlines and<br />street battles. Their sin was slippage. They had enriched their co ers<br />at the expense of their souls. Money was like power: Those who had<br />it should not speak of it, concern themselves with it, acknowledge its<br />existence as a factor. To do so was worse than bad manners; it was<br />blasphemy, an attempt to refute God’s ordering of econom ic a airs.<br />So they sought a return to that order. To reclaim it, they had to<br />take steps they had never taken before. One of these was reading the<br />Bible, a book that for most of them was long in the past, of interest<br />only to grandmothers; now, they were determined to nd in it a<br />message for men such as themselves. They promised one another that<br />they would study at least a chapter a day. Understanding was another<br />matter. The churches had failed. They no longer taught truth but in-<br />sisted on metaphor. The best pulpits were manned, if that word<br />could be used, by foppish intel lectuals who debated like Jews, si fting<br />sentences like sand for grains of meaning. A useless endeavor. The<br />ocean was crashing upon them. They needed rocks to stand on. They<br />needed marching orders. “Men who did not want to be preached at”<br />turned to one another for con rmation of their spiritual gleanings,<br />“teachings practical in business, government, and social li fe,” wrote<br />Abram. “ We discovered that, as the eye is made for light and the ear<br />for sound, so the human personality is made for God. We discovered<br />that sanity and normalcy are to be Christ-like.”<br /><br /><br />116 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />That sum mer Abram took a core of Christ-committed leaders—<br />a railroad man and a lumberman and a banker, a car dealer, a cloth-<br />ier, and a navy commander—on a retreat to the Canyon Creek<br />Lodge, alongside a river amid the peaks of the Cascades. He gathered<br />his troops around a tall stone hearth and led them in a “spiritual in-<br />ventory,” each man taking turns listing aloud that which troubled<br />their city, their state, thei r corporation. Hunger, pride, whores,<br />Harry Bridges, booze, degenerates, sloth, corruption, the Team-<br />sters. Women with short hair. Commu nism in the colleges. Sailors, a<br />dirty, immoral lot. Pessimism. Racy movies. The Soviet Union. The<br />color red, in general, the “red tide,” the “red menace,” the “red-hued<br />progeny” of Stalin. Also brown, for Brownshirts, a force so vital, so<br />strong, so bursting with muscle—could America possibly compete<br />with the fabulous rising of Italy, Germany, Austria? Round the room<br />the men went, moaning their fears and their losses and thei r fail-<br />ures. They fell to their knees, old men’s joi nts creaking, overwhelmed<br />by the godlessness surrounding them, and, yes, they confessed,<br />within them. “ Utter helplessness,” Abram recorded.<br />They had been reading the Bible for months, and most must have<br />known its darkest corners, the truth of an angry God not as a bearded<br />man in heaven shaking an ancient nger but more like the wilderness<br />growling in the dark at the edge of the city. “He was like a bear wait-<br />ing for me,” warned Jeremiah, “li ke a lion in secret places.” To them<br />the thud of the billy club and the shriek of the gas canister were the<br />sounds not of repression but of Christian civilization making its<br />last stand. The tribes of labor were whooping. If history taught any<br />lesson, it was that no Custer could save society from the coarse-clothed<br />savages. “ Subversive forces had taken over,” observed Abram. “What<br />could we do?”<br />It was at this moment on the edge of hysteria when a young law-<br />yer named Arthur B. Langlie, kneeling among the big men, discov-<br />ered his calling. A at-faced, blue-eyed Scandinavian like Abram,<br />Langlie was thirty- ve years old that July, known equally for his<br />wide smile and his zealous religion, a sharp-nosed teetotaling man<br />who could work a party with just a glass of water in his hand.<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 117<br />He rose from his knees. “Men, it can be done,” he said. “I am<br />ready to let God use me.”<br />Abram’s brotherhood was ready to use him, too. On the spot one<br />rich man said he would nance Langlie’s crusade, and others followed<br />with promises of time and connections. Langlie would be their key<br />man. Abram’s heart must have been pounding. This was what God<br />had shown him. The brothers gripped hands in a circle before the re-<br />place and sang a song in the mountai ns for the city they meant to<br />save.<br /><br /> Faith of our fathers, living still<br />In spite of dungeon, re, and sword:<br />Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy . . . <br /><br />“There,” Abram would declare, “was born a new regime.” It was<br />the beginning of the movement of elite fundamentalism that would,<br />in the 1980s, come to be known as “the Family.”<br /><br /><br />That meeting also marked a turning point in Langlie’s long and<br />successful pol itical career. Langlie came to the prayer movement as a<br />representative of a brotherhood of young businessmen across the<br />state of Washington called the New Order of Cincinnatus. Twelve<br />hundred strong, the Cincinnatans presented a “New Order” of moral<br />and economic force in opposition to FDR’s New Deal. Younger than<br />Abram’s establishment gures, the Order ran candidates for o ce<br />under the banner of the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus, sum-<br />moned from his farm ve centuries before Christ to assume dictato-<br />rial power over a populace too exhausted by in ghting to make<br />decisions for itself.<br />When several of Langlie’s Cinci nnatans showed up at the city<br />comptroller’s o ce to register, they came anked by men of the<br />Order wearing identical white shirts, joining a rai nbow of li ke-<br />minded lovers of discipline and i ntimidation—not just Mussolini’s<br />Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts but the Greenshirts of the<br /><br /><br />118 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Romanian Legion of the Archangel Michael, the Blueshirts of Ire-<br />land, and, in America, the Silver Shirts, the initials of which, SS,<br />deliberately chosen, justi ed the amboyant color. The men of the<br />Order gave themselves mi litary ranks and considered adding a sieg<br />heil–style salute to their public image, but decided that would be “too<br />fascist.” The Order’s rst “National Commander,” an excitable former<br />Republican operative, saw models for such qualities in the strong<br />men across the Atlantic and the bureaucrats who made their govern-<br />ments run like Henry Ford’s assembly lines. The Order craved e -<br />ciency. One of its rst goals after its formation in 1933 was a Washington<br />state constitutional convention at which local police forces would<br />be eliminated and replaced with troopers trained at retooled state<br />colleges.3<br />Langlie never o cially joined the Order, but he became its chief<br />candidate. The year of the big strike, the Order took control of Seat-<br />tle’s city council by invoking middle-class fears of a Wobbly insurrec-<br />tion. Poverty, it mai ntained, was part of the natural way of things.<br />The Order had two solutions to econom ic malaise: slash taxes and<br />attack vice. As councilman, Langlie purged the city’s police depart-<br />ment, which routinely ignored Sunday liquor sales, Chinese gam-<br />bling halls, and the prostitution that prospered in a port city like<br />Seattle. He then turned his ax toward the re department (poor<br />moral specimens) and public school teachers (indoctrinating the<br />youth with godless notions). With his allies in the Order, he suc-<br />ceeded in passing a bud get so brutal that the city’s conservative Re-<br />publican mayor, whose rst act i n o ce had been to literally lead a<br />police charge against the previous year’s strikers, vetoed it as con-<br />temptuous of human su ering. So Langlie decided to depose him.<br />The Order’s rise won attention as far away as Manhattan, where a<br />titillated New York Times thrilled to the movement’s youthful fervor.4<br />In Abram’s tel ling, Langlie stood, pledged himself, and simply<br />ascended to publ ic o ce. Langlie had in fact taken his city council seat<br />without the trouble of an election; his opponent, wary of a public ght<br />with the Order, simply stepped down and appointed Langlie to re-<br />place him. But despite the Order’s white- shirted military manner and<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 119<br />the nancial backing of Abram’s brotherhood, his rst bid for the<br />mayoralty failed. The Democrat who’d been ousted in 1934, a am-<br />boyantly corrupt opportunist named John Dore, charged Langl ie with<br />running as the candidate of a “secret society.” Dore wound up his<br />campaign with a ninety-minute speech denouncing Langl ie as a fascist<br />so dangerous that his own almost-open corruption was preferable.<br />The city that had thrown Dore out in a special election only a year<br />before agreed with that diag nosis: Democrats, radicals, and even Re-<br />publ icans united to return the crook to power.<br />“The insincerity of [Dore] is almost unquestionable,” the novelist<br />Mary McCarthy observed. Double-chinned Dore perched his spec-<br />tacles on the end of his nose and reveled in his royal belly and, as a<br />sign of his high regard for the common man, occasionally went down<br />to the docks and passed out glasses of beer to incom ing sailors. As far<br />as conservatives were concerned, he might as well have grown a mus-<br />tache and changed his name to Stalin. But Mary McCarthy under-<br />stood that the “ Soviet of Washington,” as one wag dubbed the state,<br />was more like a vaudeville routine than a government on the verge of<br />a worker’s utopia. “The state of Washington is in ferment,” she wrote<br />in The Nation; “ it is wild, comic, theatrical, dishonest, disorganized,<br />hopeful; but it is not revolutionary.”5<br />Dubbed “Labor’s Mayor” by the conservative press, Dore was<br />really the right-wing Teamster chief Dave Beck’s man. “Dave Beck<br />runs this town, and I tell you it’s a good thing he does,” Dore de-<br />clared as he squared o with Langlie again in 1938, a bald confession<br />of fealty to bossism. The race garnered broad attention, “a mayoralty<br />election of national signi cance,” in the words of the New York Times.6<br />At stake seemed to be the future of organized labor in the North-<br />west, which, as one of the labor movement’s strongholds, was a<br />bellwether for the nation. Dore stood for Beck, and Beck stood for<br />the old, management-friendly craft unions of the American Federa-<br />tion of Labor. His opponent on the Left, Lieutenant Governor Vic<br />Meyers, championed the newborn Congress of Industrial Organiza-<br />tions, an alliance of more militant, pro-worker unions. And out in<br />right eld stood Langlie, so far from friendly to any labor union that<br /><br /><br />120 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />even the rabidly right-wing Los Angeles Times tagged him as “ultra-<br />conservative.”7<br />Lieutenant Governor Meyers, the most well-liked man in the<br />state, should have won. But for once the Left did itself in with a sense<br />of humor. Meyers had entered public service in 1932 as a joke. A<br />beaming, mustache-twirling master of ceremonies at the city’s most<br />fashionable nightclub, he’d campaigned at the head of an oompah<br />band, wearing the uniform of a circus drum major. If elected, he’d<br />prom ised, he’d put a pretty girl hostess on every streetcar.<br />Such was the state of the union in 1932—its disgust with the big<br />business do-nothingism of Herbert Hoover—that Meyers and his<br />trombone campaign marched into o ce on FDR’s coattails. By 1938,<br />though, after years of strikes and police violence, Meyers had grown<br />serious about doing something for working people. Unfortunately,<br />he still loved a good costume, and he campaigned dressed as Ma-<br />hatma Gandhi. Even Harry Bridges, Meyers’s chief backer, couldn’t<br />make the bandleader look like a serious candidate.<br />So Dore and Meyers canceled each other out, and between them<br />slipped the winner, Arthur B. Langlie. The verdict was in: neither<br />the AFL nor the CIO represented the future. “Good government,” as<br />Langlie called his platform of bud get slashing and punishi ng moral<br />rectitude, trumped labor. “ Seattle Deals Radicals a Blow,” declared<br />the Los Angeles Times. “ Whole Left Wing Beaten,” ampli ed the New<br />York Times.8<br />What did “good government” really mean? Langlie and his broth-<br />erhood promised an end to political corruption. (There’s no evidence<br />that Langlie ever even took a dri nk, much less a bribe.) The days of<br />“ honest graft” were over, at least for a while. But seen from another<br />perspective—that of ordinary citizens without access to Langlie and<br />Abram’s elite network—Langlie didn’t so much end corruption as<br />legalize it. Langlie wasn’t opposed to a government organized around<br />the interests of the greedy; he just didn’t want to have to break the<br />law to serve them. His kind of good government meant deals for<br />your friends but not envelopes full of cash. He didn’t rule through<br />fear or nesse but through prayer. If Abram and Langlie could help it,<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 121<br />there would be no bullets, no bribes. Instead, there would be a circle<br />of men listening to Jesus by listeni ng to one another’s remarkably<br />similar views. It was the rst ful llment of Abram’s dream of gov-<br />ernment by God.<br />And although no one could see it in 1938, the shape of the Langlie<br />campaign—the New Order of Cincinnatus as his political comman-<br />dos, Abram’s God-picked elites, by then coming to be known as “the<br />Fellowship,” as his brain trust, and Abram’s old network of housewives<br />transformed into “prayer group” precincts for Langl ie—was a bell-<br />wether indeed. Not of labor’s future—that was already eroding—but<br />of prayer breakfast pol itics in the Christian nation to come.<br /><br /><br />“We work with power where we can, build new power where we<br />can’t.” These words belong to Doug Coe, who seized the Fellowship’s<br />top spot in a succession struggle following Abram’s death in 1969 and<br />began transforming it into what I eventually encountered as the Fam ily.<br />His blunt formulation of the Fellowship’s political theology is as much<br />in play now as it was in 1969, and, indeed, in 1938, when Abram and<br />his quiet gathering of businessmen staked Langlie to the beginning of<br />his career. On the face of it, such words seem brutal, a foreshadowing<br />of revolution—or counterrevolution, as conservatives like to say.<br />And yet Langlie- as-mayor, then governor, demonstrated the Fel-<br />lowship’s subtler ambitions. Theocratic by instinct and fasci nated by<br />fascism accordi ng to the fashion of the times, the Fellowship never<br />molted i nto Europe an- style authoritarianism. Its most radical goals<br />were (and remain) long-term, its method—the man- method, Abram<br />called it—painstaking, dependent not on mass conversion but on<br />individual assimilation i nto polite fundamentalism. “The more im-<br />personal our order becomes,” observed Theodor Adorno in a study<br />of 1930s fundamentalism, “the more i mportant personality becomes<br />as an ideology.” Abram’s man-method was a perfect il lustration of<br />this truth, but whereas Adorno, a refugee from Nazi Germany, saw<br />this trend as leading only to populist demagogues, Abram recognized<br />that “personality” in place of ideology could also preserve elite power<br /><br /><br />122 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />in an age of mass movements. Good manners mattered to the immi-<br />grant preacher; the men he drew to him tended to be discreet, pol-<br />ished characters. They were fundamentalism’s avant-garde, its most<br />radical thinkers, but to all appearances they were creatures of the<br />country club, golf course crusaders.<br />Langlie epitomized the breed. In 1935, at the Canyon Creek<br />Lodge, he rose from his knees as a “God-led” politician, literally a<br />theocrat, and he campaigned as a modern-day Cincinnatus. As gov-<br />ernor, he attempted (and failed) to pass a law giving him the power<br />to suspend the law—almost all of it—if he desired.<br />So Langlie accepted the constraints of democ racy as he found<br />them. He did what business asked: purged welfare rolls, abolished<br />guaranteed wage laws, denounced Democrats as un-American. In<br />1942, he i nvestigated the possibility of using martial law to suppress<br />organized labor, but when his advisers told him it would be unconsti-<br />tutional, he settled for ordi nary strikebreaking.9 He governed, in<br />other words, as a right-wing Republican.<br />And yet the Fellowship was attracted to a kind of soft fascism. In<br />1932, Abram took as a Bible student Henry Ford. By then, the auto-<br />maker was a wizened old leather strop of a man, wary of controversy.<br />He had been the American publisher of the notoriously fraudulent<br />Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic fantasia concocted i n czar-<br />ist Rus sia to justify pogroms against Jews, and the author of The Inter-<br />national Jew, a book many Nazis would later credit with awakening<br />their Aryan anti-Sem itism. During the previous decade, historians<br />suspect, he’d illegally nanced Adolf Hitler. But it was not just na-<br />tional socialism’s bigotry that Ford supported, nor even mainly that.<br />What Ford, inventor of the assembly line, loved above all was e -<br />ciency. Even his war of words against the Jews had been in the inter-<br />ests of standardization, the purging of “others” from the American<br />scene. And yet, in 1932, Ford wanted certain details of his campaign<br />for American purity to disappear. He wanted to sell cars to Jews. He<br />was i n need of a makeover, a quick bath in the Blood of the Lamb.<br />Ford’s wife heard Abram speak in Detroit and insisted that he<br />meet with her husband, no doubt guessing that Abram’s theology of<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 123<br />biblical capitalism would sit well with the tycoon, an eccentric reli-<br />gious thinker who had been raised on populist American fundamen-<br />talism. Abram and Ford traded Bible verses through a series of meetings<br />in Ford’s o ces, and then Ford invited Abram to his home in Sud-<br />bury, Massachusetts. “They were together two days,” rec ords Abram’s<br />biographer Grubb, “[Ford] unloading about spiritual, intellectual,<br />and business problems, and Abram seeking to give the answer for<br />himself and the nation.” Abram thought Ford “befuddled,” full of<br />hal f- baked religious notions gathered from partial readings of Hindu<br />texts and theosophy. “The question was,” Abram thought, “How<br />could he be untangled?”<br />Their meetings continued in Michigan. Abram was drawn like a<br />moth to the great man’s wealth—to the possibility that Ford might<br />put his tremendous worldly resources behind a campaign for govern-<br />ment by God. But he was frustrated by Ford’s failure to settle on one<br />simple fundamental ist explanation of life and the universe, until, at<br />their nal meeting, Ford nally shouted, “Vereide, I’ve got it! I’ve got<br />it! I found the release that you spoke of. I’ve made my surrender. The<br />only thing that matters is God’s will.”<br />But Ford continued to see divine will best expressed in German<br />fascism. As Hitler’s power grew, Ford became more comfortable<br />expressing his admiration. It was mutual; the Führer hu ng a portrait<br />of Ford behind his desk and told the industrialist, on a visit Ford paid<br />to Nazi Germany, that national socialism’s accomplishments were<br />simply an implementation of Ford’s vision.<br />That was a perspective that, unli ke theosophy, gave Abram no<br />pause. Such was the nature of Abram’s ecumenicism. For Jews he felt<br />nothing, one way or the other, but he would no more discriminate<br />against an anti-Semite than against a Presbyterian. He welcomed the<br />vigor anti-Sem itism brought to his cause. After the war, another ma-<br />jor American fascist sympathizer—Charles Lindbergh—would pre-<br />side for a brief period over a prayer cell modeled on Abram’s original.<br />Lindbergh rst came under FBI scruti ny, in fact, for his association<br />with a man who would become a stalwart of Abram’s inner circle and<br />a member of the board of the Fellowship, by then incorporated as<br /><br /><br />124 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />International Christian Leadership. Merwin K. Hart was an “alleged<br />promoter of the American Fascist movement,” according to FBI les,<br />and denounced publicly as a Nazi in all but name by Robert H. Jack-<br />son, the FDR-era attorney general who went on to serve as a justice<br />of the Supreme Court and chief prosecutor at Nuremberg.<br />To Abram, Hart was a dapper habitué of New York’s blue blood<br />clubs, a crucial node in his network of top men. He was a recruiter;<br />operating out of the Empire State Building, he organized busi ness<br />executives bent on breaking the spine of unionism into an organiza-<br />tion called the National Economic Council, and from those ranks he<br />selected men for the Fellowship whose devotion to the antilabor<br />cause was religious in intensity. Hart was Abram through a glass,<br />darkly: if Abram could not distinguish between men of power and<br />men of morals, Hart could not tell the di erence between commu-<br />nists and Jews, who through “deceit” and “trickery,” he preached,<br />threatened the “complete destruction” of the American way of life.10<br />Then there were the actual Nazis who would joi n Abram’s prayer<br />circles in the postwar years. But that story must wait until the next<br />chapter. To understand Abram’s weirdly ambivalent relationship with<br />fascism—to understand the uneasy echoes of the last century’s most<br />hateful ideology in contemporary American fundamentalism—we<br />must exhume an unlikely pair of “thinkers”: Frank Buchman and<br />Bruce Barton, two of the most i n uential hucksters of early twentieth-<br /> century America.<br /><br /> Buchmanism<br /><br />In 1935, Frank Buchman was at the height of his powers, a small,<br />well-nourished, and well- tailore d man of no natural distinction, who<br />found himself touring the world in the company of kings and queens<br />and bright, young, rosy-cheeked lads from Oxford and Cambridge<br />and Princeton. True, Buchman was banned from Princeton, where<br />as a Lutheran minister he had stalked students he thought eligible for<br />soul surgery, as he would come to call his variation on the born- again<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 125<br />procedure; and Oxford University was contemplating legal measures<br />to stop him from using its name for his movement. He was then call-<br />ing his followers the “Oxford Group,” havi ng discarded “First Cen-<br />tury Christian Fellowship” —a name Abram would later consider—as<br />perhaps boastful, not to mention inaccurate when applied to Buch-<br />man’s hundreds of thousands of twentieth-century devotees. “Oxford<br />Group,” though, was no more descriptive of the international ci rcuit<br />of confessional “ house parties” for the well-to-do inspired by Buch-<br />man. He had not attended Oxford (or Cambridge, though he would<br />claim the latter in his Who’s Who biography). He was a graduate of<br />modest Muhlenberg College in what was then Pen nsylvania coal<br />country.11<br />“Moral Re-Armament,” coined by Buchman as Europe entered<br />World War II, was the name that eventually stuck. Not quite an<br />organization—there were no dues or membership rol ls—but less<br />democratic in spirit than a social movement, Moral Re-Armament<br />deployed its military metaphors through Buchman’s never-ending<br />lecture tour, propaganda campaigns, and the spiritual warfare prac-<br />ticed by his disciples in service of an ideology “Not Left, Not Right,<br />but Straight,” in the words of one of Buchman’s hagiographers.12<br />Moral Re-Armament’s aims were so broadly utopian as to be mean-<br />ingless, but in practice it served distinctly conservative purposes: the<br />preservation of caste. “There is tremendous power,” preached Buch-<br />man, “i n a minority guided by God.”13<br />It is probably most accurate to name Buchman’s innovation as did<br />the papers of his day: Buchmanism. After all, it was Buchman’s<br />idea—later adapted and sharpened by Abram—that the mass evan-<br />gelism practiced by men such as Charles Fi nney and Billy Sunday<br />would never appeal to the “best people,” those whom the liquor<br />salesman’s son from Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, had dreamed of culti-<br />vating for Christ since his rst job, running a home for troubled boys<br />in Philadelphia, had ended in abrupt dismissal.<br />The cause of Buchman’s ring is murky, as is the precise nature<br />of the charges leveled against him at Pri nceton. In the rst case he<br />seems to have paid too little attention to the children’s needs, and in<br /><br /><br />126 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />the second, too much to the undergraduates. In particular, the uni-<br />versity’s president resented Buchman’s fasci nation with the sex lives<br />of young Princetonians. Buchman estimated that between 85 and 90<br />percent of all sin is sexual, and thus to him it was natural to encour-<br />age young men to confess theirs in detail.14 There is no evidence that<br />he took advantage of the information. He had kissed a girl once when<br />he was a boy, but thereafter lived as a sort of eunuch. In college his<br />nickname was “Kate,” and in the drama society he played mainly fe-<br />male roles. Many close to him thought it obvious that he inclined to-<br />ward the best-looking men of the best universities, but in terms of<br />Christian conservatism and the anxieties that plague it today, he was<br />ahead of his time in the fury with which he denounced homosexual-<br />ity as a threat to civilization. Moreover, he was an exceedingly care-<br />ful student of the crisis: In a pamphlet titled Remaking Men, he<br />observed, “there are many who wear suede shoes who are not homo-<br />sexual, but i n Europe and America the majority of homosexuals do.”<br />Also, Buchman declared, their favorite color is green.15<br />Buchman’s own eyes were emerald, and capable of the most pen-<br />etrati ng glances. His followers believed he knew their sins before<br />they confessed them. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles and, though<br />bald, was more than once described as “shampooed.” He loved to be<br />clean. Most striking about his appearance was his head; despite gi-<br />ant, pointed ears, it seemed several sizes too small for his round<br />body. “Frank,” as he insisted on being called, was the gnome of early<br /> twentieth- century elite fundamentalism.<br />In the early 1930s, he and Abram crossed paths. Buchman was in<br />Ottawa to perform soul surgery on Canadian members of Parlia-<br />ment, and Abram, fresh from what would prove to be his short-lived<br />salvation of Henry Ford (Ford would later require renewal by Buch-<br />man, for whom he built a retreat in Michigan), was lecturing in<br />Canada on behalf of Goodwill Industries. The two met, and Abram<br />suggested to Buchman that he come on with Goodwill as a chaplai n,<br />to infuse the organization with his “life-changing” evangelical fervor.<br />Buchman answered by proposing a Quiet Time.16<br />Besides confession of sexual sin, Quiet Time was the core practice<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 127<br />of Buchmanism: a half-hour-long period of silence in which the be-<br />liever waited for “Guidance” from God. Guidance was more than a<br />warm feeling. It came in the form of direct orders and touched on<br />every subject of concern, from the transcendent to the mundane.<br />“The real question,” Buchman would preach, “is, ‘Will God control<br />America?’ The country must be ‘governed by men under instructions<br />from God, as de nitely given and understood as if they came by<br />wire.’ ”17 Guidance meant not just spiritual direction but declaring<br />one’s own decisions as divinely inspired. “We are not out to tell God,”<br />Buchman announced to an assembly of twenty- ve thousand in 1936.<br />“We are out to let God tell us. And He will tell us.”18<br />“What did God say to you? ” Buchman asked Abram when their<br />Quiet Time was completed. Abram believed he had heard God’s<br />voice several times in his life, and had even considered the possibility<br />that he might be a prophet, but he had not yet been exposed to the<br />idea that God spoke to men regu larly and in detail. “He didn’t say any-<br />thing,” Abram confessed, disappointed.<br />Well, Buchman replied, God had spoken to him. “God told me,<br />‘Christianize what you have. You have something to share.’ ”<br />Blander words no Sunday school teacher ever spoke, but to<br />Abram they seemed like a revelation. God had told Buchman not to<br />join Goodwill, but that didn’t matter. What was important was the<br />discovery that God should be consulted not just on broad spiritual<br />questions but on absolutely everything. This, Abram decided, was<br />what it meant to die to the self: to turn all responsibility over to<br />God. That such a transfer meant the abdication of any accountability<br />for one’s actions, that it provided justi cation for any ambition, did<br />not occur to him.<br />Thereafter he transformed his daily prayer ritual i nto Buchmanite<br />Quiet Time. And, soon enough, God lled the silence with instruc-<br />tions: go forth, he said, and build cells for my cause like Buchman’s.<br />The cell of spiritual warriors that elected Arthur Langlie was one<br />result. That cell of men listening to God during their Quiet Time<br />doubled itself, and the two became four, the four became eight. The<br />many cells for congressmen and generals and lowly government<br /><br /><br />128 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />clerks in the Washi ngton, D.C., of the present are the o spring of<br />that origi nal mitosis, catalyzed by Buchman. But to call them Buch-<br />manite wou ld n’t be quite right. When Buchman spoke of Christi-<br />anity’s “new illum ination,” “a new social order under the dictatorship<br />of the Spirit of God” that would transform pol itics and eradicate the<br />con ict of capital and labor, Abram took him literally.<br />Abram never actually attended a Buchman house party. Had he<br />done so, he m ight have veered away from his new enthusiasm. The<br />most successful events took place at one of the estates around the world<br />that Buchman used as outreach stations. He had won the allegiance of<br />a number of wealthy widows and heiresses and neglected wives of<br />businessmen, and they regularly showered him with riches, including<br />their great homes, to which Buchman would invite select groups for<br />a day in the country. There would be tennis and golf and some pray-<br />ing, and then the group would gather for the party. A re would be<br />built, the lights dim med, and Buchman or a trained confessor might<br />begin with some minor transgression, a tra c ticket, a youthful<br />prank. Another Buchman veteran m ight then up the ante. “ Some lad<br />might now turn evidence against a governess or an upstairs maid,”<br />observed a New Yorker writer in 1932. And from there it was on to the<br />weaknesses that a ict not just college boys but also the grand dames<br />who ocked to Buchman and the big men they dragged in their wake,<br />all stumbl ing over one another in elaborate description of their pri-<br />vate perversions, how they had been blinded to their purpose i n l ife<br />by sexual desire, and how “Guidance” had saved them. Around the<br />circle they went, spurring one another on.<br />And yet Buchmanism was not purely narcissistic. Once one had<br />been “changed,” as Buchmanites called the experience of coming<br />through soul surgery successfully, one was ready for political action.<br />What sort of action? On this, Buchman was vague. Like Abram, he<br />considered industrial strife an a ront to God, to be solved by<br />“changed” men among the captains of industry. Like Abram, he con-<br />sidered the sharp elbows of democracy an insult to the “dictatorship<br />of the Holy Spirit.” And it was from Buchman that Abram surely ab-<br />sorbed the idea of a leadership of “God-led” men organized into cells,<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 129<br />consulting not the unchanged masses but the mandate of Jesus as He<br />revealed Himself to them behind closed doors. Beyond that, though,<br />Buchman rarely went. Even more than Abram, he so desired the<br />company of powerful people that he was loath to align himself too<br />closely with any one faction. But in 1936, in a sympathetic portrait<br />published by the New York World- Tele gram, Buchman named names.<br />“But think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered<br />to the control of God. Or Mussolini. Or any dictator. Through such<br />a man, God could control a nation overnight and solve every last,<br />bewildering problem.” He seemed to think the pro cess had already<br />started: “I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front<br />line of defence agai nst the anti-Christ of Communism,” he told the<br />reporter.19<br />Buchman had just returned from the Olympic Games i n Berlin,<br />orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels as a visual symphony of black and<br />red swastikas and ea gles and the long, lean muscle of Aryan athleti-<br />cism. Most of the world would remember the “Nazi Olympics” for<br />the African American athlete Jesse Owens, but Goebbels’s spectacle<br />achieved its desired e ect on Buchman, who left Berlin with a surg-<br />ing admiration for the vigor of the Third Reich. In particular, Hein-<br />rich Himm ler, the chief of the Gestapo, had impressed him as a<br />“great lad,” a man whom he recommended to his followers in Brit-<br />ish government. The sentiment, to be fair, was not mutual. After<br />World War II, Buchman’s followers, eager to “wash out” their lead-<br />er’s past, would produce Gestapo documents condemning Buchman-<br />ism, though in terms not exactly reassuring: Himmler, it seems, saw<br />Buchman’s Moral Re-Armament as too close of a competitor to na-<br />tional socialism.<br />In 1936, ush with the excitement of Hitler’s Olympics, Buchman<br />gathered some American Oxford Group men at a house party at a<br />Lenox, Massachusetts, estate. The Oxfordites sat on the oor in their<br />tweeds as Buchman described the vision he brought back with him.<br />“Suppose we here were all God-controlled and we became the<br />Cabinet,” he said. Then he designated the World- Tele gram reporter<br />secretary of agriculture and poi nted to a recent Princeton graduate<br /><br /><br />130 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />(they came to him, since he could not go to them) to replace Cordel l<br />Hull, Roo sevelt’s secretary of state. Around the room he went, re-<br />ferring not to the talents of his followers but to their willingness to<br />govern by Guidance.<br />“Then,” he continued, “in a God-controlled nation, capital and<br />labor would discuss their problems peacefully and reach God-<br />controlled situations.” The distribution of wealth would remain as it<br />was, but the workers would be content to be led by employers who<br />were not greedy but God-controlled. Echoing the words of U.S.<br />Steel’s James A. Farrell that had so inspired Abram in 1932, words<br />which the Fellowship repeats to this day, Buchman declared, “Hu-<br />man problems aren’t economic. They’re moral, and they can’t be<br />solved by immoral measures.”<br />In 1936, when men such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh<br />openly adm ired Hitler, it was still safe to name the style of govern-<br />ment to which these words poi nted. Human problems, Buchman told<br />his little group that night in Lenox, require “a God-control led de-<br />mocracy, or perhaps I should say a theocracy.” Just as good, said Buch-<br />man, would be a “God-controlled Fascist dictatorship.”<br />He paused. He let his emerald eyes glide over the young man-<br />hood of Buchmanism, sitting cross-legged on the oor before hi m as<br />if he was a Greek philos opher. Frank sm iled and adjusted the red rose<br />in his boutonniere.<br /><br /><br />“There is a book in the store windows in London and New York,”<br />Buchman told an assembly at the Metropol itan Opera House in No-<br />vember of 1935. “The title is It Can’t Happen Here. Some of you who<br />read the very important words of the Secretary of State, ‘Our own<br />country urgently needs a moral and spiritual awakening,’ may have<br />said the same thing, ‘It can’t happen here.’ ”<br />Buchman had taken the stage that eve ning to tell Manhattan’s<br />wealthiest that it could. “Thi nk of nations changed,” he told his audi-<br />ence, urging them to imagine soul surgery on a national scale, or<br />something even grander: “God- controlled supernationalism.” 20<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 131<br />Buchman never was one for details. Had he bothered to pick up<br />the book he considered too pessimistic, he would have discovered<br />that the It of the volume’s title was fascism. Five years earlier, the<br />book’s author, Sinclair Lewis, had become the rst American to win<br />the Nobel Prize for Literature, in recognition of novels such as Bab-<br />bit, Arrowsmith, and Elmer Gantry. It Can’t Happen Here wasn’t Lewis’s<br /> nest work, but it contained some of his scariest writing. Can’t hap-<br />pen here? Lewis’s novel contended that it already had, in countless<br />little rooms across the country, at gatherings of Rotarians and the<br />Daughters of the American Revolution, in hot- blooded church meet-<br />ings and movie houses where gun ghters bestrode American dreams<br />like Mussol inis in spurs. All that was wanting was the right key man<br />to take up the sword and the cross and move into the oval o ce. In<br />the novel, that man is Senator Buzz Windrip, a folksy southerner<br />backed by a radio preacher called Bishop Peter Paul Prang and his<br />“League of Forgotten Men.”<br />The story opens with the “Ladies Night Dinner” of a small town<br />Rotary Club, and Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimm itch, an expert on “Child<br />Culture,” lecturing a group of concerned citizens in eve ningwear.<br />Her sermon could have been lifted directly from Abram: “I tell you,<br />my friends, the trouble with this whole country is that so many are<br />sel sh! Here’s a hundred and twenty mil lion people, with ninety- ve<br />per cent of ’em only thinki ng of self, instead of turning to and helping<br />the responsible business men to bri ng back prosperity! All these cor-<br />rupt and sel f- seeking labor unions! Money grubbers! Thinking only<br />of how much wages they can extort out of their unfortunate em-<br />ployer, with all the responsibilities he has to bear!<br />“What this country needs is Discipli ne.”<br />The novel’s voice of reason is the local newspaper editor, one<br />Doremus Jessup, i nto whose mouth Lewis packs a dense but brief ac-<br />count of the authoritarian strain i n American history.<br /><br />Why, there’s no country in the world that can get more<br />hysterical—yes, or more obsequious!—than America. Look<br />how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana,<br /><br /><br />132 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip<br />owns his State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin<br />on the radio—divine oracles, to millions. Remember how<br />casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting<br />and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of Presi-<br />dent Harding’s appointees? Could Hitler’s bunch, or Wind-<br />rip’s, be worse? Remember the Ku Klux Klan? Remember<br />our war hysteria, when we cal led sauerkraut “Liberty cab-<br />bage” and somebody actually proposed calling German mea-<br />sle s “Liberty measles”? And wartime censorship of honest<br />papers? Bad as Rus sia! Remember our kissing the—well,<br />the feet of Billy Sunday, the m illion-dol lar evangelist . . .<br />Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obe-<br />dience to Wil liam Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology<br />from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scienti c experts<br />and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the<br />teaching of evolution? . . . Remember the Kentucky night-<br />riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to en-<br />joy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition—shooting down<br />people just because they might be transporting liquor—no,<br />that couldn’t happen in America! Why, where in al l history has<br />there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!21<br /><br />And yet that fruit was never plucked. The United States did not<br />then—and has not yet—succumbed to fascism. Nor, for that matter,<br />does the contemporary Christian Right embrace even a modern strain<br />of “national socialism.” Many of the ingredients are there: m ilitaristic<br />patriotism, a blurry identi cation of church with state, a reverence<br />for strong men, a tendency to locate such men at the top of corporate<br />hierarchies, even a hated “other” (for American fundamental ists, Jews<br />and Catholics gave way to communists, and now the populist front of<br />the movement is divided over whom to demonize more, Muslims or<br />gay people).<br />But other elements of Europe an- style fascism never emerged in<br />the United States. Despite the nation’s near constant involvement in<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 133<br />one war or another for the last sixty years, it has never adopted an<br />ideology that explicitly celebrates violence. Nor do we have a signi -<br />cant secret police force. And it is Christianity itself that has pre-<br />vented fundamentalists, America’s most authoritarian demographic,<br />from embracing the cult of personality around which fascist states<br />are organized. No matter how much the movement may revere Ron-<br />ald Reagan or George W. Bush or the next political savior to arise,<br />such men must always accept second billing to Jesus—The Man No-<br />body Knows, in the words of Bruce Barton’s 1925 best seller, perhaps<br />the most in uential forgotten book of the twentieth century.<br />Barton’s publisher boasted that the book could be read in two<br />hours, but most readers could bounce through it in half that time.<br />Less a narrative than a collage of advertisi ng copy, The Man Nobody<br />Knows o ered Christ on the cheap as “the most popu lar dinner guest<br />in Jerusalem!”22<br />Exclamation points come by the bushel in Barton’s work. “A fail-<br />ure!” the book opens—and here the exclamation point must be read<br />as an i ncredulous question mark, a quotation of the supposed liberal<br />view of Christ as “weak and puny,” an e eminate sadsack who died<br />on the cross because he could not do better. Barton responds with<br />the greatest Fortune magazi ne story ever told: “He picked up twelve<br />men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an orga-<br />nization that conquered the world.”<br />Barton himself was such a man. Shaped like a shoe box, he had a<br />at-faced head atop a rectangle of a body but was handsome all the<br />same in that lock-jawed manner that makes some men look like they<br />were born to captain industry. Barton’s name lives on as one fourth<br />of the advertising giant Batten, Barton, Dursti ne, and Osborne, but<br />his slim volume on Christ as the ultimate salesman exists now only as<br />an academic curiosity, evidence to historians of the “secularization”<br />of religion duri ng the 1920s. Published in the same year as the Scopes<br />mon key trial took place, The Man Nobody Knows has long looked to<br />such observers like proof that the chief concern of<br />secularism—busi ness—had subsumed theology. Barton made Jesus<br />into a management guru, and pro t trumped prophet. Even in the<br /><br /><br />134 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />era of a president who touts as his twin quali cations a business de-<br />gree and his intimate relationship with Jesus, Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby<br />and Lewis’s Babbitt are celebrated as the de nitive texts of that earlier<br />age, the stories that shaped the later course of the nation.<br />And yet i n the 1920s, The Man Nobody Knows outpaced them both.<br />It was the book read on streetcars and the title punned on by admir-<br />ers, the volume distributed i n bulk at Christmas to friends and em-<br />ployees. So, too, its themes thrive now, far more so than Fitzgerald’s<br />despair or Lewis’s contempt for capitalism. Gatsby and Babbitt may<br />still be debated in high school English classrooms, but Barton’s<br />entrepreneur-Christ prospers on a broader scale, the “Master,” as<br />Barton called him, of best sellers such as God Is My CEO: Following<br />God ’s Principles in a Bottom- Line World, and Jesus CEO: Using Ancient Wis-<br />dom for Visionary Leadership, and, most in uentially, Rick Warren’s<br />spiritual time- management manual, The Purpose- Driven Life —more<br />than 25 million copies sold since publication in 2002.<br />In Barton’s own day, Frank Buchman declared The Man Nobody<br />Knows one of the “three outstanding contributions to [his] life and<br />work.” 22 Abram did not record whether he, too, had read it, but he<br />wouldn’t have had to; Barton’s business-faith had entered the blood-<br />stream of American Christianity. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the<br />rise of Abram’s elite evangelicalism absent the pre ce dent of “top<br />man” rel igion set by The Man Nobody Knows. If the book espoused a<br />literally fundamentalist Jesus—a Christ stripped clean of all that<br />Barton considered feminizing cultural accretion—Barton was not,<br />himself, a fundamentalist. He was less interested in the doctrinal<br />battles of separatist rel igion than i n the driving force of Christianity<br />as the best means for national e ciency. In this sense, he followed<br />the example set by one of his chief theological advisers, Harry Emer-<br />son Fosdick, even as he hewed to a morality and politics more akin to<br />that of Billy Sunday.<br />In 1922, Fosdick had preached a sermon that drew the battle<br />lines and became a manifesto of sorts for modernist Christians. “Shall<br />the Fundamentalists Win?” attempted to prove that they couldn’t.<br />Ironically, it also established the political and theological vision that<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 135<br />would allow more sophisticated fundamentalists such as Abram to<br />build for the future.<br />“We must be able to think our modern life clear through in<br />Christian term s, and to do that we also must be able to think our<br />Christian faith clear through in modern terms,” Fosdick preached<br />from the pulpit of New York’s First Presbyterian Church. Remind-<br />ing his congregation of advances in science and, even more danger-<br />ously, biblical scholarship—the German “higher criticism” which<br />held that the Bible could be better grasped with a knowledge of its<br />historical context—he declared that “the new knowledge and the old<br />faith [have] to be blended in a new combination.”<br />Fosdick imagined that combination to be cosmopolitan and liter-<br />ary, shaped by a grasp of metaphor and a benign disdain for the liter-<br />alists of years past. He had no concept of the other meanings future<br />Christian conservatives would take from his call, shu ing the parts<br />around not in the service of high-mi nded liberalism but of sophisti-<br />cated, science-fueled fundamentalism. Fosdick’s accommodationist<br />vision of modernism illum inated the path for a traditionalist crusade<br />in which later fundamental ists —in uenced, not so indirectly, by<br />Marx, whom some read with the idea of turning his ideas to conser-<br />vative ends —realized that they could seize the means of cultural and<br />political production. They could make better radio than the liberals,<br />better propaganda, and most of all, they could shape and run and -<br />nance better politicians. Not just morally superior legislators but bet-<br />ter hacks—men (and, eventually, women) who took from modernism<br />only its rule book, not its goals, and bested its pure champions at the<br />game they thought they’d invented.<br />Fosdick smoothed the way with his powerful denunciation of<br />denominations, soon to become a bête noire of Christians who de-<br />ned their faith by the “fact” of spiritual war, in which there are ulti-<br />mately only two sides, theirs and the enemy’s, Christ’s and Satan’s.<br />“If,” preached Fosdick, “ during [World War I], when the nations<br />were wrestling upon the very brink of hell and at ti mes all seemed<br />lost, you chanced to hear two men i n an altercation about some mi-<br />nor matter of sectarian denominationalism, could you restrain your<br /><br /><br />136 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />indignation? You said, ‘What can we do with folks like this who, in<br />the face of colossal issues, play with the twiddlywinks and peccadil-<br />los of religion?’ ”<br />Of course, those “twiddlywinks” are the i ntellectual marrow of<br />Christianity and the convictions that prevent its more ancient pre-<br />cepts from merging too easily with modern politics. Barton, li ke<br />Fosdick, saw no reason not to do so. Upon returning to the United<br />States from a Europe an tour in 1930, he wondered, “How can we<br />develop the love of country, the respect for courts and law, the sense<br />of national obligation, which Mussolini has recreated in the soul of<br />Italy? ”23<br />He praised Mussolini’s “e ciency and progress” and Hitler’s<br />mastery of the adman’s science, psychology, after another Europe an<br />visit in 1934. “Only strong magnetic men inspire great enthusiasm<br />and build great organizations,” he’d noted in The Man Nobody Knows.<br />He wasn’t defending the dictators’ disregard for rights, he i nsisted,<br />but he had to adm ire Hitler’s anti-Semitic propaganda, so detailed in<br />its documentation of Jewish in uence in Germany that one could<br />easily see why Hitler’s rise “was not an unnatural thing to have hap-<br />pen.” 24 Declari ng himself of a “generous” frame of mind, he said that<br />he preferred Roo sevelt, whom he considered an antibusiness “ dicta-<br />tor,” to Hitler. Still, he seemed to see more similarity between them<br />than di erence. “Every new deal has to have some one to blame<br />when all the promises do not come true. We blame the reactionar-<br />ies; Hitler blames the Jews.” Four years later, Barton entered Con-<br />gress as a leading isolationist, opposed not only to war with the Axis<br />powers but to aid to the Allies as well.<br />But Barton was not a fascist in the vein of Henry Ford (whom he<br />quoted as an authority on Christian business in the Man Nobody Knows)<br />or even fuzzy-brained Frank Buchman. He was an advertising man, an<br />optimist. In an editorial for the Wall Street Journal titled “Hard Times,”<br />Barton quoted the Journal’s publisher on the necessity of poverty:<br />“What is taking place on this earth is a great experiment in the devel-<br />opment of human character. The Creator is not interested in money or<br />markets, but in more enduring men . . . su ering develops them.” 25<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 137<br />That the subjects of this great experiment were not as interested in<br />this development as were the captains of industry mildly puzzled Bar-<br />ton but did not bother him. He felt certain that they could be per-<br />suaded with a jingle and a catchy slogan, a “ juster” peace.<br />Such newspeak represents the chummy self-satisfaction of a mind<br />that mistakes the e ciency of short phrases for depth of meaning. In<br />The Man Nobody Knows Barton tells the story of a newspaperman as-<br />signed to cover an unnamed great issue of the day i n a single column.<br />When the reporter protested that one column was not enough space,<br />his editor told him to review the Book of Genesis—all of creation<br />summed up in a tidy 600 words. Not for Barton the lingering work<br />of theologians, who nd in sc ripture at least as many questions as<br />answers. Nor was he a man for the thickets of pol itical theory, a<br />limitation which, given his stated sympathies for strongmen, may<br />have saved him from a more frightening path. Mein Kampf ? That<br />doorstopper weighed in at nearly 1,0 00 pages. Barton simply lacked<br />the patience for fascism; Hitler was too deep for him.<br />But he also took one of fascism’s central premises too seriously to<br />embrace the ideology’s violence. Fascism, the word itself derived from<br />the Latin for a bundle of sticks bound together and thus unbreakable,<br />promised unity. Barton wanted that: unity. As an advertising man, he<br />bel ieved it could be achieved through persuasion rather than force of<br />arms. Moreover, he understood that the best way to sell a product was<br />not fear alone but fear plus desire: to stoke the consumer’s anxiety<br />that he or she lacked something, and then to press some button in the<br />brain that led to the conviction that acquiring it would lead to happi-<br />ness. Consumption, not fascism, was the core of his Christianity.<br /><br /><br />For Barton, and later Abram, the something was Jesus, the ulti-<br />mate “personality.” To Barton, one nation under God meant a nation<br />of consumers, their deepest needs and greatest wants in perfect ac-<br />cord with the products of BBD& O’s clients, General Electric and<br />General Motors and, in 1952, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. For<br />Abram, unity meant the boss with his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder,<br /><br /><br />138 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Christ’s masculi ne love owing through his CEO key man and into<br />the workingman’s bones. Not fascism; in the future Barton and<br />Abram helped forge, God’s love would be hu ngered for and accepted<br />gladly. There would be no secret police, no jackboots, no Buzz Win-<br />drip, no cult of personality.<br />Rather, a Babbitt cult, as one of Barton’s Christian critics put it, a<br />cult of many personalities, all of them more or less the same, vessels<br />lled with His manliness, His will. The “man-method” that Abram<br />shaped from Buchman’s “Guidance” and Barton’s big business theol-<br />ogy, the freedom he dreamed of and preached for the next three de-<br />cades, was that of obedience. In a 1942 pamphlet titled Finding the<br />26 one of Abram’s lieutenants described the Babbitt cult<br />Better Way,<br />Abram had created and then replicated in San Francisco (led by a<br />former secretary of the navy), Los Angeles (chaired by an oilman),<br />and Philadelphia (started by Dr. Dan Poli ng, the squeaky-clean radio<br />preacher who would also serve as frontman for the city’s Republican<br />machine), as well as Chicago, New York, Boston, and some sixty<br />other cities.27<br />Washington, D.C. was one of them. That year, with the help of<br />Senator Ralph Brewster of Maine—a calculating character, both a<br />Yankee and a Klansman, Brewster evidently recognized Abram’s<br />more amiable Fellowship as the coming club for backroom dealing—<br />Abram convinced dozens of congressmen to begin attending his<br />weekly breakfast prayer meetings at the Hotel Willard. Abram him-<br />self was staying at the University Club, a clumsy old building next<br />door to the Soviet embassy. His rst meeting at the Willard took<br />place in the midst of a blizzard i n January 1942. Seventy-four men,<br />most of them congressmen, gathered to hear addresses by Howard<br />Coonley, the ultraright president of the National Association of<br />Manufacturers—and Abram. “The big men and the real leaders in<br />New York and Chicago look up to me in an embarrassing way,” he<br />wrote his wife, Mattie.<br />It was true. The president of Chevrolet requested an afternoon<br />with Abram, and the president of Q uaker Oats insisted on a morning<br />meeting. I n Chicago, he dined with steel magnates and railr oad titans<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 139<br />and Hughston McBain, the president of Marshall Field. In New York,<br />Thomas Watson of IBM summoned a group of men to hear Abram<br />speak at the Banker’s Club, Coonley opened doors for Abram to dis-<br />cuss God and labor with the president of General Electric, and J. C.<br />Penney, one of the nancial backers of modern fundamentalism,<br />took Abram to Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue to meet<br />Norman Vincent Peale, the apostle of “positive thinking” and possi-<br />bly the most deliberately banal man in American history. Abram<br />soon joined Peale as one of “the Twelve,” a council of Christian con-<br />servative leaders bent on working behind-the- scenes to rebrand fun-<br />damentalism in Peale’s feel-good terminology.<br />In Washington, Abram was even more popular. “Congressman<br />Busbey reported how respected, loved, and admired your husband<br />was there and the contribution he had made to Congress,” he wrote<br />Mattie. In the eve nings he summoned maids and busboys to his rooms<br />for knee-cracking prayer sessions that stretched into the night. Black<br />people, he liked to boast, loved him, and congressmen, he claimed,<br /> ocked to him. Within a year of his arrival, he could stroll freely into<br />ne arly any o ce i n Washington. Senators Alexander Wiley of Wis-<br />consin, Raymond Willis of Indiana, and H. Alexander Smith of New<br />Jersey functioned as his lieutenants. Representative Walter Judd, a<br />former medical missionary from Minnesota, later to become a red<br />hunter nearly as cruel as McCarthy, became Abram’s man on the<br />House oor. David Lawrence, publisher of U.S. News (now U.S. News<br />and World Report), the most in uential media conservative in the coun-<br />try, joined the board of directors of Abram’s newly formed National<br />Comm ittee for Christian Leadership. Lawrence was Jewish, but with<br />Abram he prayed to Jesus as the only hope against communism —<br />never mind that the Soviets were American allies at the time.<br />To fu rther spread the Idea, Abram’s Finding the Better Way ex-<br />plained that the Breakfast Groups—the basic unit of the Fellow-<br />ship, from which some men would be recruited into cells—were<br />nonpartisan, open to everyone. But those who chose to attend were<br />of a disti nc t caste. According to the pamphlet, a “typical meeti ng”<br />of the Seattle group consisted of prayers, “comments,” and personal<br /><br /><br />140 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />testimonies by top executives from an array of regional and national<br />corporations. There was a man from J. C. Penney, and the president<br />of Seattle Gas. The president of Frederick & Nelson, then the North-<br />west’s largest department store—and its arbiter of upper-class<br />tastes—o ered “comments,” as did an executive from the Chicago,<br />Milwaukee, St. Paul & Paci c Railroad. The Democratic candidate<br />for governor and the Republican candidate for the Senate made ap-<br />pearances, but the Republican got the better spot: the closing prayer,<br />following Abram’s summation. Clearly, “typical” meetings made for<br />valuable campaign stops.<br />What of the pamphlet’s promise that “ representatives of both<br />capital and labor nd common ground ” at such? Of seventeen speak-<br />ers, only one spoke for labor, James Duncan (possibly the “Jim my” of<br />Abram’s rst sessions). An o cer of the International Association of<br />Machinists, Duncan helped drive a rift into the West Coast labor<br />movement with his rm opposition to a popular rank- and- le initia-<br />tive to allow African Americans to work for Boeing. His involvement<br />with the bosses who made up the membership of the Seattle Break-<br />fast Group provides a portrait of the labor leadership with which<br />Abram’s Fellowship felt it could stand on common ground: violent,<br />reactionary, and thick with bigotry.<br />Abram himself never made an explicitly racist remark in his life,<br />but he practiced a paternalism that amounted to a quiet declaration<br />of his views on the matter. Some of Abram’s closest allies would be<br />Dixiecrats such as South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, who became a<br />coleader with Abram of the senate’s weekly prayer breakfast, and<br />Mississippi senator John Stennis. At the left end of Abram’s spectrum<br />were men such as Representatives Brooks Hays of Arkansas and John<br />Sparkman of Alabama, “moderates” who felt that slow and limited<br />integration was an acceptable option, i f not a necessity. Activism on<br />its behalf bordered on treason.<br />Duncan evidently felt the same way, only more so. I n 1941 at Boe-<br />ing, Seattle’s biggest employer, Local 751 of the Aero Mechanics<br />Union voted to al low African Americans to join its membership, al-<br />ready 9,10 0 strong and sure to grow as the war demanded more<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 141<br />planes. But the local’s parent, Duncan’s International Association of<br />Machinists, claimed the union’s constitution barred nonwhites, union<br />democracy and the war e ort be damned. The International accused<br />the local’s president of communism and replaced him in a coup with a<br />red-baiter named Harry Bomber. To val idate Bomber’s unelected<br />leadership, the International rented out Seattle’s Civic Auditorium for<br />a mass meeting of anti-red—and anti- black—workers. The city fa-<br />thers, who by then comprised Abram’s purest “God-led” political<br />machine, approved; a few days before the meeting, the Seattle Times<br />declared it “one of the most important in Seattle’s labor history.”28<br />Most of the members of the local didn’t thi nk so. Out of 9,100,<br />only 2,000 attended, and just over half of those even bothered to<br />vote on the International’s slate of rigged issues. Even then, they<br />cleared a man accused of communism of all charges. After the meet-<br />ing, goons associated with the pro-business, anti- black slate delivered<br />beatings to those they considered leaders of the pro-black faction.<br />The victims led charges. The district attorney, B. Gray Warner—a<br />Fellowship man—took the case so seriously he declared its proper<br />handling a matter of “national defense.” That is, the victims were<br />hindering national defense by complaining instead of buckling down<br />to work. No cases went to trial.<br />By 1943, the progressives beaten, jailed, driven out of town, or<br />cowed into subm ission, the Machinist leadership of which the Fel-<br />lowship’s Duncan was an o cer produced an edition of their news-<br />letter, Aero Mechanic, featuring a cartoon of a black man applyi ng for a<br />job at Boeing. “Stable Lizers,” he says, in response to a question about<br />airplane stabilizers. “Yas Suh! Ah sho knows ’bout dem.” In an inset,<br />we see a black man sweeping a stable.29<br /><br /><br />Such was the underbelly of elite fundamentalism’s labor-management<br />“reconciliation”—the principles of Moral Re-Armament in practice,<br />the fruits of Barton’s business theology applied to the real world. In<br />1938, Barton ran for Congress. Like Abram, he believed economic<br />depression to be a result of spi ritual disobedience, though Barton<br /><br /><br />142 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />preferred the term distance. The New Deal had moved us away from<br />Jesus, he thought, by substituting man- made legislation for divine<br />will, as revealed in the working of Christian busi nessmen unhin-<br />dered by regulations. So in 1938 he won a seat in Congress by prom-<br />ising to “Repeal a Law a Day.” Or, i n the slang of today’s<br />fundamentalism: Let Go, and Let God.<br />The Wall Street Journal thought it a capital idea. “It is not that one<br />congressman, more or less, especially a new one, can arrest the hitherto<br />unstoppable juggernaut” of government, the paper editorialized, “ but<br />that [Barton’s] election can well serve as a beacon to encourage other<br />reasonable men, who have demonstrated their success in industry . . .<br />to take action against the web of legislation in which the nation is cur-<br />rently struggling.”30<br />Conventional wisdom holds that it was Ronald Reagan who be-<br />gan the real dismantling of the New Deal, but a closer examination<br />of the legislative record reveals that the pro cess began as early as<br />1943, in the midst of the war, when conservative southern Demo-<br />crats teamed up with Republicans to pass the anti-union Smith-<br />Con nally Act, the rst step in what would eventually become the<br />repeal of most of labor’s New Deal gains. In 1948, Representative<br />Paul B. Dague, then one of Abram’s disciples, wrote in a Fellowship<br />newsletter that Abram’s weekly meeti ngs for congressmen had pro-<br />duced in them the “conviction that more of God’s mandates and the<br />teachings of the Nazarene must be written into current legislation.”<br />He did not o er examples. It is easy to guess, however, that he had in<br />mind the previous year’s Taft- Hartley Act, known by even conserva-<br />tive unions as the “slave labor law” for the ends to which it went to<br />roll back the New Deal and replace strikes with employer-controlled<br />“conciliation,” a hallmark of Abram’s vision for “industrial peace.”<br />The “teachi ngs of the Nazarene” for such politicians amounted to<br />deregulation, the removal of government intervention from matters<br />they thought rmly taken in hand by Jesus and His chosen representa-<br />tives. They were not libertarians; they were authoritarians.<br />“Our people as a whole have become the most highly organized<br />in the world,” declared Abram’s Better Way pamphlet.<br /><br /><br />The Family by The Family by Jeff Sharlet| 143<br />All the vital activities of industry, commerce, and govern-<br />ment are carried on by corporations and other formal orga-<br />nizations. Such bodies are continually growing in size, and<br />hence the top leadership is continually growi ng in power and<br />in uence.<br />We have entered an era when the masses of the people<br />are dependent upon a rapidly dim inishing number of leaders<br />for the determination of their pattern of life and the de ni-<br />tion of their ultimate goals. It is the age of minority control.<br />[Emphasis mine.]<br /><br />Lest anyone mistake Abram’s meaning during wartime, the pam-<br />phlet went on to poi nt to the Axis powers as examples of what could<br />go wrong if “mi nority control” got into the wrong hands. The pam-<br />phlet had good things to say about Hitler’s “youth work,” but it had<br />no use for Hitler’s military adventurism, the crudest and ultimately<br />most i ne ective form of evangelism ever invented. But just as a mi-<br />nority “can wreck a nation,” a “ righteous ‘remnant’ ” chosen by God<br />can redeem it. “Men whose success shows them to have the abi lity to<br />lead cannot evade the responsibility for delivering America from its<br />present curse of spiritual indi erence and moral decadence. These<br />are the men whom others will follow.”<br />Years later, at the height of American postwar a uence —the<br />days when millions were questioning the wisdom of “following”—a<br />German-Jewish refugee named Herbert Marcuse (writing not long<br />after Kissinger paid his tribute to the subtleties of status quo power)<br />would capture i n his One- Dimensional Man the contradictions of<br />Abram’s Better Way, his celebration of strongmen and his fetish for<br />conformity, his belief in providence and his reliance on behind-the-<br />scenes planni ng, his love of liberty and his insistence on obedience.31<br />After the years of fascist pageantry and war, wrote Marcuse in an es-<br />say titled “ The New Forms of Control,” comes the age of “comfort-<br />able, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-76186523587529972762009-07-12T02:23:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:26:01.874-07:00II. Jesus Plus Nothing - Unit Number One<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Unit Number One<br /></span></div><br />The Idea, Part 1<br />Afamiliar tableau: a man on his knees before dawn,<br />praying secret prayers for guidance. Only now it’s the 1920s, and the<br />heir to the title of First Revivalist is Billy Sunday, a former ballplayer<br />who worked the stage as if he was covering second base and calling<br />the game at the same time, dashing back and forth between velvet<br />curtains, winding up for a big throw and hollering at the batter. Sin-<br />ner! was Sunday’s cry. He railed against reds and women’s libbers and<br />tippling bohem ians. Christ he considered a man of action and then<br />some. Jesus, he preached, was a boxer, a brawler, a two- sted man’s<br />man who was also God. A twofer! Gone was the Jesus of Jonathan<br />Edwards, austere and intellectual. And fading, too, was Finney’s<br />Christ, an idea of the divine that re ected Finney’s own raw, native<br />vision. Sunday preached a prosperity gospel—God loves the<br />wealthy—and lived it as well. He was not a crook but a hustler, milk-<br />ing the masses with his holy-rolling vaudeville routines. Preoccupied<br />with fame, he revived the nation again but left it largely u naltered.<br />He did not advance the theocratic project, was not the next key man<br />of American fundamentalism.<br />That honor goes to our man kneeling in the dim blue of predawn<br />Seattle, murmuring prayers in a foreign tongue. The man is a Norwe-<br />gian immigrant named Abraham Vereide, known to most as Abram, a<br />preacher who has found in America the stature and respectability—by<br /><br /><br />88 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />way of a prestigious pulpit—that eluded him in his native Norway.<br />Still, something is beyond his grasp. He wants the peace he’s certain<br />God has promised him, yet su ering, in the abstract, distracts him.<br />Abram is immune to despair by this point in his life, but it bothers<br />him, and he wishes it wouldn’t.<br />He is a big man— t and square in the shoulders and in the jaw,<br />his face broad, severe, and intensely handsome—and a bighearted<br />man, too, and intelligent, but also simple, and glad to be so. He likes<br />things to be in their places: God in His heavens, Abram by his Bible,<br />men working where God puts them, al l content with their calling.<br />So it is clear something is wrong with the world: the poor. They are,<br />it seems plai n to him, out of place. Literally out of order. Something<br />has gone wrong. God prom ised us we would be happy when we<br />reached the Prom ised Land, and what, if not that, is America?<br />So what does God have in mi nd? Abram has not yet found an an-<br />swer. He keeps praying.<br />This morning, 4:30 a.m., he prays alone but he is not alone. His<br />son, Warren, is watching. He has newspapers to deliver. He moves<br />quietly through the darkened house, pulling on socks and dungarees<br />and tiptoeing down the back stairs so as not to wake his mother, so<br />often ill, restricted to bed but never resting easy. Just before the last<br />step, Warren hears a noise—a sudden intake of breath followed by an<br />exhalation. Li ke laughter, only it’s followed by a moan. Then Warren<br />hears a voice com ing from the kitchen. Perched on his step like a<br />mouse, not making a sound, Warren listens to his father’s deep mur-<br />mur, still thick with the accent of the fjords. Abram’s voice sounds<br />strange—not the way it does when he speaks to Warren or Warren’s<br />mother or to the big men he counts as his friends. This morning he<br />sounds as if he is talking to someone he loves and respects and of<br />whom he is just a little bit afraid.<br />“Do you want me, Lord, to go as Thy Ambassador?”<br />Silence. Abram’s shoulders seem to settle. Maybe he smiles. He<br />has received instructions.<br />“It is done,” Abram says, and Warren takes advantage of his father’s<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 89<br />moment of serenity to slip out into the early morning, leavi ng Abram<br />alone with his God.1<br /><br /><br />Abram prayed like this for years, and the years grew darker, the<br />poor poorer, the world more broken, until one day in April of 1935 he<br />received not just instructions for the day before him but a vision for<br />the decades; God’s hand moving His people in an entirely new direc-<br />tion. T he revelation God gave him was simple: To the big man went<br />strength, to the little man went need. Only the big man was capable of mending<br />the world. But who would help the big man? Who would console him<br />when he, as Abram did sometimes, wept in the early mornings? That<br />the big men of society wept Abram never doubted. He thought that<br />powerful people, so clearly blessed by God, must surely possess equally<br />great reserves of compassion and love that they wished to shower<br />down on the weak, if only someone would show them how.<br />Abram would show them how. This was his vision. His life thus<br />far—in 1935, he was forty-nine, his once-dark brow gray like a<br />North Paci c breaker—had followed an arc, he believed, but it had<br />taken him a long time to see it. His m inistry, he now real ized, was<br />not “among those who have had the bottom knocked out of life, its<br />derelicts, its failures,” as a friend would write years later, “ but, ultima-<br />tely, among those even more in need, who live dangerously in high<br />places.”<br />For nearly 2,0 00 years, Abram concluded, Christianity—that<br />is, the religion, the rituals, the stu of men with their weak, si nful<br />minds—had bent all its energies toward the poor, the sick, the starv-<br />ing. The “down and out.” Christianity gave them shes when it could<br />and hope when it had nothi ng else to o er. But what good had it<br />done? What had been accomplished between Calvary and 1935?<br />Just look at Seattle, Abram’s adopted hometown: nearly half the<br />city was on relief, and the other half was dark-eyed, eyeing the bless-<br />ings of the “top men” with envy, which is a blight on a man’s soul. A<br />rich man may have little hope of getting into heaven, but an envious<br /><br /><br />90 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />man could turn to violence and lose all hope for this world or the next.<br />Abram had to help such creatures, the derel icts, the failures. How? By<br />helping those who could help them—the high and the mighty—that<br />they m ight distribute the Lord’s blessings to the little men, whose envy<br />would be soothed, violence averted, disorder controlled.<br />Thereafter, Abram would spend his days arrangi ng the spiritual<br />a airs of the wealthy. It would be another decade—ten years spent<br />cultivating not just Seattle’s big men but those of the nation—before<br />Abram would coin a phrase for his vision: the “new world order.” By<br />then, 1945, he’d moved to Washington, D.C., and he cut a di erent<br /> gure than he had as a preacher. He wore double- breasted suits with<br />lapels like wings, polka-dotted bow ties, and wide- brimmed fedoras.<br />He was often seen with his dark overcoat thrown over his shoulders<br />like a cape. Other men considered hi m a spectacular dresser; those<br />who knew him wel l considered his stylishness itself a minor m iracle,<br />since Abram was not wealthy. But God provided. As a young itiner-<br />ant preacher, he’d traveled on horse back with a six-gun and a Bible,<br />travel ing from farmer to farmer. Now, he carried a silk handkerchief<br />instead of a pistol, and he moved from rich man to rich man. He<br />stayed in the best hotels and clubs —the Waldorf-Astoria in New<br />York, the Union League in Chicago, Hotel Washi ngton in the na-<br />tion’s capital—as the guest of friends, and he traveled over the years<br />in the best cars (God led a rich man to give him the use of a<br />twenty-thousand-dollar Duesenberg), on private planes, i n Pullman<br />cars especially reserved for his use.<br />When as a young preacher out West he had once faced a pressing<br />debt of twenty- ve dollars and had no hope of paying it, a woman<br />unknown to him squeezed twenty- ve dollars into his hand. She told<br />him, he claimed, that she had been moved by God to give him cash;<br />had set out for his church with ve dollars; had been stopped by the<br />Lord at the threshold and been given to understand that Abram re-<br />quired more of her; had plucked another twenty dollars from her<br />purse; and had oated toward the beauti ful preacher, her money—<br />the equivalent today of hundreds of dollars —pressed, through no<br />will of her own, from her hand to his.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 91<br />His hands were enormous, his ngers long. His face was granite—<br />a straight, lipless line of a mouth and a jaw so square it could’ve been<br />used i n a geometry class. His eyes, set deep and serious beneath long<br />dark lashes and craggy brows, looked like pale ice. They were the<br />eyes not of a seducer but a persuader, a gaze men more than women<br />remembered. “God gave hi m a majestic gure,” his eldest son, War-<br />ren, would recal l. Like all those entranced by his father, Warren be-<br />lieved that God had granted Abram his manly appearance for a<br />purpose: to win powerful men to his cause.<br />Abram would become an exponent of a rel igion for the elite—the<br />“up and out,” as he called them —for the rest of his life. He termed<br />this trickle- down faith the Idea, and it was really the only idea he ever<br />had—the only one, he bel ieved, God gave him. In one sense, it was<br />nothing more than a defense of the status quo. It neither challenged<br />power nor asked for anything from the powerful but their good in-<br />tentions. In another, it was the most ambitious theocratic project of<br />the American century, “every Christian a leader, every leader a Chris-<br />tian,” and this ruling class of Christ-committed men bound in a fel-<br />lowship of the anointed, the chosen, key men in a voluntary<br />dictatorship of the divine.<br />From Seattle, Abram traveled the world with the Idea, winning to<br />its self-satis ed simplicity the allegiance of senators, ambassadors,<br />business executives, and generals. Every president beginning with<br />Eisenhower has attended the annual National Prayer Breakfast Abram<br />founded in 1953. He never achieved his dream—the United States is<br />no more a theocracy today than it was in Charles Finney’s lifetime—but<br />in his pursuit of it he stood at the vanguard of an el ite fundamental ism<br />that shaped the last half century of American and world politics in<br />ways only now becoming visible. Abram, observed two approving<br />evangelical writers in a 1975 study, Washington: Christians in the Corri-<br />dors of Power, “personally in uenced thousands of community, national,<br />and world leaders, who in turn in uenced countless others, a remark-<br />able chain reaction . . . Many of them have never heard of [Abram],<br />much less seen him. But his shadow is upon them.” 2<br />Shadow is indeed the word for Abram’s legacy. In 2005, Time<br /><br /><br />92 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />magazine labeled Abram’s successor, Doug Coe, the stealth persuader,<br />a term that might just as easily have t his mentor. Abram’s upper-<br />crust faith was not a conspi racy, but it was not meant for the masses,<br />either. Until recently, those masses—fundamentalist as well as<br />secular—barely knew it existed.3<br /><br /><br />Abram heard his own peculiar God for the rst time in Norway,<br />one June morning in 1895 when as an eight-year-old boy he was tak-<br />ing his father’s cattle to pasture in the high cold elds of the Norwe-<br />gian village from which Abram’s family took their surname. In later<br />life, Abram would often insist that he had been born poor, but among<br />the white houses and red barns of the one-thousand-year-old village<br />of Vereide, his family’s home—close to the church and surrounded<br />by oak trees —was far from the humblest. The inlet near the village<br />was narrow enough to resemble a river, and over it loomed two<br />mountai ns, the peaks of which were perfect triangles of black and<br />white, laced with snow even in June. In between stretched farmland,<br />the future that awaited Abram if he remained. His father was a fore-<br />man of sorts for land owned by the crown. But Abram was restless, a<br />popular boy yet angry and given to ghting.<br />His mother had died shortly before the June day on which he rst<br />heard God’s voice, and her last prayers had been for a calm ing of her<br />boy’s temper. That June morning, he took those prayers with him<br />into the elds. As he closed the gate behind him, his grief combined<br />with his anger into a cloud of guilt and regret, of longing for his<br />mother and for the good son he believed he should have been. He<br />couldn’t bear himself: he ran. He abandoned the cows. He hid in a<br />grove of elder trees, crying and shivering despite the sun that crept<br />through the leaves. A brook burbled, and the ai r smelled of cow<br />dung. He wanted to pray, but he didn’t know how. He’d never paid<br />attention to his mother’s prayers. Then, into his mind came words:<br />Fear not, for I have redeemed thee and called thee by name, thou art mine.<br />Abram would later say that at the time he had not yet read the<br />Book of Isaiah, from which those words came. Perhaps he had read<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 93<br />the verse, or heard it spoken by his mother, or maybe it was as he’d<br />come to believe years later, in America: a supernatural call to the<br />divine. Whichever the case, t hose words were the rst i ntimations<br />of what would become Abram’s theology. They resolved the age-old<br />question of theodicy—why does God let bad things happen to good<br />people?—by ignoring the fact that they had happened at all. Rather<br />than wrestle with grief and loss, as the best Christian thi nki ng does<br />so profoundly, Abram found in the grove the seeds of a faith that he’d<br />thereafter use as a shield against even the awareness of pai n, of doubt,<br />of the danger of despair and the hard, precious hope won from that<br />knowledge. This was the birth of Abram’s “positive” Christianity: the<br />censorship of su ering.<br />Ten years later, eighteen years old and educated to that point but<br />with no prospects in Norway other than a life in the eld, Abram left<br />for America, the “ land of the Bible unchained,” as he dreamed of it.<br />He arrived at Ellis Island after a stormy voyage, and very rst thing a<br />woman rushed up to him and said, “Welcome!” and pressed into his<br />hands a New Testament. Abram thought her rude and wonderful,<br />just like America. But her kindness added no advantage. Besides his<br />new American Bible and a Norwegian copy, he had nothing. His<br />clothes were homespun, stitched by his sisters; his shoes were goat-<br />skin, from a goat he had slaughtered; his suitcase was a leather box of<br />his own devising. He had only the name of a countryman who would<br />help to seek out in Butte, Montana, a boomtown run like a efdom<br />by giant Anaconda Copper, and just enough money to get there, a<br />hard journey of fteen days.<br />His con nection turned out to be a man in a shack by the railroad,<br />but the old hand knew what to do with a new Norwegian. “Let’s go<br />uptown and meet the boys,” he said, and took Abram past a row of<br />brothels punctuated by whore-lined alleys to a saloon. At the saloon<br />Abram’s guide sat him at a bar amid a gang of m iners who sweated<br />whiskey and copper, and all clinked glasses in his honor. He would<br />not raise his glass. They called him a dumb greenhorn. He didn’t<br />care. They cursed him. He stood up, broad- shouldered and straight-<br />backed, his icy blue eyes set in handsome features, ruddy but clear, a<br /><br /><br />94 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />rebuke to the scars hard labor and whoring had written across his<br />companions. He frowned upon them, the whiskey, the cleavage of<br />women, the stink of the men, the rumble of the bar, the land of<br />mammon unchained.<br />“You are in America now—do like Americans do,” one man<br />said.<br />That was exactly what Abram planned; he would do as the<br />Americans of his imagination did. “No, thank you,” he said, his<br />voice controlled. “I never tasted liquor i n my life, and I can get along<br />without it.”<br />Into the cold night under a sky lled with strange stars, he walked<br />until he came to the cli s that loom over Butte. He shivered and<br />stared at the mines below, lit up for night shifts like glittering stones.<br />There he wept, and then he shouted, to the God he had been certain<br />he would nd i n America. And out of the darkness, he would say to<br />the end of his days, he heard the voice of his Lord, speaking the clean<br />English the imm igrant would soon master. This time the words came<br />from Proverbs: There is yet a future and your hope shall not come to<br />naught.<br />“In America,” he’d assured his worried father, “education is free,<br />money is plentiful, and everyone has a chance.” Instead, his rst ex-<br />perience of the United States was the savage li fe of immigrants, men<br />and women pressed i nto the hardest, most dangerous work. In the<br />days that followed, he did such labor himself, knocking around the<br />copper camps of Montana, a once-healthy farm boy eventually laid<br />low by sickness and industrial poison, “copper-tinged water” that put<br />him into a state of sem iconsciousness that lasted for days, halluci na-<br />tory hours spent at on his back in the shack by the railroad tracks,<br />his gaunt body sweating away the butter and beef and herring on<br />which he had grown strong in Norway. It was God’s doing, he be-<br />lieved: “The Europe an starch had to be washed out.”<br />And it was. The boy from the village that bore his family name<br />worked as a section hand, a oor mopper, and a hard laborer, beaten<br />out of his wages again and agai n by crooked bosses who called him a<br />“ big-footed Norwegian”—feet, apparently, being the currency of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 95<br />bigotry with regard to Norsemen. On the Fourth of July 1905,<br />Abram asked to be paid for work he had done as a paint er in the town<br />of Basin so he could buy some “American clothes” to celebrate the<br />holiday. Stick it, said the boss. So Abram took the American option:<br />“when I heard the train whistle, bound from Basin to Butte, I said<br />goodbye.” In Butte on that Fourth of July, Abram spent his last dime<br />on a streetcar ride to a park on the edge of the city, where he found a<br />grove of trees far from the American celebration. He had no money,<br />no friends, no place to sleep. The city was too far behind for him to<br />walk back, but that didn’t matter: Abram wanted to die right there<br />and be done. It was a moment like Finney’s, only starker: Abram’s<br />su ering was in his belly as well as his soul. He sat in the shade of the<br />trees beneath the high pl ains sun and waited for an answer. He’d<br />brought all his possessions with him in a small bundle—the goat hide<br />suitcase from home lost along the way—and from it he took out his<br />New Testament and began to read through his tears. As his eyes<br />scanned the now-familiar words, he sensed God Himself once again<br />speaki ng: Ye have not chosen me, but I chose you . . . The Gospel of John,<br />chapter 15, verse 16 . . . Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, he<br />shall give it to you.<br />Then—a sign, Abram thought—through the woods, came a man<br />who found Abram wiping away his tears. The man had a beautiful<br />smile. He opened his mouth to speak. Abram would later remember<br />not so much the words as their sound: this messenger from God was<br />a Norwegian. Not an angel but a former saloonkeeper who’d found<br />Jesus before he’d found Abram. As i f, Abram thought, God was lin-<br />ing up all his experiences in the New World to reveal a singular les-<br />son. Ye have not chosen me, but I chose you . . . The Norwegian took<br />Abram home to live with his fami ly that Fourth of July, and through<br />him Abram eventually found his way to a Methodist sem inary, the<br />free education he had boasted of to his father, and the hand in mar-<br />riage of a well-o minister’s daughter, the m iddle-class step up into<br />American l ife Abram had been looking for. W hatsoever you ask the Fa-<br />ther in my name, he shall give it to you.<br />The one word that does not appear in the notes on his life Abram<br /><br /><br />96 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />prepared near the end of his life, when instead of sheepskin he wore<br />silk and gabardi ne, when instead of miners and cowboys he preached<br />to senators and presidents, is power. But in 1935, when Abram was<br />just beginning to dream his real ministry, he wrote the word once,<br />in the margin of a church program. It was at the bottom of a list of<br />names of men he had recruited. Besides each was a responsibility: or-<br />ga ni za tion, nances. Beside his own name, he wrote power—and then<br />crossed it out. If it must be said, it can’t be had. Power, Abram real-<br />ized as he moved through the high corner o ces of businessmen and<br />leaders, has nothing to do with forcing the devil behind you or mak-<br />ing the company increase your wages. Power lies in things as they<br />are. God had already chosen the powerful, his key men. There they<br />are, Jesus whispered in Abram’s ear; go and serve them.<br />Throughout the 1920s, Abram directed Seattle’s division of<br />Goodwill Industries. He didn’t just open stores for used clothes; he<br />organized 49,000 housewives into thirty- seven districts and set them<br />to work salvaging goods for the poor. In 1932, Franklin Roo sevelt,<br />governor of New York, invited Abram to his o ce to discuss his or-<br />ganizing system. Later he’d come to see Rus sian red running through-<br />out Roo sevelt’s New Deal, but at the time Abram was captivated by<br />another man sum moned to advise the governor, James Augustine<br />Farrell, president of the United States Steel Corporation. Abram had<br />met industry chiefs before then, but here was a titan. A tal l, stern<br />man of dark suits and high collars, Farrell had led U.S. Steel for de-<br />cades, since not long after its creation as the biggest business enter-<br />prise in history, and he had a reputation as an indust rial free thinker.<br />The year before he’d rebuked a group of businessmen for treating<br />workers like ani mals. Farrell looked on his employees more li ke<br />children. Big business, he believed, ought to act as a big brother,<br />and to that end he i nsisted that the age of competition had passed;<br />captains of industry must be freed of antitrust legislation so that<br />they might better council together for the good of the innocent and<br />the poor.<br />Abram xed his rapt attention on the “steel shogun,” as the press<br />of the time called the industrialist. “Mr. Farrell reviewed the history<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 97<br />of America,” he’d remember, “and pointed out that we have had<br />nineteen depressions— ve major ones —and that every one was<br />caused by disobedience to divi ne laws.” Farrell o ered no evidence<br />for his dismissal of economic factors, but he did have a solution on<br />hand. “Now,” Abram recorded his words, “I am a Roman Catholic<br />and we don’t go i n much for revivals and such things, but I am sure as<br />I am sitting here that if we don’t get a thorough revival of genuine<br />religion . . . with a return to prayer and the Bible” —an oddly Prot-<br />estant aim—“we are headed for chaos.” Farrell suggested that the<br />time had come for the “leaders of i ndustry” to take the reins not just<br />of the economy but of the entire nation in order to restore it to a<br />godly path.<br />Farrell, a former steelworker himself and thus living proof in his<br />own m ind that equal opportunity existed for all, was likely too mod-<br />est to mention U.S. Steel’s own e orts in this regard; most notably,<br />its rel ief program for the Pennsylvania steeltown of Farrell, renamed<br />just that year in honor of the great man himself. A desperate measure<br />by a community of 30,000 utterly dependent on U.S. Steel and<br />starving because of that fact. In Farrell, U.S. Steel fought the spiri-<br />tual roots of its econom ic woes not through revival but by evicting<br />from company housing those who were not part of the nation’s godly<br />heritage: foreign-born workers, black workers, and even the old<br />white men who had built Farrell and now approached retirement and<br />pensions. U.S. Steel replaced them all with young peons paid low<br />wages. It was not a matter of getting the job done, since the mills<br />were shuttered and there was no work to be done. U.S. Steel simply<br />saw an opportunity for a correction.3<br />But then, so did the men and women whom companies such as<br />U.S. Steel were liquidating. It’s hard now, in the present United<br />States, to imagine the fear that attended the Depression years, and<br />harder stil l to remember the anger. Most forgotten of all is the opti-<br />mism of ordinary people pushed to an edge over which they peered<br />and saw not the abyss they had been told by their employers and their<br />politicians awaited them, but—maybe, i f they built it themselves—a<br />future dramatically di erent from the past.<br /><br /><br />98 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />The 1930s were the hungry years, yes; but they were also radical,<br />which is to say, visionary—an era of political imagination. American<br />history has plunked Roo sevelt at the left edge of the spectrum of our<br />political life, but at the time Roo sevelt was closer to the middle. To his<br />right were fools and fascists; these were the days when one might re-<br />spectably admire the methods of “Mr. Hitler” and wonder, in the<br />pages of newspapers or on the oor of Congress, whether there might<br />not be some part of his approach for Americans to copy. And to Roo-<br />sevelt’s left? There l ies the m issing history of America without which<br />the rise of Abram’s religion, the fundamentalism of the “up and out,”<br />the gospel of power for the powerful that soothes the consciences of<br />fundamentalism’s elite to this day, cannot be understood. The elite<br />fundamentalist movement of which Abram would be a pioneer arose<br />in response to a radical age. Abram’s biographers say that for a brief<br />moment in 1932, a Roo sevelt aide charged with building a brain trust<br />from which the future president’s cabinet could be constructed pro-<br />moted Abram to take charge of a social services portfolio on the<br />strength of his Goodwil l work, and began including him in meetings.<br />“Abram was introduced to the inner workings of the economic and<br />political forces of the nation,” wrote Abram’s friend and biographer<br />Norman Grubb. T here he saw “ how serious was the danger of leftwing<br />elements actually taking over the nation.”<br />As far as Abram was concerned, they did. He had begun drawing<br />up plans for government- backed religious revival as a cure for the na-<br />tion, but FDR went the way of the New Deal. Roo sevelt’s name<br />rarely appears in Abram’s papers thereafter.<br />Nor, for that matter, does the name of anyone Abram thought<br />beyond God’s sphere of in uence. Abram perfected a feel-good fun-<br />damentalism that was every bit as militant and aggressive as today’s<br />populist front but incapable of uttering a harsh word. It was country<br />club fundamentalism, for men who believed in thei r own goodness<br />and proved it to themselves and each other by commending Christ<br />and the next fellow’s ne e ort at following His example. They fol-<br />lowed the law of kindergarten: if you have nothing nice to say about<br />someone, say nothi ng at all. Or put it in terms of abstraction, the<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 99<br />preeningly polite language of upper-class religion: One might talk<br />about a “Red Menace,” but good Christians did not discuss what they<br />deemed Roo sevelt’s communistic tendencies: One might bemoan moral<br />decay, but it would not do to mention the name of a fellow busi ness-<br />man who kept ladies on the side. Only once, in the notes Abram gave<br />his friend Grubb, did he come close to identi fyi ng an enemy: the no-<br />torious “B.”<br />Who is B? The Red Menace in the shape of a man, subversion<br />personi ed, a zombie from Moscow.<br />That is, B belonged to a union. Which union? Hard to say. Two<br />candidates present themselves, but neither ts Abram’s description<br />precisely. Rather, the mysterious B who inspired Abram to gather his<br />decades of work and contacts and fundamentalist re nements into<br />the Idea seems to be an amalgam of the two most powerful labor<br />chiefs on the West Coast in 1935, and, indeed, perhaps the country:<br />Dave Beck, the Teamster warlord of Seattle, and Harry Bridges, the<br />Australian- born champion of longshoremen from San Diego to Van-<br />couver.<br />The two men were a study in contrasts. Beck, with his “pink<br />moon face and icy blue eyes,” as the journalist John Gunther de-<br />scribed him, a union leader so conservative he was “probably the<br />most ardent exponent of capitalism in the Northwest,” ran Seattle<br />like a efdom with bully-boy squadrons of brass-knuckled goons and<br />a mayor who actually boasted of being in Beck’s pocket. Bridges, “a<br />slight, lanky fellow,” observed the radical writer Louis Adamic, “with<br />a narrow, longish head, receding dark hai r, a good straight brow, an<br />aggressive hook nose, and a tense-lipped mouth,” operated out of San<br />Francisco but at only thirty-four years old had a rank- and- le follow-<br />ing across the trades and industries up and down the coast. Beck<br />wore double- breasted suits and painted ties and thought he looked<br />pretty damn good in black and white on the front page of a paper.<br />Bridges dressed like the longshoreman he was: black canvas Frisco<br />Jeans with his i ron cargo hook hanging from the back pocket, denim<br />shirt, and a at white cap. A shave, maybe, for a special occasion. He<br />rarely spoke to reporters.4<br /><br /><br />100 | JEFF SHARLET<br />Beck’s integrity can best be summed up by the fact that years<br />later—by then he was the boss of the whole union—when he was<br />summoned to Washi ngton to account for himself and his mysterious<br />riches, he pled the Fifth, got drummed out of the Teamsters like a<br />bad punch line, and Jimmy Ho a took over. After Beck, even the<br />Kennedy brothers thought Ho a was good news.<br />Bridges? In 1934, the legend spread that the San Francisco ship<br />owners sent an ex-prize ghter with $50,0 00 to try and buy him.<br />Bridges met the boxer alone; considered putting the cash into the<br />strike fund; but said no because he gleaned it was a trap. Had he taken<br />the money, he would have been dead in two minutes, and his union<br />brothers would have found an impossible wad of cash on his corpse,<br />and that would have made for a very di erent story than the one that<br />got around.<br />Abram knew Beck was a crook and probably knew Bridges was<br />not, but he likely loathed them with equal intensity. Beck’s muscle<br />made a mockery of the government of God-led men Abram dreamed<br />of for Seattle, and Bridges’s pure-hearted radicalism must have<br />seemed to Abram like a devil’s parody of religious conviction.<br />“ ‘B’,” wrote Abram of the conditions that sparked the Idea, “had<br />a lot of folks up in arms agai nst him, but most of them had now i n-<br />volved themselves in one way or another and didn’t dare squeal.<br />Some played the game and liked it, and others paid through the nose;<br />but whether you were a businessman, a contractor, or a labor leader,<br />you went along.”<br />This “B” is almost de nitely Beck; no businessman i n America<br />“went along” with Harry Bridges. And yet it was Beck, ironically,<br />who inadvertently exposed big business of the 1930s for what it was:<br />a racket with rewards reserved for t he big men. In most parts of<br />the country, that would be someone like James A. Farrell or Henry<br />Ford, commanding Pi nkertons and the police; in Seattle, it was<br />Dave Beck, Teamster, who owned the law. That’s why Abram hated<br />him: Beck was living evidence that God’s invisible hand blessed the<br />ruthless as much as or more t han those whom he considered the de-<br />serving.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 101<br />But Abram had been living in San Francisco i n 1934, leading<br />prayer meetings for a group of business executives at the Paci c<br />Union Club, and he had witnessed the power of Bridges up close,<br />worse than anything he had seen duri ng his years of preaching and<br />organizing in Boston, New York, and Detroit. “It was the utter help-<br />lessness of the rank and le,” wrote his friend Grubb, “under the po-<br />litical control of subversive forces in the saddle.”<br />That’s not Beck—his hit squads struck any union meeting that<br />showed radical inclinations harder than the most brutal lumber baron<br />could imagine. Abram wanted to convert communists; Beck wanted<br />them beaten and dumped i n the dri nk. No, the “subversive forces in<br />the saddle” must have been Bridges, although Bridges was not subver-<br />sive, he was a revolutionary. And i n 1934 and ’35, to Abram—indeed,<br />to much of the world—it looked as if he might be successful.<br /><br /><br />Bridges was the anti-Abram. Raised middle class and Roman-<br />Catholic in Melbourne, Australia, he shipped out to sea when he was<br />sixteen and got o the boat in America four years later. Abram had<br />his faith, and Bridges had his. God hadn’t spoken to him; a Wobbly<br />had—a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. They aimed<br />for one simple goal, paradise on Earth. They called it One Big Union<br />and fought for it with the ne art of sabotage: Wobblies blasted steam<br />into the pipes of refrigerated shipping containers, sabotaged blacktop<br />so it c racked open, literally jammed wrenches into the works. They<br />didn’t steal from the rich and give to the poor; they were the poor,<br />and they took. Most of all, though, they lingered and gabbed and<br />winked at one another and then quit—they loved leavi ng work be-<br />hind. “Hallelujah, I’m a bum again,” went a favorite American Wob-<br />bly song. Abram had nightmares about such hymns, m istook their<br />radicalized Tin Pan Alley humor for the ponderous phrasing of the<br />E u r o p e <br />a n “ I n t e r n a t i o n a l e . ” 5<br />But the Wobblies weren’t red; they were romantic, deliberately<br />and desperately so, skeptical of power and or ganization and compro-<br />mise, and constantly amused by themselves. Sabotage, after all, is a<br /><br /><br />102 | JEFF SHARLET<br />kind of joke—not just on the bosses but also on anyone who works,<br />on the very idea of work. The God Wobblies believed in had made<br />humanity not for hard labor but for pleasure. Why else did He give us<br />legs on which to dance?<br />And yet the rst noble truth of the Wobblies was su ering, a<br />sure thing for as long as there was a ruling class with which to wage<br />war. So Wobblies fought, but they fought for the paradise they felt in<br />their bones and their bellies had been promised to them. A city upon<br />a hill. What else was worth ghting for?<br />Their dream was il l de ned, less an agenda than a story, about<br />class warfare and the spoils that would one day go to the victors.<br />They didn’t have politics, they had a parable.<br />Wobblies whispered in young Bridges’s ears as God had spoken<br />to Abram in the elder trees. But Bridges was of a more independent<br />turn of mind. He liked the Wobbly story about the One Big Union<br />still to come, and took it as his own, but he didn’t believe workers<br />would win squat without organization. That idea he took from the<br />com munists, though he wasn’t a communist, either. Like Abram, he<br />loved to be around people and yet was a loner, kept his own counsel,<br />looked inward, and what he found there he told no one. But unl ike<br />Abram, there is no record of him crying but for the day he stood by<br />the co ns of two men he had led out on stri ke. The police had shot<br />them down. Bridges wept and said nothing.<br />What the two men shared were dreams. The Australian and the<br />Norwegian were utopians in the American vein. Bridges thought the<br />Prom ised Land awaited construction; Abram thought it was simply<br />to be recovered. Bridges had read a bit of theory, Abram some theol-<br />ogy, but both believed that they could bring forth the good life for all<br />who would accept it without recourse to ideology. Bridges took the<br />com munists into his ranks but never entered theirs, Abram strolled<br />along the fence of fascism but never hopped over. Neither man cared<br />much about ideas; both believed in power. Bridges wanted to see it<br />redistributed. Abram wanted to see it concentrated.<br />Like Abram, Bridges knocked around, rst as a sailor, then as an<br />oil rigger, and nally as part of a San Francisco steel gang, unloading<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 103<br />heavy metal on the docks. Like Abram, he’d been beaten out of his<br />wages. He got beaten every day, in fact, just like every other long-<br />shoreman. The shipowners had multiple methods for keeping their<br />workers in line. Once, the San Francisco dockers had been among<br />the toughest u nion men in the country, but the company had broken<br />them back i n 1919, herding them into the “Blue Book,” a company<br />collective in which the CEO e ectively served as union boss, negoti-<br />ating with himself. The bosses thought they were being kind. So did<br />Abram. To him, such arrangements seemed like the “reconciliation”<br />prom ised by Christianity, the solution at last to the old problem of<br />labor and capital. The laws of property obtained—was it not the<br />company’s right to hire and re at wi ll?—but were softened, in the<br />minds of Blue Book believers, by the company’s voluntary decision to<br />treat its employees not as hostile contractors but as children. That<br />made sense to Abram, who divided the world between big men and<br />little men and preferred the company of the former.<br />By 1933, the “children,” the workers, ate —that is, earned—only<br />if they could survive the shape-up, the speed-up, and the straw boss.<br />The shape-up began before dawn, in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle.<br />Along the Embarcadero, the long curving cobblestoned street between<br />the Bay City and its eighty-two piers, 4,000 men gathered in the fog<br />and the dark, hoping to be picked for one of fteen hundred jobs. They<br />jostled for a place close to the front of the crowd and pu ed themselves<br />up to look thick and strong even if they hadn’t eaten in days. They felt,<br />more than one man would remember, like whores trying to look<br />pretty. The picker—the pimp—was called the straw boss. If you<br />wanted to be chosen, you promised him a part of your wages. And if he<br />gave you a job, you might work for four hours or twenty-four. You<br />might work with a gang or with a small crew, too few men for the task.<br />That was the speed-up: the job didn’t go faster; you did. Longshoremen<br />were not a delicate breed, but they collapsed with exhaustion and some<br />dropped dead, their heart muscles bursting. Say a word about what you<br />saw around you, and you were gone. Silence was golden. For the com-<br />pany, that is. In 1933 it shaved a dime o wages, and the Blue Book<br />“union” accepted the loss as the cost of harmony.<br /><br /><br />104 | JEFF SHARLET<br />But a few men didn’t, and that sum mer, emboldened by FDR’s<br />New Deal, they organized. By spring of 1934 they were talking<br />stri ke. In May it sparked: rst in Seattle, where longshoremen bat-<br />tled deputized vigilantes, took their riot clubs away from them, and<br />sent ve to the hospital; then in San Francisco, where police shot a<br />twenty-year-old kid in the heart as he led a striker’s charge just hours<br />after joining the union. There was something almost quixotic in the<br />rst responses of the owners: i n San Francisco, shippers trolled fra-<br />ternity houses for the state’s best young men, who considered a few<br />days of heavy labor the duty of gentlemen, and the Berkeley football<br />coach recruited three squads of big-shouldered boys from the Golden<br />Bears to join down-on-their-luck white-collar workers on a oating<br />barracks for strikebreakers, a ship called the Diana Dollar.<br />Abram followed a teeth-rattling roller coaster of news for months,<br />as the papers reported one day a red tide rising and the next labor<br />peace in the o ng. Neither story was true. The army of strikers<br />grew larger and larger, bakers and cooks and waiters and even the<br />proud and conservative Teamsters swelling the dockers’ ranks.<br />No peace was coming. “Riot Expected,” declared the papers in<br />one of their grimmer moods. The Chamber of Commerce drafted a<br />declaration and put it on the front page of the Chronicle: “American<br />principles” vs. “un-American radicalism.” The chamber stood for<br />“free labor,” for the “American Plan,” for the “right to work.” Lose<br />San Francisco, and Seattle and Portland would fall like dominoes.<br />“The winning of the strike means the abandoning of control by pri-<br />vate owners over their own property,” declared the columnist Chapin<br />Hall. “ San Francisco is the real seat of war and right nobly is she<br />standing up to the ring li ne.”<br />Seven hundred policemen i n dark blue patrolled the waterfront<br />on foot and i n black cars and on high chestnut horses. Twice that<br />number and more picketed or searched for strikebreakers. The mid-<br />dle class began contemplati ng last-minute vacations. The wives of<br />the wealthy bunkered up at the Union Club, where Abram led prayer<br />meetings for businessmen. As the blue tear gas sent tendrils up the<br />hill, they must have felt frustrated by his optim istic lessons in biblical<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 105<br />capitalism. Scripture has much to say about honest dealing and even<br />more about handling the heathen, but not once does it mention orga-<br />nized labor. Kenneth Kingsbury, the president of the Standard Oil of<br />California (and later a member of Abram’s movement), peered out of<br />the club’s windows one day and saw pickets peering back; he pan-<br />icked. A sign of the apocalypse, Kingsbury instructed a federal man<br />to write his employers i n Washington, was that Kenneth Kingsbury<br />could not leave the club to hail a cab.<br />On July 3, the Industrial Association of San Francisco resolved to<br />open the port by force. Mayor Angelo Rossi, a orist by trade, did<br />not stop them. At 1:30 p.m. the steel doors of Pier 38 rolled up, and<br />ve trucks full of goods from the moribund ships in the harbor rolled<br />out, police cruisers behind and alongside them. Driving the trucks<br />were not ordinary strikebreakers but business executives, “key men,”<br />in Abram’s vernacular. Young James A. Folger of Folger’s Co ee<br />took the lead. A crowd of 5,00 0 pickets watched without making a<br />sound. The busi nessmen raced to a warehouse four blocks inland and<br />unloaded: birdseed, co ee, and tires. They went back for more. The<br />strikers looked on. No songs, no chants, no stones. Silent witness to<br />the labor of businessmen. This was the story the papers told when<br />Abram opened their pages on the Fourth of July 1935, his twentieth<br />anniversary in “the land of the Bible unchained.”<br />Did Folger and his 700 bodyguards in blue think, for just a mo-<br />ment, that peace was at hand? A police captain with gold braid<br />gleaming on his shoulder, riding on the running board of a police<br />cruiser with his revolver in the air, shouted, “The port is open!”—<br />and gave the strikers the signal for which they had waited. They<br />roared and attacked with cobblestones ripped from the street and<br />bricks and stones, with clubs they tore from policemen’s hands and<br />with wooden shafts they hurled like spears. The police opened re<br />into the crowd.<br />And with that, the rst ght was over—thousands melted into<br />alleys, dragging the wounded with them. Blood pooled between the<br />cobblestones. The air smelled acrid. At night the blue and green<br />lights of helpless ships blinked from the bay and went unanswered.<br /><br /><br />106 | JEFF SHARLET<br />The pool hal ls, the bars, the tattoo parlors, the brothels, were silent.<br />Vice had been conquered, the Christian city on a hill defended from<br />the barbarians.<br />There were not many picnics on the Fourth. A train burned and<br />thirteen policemen’s wives were given reason to curse the red bas-<br />tards. The governor said troops were coming. The commanders of<br />the Guard strategized.<br />“My men . . . will talk with bayonets,” said their general.<br />This was not what Abram had dreamed of. Where were his key<br />men, his top men, his up and out? Out of the city, hiding in the<br />hills.<br />The next morning, the police went forward in waves, rows of<br />Martians in khaki gas masks and black helmets, revolvers drawn. A<br />few blocks from the water, on Rincon Hill, a knoll tall as a four- story<br />building, a crowd of longshoremen gathered. From widemouthed<br />riot guns police thumped out gas shells that sliced through dry brown<br />grass and sparked it like tinder. Strikers scorched their ngers on the<br />shells and hurled them back down the hill. Blue smoke from the gas,<br />black and gray from the grass, an oily stink that pushed the armies<br />away from one another. Up the knoll went the strikers. Policemen in<br />ripped uniforms, blood dripping from facial wounds, squinted and<br />aimed and unloaded revolvers and ri es. A striker crested and fell,<br />shot like a turkey. A tear-gas salesman, deputized, cheered. T he smoke<br />stank of vomit and gun re. Airplanes dipped and whined, dropping<br />messages to police command. Horse hooves thudded; out of the blue<br />smoke went the charge, horses snorting and shrieking.<br />The strikers were ready with slingshots: two poles stretching a<br />car ti re inner tube hurled a three-pound stone fast and hard 40 0 feet,<br />or less should a policeman agree to catch it with his belly. Back down<br />the hill went the horses.<br />Up went another charge, replied to with another volley. The po-<br />lice charged again, and this time they took a wall, but the men be-<br />hind it had gone missing. So it went, charges and stone volleys and<br />feints and men vanishing like quicksilver.<br />The police found them. They blocked o both ends of the street<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 107<br />in front of the union hall. A plainclothesman drove into the crowd,<br />stepped out of his car, and opened up with a shotgun held at the hip,<br />and in front of the hall he brought down three men. One pulled him-<br />self up and looked at the crowd with blood in his mouth, blood in his<br />eyes, and then his head dropped and his jaw cracked like an egg.<br />At least thirty-three more nursed gunshot wounds that night.<br />They were laid in rows in the union hall or hidden in bedrooms by<br />wives and mothers and brokenhearted fathers who boiled water and<br />pried bullets out with thick ngers while their men screamed and the<br />neighbors cried. Down on the docks a boat landed, and into the city<br />marched soldiers, the rst of 5,000. A sharp wind snapped the fog,<br />the gas, the smoke up into the atmosphere, but the smell of violence<br />lingered.<br />“I walked down Market that night,” wrote the novelist Til lie Ol-<br />sen, then twenty-one-year-old Tillie Lerner fresh from Nebraska, in<br />one of her rst pieces of published prose. “All life seemed blown out<br />of the street; the few people hurrying by looked hunted, tense, ex-<br />pectant of anything. Cars moved past as if eeing. And a light, inde-<br />scribably green and ominous, was cast over everything, in great<br />shifting shadows. And down the street the trucks rumbled. Drab<br />colored, with boys sitting on them like corpses sitti ng and not mov-<br />ing, holding guns sti y, staring with wide frightened eyes.”6<br />That was what Abram didn’t understand: the fear of death and<br />the fear of sin, real sin, killing a brother or a sister. He was as de-<br />lighted by the prospect of his death, whatever hour God should ap-<br />point for it, as Abigail Hutchinson had been. Compassionate in the<br />abstract, he thought of the masses as just that, blocks to be arranged<br />neatly. The troops that moved in on San Francisco that night had no<br />feelings with which Abram would have been concerned; they were<br />expressing the will of God, which to him was order. After the Stri ke<br />of ’34, Abram’s allegiance would be forever given to the men who<br />com manded soldiers, not the soldiers themselves. As for those de-<br />ned as the enemy, they were not even human. Their grief never<br />registered.<br />A few days later, men and women marched tens of thousands<br /><br /><br />108 | JEFF SHARLET<br />strong ve miles up Market Street behi nd two black-draped atbed<br />trucks. The trucks bore co ns and mountains of owers, like can-<br />vases by Diego Rivera set in slow motion. A band played Beethoven.<br />Nobody said a word. “ ‘Life,’ the capitalist papers marveled,” wrote<br />Tillie Olsen, “ ‘Life stopped and stared.’ ”<br />It was incomparable drama, simultaneously staged and real. A<br />ritual, yes, the pro cession of the plain folk, the march of the mar-<br />tyrs, a script older than Christendom. Bridges, surely aware of the<br />moment’s theatrical power, nonetheless choked up when his turn to<br />speak came. Not a well-timed sob but wide-eyed, grief-stricken si-<br />lence. He o ered no i nspiration. None was needed. The funeral was<br />religion: not just solidarity, workers arm-in- arm, but communion, a<br />com ing together. The march up Market Street was the embodiment<br />of faith, not as a metaphor but as a new fact in the American story.<br />One Big Union on the move.<br />The strike went on, but the shippers were defeated by the time<br />the co ns went into the ground. Their old beliefs could not com-<br />pete. Management—capital—would require a new faith if it was to<br />survive.<br /><br /> The Idea, Part 2<br /><br />The stri ke of 1934 scared Abram into lau nching the movement that<br />would become the vanguard of elite fundamentalism, and elite fun-<br />damentalism took as its rst challenge the destruction of militant<br />labor. Destruction was not the word Christians used, however. They<br />called it cooperation.<br />The April after the strike, Harry Bridges traveled to Seattle to<br />convene a meeting of a new federation of maritime workers, with<br />“maritime” broadly de ned to i nclude pretty much anyone within<br />driving distance of the ocean. For a brief moment that year, he came<br />close to turni ng the old Wobbly dream of One Big Union i nto a politi-<br />cal reality. But it wouldn’t last. Indeed, the revived Wobbly dream<br />began unraveling right there i n Seattle, where Abram nally plucked<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 109<br />up the theocratic strand and began pulling it taut into the twentieth<br />century.<br />That April, Abram had been having dreams of his own, unpleas-<br />ant ones. Subversives stalked his sleep, hammers and sickles danced<br />like sugar plum fairies, a Soviet agent “of Swedish nationality” as-<br />signed to Seattle—probably the brawny and bellicose six-footer from<br />the Seamen’s Union whom Bridges had tapped to lead the maritime<br />federation—roared his nightmare de ance of that which was godly.<br />One night Abram could sleep no longer. He sat up in bed and re-<br />solved to wait for God. At 1:30 a.m., He appeared: a bli nding light<br />and a voice. Abram listened and took notes. “ The plan had been un-<br />folded and the green light given.”7<br />A few hours later, Abram dressed and put on his coat and hurried<br />to downtown Seattle for the morning rush, where he waited for God<br />to bring him the means to put his plan into action. On a busy street<br />corner, a local developer of means hai led him. “Hey, Vereide, glad to<br />see you!”<br />The developer, a former major named Walter Douglass who still<br />preferred to be addressed by his m ilitary title, cut straight to the<br />matter on both men’s minds: “Where is this cou ntry going to, any-<br />way? ”<br />“You ought to know,” said Abram.<br />Indeed, the major did: “The bow-wows,” he harrumphed, “and<br />the worse of it is you fellows aren’t doing anything about it.”<br />“What do you mean?”<br />“Well,” growled Douglass, “ here you have your churches and ser-<br />vices and merry-go-round of activities, but as far as any actual impact<br />and strategy for turning the tide is concerned, you’re not making a<br />dent.”<br />Abram could not have agreed more. While San Francisco had<br />boiled, Abram had developed the prototype of the Idea, preaching a<br />manly Christ to a group of business executives who had no time for<br />hymnals and sob sisters and soup kitchens and the Jesus of long eye-<br />lashes beloved by old ladies. Jesus, for such men, “must be disentan-<br />gled from church organization,” Abram had discovered. In the 1930s,<br /><br /><br />110 | JEFF SHARLET<br />the meaning of that was plain: a rejection of the “Social Gospel” of<br />good works for the poor in favor of an unhindered Christ de ned by<br />his muscles, a laissez-fai re Jesus proclaimed not by spi ndly necked<br />clergymen bleating from seminary, but by men like Major Douglass,<br />o cers who commanded troops who brought order to cities.<br />“You ought to get after fellows like me,” Douglass told Abram.<br />He was standing in just the right spot for chest pu ng—behind him<br />towered the city’s Douglass Buildi ng.<br />These were the words Abram had been waiting for, in the place,<br />he was certain, to which God had guided him. He revealed the plan<br />God had given him just hours earlier that morning: the Idea. He kept<br />secret the bright light, the voice, the automatic writing in the dark<br />hours. Men like Major Douglass, men of a airs, would not under-<br />stand. But Major Douglass got the Idea.<br />“We are where we are,” Abram said—on the bri nk of anarchy,<br />both men thought—“because of what we are.” By that he meant sin-<br />ful, only his concept of sin was not so much concerned with immo-<br />rality as with “duty.” “ Top men” had a responsibility to do for God<br />what lesser men couldn’t. Their failure to take on this burden had led<br />the nation to its terrible position. “Obedience,” concluded Abram, is<br />“the way to power.” God wanted his chosen to rule—to “serve,” as<br />Abram liked to say. Were men such as Major Douglass ready to re-<br />port for duty?<br />Douglass stared at the silver-haired preacher. A “piercing gaze,”<br />Abram recalled. “Vereide,” he said, “if you will settle down in this<br />city and do a job like that, I will back you.”<br />Abram demanded speci cs. Douglass delivered: a suite of o ces<br />in the building behi nd Abram and a check to get him started.<br />“That’s tangible,” said Abram.<br />Then they set o together to see William St. Clair, one of the<br />wealthiest men in Seattle. There’s a whi of The Wizard of Oz in<br />Abram’s later retelling of this story, the major and the minister pop-<br />ping lightbulbs over their fedoras on the Seattle street corner and<br />rushing on to the man who would bring it all together, but that is,<br />apparently, what happened: St. Clair, president of Frederick Nelson,<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 111<br />the biggest department store in the Northwest, cleared his o ce and<br />insisted the two men sit down. “We told him the story,” Abram re-<br />membered. “And he, too, looked searchingly at me and remarked,<br />‘That’s constructive.’ ”<br />St. Clai r made a list of nineteen businessmen and invited them to<br />breakfast at one of the city’s nest hotels. St. Clair certainly didn’t<br />choose on the basis of Christian moral ity. Of the nineteen, only one<br />was a churchgoer, and he pointed out at the rst meeting that the<br />other men there knew him mainly as a creature of cocktail lounges<br />and poker tables. Among the nineteen sat a lumber baron, a gas ex-<br />ecutive, a railroad executive, a hardware magnate, a candy impresa-<br />rio, and two future mayors of Seattle. “Management and labor got<br />together,” Abram would later claim, but there were no union repre-<br />sentatives at the meeting, where nineteen businessmen plus Abram<br />agreed to use the “Bible as blueprint” with which to take back rst<br />the city, then the state, and perhaps the nation from the grip of god-<br />less or ga nized labor.<br />Their rst success soon followed. “One morning,” remembered<br />Abram, “a labor leader, who had been a disturbing factor in the com-<br />munity, was seen at the table.” Abram never fail s to provide full<br />names and corporate titles for the management side of his equation,<br />but his rst convert from labor is known only as “Jim my.” Jimmy<br />came back for more meetings, sitting quietly in the corner and lis-<br />tening as the businessmen testi ed to one another about the Bible’s<br />transforming power in their lives. So Abram took Jim my aside and<br />had a talk with him about his responsibilities. Jimmy had been a<br />leader in the “big strike.” There, at the breakfast table, sat many men<br />in whom Jimmy’s actions had provoked “bitter feelings.” One man,<br />in fact, had been burdened with leading the industrial ists’ comm ittee<br />that organized management’s ght against the strike. Jimmy had now<br />taken meals with this man but had done nothing to make amends.<br />Jimmy remained “unreconciled.”<br />The next week, before a group of executives that now numbered<br />seventy- ve, Jimmy rose and spoke for the rst time. “You fellows<br />know me.” He nodded toward one businessman. “I picketed your<br /><br /><br />112 | JEFF SHARLET<br />plant.” He looked toward another. “I closed your factory for months.”<br />He pointed to a third: “I hated you.”<br />But with Abram’s help, Jimmy had discovered “ how absolutely<br />honest” these men he had hated were. They were humble. They were<br />sincere. In fact, Jimmy realized, if they could bring more busi ness-<br />men in on the Idea, “there would be no need for a labor union.” This,<br />understandably, had been a bit of a shock to Jimmy. He had gone to<br />his knees in his home, he told the men, and begged God’s forgiveness<br />“for the spirit I had been manifesting.” And now he was ready to ask<br />their forgiveness. He had been a thorn in capital’s esh, he said, but<br />he would prick no more.<br />Jimmy sat down. The room was silent. Then “the sturdy, rugged<br />capital ist who had been chairman of the employer’s committee in the<br />big strike,” Abram observed—this probably refers to the “Citizens<br />Emergency Committee,” headed by the aptly named John Prim8 —<br />stood at the head of the table and walked over to Jimmy without a<br />word. Worker looked up at boss. Boss glared down at worker. The<br />businessman let drop a heavy hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.<br />“Jimmy,” he said, “on this basis we go on together.”<br /><br /><br />In the years to come, Abram would tell polished versions of this<br />story hundreds of times, in dozens of countries, to CEOs and sena-<br />tors and dictators, a parable of “cooperation” between management<br />and labor, the threat to Christ and capital subdued, order restored.<br />That was where it began, he’d say: Jimmy the agitator confessing his<br />sins before a room full of businessmen, God’s chosen men. This was<br />“Unit Number One” of what Abram called his “new world order.”<br />Abram was a kind of artist, just discovering in 1935 that there<br />were other men and women with powers like his, feelings like<br />his—“American,” he would say, “terri ed,” we might translate—with<br />whom he could join forces. Together they would smooth the dream.<br />They claimed thei r religion was very old, “ rst century Christianity,”<br />but in their hearts they understood that it was a new faith, a new<br />politics. Its conservatism was not vestigial; what made it thril ling<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 113<br />was that the new religion made conservatism forceful again. It was<br />not just a veneer for capitalism, nor simply a vehicle for power. It was<br />a di erent way of wielding power. It shrugged o old inhibitions. It<br />sco ed at liberal restraints and ignored traditional conservative res-<br />ervations. It was Rotary Club dada, surrealism for businessmen from<br />Seattle. It was the Word made fresh for the industrial age, vital and<br />strong.<br />Just like that of Edwards. Just l ike that of Fi nney. But Finney had<br />been followed by Sunday, who’d made the Word muscular yet vul-<br />gar. In 1935, Abram breathed life into a faith for the elite, an Ameri-<br />can fundamentalism made up of both Edwards’s “heart” religion and<br />Finney’s permanent revival. He would write to his comrades with<br />exhilaration when he thought a “key man” was beginning to “catch”<br />the Idea. The religion Abram rebelled against was a set of ethics, a<br />rule book for women. He aspired instead to spread what he would<br />come to call a contagion, passed from key man to key man, the<br />avant-garde of American fundamental ism.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-14798656622074619452009-07-12T02:21:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:23:17.255-07:00I Awakenings - The Revival Machine<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Revival Machine<br /></span></div><br />The myth persists,” wrote the historian Timothy L. Smith<br /> several decades ago, “that revivalism is but a half- breed child of<br />the Protestant faith, born on the crude frontier, where Christianity<br />was taken captive by the wilderness.”1 Like all myths, it is almost<br />true. But the captive taken was wilderness itself, and the captor was<br />the American religion. Jonathan Edwards—and, later, Charles Gran-<br />dison Finney—did not so much tame the wilderness of the American<br />mind as tap its secret power. Nearly a hundred years after Edwards<br />awakened Northampton, Finney would lead a series of revivals across<br />the Northeast and Britai n that would win for his populist vision of<br />evangelicalism not the hundreds who were converted under Edwards,<br />but uncounted multitudes. In what was then the heart of Manhattan<br />he built the Broadway Tabernacle, the country’s rst megachurch. It<br />seated 2,50 0, and often close to twice that number crowded into the<br />sanctuary—a pillared theater in the round like a Roman stadium —<br />for Finney’s orchestrations of scripture and sentiment, moralism and<br />sensation. Crowds fell like wheat before his beautiful, terrifying,<br />consoling voice. Most receptive to his message were the new little big<br />men of the nation, the petit bourgeoisie, physicians, inventors, entre-<br />preneurs, self-made men and their wives, wealthier than the old Pu-<br />ritan aristocracy. “Under my preaching,” Finney boasted of just one<br />of his many revivals in the new city of Rochester, “ judges and lawyers<br />and educated men <br />were converted by the scores.”2<br />Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, extended the vote to men<br /><br /><br />74 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />without property. Charles Grandison Finney, whose early career<br />strangely m irrored Jackson’s presidency, extended the passionate<br />God of the frontier, the pious morality of hell re and certainty, to<br />the men and women who would lay the foundations of the Gilded<br />Age. Here we nd the origins of evangelicalism as we know it: the<br />marriage of new money and “new life” that would stoke the furnaces<br />of industrial empire. It was a di erent expression of democracy than<br />Jackson’s, but just as potent. And, overlooked by the successive gen-<br />erations of evangelicals and fundamentalists who study Finney’s re-<br />vivals to this day—Billy Graham insists that “no one can read [Finney]<br />without being challenged by his passion for <br />evangelism”3—we nd<br />also an intimacy, a love of secret feelings that Edwards would have<br />understood and that we can recognize in the blend of masculinity<br />and sentiment, muscle and tender self-regard, that su uses funda-<br />mentalism even now.<br /><br /><br />On the afternoon of October 7, 1821, after yet another church<br />service that left him bored, Charles Grandison Finney decided to<br />settle the question of God. “A splendid pagan of a man,” i n his grand-<br />son’s description, he was, at twenty-nine, six-two, thick-chested,<br />could wrestle any challenger to the ground.4 Women thought him<br />the most elegant dancer in Adams, a farming ham let on the rough<br />western edge of New York. His sandy hair was thin on top but given<br />to a rakish curl, and his violet eyes were so bright they leap out even<br />from black-and-white photographs, “ intense, xating, electri fyi ng,<br />madly prophetic eyes,” wrote the historian Richard Hofstadter, “the<br />most impressive eyes —except perhaps for John C. Calhoun’s—in<br />the portrait gallery of ni neteenth-century America.”5<br />Finney led the Presbyterian church choir, and he enjoyed discuss-<br />ing theology with his pastor, but until that October day in 1821, he’d<br />had little use for and less bel ief in the Lord. Long set in the pride of<br />his own intel lect, he was past the usual age of such inquiries. As a<br />you ng man he’d hoped to nd a way to Yale, but instead he became a<br />schoolteacher and now he was a lawyer, and many people believed<br /><br /><br />THE The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 75<br />that soon he’d be a politician, perhaps a senator one day. If that was<br />to come to pass, he decided, he’d better get his inner life in order.<br />That Sunday in October, he cleared his schedule for Monday and Tues-<br />day and resolved to decide by Wednesday whet her he was a man<br />of God.<br />The truth was that religion had been creeping up on him. As a<br />boy he had witnessed powerful Baptist preaching, the stomping,<br />shouting, Holy Ghost power kind, but as a man he had remained im-<br />mune to the revivals that swept the region so often that it would later<br />be called the “Burned Over District” for the i ntensity of its spiritual<br /> r e s . 6 Then, one day, he bought a Bible. For his law library, he said,<br />and everyone bel ieved him. Finney preferred it that way. He took to<br />shutting his o ce door, clogging the keyhole with a rag lest anyone<br />peep on him, and praying in whispers. When the Bible had been just<br />one more big book among the tomes of law in his library, he’d read it<br />openly. Now, it became a secret companion.<br />He had a reputation to uphold; his very name was in Adams the<br />standard of Logic and Reason. “If religion is true,” one man de-<br />manded of his wife, “why don’t you convert Finney? If you Christians<br />can convert Finney, I will believe in religion.”<br />But no one could convert Finney. “I had not much regard for the<br />opinions of others,” he’d confessed. As he sought God from Sunday<br />night through Monday and Tuesday, it seemed as if his heart grew<br />harder. “I could not shed a tear; I could not pray.” On Tuesday night,<br />terror struck him. He thought he would die. “I knew that if I did, I<br />should si nk down to hell.” He wanted to scream. He braced himself<br />in bed and waited for dawn.<br />As soon as light broke, he dressed and hurried to his o ce, to<br />return to the Bible that taunted him. The town was already awake.<br />He nodded and smiled at farmers and ladies, quickening his pace to<br />avoid unbearable conversation. And then, he froze. Stopped and<br />stood dead still in the middle of the dirt road that was the town’s<br />main street. Creaky wagon wheels rolled left and right, their drivers<br />cursing. Women may or may not have spoken to him. Good day, Mr.<br />Finney. Mr. Finney? Oh, dear. He doesn’t hear. Quite unlike him! Just how<br /><br /><br />76 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />long he stood still, he’d never be able to say. There was only one sen-<br />tence among his thoughts, but it seemed to come from elsewhere,<br />spoken in vibrating, terrifying tones that did not correspond to the<br />seconds and sounds of the material world.<br />Will. You. Accept. It. Now. Today?<br />He bolted. Walking fast, smiling at passersby so they wouldn’t<br />notice his distress, a cold, clammy feeling overtaking him. He aimed<br />himself for a piece of woods over a hill on the north side of the vil-<br />lage, but he charted an indirect path, because he did not want anyone<br />to know where he was goi ng. “I skulked along under the fence, til I<br />got so far out of sight that no one from the vill age could see me. I<br />then penetrated into the woods.” He found himself a closet of trees,<br />fallen timber crisscrossing to create a mossy fort open to the sky. He<br />crawled in on a damp bed of pine needles and re-red oak leaves and<br />knelt. There, he determ ined, he would Accept It Now Today, and if he<br />did not he would not return to the world. He waited for prayer. For<br />“relief.” But he could nd none. When he opened his mouth, he<br />heard only the rustle of leaves. He squeezed his eyes shut and groaned.<br />Somewhere close by, a twig snapped. Finney started, opened his<br />eyes, began to rise, blood ushing his cheeks. Had he been discov-<br />ered? Openmouthed like a sh opped down among the trees, the<br />knees of his lawyer’s suit brown with dirt like those of a farmer? Had<br />they seen his knobby knuckles knitted together like those of a school-<br />boy? Would they laugh? Would God?<br />Then Finney broke. He screamed. “What!” he bellowed. What!<br />His voice lowered and quickened and heaved on a sea of gulping air<br />and grief and shame. “Such- a-degraded- sinner- as-I-am, on my knees,<br />confessi ng my sins to the great and holy God, and ashamed to have<br />any human being, and a sinner like myself know it, and nd me on<br />my knees endeavoring to make my peace with my o ended God!”<br />He went on for hours, tears streaming, his hands and his faith<br />brown with the dirt of the forest oor, his knees dark with mud, his<br />body aching, “releasing” all his shame, all his pride. He had found his<br />enemy at last. It was his own mind. God, he’d say, gave him promises<br />and revealed to him truths too precious for words. “They did not<br /><br /><br />THE The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 77<br />seem so much to fall into my intellect as into my heart.” The m ind, he<br />realized, was nothing but a tool.<br />Finney rose and began wal king, stumbling like a drun ken man<br />back to town, his feet tangli ng, but his mind so quiet “it seemed as if<br />all nature listened.” He’d left before breakfast. By the time he returned,<br />his law partner, Benjamin Wright, had gone home, but, he’d later<br />say, Jesus Christ himself stood i n the o ce, “ face to face,” awaiting his<br />deposition. Into the darkness came then the Holy Spirit. “Like a wave<br />of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed it seemed to<br />come in waves, and waves of liquid love.” Finney roared out loud, his<br />shame dissolved in his fear and ecstasy. “I shall die if these waves con-<br />tinue to pass over me.” The waves kept rolling, and he dipped and<br />bobbed in the spirit, the crests and the troughs of the ocean soaking<br />one message i nto his bones, the idea-that-is-not- an-idea that he would<br />take as his text for what would become the greatest revival since the<br />days of Jonathan Edwards: before God, you are nothing.<br /><br /><br />Finney titled the rst postconversion chapter of his memoirs “I<br />Begin My Work With Immediate Success.” Not for him Jonathan<br />Edwards’s curiosity about the workings of the Holy Spirit he was so<br />certain owed through him like electric current. Finney’s was the<br />faith of the industrial age. Whereas Edwards wondered if rel igion<br />might, like light itself, be subject to natural laws, Finney hit a switch<br />and expected the power to ow. Likewise their political understand-<br />ing of evangelism: Edwards studied Locke and anguished over the<br />democratic contradictions of revival. Finney read the law books of<br />Blackstone and took his Bible un ltered and applied what he learned<br />with equal-opportunity fervor. By Fi nney’s reckoning, every citizen<br />had the right—the obligation—to be as zealous as the man he called<br />“President Edwards,” in honor of Edwards’s brief tenure as the head<br />of Princeton University.<br />The night after Finney returned from his forest grotto a changed<br />man, a member of the choir that old God-spurning Finney had led<br />came to see him. The chorister found Finney in the dark. The lawyer’s<br /><br /><br />78 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />shoulders were shaking. His breath was loud and heaving. “What ails<br />you?” the visitor asked. Finney wiped away his tears. “I am so happy<br />that I cannot live,” he answered.<br />But he did, into the dawn, at which point the Holy Spirit checked<br />in on him. “Will you doubt? Will you doubt?” a voice demanded.<br />Finney the lawyer knew the answer to that one. Same as a verdict,<br />guilty or not guilty, black or white. “No! I will not doubt; I cannot<br />doubt.” Satis ed with Finney’s reply, the Spirit “then cleared the sub-<br />ject up” in Finney’s mind, the subject being the question of his con-<br />version and whether he was saved. He was.<br />If such instant grace is a commonplace of American fundamental-<br />ism today, it was an oddity to be doubted in Finney’s time. Saul had<br />become Paul in a ash some eighteen hundred years previous, and<br />there had been other miracles since, but not every country lawyer<br />could call the voices in his head God’s and be believed. Not until then,<br />anyway; American Christendom was changing fast. Finney’s epiphany<br />contained in it the summation of two developing ideas of the times,<br />ideas that would vastly expand Christ’s jurisdiction over America in<br />the minds of believers: the radical notion that to perceive the divine is<br />to accept divine authority, without question; and the mechanistic un-<br />derstanding of faith as instantaneous for all who want it. Sign here,<br />and you’re a soldier in the army of God, ready for battle.<br />Finney sallied forth to his law o ce clad in his new spiritual armor<br />and promptly began the war. Benjamin Wright passed by, and Finney<br />threw o some remark. He did not pay enough attention to remember<br />what it was, but such was the “e cacy” of his new religion that the re-<br />mark he made pierced Wright “like a sword.” Next came a client, ready<br />to go to court on a civil matter. Finney shook his head. He could not<br />even o er an apology. He was, he said, an “enlisted” man now. He quit<br />his life’s love, lawyering, on the spot and set about the cause of convict-<br />ing souls. His method? Wander, argue, destroy. He was, if not the most<br />educated man in the countryside, probably the brightest between Lake<br />Erie and the Atlantic. Moreover he was a physical giant by the stan-<br />dards of the day, and his voice was deep, and there were those radiant<br />eyes. Nobody could stand rm before his onslaught.<br /><br /><br />THE The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 79<br />The rst to fall was a you ng man in a shoemaker’s shop, a icted<br />by modern ide as, universalism, the awkward faith of those<br />not-quite- secular citizens who styled themselves sophisticated. “The<br />you ng man saw in a moment that I had demolished his argument” and<br />immediately ed. To safety? To reprieve from insistent evangelists?<br />Impossible. Finney had shown him by force of logic the absolute cer-<br />tainty of God’s total power. All that remained was for the man to<br />conform his will. That was his only real choice: conform or be<br />dam ned. Finney watched, pleased, as the broken universalist ran to<br />the edge of town, hopped a fence, and made for the forest grotto.<br />God would meet him in among the dark trees and x his soul.<br />The grotto never failed. Finney’s faith was, in comparison to that<br />of Edwards, almost mechanical; it was industrial. In the weeks that fol-<br />lowed, Finney sent a pro cession of townspeople tromping into the<br />woods, there to repeat the form of his own intimate encounter. T he<br />story of his forest salvation was t he secret weapon of his crusade,<br />the mythic ammunition behind his “arguments” for the undeniable au-<br />thority of God, more persuasive in his raw country town than the<br />principles of Blackstone, spiritualized. Or rather, the two narratives<br />worked in tandem, o ering the citizens of pastoral Adams, New<br />York—adrift in the great in- between of America, no longer wilderness<br />and not yet settled—both savagery and civilization, a weeping, scream-<br />ing, singing forest god and a straightforward, law-based, citizen-Christ<br />for the democratizing nation.<br />Finney’s law partner, Wright, a respectable man with connec-<br />tions to the coming political powers of the state, thought he could<br />accept the latter without the former. Swept up in the townwide re-<br />vival that followed in the wake of Finney’s conversion, Wright deter-<br />mined to settle his accounts with the new Jesus. But “ he thought that<br />he had a parlor to pray in,” and he would not go to the forest li ke<br />Finney’s other soldiers. Wright prayed in his parlor for days and<br />nights. Jesus would not answer. He prayed out loud into the early<br />morning. Jesus would not answer. Because Jesus had chosen a place<br />shadowed by trees for their meeting. I’m not proud! Wright wept, but he<br />could not receive the wave of Jesus-love of which Finney had spoke n,<br /><br /><br />80 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />the power without which he was certain he would die. He took from<br />his pocket a small knife, weighed it in his hand, imagined its bite.<br />Relief. He was not proud; he would prove it with blood.<br />But he was proud, and he threw the knife away, “as far as he could,”<br />said Finney, because Lawyer Wright knew he was too petty to resist<br />temptation. For weeks he struggled. One night he collapsed in the<br />muddy street, kneeling in puddles. See? I am not proud! But he was.<br />He would not accept the Christ waiting for him among the trees.<br />“One afternoon I was sitti ng in our o ce,” recalled Finney, when<br />the shoemaker’s universalist, now a “Christian,” burst into the room.<br />“Esquire Wright is converted!” he shouted. He had been up in the<br />woods himself, there to pray, when he heard from a neighbori ng val-<br />ley the echoes of shouting. He had climbed a hill for a view and spot-<br />ted Wright in the distance. Wright was a fat man, heavy, not athletic<br />like Finney, but there he was in the wild, marching and shouting.<br />Like a soldier on watch, pivoti ng and turning, pivoti ng and turning,<br />to and fro. He’d stop, wi nd back his arms like wings and clap “with<br />his full strength and shout ‘I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!’ ”<br />As the man told the story, Finney heard shouting, looked up, and<br />saw Lawyer Wright marching down the hill. The big man inter-<br />cepted old Father Tucker on the edge of town and lifted him o the<br />ground and squeezed him, dropped him, marched. Stopped, clapped,<br />barked, “I’ve got it!” Wright fell to his knees before Finney and told<br />him that he had been saved. He’d had a choice: suicide or the trees.<br /><br /><br />Jonathan Edwards had been a scientist of religion, maybe a mad<br />one. Finney—nothing if not sane, his language plain, “colloquial and<br />Saxon”—became its promoter, its mass distributor, a pious variation<br />on his better-remembered contemporary, Phineas Taylor Barnum.<br />He favored raw emotion as his medium but practiced religion like a<br />country lawyer, an American exhorter. “ I came right forth from a<br />law o ce to the pulpit, and talked to the people as I would have<br />talked to the jury.” Old churchmen shivered at his vulgar words. “Of<br />course,” he said of that crowd, “to them I was a speckled bird.”<br /><br /><br />THE The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 81<br />Theologians of that time and historians of ours parse Finney’s<br />words to discover whether he broke with Edwards or continued his<br />tradition. They take a typical Fi nney proclamation such as this—<br />“Knowing your duty, you have but one thi ng to do, PERFORM<br />IT”—and consider it in light of debates over Calvinism and, if they’re<br />bold, the politics of Andrew Jackson. But they give little credence to<br />the words Fi nney felt must be capitalized. PERFORM IT. Finney’s was<br />a faith of action, a fact com monly noted. He was an abolitionist, a<br />temperance man. Less considered is the emphasis of the action that<br />bridged the theological isms and the politics of the day: performance.<br />The subtle delights and terrors of spectacle that link Finney’s revivals<br />to those of our present megachurch nation.7<br />For Edwards, revival had been a strange and wonderful phenome-<br />non, a displacement of ordinary air by the immaterial body of the Holy<br />Ghost. But it was delicate, revival, neither a force to be directed nor<br />one that would abide exploitation. Its politics were implicit. For Finney,<br />a self-taught preacher declaring a frontier Christ for the industrial age,<br />revival was a machine made up of “new measures”: “powerful preach-<br />ing,” a well-timed hymn, the “protracted meeting”—movements of<br />the Spirit scheduled on a daily basis for weeks at a time. Its politics<br />were as plain as the public confessions of sinners called to grease the<br />gears of Finney’s cleverest innovation, the anxious bench, the titillation<br />of which P. T. Barnum would never rival.8<br />Finney was recently married when he conceived of the anxious<br />bench, but not much drawn to his wife. He left her alone for most of<br />the rst six months of their marriage while he wandered from church<br />to meeting house to schoolhouse to parlor in the little towns of west-<br />ern New York, preaching wherever he could nd a pulpit or a room<br />ful l of people. His reputation was growi ng, as the tal l young man<br />who spoke hell re, who called sinners blis tered and skinned and broken<br />down. And what’s more, called them by name. Not for Finney ab-<br />stractions of theology and tics of old English that distanced the man<br />in the pulpit from the men and women—mostly women—who lled<br />the pews. Finney said “you.” And he stared at you. And if he found<br />out your name, he’d call you a sinner. It was thrilli ng.<br /><br /><br />82 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />One warm spring day, Finney walked three miles through a pine<br />forest to a church in the town of Rutland. The rst to arrive, he took<br />a seat in the pews. He carried no sermon. A crowd began to gather,<br />but nobody recognized him. In walked a woman, slender and lovely,<br />“decidedly” so, graceful, wearing a bonnet adorned with plumes. “She<br />came as it were sailing around, and up the broad aisle toward where I<br />sat, mincing as she came.” She sat right behind him. He could feel her<br />close to him. He shifted his hips, threw an elbow over the back of his<br />chair. Watched her watching him. Two beautiful creatures, a delight<br />to behold. His violet eyes consumed her, “from her feet up to her bon-<br />net and then down again. He was not secret in his glances.<br />She blushed. Hello, stranger.<br />His lips were thick and wide, set in a strange, calm smile, brown<br />like his skin from the sun. But he did not look like a farmer. There<br />were those Finney eyes, giant and glowing. When he opened his<br />mouth, his voice was low, not tender.<br />“Don’t you believe that God thinks you look pretty? ”<br />What?<br />“Don’t you think all the people will think you look so very nice? ”<br />The blood must have drained from her cheeks.<br />His voice dropped lower. “ Did you come here to divide the wor-<br />ship of God’s house?”<br />This, Finney noted, made the pretty, proud thi ng “writhe.”<br />“I followed her up in a voice so low that nobody else heard me,<br />but I made her hear me distinctly.”<br />Vanity, “insu erable vanity.”<br />The woman was trembling, “her plumes were all in a shake.” At<br />last, Finney was ready to preach. He ascended to the pulpit and re-<br />vealed himself as the man the congregation had been waiting for. The<br />woman must have gasped; she began to shake.<br />He preached to a full house that followed him deep i nto the lit-<br />eral gospel. They saw what he had done to the woman and wanted<br />him to slay them also, to convict them, to crush them. Such words<br />were part of his new measures. Then—“I did what I do not know I<br />had ever done before.” He called on those who would be saved to rise<br /><br /><br />THE The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 83<br />from their seats and come to the front of the hall, there to stand ex-<br />posed in their sin. Of course the woman rose, the rst to respond.<br />She fell out into the aisle. “Shrieked,” remembered Finney.<br />Her squeal excited the crowd. They too surged forward, moan-<br />ing and stumbli ng and screaming, eager to feel, as the shrieking<br />woman had, the intensity of conversion. The machine was working,<br />electri ed by the anxious bench, Finney’s most thrilling invention.<br /><br /><br />“T h e Spirituality of Christians does not lie in secret Whispers, or<br />audible Voices,” wrote an eighteenth-century New England divine who<br />was rm ly opposed to revivalism—its God-chosen men, its shouters<br />and fainters and <br />falling-down people.9 True religion, he believed, did<br />not depend on special revelations for the self- anointed nor the noisi-<br />ness of a crowd shaking with Holy Ghost electricity.<br />Perhaps not. But power requires both, whispers and voices, the<br />intimacy of the grove and the public outcry of the anxious bench.<br />Finney’s revival machine made use of both, and more important,<br />made them interchangeable: private experience became public rel i-<br />gion’s badge of authenticity, and public religion’s pulsing current<br />gave to Finney’s inner piety the intensity of a collective, a movement,<br />a multitude. “The church,” Finney would declare of the community<br />of believers years after he’d left the upstate wilds, “was designed to<br />make aggressive movements in every direction.” Finney meant this<br />politically—believers were “bound to exert their i n uence to secure<br />a legislation that is in accordance with the law of God”—but also as a<br />matter of performance.10 “The church” was not bricks and mortar,<br />nor even simply the sum of Bible- Christians, Finney’s term for follow-<br />ers of his protofundamentalism. The church, to Finney, was the indi-<br />vidual’s encounter with Jesus in the wilderness, the mass contagion<br />of the anxious bench; and it was the chemical reaction that occurred<br />when the certai nty of the former combined with the jolt of the latter<br />to force the issue of Finney’s American Christ onto the nation.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-35638115099422024562009-07-12T02:14:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:18:43.619-07:00Awakenings - Experimental Religion<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Experimental Religion<br /></span></div><br />Little Stevie was right: As soon as I left Ivanwald, I became It. <br />That is, I’ve been chasing the story I rst encountered there ever<br />since, trying to t the religious practice I found in that Arlington<br />cul-de- sac onto a spectrum of belief where it seems to have no place.<br />It was at once as ordinary as a game of golf and stranger than any-<br />thing I’d seen in years of reporting from the margins of faith. Maybe<br />it was nothing but country club fundamentalism, worth little more<br />attention than Rotary or the Freemasons. But experienced from<br />within, the Fam ily was as perfectly absurd and—granted its own<br />logic—as perfectly rational as the Catholic dirt eaters of Chimayo,<br />New Mexico, who consider the dusty soil in one small spot in the<br />mountains capable of curing any ailment; or Shinji Shumeikai, an inter-<br />national sect of religious aesthetes who believe that by bui lding mod-<br />ernist architectural masterpieces in remote places they’re restoring<br />the planet’s balance, literally. But such convictions are self-contained,<br />interested mostly in internal purity. Indeed, the more eccentric the<br />religion, the more sharply its followers tend to de ne themselves<br />against the rest of society.<br />And yet, despite the Family’s theological oddities—its concen-<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 57<br />tric rings of secrecy, its fascination with megalomaniacs from Mao to<br />Hitler, its conviction that being one of God’s chosen provides divi ne<br />diplomatic im munity—it is anythi ng but separate from the world. It<br />so neatly harmonizes with the political shape of worldly things, in<br />fact, that it’s nearly indistinguishable from secular conceptions of<br />social order. It’s “ invisible” not because it’s hiding, but because it’s<br />not. Dism issed as “civil religion” by observers who know it only by<br />the National Prayer Breakfast’s annual broadcast on C-Span, the<br />Family’s long-term project of a worldwide government under God is<br />more ambitious than Al Qaeda’s dream of a Sunni empire. Had I not<br />stumbled into its heart, I would never have seen it. Since I had, I be-<br />gan to ask basic questions. Was the Family’s vision simply a pious<br />veneer on business as usual? Do its networks actually in uence the<br />world the rest of us live in? Is it an aberration in American religion,<br />or the result of a long evolution?<br />This last is a very di erent question from the one usually asked<br />about radical rel igion: “What do the believers want?” An understand-<br />able concern, but one that obscures the true shape of fundamental-<br />ism. Those of us not engaged in “spiritual war” attempt to contain<br />fundamentalism by reducing its ambitions to a program, an agenda:<br />the abolition of abortion, homosexuality, or maybe sex in general.<br />If the fundamentalists ever won, we tell ourselves, we would all be<br />forced to live like Puritans, or worse—the Tal iban. Fundamental-<br />ism, we conclude, is therefore un-American and doomed to wither<br />on our democratic soil.<br />But faith, radical or tepid, gentle or authoritarian, is always more<br />complicated and enduring than a caricature. The Family has grown<br />and taken root directly at the center of American democracy, inter-<br />twining with the world as it is. “Business as usual” is the Family’s<br />business. The elite fundamentalism of the Family doesn’t lead us<br />back to Plymouth Rock, much less to the Taliban’s Kabul. The Fami-<br />ly’s faith is not that of a walled-o community but of an empire; not<br />one to come but one that already stretches around the globe, the soft<br />empire of American dollars and, more subtly, American gods. If we<br />want to understand this fundamentalism, we must ask not what it<br /><br /><br />58 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />wants to do but what it has done: how it has run parallel to and at<br />times owed into the main c urrents of history. We must solve the<br />equation presented by Doug Coe: Jesus plus nothing. J + 0 = X. To<br />solve for X, the role of elite fundamentalism, we’ll need to consider<br />our variables: American Jesuses, plural, and nothing. Nothing, in this<br />equation, stands for a great deal. All that fundamentalism has aban-<br />doned, the story it does not tell: the history of where it came from<br />and how it came to live so close to the center of American power.<br /><br /><br />The plainest expression of the relationship between the theology<br />of Jesus plus nothing and the mundane world of secular democracy<br />may be found in the words of George W. Bush. Bush is not a member<br />of the Family, although his faith was shaped in a Bible study in Mid-<br />land, Texas, organized by a group the Family started in the late<br />1970s for the very purpose of bri nging in uential men into personal<br />relationships with each other and with a particular concept of Jesus.<br />In 1989, Doug Coe, addressing a private gathering of evangelical<br />leaders in Colorado Springs, assured them that Bush Senior—a secu-<br />lar sort whom they’d backed with reservations —was a Family rela-<br />tion, if perhaps a distant one. Moreover, he’d surrounded himself<br />with godly men such as James Baker and Jack Kemp and, yes, even<br />Dan Quayle, all associates of the Fam ily. Most promising of all, said<br />Coe, was Bush Junior, a good i n uence on his father.1 Twelve yea rs<br />later the younger Bush ran for president. At a 1999 debate in Des<br />Moines, Iowa, the moderator asked the then-candidate to identify his<br />favorite philos opher. His opponents had already named John Locke<br />and Thomas Je erson, but Bush said Jesus, because Jesus had changed<br />his heart. A murmur of surprise rippled through the crowd. The<br />moderator asked Bush to say more, implicit in his question the prob-<br />lem of how heart reconciles with the traditional province of philoso-<br />phy, mind. Bush answered as if the audience was not in the room.<br />“Well, if they don’t know, it’s going to be hard to explain.”<br />Pundits sco ed, but Bush’s response proved brilliant, a are in the<br />night for fundamentalist America—the equivalent of Ronald Reagan’s<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 59<br />irty 1980 remark to a convention of the National Religious Broadcast-<br />ers, “You can’t endorse me, but I can endorse you.” And Bush’s words<br />meant more than those of Reagan, who seemed merely to promise politi-<br />cal favors. Bush avowed a strength of belief that must be felt to be fully<br />understood, a faith outside the tidy terminology of liberal religion. You<br />must be in the Word to get this powerful feeling. Well, if they don’t know,<br />it’s going to be hard to explain. It’s beyond rational de nitions. It’s an idea<br />that denies ideas, a xed intellectual position that rejects the primacy of<br />intellect and the signi cance of “positions.” Jesus plus nothing.<br />As a statement of philosophy, Bush’s rst answer—because He<br />changed my heart—insists on timelessness (Jesus in the present tense),<br />spacelessness (Jesus in Texas, in Des Moines, in Bush’s body), and<br />sel essness, though this last not in the sense of a modesty of spirit that<br />might lead one to help others, but rather in that of an inward gaze<br />that is simultaneously narcissistic and bl ind to the particulars of the<br />self it sees there, able only to perceive a heart remade by God. There’s a<br />word for this wide-eyed stare: piety. We are all familiar with the g-<br />ures of the pious church lady and the sanctimonious school marm, and<br />yet such characters fail to embody the meaning of piety as it has existed<br />for hundreds of years in Christianity and took root in America, rst<br />through the Puritans and then, in the fashion in which it l ives on to-<br />day, in the 1730s, in Northampton, Massachusetts, summoned from<br />the hearts of men, women, and children by the words of Jonathan<br />Edwards, the author of the Great Awakening.<br />Edwards’s legacy lies not in the Republic built on the Enlighten-<br />ment ideas of Locke and Je ersonian skepticism, but in the fact that<br />more than two centuries later, that nation remains one of the most re-<br />ligious on Earth, much of it devoted to a vision of Christendom that<br />originated with him. That this v ision was at its inception theocratic is<br />barely worth mentioning; among the elites of Edwards’s day, theocracy<br />was simply the “Calvinist scheme” which their forebears had come to<br />the New World to pursue. That the United States is, as much as ever, a<br />Christian nation, is a more controversial claim. “Historians of the<br />United States,” notes George Marsden, Edwards’s most perceptive bi-<br />ographer, “ have been prone to give much more attention to Benjamin<br /><br /><br />60 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Franklin than to Edwards as a progenitor of modern America.” That<br />oversight explains why most of American history cannot account for<br />the country’s ongoing rel igious fervor. Although American fundamen-<br />talism has lately attempted to claim Franklin as a forebear—a collec-<br />tion titled American Destiny: God’s Role in America trumpets three<br />apparently pious utterances of Franklin’s out of context and without<br />mentioning his equal enthusiasm for the sensual life and a Christless<br />deism—the legacy of Franklin’s ideas remains staunchly secular. But<br />the nation does not. Christ thrives in America not so much as an idea or<br />a deity as a mood: a feeling, a conviction, a sentimental commitment to<br />manifest destiny on a personal level, with national implications.<br />When I left Ivanwald, one of the se nior men, a former chief coun-<br />sel to Republican senator Don Nickles, told me I was making a terrible<br />mistake. “You may not be able to come back,” he said. He left it un-<br />clear whether that would be my choice or the Family’s, but I think I<br />know now what he meant. If I left, prematurely in his eyes, I would<br />literally no longer be within the mood. T he ideas I’d encountered<br />there might travel with me (as they have, in a manner the Family<br />didn’t anticipate), but the mood could not. After I left, I went to the<br />Billy Graham Center Archives at Wheaton College, where the Fam-<br />ily had deposited more than 600 boxes of documents, and I sifted<br />through these seventy years of its history in search of explicit theol-<br />ogy, an explanation for what I’d encountered. There were snatches of<br />argument, passages of theory, references and allusions which I have<br />since spent several years pursuing. But most of all there was the mood.<br />Oftentimes, in letters to one another, Family men wrote of it as a<br />“spirit” that spread like a disease, a “contagion,” they called it. Men<br />would come from around the world to spend time with Doug Coe, or<br />his pre deces sor, Abraham Vereide, to “catch the spirit of the work.”<br />Sometimes they’d talk politics; sometimes they’d make business deals.<br />But more often they simply basked together in the glory of “the work.”<br />One did not “learn” anythi ng; one found it in one’s own heart.<br />There is little taste for history among Family members, and the dis-<br />array of the 600 boxes it shipped o to the Billy Graham Center sug-<br />gests that nobody has ever been interested in looking backward. Not to<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 61<br />1935, when the Family began as a businessmen’s antilabor alliance in<br />Seattle, and certainly not farther back, to the roots of “the work.” Those<br />origins lie not in the New Testament, which is ultimately little more<br />than a fabric from which the Family constructs contemporary realities,<br />but in the dream of a Christian nation, “awakened,” as it was by Jonathan<br />Edwards in 1735, by a piety infused with enthusiasm and—an element<br />overlooked by most historians of the Great Awakening—an adoration of<br />power, divine and worldly, the intangible foundation of American em-<br />pire. The love of power—world-changing power, messianic power—is<br />not an American invention; but our civil religion, the belief that such a<br />love can coexist peacefully with both God and democracy, is.<br />Biographers of Edwards note the unlikely marriage within his<br />thought of the rigors of John Calvin—who argued that God cares so<br />little for good deeds or bad that he saves whom he will and damns the<br />rest of us—with the revelations of the Enlightenment, Locke’s political<br />ideas and the scienti c discoveries of Isaac Newton. But Edwards was<br />no mere synthesizer. His preaching and writing helped spark a re of<br />religiosity that swept the colonies and leaped back across the ocean to<br />the heart of the British Empire. Edwards rationalized religion; set it on<br />a course of wild re evangelism; and built a web of ideas in which the<br />radicalism of the American Revolution would be entangled with a spiri-<br />tual authoritarianism, an idea of God that did not so much emphasize<br />might rather than love as equate the two. Edwards’s Jesus was personal,<br />intimate, dedicated, like the Fam ily, to the slow breaking of souls.<br /><br /><br />Of all insects, no one is more wonderful than the spider, especially with<br />respect to their sagacity and admirable way of working.<br /><br /><br /><br />—JONATHA N EDWAR DS, “OF INSECTS,” IN HIS PRIVATE JOUR NA L, 17162<br /><br />Edwards’s genius was to describe his God not through declaration<br />but through observation. He wrote like a naturalist, of owers and<br />insects and cloud formations, all of creation bursting with revelation.<br />“And scarce any thing,” he confessed, “among all the works of nature,<br /><br /><br />62 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />was so sweet to me as thunder and lightni ng.” Edwards “felt God” at<br />the rst appearance of a thunderstorm: “I would x myself in order<br />to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic<br />and awful voice of God’s thunders.”<br />He was tall and slender, his face long and his features delicate, his<br />skin pale. He spoke i n a soft, lovely voice, and he liked to sing aloud<br />during storms, his lyrics the raw form of the prose he would later<br />com mit to writing. He began every day at four, because Christ rose<br />early, too, just three days after his cruci xion. Then he prayed, se-<br />cret prayers. Later, his wife, Sarah, would joi n him in his study, and<br />they would pray together in that light that rises before the sun, the<br />same blue light one nds at the heart of a ame.<br />He ate very little. He often studied for a dozen hours or more,<br />time passed “not in per usi ng or tr easur ing up the thoughts of others,”<br />wrote his nephew, but in wrestling with data from his own congre-<br />gation, tested agai nst ideas transm itted directly from God. “New<br />Light,” the believers at the time called the religion of Jonathan Ed-<br />wards. As a young man, he studied the Opticks of Newton, wrote pa-<br />pers about rainbows and twi nkl ing stars, and took delight i n science’s<br />discovery that the color of things in this world is not inherent but<br />merely a matter of perception. He loved to look at owers; he thought<br />often of how they would soon die. Fruit trees proved yet more re-<br />vealing. “That of so vast and innumerable a multitude of blossoms<br />that appear on a tree, so few come to ripe fruit.” So was it, he con-<br />cluded, with “the mass of mankind.”<br />He wrote of “true religion” as not of outward forms but of in-<br />ward emotion. He called this qual ity a ection and rated it more highly<br />than the thoughts and deeds of great men. He wrote about people<br />with whom powerful men had never concerned themselves.<br />One such was a woman named Abigail Hutchinson, whose last<br />days Edwards presented as a case study of conversion in the long es-<br />say that rst brought him trans-Atlantic fame. Edwards had the good<br />fortune to publish A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the<br />Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in 1736, just as developments in the<br />technology and economics of publishing were giving rise to that<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 63<br />modern genre known as “current events.” Lengthy works m ight be<br />made widely available so quickly that narratives that had once been<br />“ history” now became part of an ongoing conversation. He hoped<br />that his careful case study of revival, played out in the microcosm of<br />one sick young woman’s ravaged body, would forge out of religion a<br />new natural science. He had experimented on himself toward this<br />end for years, recording day by day, sometimes hour by hour, the<br />most trivial workings of God and Satan within his own mind and<br />body. He monitored what he ate and how it a ected his prayers,<br />noted how many hours he slept and whether fatigue served as a good<br />tool with which to break his wil l. But his experiments, before 1735,<br />remained unreplicated, unveri ed. The Awakening of Abigail Hutchin-<br />son a orded him a guinea pig on whom to test the e cacy of devo-<br />tion, the science of mi nd, the subjugation of heart to power.<br /><br /><br />Abigail Hutchinson was a sickly, unmarried young woman who<br />worked in a shop. She lived with her parents, people known for intel-<br />ligence and sobriety, who were neither wealthy nor very poor. Their<br />house was smoky, dark, and cold. They measured time by the sun<br />and the sound of churchbells.<br />Before her conversion, Abigail was “still, quiet, reserved.” She<br />was gentle. There was, Edwards observed—with approval—nothing<br />fanciful about her. She was very thin.<br />The spark that lit the spiritual re which was to consume her<br />came not from scripture nor from Edwards’s pulpit but from the<br />news of another woman’s conversion, a young and popular and no<br />doubt pretty girl, “one of the greatest company-keepers in the whole<br />town,” Edwards described her, granted a “new heart” by God, “truly<br />broken and sancti ed.” The formerly loose woman’s popularity grew<br />as the men who once had courted her gathered round to hear the<br />sweet young thing testify. One Monday in the spring of 1735, as the<br />ice on the Connecticut River crackled and boomed and melted back<br />into cold black water, Abigail’s brother, a converted man, decided to<br />speak with Abigail about “the necessity of being in good earnest in<br /><br /><br />64 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />seeking regenerating grace.” Abigail fumed. Why did she need to be<br />told the necessity of being in “good earnest,” a quality now attributed<br />to a woman who went walking with men in the dark? Abigail was in<br />good earnest. Why did she not experience the grace—the joy—now<br />said to be visited upon a harlot?<br />Abigail decided to search for the answer in scripture, starting<br />from page one. She read about Eve, who took the devil’s fruit in her<br />mouth; Ham, who looked at his naked father and laughed; Lot’s<br />daughters, who raped their father. God ran javel ins through those<br />whose love was wrong, incinerated those whose gifts were not wor-<br />thy, broke infants beneath the hooves of horses ridden by in dels. No<br />one was spared. After three days of reading, Abigail was too terri ed to<br />continue. Before, she had listened to the Reverend Edwards’s sermons—<br />nearly all variations on a theme, damnation, delivered in tones, Har-<br />riet Beecher Stowe would later imagine, “calm and tender”—but she<br />had not heard. Now she saw: she was wicked, born wicked right from<br />the start, cursed as Eve. She had murmured against God. “Her very<br /> esh,” Edwards recorded, “trembled for fear.”<br />She shuddered when she recalled the doctors she’d consulted.<br />Why had she believed her body deserved anything more than what<br />God had given?<br />What had God given?<br />Hunger. A craving for food. At the same time an inability to con-<br />sume. A slow strangling. The war of esh, of belly, of the throat that<br />closes, of the tongue that feels food’s texture, sweet and savory. Suf-<br />fering was the gift of the divine.<br />The next day she skipped ahead to Jesus, the New Testament, “to<br />see if she could not nd some relief there for her distressed soul.” By<br />Saturday, she could no longer read. “Her eyes were so dim,” observed<br />Edwards, “that she could not know the letters.” She had been pious<br />all her life, but now she knew that her devotions had availed her of<br />nothing in Christ’s eyes. She went to her good older brother. The<br />Bible had become like a weapon turned against her, a knife held to<br />her throat. It had revealed her to herself as lthy, de led by sin; she<br />was nothing, deserved nothing.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 65<br />The next morning, Sabbath-day, she was too sick to get out of<br />bed. But she needed to hear the Reverend Edwards. No, her family<br />said, and restrained her; so he came to her. Around thirteen hundred<br />people l ived in Northampton then, and no man was better known.<br />His grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, had built the congregation to<br />which he ministered, and, in many ways, had built the town. Its resi-<br />dents called him “the pope of the Connecticut Valley.” Edwards in-<br />herited the mantle, if not the full authority. Whereas Stoddard had<br />memorized his sermons the better to perform them, Edwards gripped<br />the pulpit and read softly, his pale face proof to his congregation of<br />his sincerity. At times, they felt they could almost see through him.<br />Before the Awakening, he had wasted no time on chatter and had<br />not often visited his ock in their homes. But in 1735, as revival<br />burned through the town, he began making rounds, taking notes,<br />aski ng questions, and shy Abigail became an object of great fascina-<br />tion to him. He visited her i n her home, she visited him in his. Some-<br />thing great was happeni ng in the valley; the fear of God had never<br />been more palpable. Travelers spent a night and left transformed,<br />carryi ng with them the spores of revival; stories would return to<br />Northampton of spiritual res lit across New England. In Boston,<br />they called it hysteria; Edwards believed that Northampton’s far re-<br />move secured it from dangerous ideas. To the west of the mountain<br />lay wilderness. To the east, church steeples scraped the underbelly<br />of clouds like thorns. Before Edwards’s ascension to the pulpit,<br />Northampton had reveled in its frontier freedom. It was a tobacco<br />town, the giant green leaves aged until brown and hung like bodies in<br />barns the sides of which opened l ike gills. Ale was more com monly<br />drunk than water.<br />And then, revival—compared to its fervor, drunkenness must<br />have seemed dull. God was wilder and more terrifying than the<br />woodlands to the west, and also gentler, like late day winter sun<br />turni ng the snow elds golden.<br />Edwards exalted. In revival, the ecstasy of the thunderstorm was<br />wed at last to the theology he had crafted in his years of studying<br />scripture, science, and the work of spiders. Come in, come in, he’d<br /><br /><br />66 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />say to the young men and women who knocked on his door. Men<br />would scream and weep on his knee; women’s faces would ush,<br />and they’d lay down before him. Such enthusiasm thrilled him, but<br />it also frightened him. He knew about the tricks of the mind and the<br />lies of the heart. Few said as much, but everyone knew: this could<br />be Satan.<br />Cotton Mather, a rival of Edwards’s grandfather, would have<br />frowned and barred his door to the young revivalists. Edwards the<br />pastor surely considered doing the same. But Edwards the scientist<br />consoled, encouraged, and most of all, recorded. Page after page of<br />data: “Some have had such a sense of the dis pleasure of God, and the<br />great danger they were in of damnation, that they could not sleep at<br />nights,” he wrote, “and many have said that when they have laid<br />down, the thoughts of sleeping in such a condition have been fright-<br />ful to them; they have scarcely been free from terror while asleep,<br />and they have awakened with fear. . . .”<br />Such was Abigail. A sweet soul who had never before given of-<br />fense to anyone, she had grown violent of spi rit in her despair. Ed-<br />wards sympathized with her anguish. As a younger man he, too, had<br />often wondered if he could anticipate heaven, his fear greatest when<br />he felt closest, could almost smell the milk and honey. He likened<br />souls such as his and Abigail’s, those that paused on the cusp of salva-<br />tion, to “trees in winter, like seed in the spring suppressed under a<br />hard clod of earth.”<br />This was how she blossomed: After three days of scripture read-<br />ing and three days of terror, she awoke on a Monday morning before<br />dawn. Her mind felt like a windless pond, clear and at and still, re-<br />ecting the heavens. And then words lled her, language owing in<br />like water. “The words of the Lord are pure words, health to the<br />soul, and marrow to the bones.” And: “ It is a pleasant thing for the<br />eyes to behold the sun.” A light so bright . . .<br />Abigail exclaimed to her good older brother, I have seen! As she<br />had su ered in terror for three days, so “she had a repetition of the<br />same discoveries of Christ three mornings together.” Each time be-<br />fore dawn. Each dark morning, her frail body cold beneath layers of<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 67<br />quilts, the sky blue- black in the window, her ski n sallow and wed too<br />closely to the bone, the light came—“brighter and brighter.”<br />Her cheeks, no doubt pale like Edwards’s, would have reddened,<br />her eyes, huge in her emaciated skull, opened wide and shone like<br />dark lanterns. She bloomed. She became a visible saint of the Lord.<br />She asked her brother to help her to the homes of unconverted neigh-<br />bors, that they might, she said, “see and know more of God.” He was<br />shining in her glassy eyes. She wanted to go right away! House by<br />house! Now! Now! She wanted to be a warning.<br />Death became her obsession; Edwards did not discourage her.<br />Together they spoke of her body, its submission to the divine. Her<br />sister tried to feed her. She could swallow nothing. I have been “swal-<br />lowed by God,” she told her minister. He must have shivered; he had<br />often thought of salvation in those very words.<br />Did Edwards lust for Abigail? He was not an unsensual man. He<br />was a writer of love poems for his wife, Sarah, said to be the most<br />beautiful woman along the Connec ticut River, and father of ten<br />children. He’d confessed to running elaborate mathematical prob-<br />lems through his mi nd to resist temptation. And yet despite the de-<br />vices with which he meant to defend his purity, the thought of Abigail<br />penetrated his mind. “Once, when she came to me,” he wrote, “she<br />was like a little child, and expressed a great desire to be instructed,<br />telling me that she longed very often to come to me for i nstruction,<br />and wanted to live at my house, that I might tell her what was her<br />duty.”<br />Did Abigail long for more than the pastoral care? She was not so<br />ambitionless as she had once seemed. She wanted, most of all, to be<br />seen, and the more she spoke of dying, rapturously, the more he saw<br />her; indeed, seemed to stare at her, even wrote about her. “I am will-<br />ing to live, and quite willing to die,” she told him, “quite willing to<br />be sick, and quite willing to be well.” Anything for God.<br />She stopped drinking water. Her sister cried; Abigail smiled. “O<br />sister, this is for my good!” Her sister could not understand. “It is best,”<br />explained Abigail, “that things should be as God would have them.”<br />Her brother read to her from the Book of Job, pausing as he came<br /><br /><br />68 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />upon a passage about worms feedi ng on a dead body. No, go on. “It<br />was sweet to her,” Edwards mused, “to think of her being in such cir-<br />cumstances.”<br />Her eyes sank into her skull, her nostrils collapsed. Her hair be-<br />came brittle. For three days she lay dying. Young men and women<br />came to her bed and leaned in close to her dry lips to hear her. “God<br />is my friend!” she’d whisper. Over and over. God is my friend!<br />He had nally made her a woman. “Her esh,” wrote Edwards<br />near the end, “seemed to be dried upon her bones.” On Friday noon,<br />June 27, 1735, her “weak clog” of a body submitted to Christ’s de-<br />sire. She was, at last, beautiful in the eyes of God, and of Jonathan<br />Edwards.<br /><br /><br />Years after the revival, not long before his church purged him in<br />1750, Edwards wrote a reevaluation of what he had wrought—in es-<br />sence, an appeal to reason, one that laid the fou ndation for the hybrid<br />of science and faith that would become the cornerstone of fundamen-<br />talism: “As that is called experimental philosophy, which brings opi n-<br />ions and notions to the test of fact,” Edwards formulated, “so is that<br />properly cal led experimental rel igion”—not in the sense of innova-<br />tion, but of the science of sainthood—“which brings rel igious a ec-<br />tions and intentions, to the li ke test.”<br />Such tests were for the most part exercises of the mind. For ex-<br />ample, Edwards was fascinated by atomic power. Not nuclear, of<br />course, but what he perceived as the indivisibility of atoms, about<br />which he had learned from Newton. The smallest of particles, he<br />concluded, was also the most powerful, for it alone was possessed of<br />the power of resis tance; one could not break it down any further,<br />surely proof of an animating force, a creator.<br />And then, Edwards surpassed Newton. In 1723, thinking of light<br />and color, perhaps the green leaves of summer—which, Edwards<br />had come to understand, were not really green, had no color at<br />all—he leaped centuries ahead to imagine an indivisible atom di-<br />vided, the power that binds it broken, an almost incomprehensible<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 69<br />reversal of creation. That is, imagined the mind of God as he knew it<br />removed from the green of the leaves, the blue of the sky, our bodies<br />that are not our own. “Deprive the world of light and motion,” he<br />wrote, “and the case would stand thus with the world: There would<br />be neither white nor black, neither blue nor brown, bright nor shaded,<br />pellucid nor opaque, no noise or sound, neither heat nor cold, neither<br />uid nor wet nor dry, hard nor soft, nor solidity, nor extension, nor<br />gure, nor magnitude, nor proportion; nor body, nor spirit. What<br />then is become of the universe? Certainly, it exists nowhere but in<br />the divine mind.”<br />In Boston and London he was judged a genius or a fanatic. In the<br />little towns around Northampton, people thought of him as either a<br />new Moses, leading them to the Prom ised Land they had long be-<br />lieved the colonies to be, or vulgar Ahab—angry, obsessed, ignorant<br />of the compromises one must make to get along. His own relations<br />among the so-called River Gods of the valley—powerful merchants<br />and more conventional preachers—rebuked him. He would not have<br />survived in his pulpit as long as he did had he not been protected by a<br />cousin, John Stoddard, another grandson of Solomon Stoddard. But<br />whereas Edwards followed his grandfather to the pulpit, Stoddard<br />followed his grandfather’s example to power. The wealthiest land-<br />owner for m iles, he made himself magistrate, representative to the<br />assembly, and colonel of the mil itia. He was a feudal lord, and Ed-<br />wards was the high priest of his benefactor’s authority.<br />His religion was radical, available to all classes and even to slaves,<br />an inspiration to the nascent sense of individual liberty that would<br />become the American Revolution, but his polit ic s were warlike<br />and controlli ng. Empire struck him as an ideal vessel for the Gospel.<br />He preached often against envy, but named as envy only that feel-<br />ing which lled those of lesser wealth, or lesser land, or lesser status,<br />who determined to band together to wrest power from above. Such<br />less-privileged men gathered in taverns —Northampton had three—and<br />instead of contemplating Christian harmony, conspired in “party<br />spirit” to reshape not their souls but their elds. The wealthiest few<br />of the val ley owned at least a quarter of its arable ground.<br /><br /><br />70 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Sin fermented in such taverns, charged Edwards, listi ng a catalog<br />of cri mes of the spirit that might just as easi ly come from the mouth<br />of a fundamentalist today. He railed against the common man’s pro-<br />pensity toward lawsuits, agai nst young women who carried them-<br />selves like men and young men who dressed in an unmanly style.<br />Pornography was another vice that preoccupied him. His downfall<br />began when he rebuked a group of boys—converted Christians, no<br />less—for stealing and reading m idwives’ manuals and applying their<br />studies with hands-on investigations, the science of groping. The<br />boys got o , so to speak, because they were wealthy, but another<br />story surfaces when we consider that the boys in turn rebuked the<br />reverend. Don’t you point ngers, they said; we know where yours<br />have been. Did you hold Abigail’s hand as she lay dying?<br />The spring of Northampton’s revival, Edwards spent much time<br />counseling his uncle, Joseph Hawley, who under his nephew’s tute-<br />lage began to see secrets within himself, and worse—the meaning-<br />lessness of self, of “Joseph Hawley.” The hand of God dangled him<br />over the pit by a spindly leg as if he was nothing but a spider. An an-<br />gry God, yes, but what was worse—overlooked by historians who<br />emphasize the wrath of Edwards’s sermons—He was also a loving<br />God. “Majesty and meekness joined together,” wrote Edwards,<br />“. . . an awful sweetness.” Edwards cared little for the Calvinism of<br />his forebears when put next to the vision of God he seemed to most<br />favor, that of a giant mouth awaiting your submission—waiting to<br />swallow you, Edwards would write i n his diaries, to make you one<br />with everything. Which is to say—nothing. Only your sense of being<br />kept this from happening now, now. Not hell re but the temptations of<br />self—what later generations of evangelicals would rage against as<br />secular humanism—birthed Joseph Hawley’s despair.<br />Hawley stopped sleepi ng. He stayed up at night in the still of his<br />home, “meditating on terror.” In March, another man in a similar state<br />slit his own throat, but he was in such a hysteria—a man of such weak<br />character—that he botched the job and survived, blocked from en-<br />tering hell as well as heaven. Joseph Hawley was not such a fool. He<br />was a seller of guns and tobacco, a man of substance in Northampton.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 71<br />But his nephew Jonathan revealed to him a deeper reality, in which<br />substance itself became suspect. In May Edwards preached to the<br />congregation as he might have spoken to Hawley in private settings:<br />“You have seen the lthiness of toads . . .” You , declared Edwards<br />with great and compelling certai nty, are even lower. Next to the<br />souls of the unchosen, even “putre ed esh” smells sweet to God.<br />Hawley, a man “of more than common understanding,” took the les-<br />son. Using what must have been a sharp blade—he also sold<br />knives—he opened beneath his rm chin a bright red smile.<br />The pious and the melancholy, those who were saved and those<br />were waiting, those who did not care at all—every sort of person<br />came now to Jonathan Edwards, knocking on the pastor’s door. Can I<br />come in? I heard something . . . He knew what they’d heard. He’d been<br />hearing it from them for days now, each testimony so much like the<br />last that he must have forgotten who was givi ng voice to the words,<br />man or woman, ancient or child, saying this: I heard a strange voice in<br />my mind; it seemed so compelling and right (like yours, Reverend Edwards).<br />Edwards recorded the data. Cut your own throat, the voice without<br />a body whispered into the ears of his ock. Cut your own throat! Now!<br />Now!<br />He did not count the bodies of those who did so.<br /><br /><br />Salvation was for Edwards a science, worthy of careful record<br />keeping. The twin shadows of righteousness and purity—hatred and<br />self-loathing—he dismissed as undeserving of the scruti ny of his<br />amazing mind. Or did he? “Remember,” he wrote to himself once,<br />“to act according to Prov. 12:23, ‘A prudent man concealeth knowl-<br />edge.’ ” He did as much in his Faithful Narrative, weaving a web of<br />logic and argument beneath the surface of a story that attracted a<br />popular audience drawn by its portrait of sin and tragic account of<br />redemption. In so doing, Edwards staked out a political position as<br />well as a spiritual one, a subtly elitist conception of knowledge as a<br />property to be possessed in di erent portions according to a divine<br />hier archy. T he wise man of Chr ist knows that only to some does God<br /><br /><br />72 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />give a calling, the power to draw closer to Him and understand His<br />grand plan.<br />In 1750, Edwards’s congregation purged him. Not for the blood<br />that owed from his revival, but simply as a result of the power he’d<br />unleashed. To preserve the old Puritan order, Edwards had destroyed<br />it; but he was ill prepared for what the new bel ievers — ercer in<br />their faith than ever Puritans had been—would build from the ruins,<br />not just in Northampton but across the colonies. Edwards’s books<br />en amed men to burn other books on town commons, his tale of<br />Abigail Hutchinson gave license to women to tear at their dresses on<br />the cobblestoned streets of cities, screaming for contact with a God<br />as intimate as Edwards’s story. In Northampton, the believers turned<br />against him not for the pain his religion drew forth but for shying<br />away from the radicalism of the revolution he had inspired.<br />He went west—to an Indian mission in Stockbridge, a town<br />even closer to the edge of British civilization than Northampton, it-<br />self a city considered by proper Bostonians still half-wild. Among the<br />Mahican Indians he pondered the vicissitudes of the mood he had<br />stoked, its brightness and its darkness, its hym nody and its screech-<br />ing, the new birth it o ered and the death’s-head that grinned alike<br />on the saved and the damned. He was a man given to the study of<br />oneness. Perhaps he recognized that the heart full of feeling and the<br />calculating mind full of knowing, like the thunder and lightni ngs he<br />so adored, were simply two expressions of the same phenomenon, an<br />American religion, one so well suited to the brutal demands of the<br />building of a new Jerusalem—conquest; unrestrained capital; the<br />rights of men and women to speak for themselves; and the rights of<br />stronger men to command their submission for the greater cause—<br />that it would still i nsist, two and a half centuries later, that all the<br />world is a frontier, in dire need of revival, and a new chosen people.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-80319790417907626232009-07-12T02:05:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:10:57.947-07:00The Family - Awakenings<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:180%;">1. Ivanwald</span><br /></div><br />Not long after September 11, 2001, a man I’ll call Zeke1<br />came to New York to survey the ruins of secularism. “To bear<br />Not long after September 11, 2001, a man I’ll call Zeke1<br />witness,” he said. He believed Christ had called him.<br />He wandered the city, sparking up conversations with people he<br />took to be Muslims—“Islam ics,” he called them—knocking on the<br />doors of mosques by day and sliding past velvet ropes into sweaty<br />clubs by night. He prayed with an imam (to Jesus) and may or may<br />not have gone home with several women. He got as close as possible<br />to Ground Zero, visited it often, talked to street preachers. His<br />throat tingled with dust and ashes. When he slept, his nose bled. He<br />woke one morning on a red pillow.<br />He went to bars where he sat and listened to the anger of men<br />and women who did not understand, as he did, why they had been<br />stricken. He stared at photographs and painti ngs of the Towers. The<br />great steel arches on which they’d stood reminded him of Roman<br />temples, and this made him sad. The city was fallen, not just literally<br />but spiritually, as decadent and doomed as an ancient civilization.<br />And yet Zeke wanted and believed he needed to know why New<br />York was what it was, this city so hated by fundamentalists abroad<br />and, he admitted after some wine, by fundamentalists—“Believers,”<br />he called them, and himself—at home.<br />At the time Zeke was living at Ivanwald. His brothers-in-Christ,<br />the youngest eighteen, the oldest in their early thirties, were much<br />like him: educated, athletic, born to a uence, successful or soon to<br /><br /><br />14 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />be. Zeke and his brothers were fundamentalists, but not at all the<br />kind I was familiar with. “We’re not even Christian,” he said. “We<br />just follow Jesus.”<br />I’d known Zeke on and o for twelve years. He’s the older<br />brother of a woman I dated in college. Zeke had studied philosophy<br />and history and literature in the United States and in Europe, but he<br />had long wanted to nd something . . . better. His life had been a<br />pilgrim’s progress, and the path he’d taken a circuitous version of the<br />route every fundamentalist travels: from confusion to clarity, from<br />questions to answers, from a mysterious divine to a Jesus who’s so<br />familiar that he’s like your best friend. A really good guy about whom<br />Zeke could ask, What would Jesus do? and genuinely nd the an-<br />swer.<br />His whole l ife Zeke had been searching for a friend like that,<br />someone whose words meant what they meant and nothing less or<br />more. Zeke himself looks like such a man, tall, lean, and muscular,<br />with a square jaw and wavy, dark blond hair. One of his grandfathers<br />had served i n the Eisen hower adm inistration, the other in Kenne-<br />dy’s. His father, the family legend went, had once been considered a<br />possible Republican contender for Congress. But instead of seeking<br />o ce, his father had retreated to the Rocky Mou ntains, and Zeke,<br />instead of attaining the social heights his pedigree seemed to predict,<br />had spent his early twenties withdrawing into theological conun-<br />drums, until he peered out at a world of temptations like a wounded<br />thing in a cave. He drank too much, fought men and raged at women,<br />disappeared from time to time and came back from wherever he had<br />gone quieter, angrier, sadder.<br />Then he met Jesus. He had long been a committed Christian, but<br />this encounter was di erent. This Jesus did not demand orthodoxy.<br />This Jesus gave him permission to stop struggling. So he did, and his<br />pallor left him. He took a job in nance and he met a woman as<br />bright as he was and much happier, and soon he was making money,<br />in love, engaged. But the questions of his youth still bothered him.<br />Again he drank too much, his eye wandered, his temper kindled. So,<br />one day, at the suggestion of an older mentor, he ditched his job, put<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 15<br />his ancée on hold, and moved to Ivanwald, where, he was told, he’d<br />meet yet another Jesus, the true one.<br />When he came up to New York, his sister asked if I would take him<br />out to dinner. What, she wanted to know, was Zeke caught up in?<br />We met at a little Moroccan place in the East Village. Zeke ar-<br />rived i n bright white tennis shorts, spotless white sneakers, and<br />white tube socks pulled taut on his calves. His concession to Manhat-<br />tan style, he said, was his polo shirt, tucked i n tight; it was black. He<br />irted with the waitress and she giggled, he talked to the people at<br />the next table. Women across the room glanced his way; he gave<br />them easy smiles. I’d never seen Zeke so charming. In my mind, I<br />began to prepare a report for his sister: Good news! Jesus has nally<br />turned Zeke around.<br />He said as much himself. He even apologized for arguments we’d<br />had in the past. He acknowledged that he’d once enjoyed getting a rise<br />out of me by talking about “Jewish bankers.” (I was raised a Jew by my<br />father, a Christian by my mother.) That was behind him now, he said.<br />Religion was behi nd him. Ivanwald had cured him of the God problem.<br />I’d love the place, he said. “We take Jesus out of his rel igious wrap-<br />ping. We look at Him, at each other, without assumptions. We ask<br />questions, and we answer them together. We become brothers.”<br />I asked if he and his brothers prayed a great deal. No, he said, not<br />much. Did they spend a lot of time in church? None—most churches<br />were too crowded with rules and rituals. Did they study the Bible in<br />great depth? Just a few minutes in the morning. What they did, he<br />said, was work and play games. During the day they raked leaves and<br />cleaned toilets, and during the late afternoon they played sports, all<br />of which prepared them to serve Jesus. The work taught humility, he<br />said, and the sports taught will; both were needed in Jesus’ army.<br />“Wait a minute,” I said. “ Back up. What leaves? Whose toilets? ”<br />“Politicians,” he said. “Congressmen.”<br />“You go to thei r houses? ”<br />“Sometimes,” Zeke answered. “But mostly they come to us.”<br />I was trying to picture it—Trent Lott pulling up in a black Lin-<br />coln, a toilet badly in need of a scrub protruding from the trunk. But<br /><br /><br />16 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />what Zeke meant was that he and his brothers raked and polished for<br />politicians at a retreat called the Cedars, designed for their spiritual<br />succor.<br />“Really?” I said. “Like who?”<br />“I can’t really say,” Zeke answered.<br />“Who runs it?”<br />“Nobody.”<br />“Who pays? ”<br />“People just give money.” Then Zeke smiled. Enough questions. <br />“You’re better o seeing it for yourself.”<br />“Is there an organization?” I asked.<br />“No,” he said, chuckling at my incomprehension. “Just Jesus.”<br />“So how do you join?”<br />“You don’t,” he said. He smiled again, such a broad grin. His<br />teeth were as white as his sneakers. “You’re recom mended.”<br /><br /><br />Zeke recommended me to Ivanwald, and because I was curious and<br />had recently quit a job to write a book about American religious<br />com munities, I decided to join for a while. I had no thought of inves-<br />tigative reporting; rather, my interest was personal. By the time I got<br />there, I’d lived for short spells with “Cowboy Christians” in Texas,<br />and with “Baba lovers,” America’s most benign cultists, in South<br />Carolina, and in Kansas with hundreds of naked pagans. I thought<br />Ivanwald would simply be one more bead on my agnostic rosary. I<br />thought of the transformation Ivanwald had worked on Zeke, and I<br />imagined it as a sort of spiritual spa where angry young men smoothed<br />out their anxieties with new-agey masculine bonding. I thought it<br />would be silly but relaxi ng. I didn’t imagine that what I’d nd there<br />would lead me into the heart of American fundamentalism, that a<br />spell among Zeke’s Believers would propel me into dusty archives<br />and the halls of power for the next several years. I had never thought<br />of myself as a religious seeker, but at Ivanwald I became one. Since<br />then, I’ve been searching, not for salvation, but for the meaning be-<br />hind the words, the hints of power, that I found there.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 17<br />Zeke was gone by the time I arrived. He had returned to nance,<br />a path the brothers approved of, and to his ancée, whom they did<br />not—she was a graduate student and a free- spirited Scandinavian<br />who loved to party. Je Connally, one of the Ivanwald house leaders<br />who picked me up at Union Station in Washington one April eve-<br />ning, told me he thought Zeke might have made the wrong choice.<br />Zeke’s ancée did not obey God. She was, he said, a “Jezebel.” Je <br />was a small, sharply handsome man with cloudy blue eyes above high<br />cheekbones. When he said “Jezebel,” he smiled.<br />Je had come with two other brothers: Gannon Sims, the Baylor<br />grad, and Bengt Carlson, the other house leader, a twenty-four-year-<br />old North Caroli nian with spiky brown eyebrows. In the car, after a<br />long silence, he said, “Well, I think you’re probably the most m isun-<br />derstood Ivanwalder ever.”<br />“Yeah?” I said.<br />“I didn’t real ly know how to explain you to the guys,” Bengt<br />went on. “ So I just told hi m we got a new dude, he’s from New York,<br />he’s a writer, he’s Jewish, but he wants to know Jesus. And you know<br />what they said? ”<br />“No,” I answered, my ngers curling around the door handle.<br />“Bring him on! ” My three new brothers laughed, and Gannon’s<br />Volvo eased down tree-lined streets, each smaller and sleepier than<br />the last, until we arrived at the gray colonial that was to be my new<br />home. Bengt showed me my bunk and two drawers in a bureau and a<br />cubbyhole in the bathroom for my toiletries. One by one, a dozen<br />men drifted by in various states of undress, slapping me on the back<br />or the ass or hugging me, call ing me “ brother.” Someone was playing<br />the soundtrack to Hair. One man c rooned the words to “Fel latio,” but<br />then he said he was just kidding, and another switched out Hair for<br />Neil Young’s “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World.” Pavel the Czech<br />winked.<br />Ready for bed, the men introduced themselves. From Japan there<br />was Yusuke, a management consultant studying Ivanwald in order to<br />replicate it in Tokyo; from Ecuador, a former college soccer star<br />named Raf, a Catholic who was open about his desire for business<br /><br /><br />18 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />connections. From Atlanta there was thick-necked Beau and bespec-<br />tacled Josh, best friends who’d put o their postcollege careers; from<br />Oklahoma, Dave, a tall, redheaded young man with a wide, da y<br />smile on a head of uncommon proportions. “Our pumpkin on a bean-<br />pole,” one of the brothers called him, a “gift” to our brotherhood<br />from former representative Steve Largent, who Dave said had ar-<br />ranged with Dave’s father for Dave to be sent to Ivanwald to cure him<br />of a mild case of college liberalism.<br />Before the lights went out after midnight, they came together to<br />pray for me, Je Con nally’s voice just above a whisper, asking God to<br />“ break” me. Dave, already broken, mumbled an amen.2<br /><br /><br />Ivanwald, w hich sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in<br />Arlington, was known only to its residents and to the members and<br />friends of the Family. The Family is in its own words an “invisible”<br />association, though it has always been organized around public men.<br />Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kansas), chair of a weekly, o -the-record<br />meeting of rel igious right groups called the Values Action Team<br />(VAT), is an active member, as is Representative Joe Pitts (R., Penn-<br />sylvania), an avuncular would-be theocrat who chairs the House ver-<br />sion of the VAT. Others referred to as members include senators Jim<br />DeMint of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Steering Com-<br />mittee (the powerful conservative caucus cofounded back in 1974 by<br />another Family associate, the late senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska);<br />Pete Domenici of New Mexico (a Catholic and relatively moderate<br />Republican; it’s Domenici’s status as one of the Senate’s old lions that<br />the Family covets, not his doctrinal purity); Chuck Grassley ( R.,<br />Iowa); James Inhofe (R., Oklahoma); Tom Coburn (R., Oklahoma);<br />John Thune (R., South Dakota); Mike Enzi (R., Wyoming); and<br />John Ensign, the conservative casino heir elected to the Senate from<br />Nevada, a brightly tanned, hapless gure who uses his Family con-<br />nections to graft holi ness to his gambling-fortune name. “Faith- based<br />Democrats” Bill Nelson of Florida and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, sin-<br />cere believers drawn rightward by their understanding of Christ’s<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 19<br />teachings, are members, and Fam ily stalwarts in the House include<br />Representatives Frank Wolf ( R., Virginia), Zach Wamp (R., Tennes-<br />see), and Mike McIntyre, a North Carolina Democrat who believes<br />that the Ten Com mandments are “the fundamental legal code for the<br />laws of the United States” and thus ought to be on display in schools<br />and courthouses.3<br />The Family’s historic roll call is even more striking: the late sena-<br />tor Strom Thurmond (R., South Carolina), who produced “con -<br />dential” reports on legi slation for the Fami ly’s leadership, presided<br />for a time ov er the Fami ly’s w eekly Se nate meeting , and the Di xie-<br />crat senators Herman Talmadge of Georgia and Absalom Willis<br />Robertson of Virgi nia—Pat Robertson’s father—served on the<br />behi nd-the- scenes board of the organization. In 1974, a Family prayer<br />group of Republican congressmen and former secretary of defense<br />Melvin Laird helped convince President Gerald Ford that Richard<br />Nixon deserved not just Christian forgiveness but also a legal pardon.<br />That same year, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist led the<br />Family’s rst weekly Bible study for federal judges.4<br />“I wish I could say more about it,” Ronald Reagan publicly de-<br />murred back in 1985, “ but it’s working precisely because it is pri-<br />vate.”<br />“We desire to see a leadership led by God,” reads a con dential<br />mission statement. “Leaders of all levels of society who direct proj-<br />ects as they are led by the spirit.” Another principle expanded upon<br />is stealthiness; members are instructed to pursue political jujitsu by<br />making use of secular leaders “in the work of advancing His king-<br />dom,” and to avoid whenever possible the label Christian itself, lest<br />they alert enemies to that advance. Regular prayer groups, or “cells”<br />as they’re often called, have met in the Pentagon and at the Depart-<br />ment of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties<br />with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries.<br />The Family’s use of the term “cell ” long predates the word’s cur-<br />rent association with terrorism. Its roots are in the Cold War, when<br />leaders of the Fam ily deliberately emulated the organizing techniques<br />of com munism. In 1948, a group of Senate sta ers met to discuss<br /><br /><br />20 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />ways that the Family’s “cell and leadership groups” could recruit<br />elites u nwilling to participate in the “mass meeting approach” of<br />populist fundamentalism. Two years later, the Family declared that<br />with democracy inadequate to the ght against godlessness, such<br />cells should function to produce political “atomic energy”; that is,<br />deals and alliances that could not be achieved through the clumsy<br />machinations of legislative debate would instead radiate quietly out<br />of political cells. More recently, Senator Sam Brownback told me<br />that the privacy of Family cells makes them safe spaces for men of<br />power—an appropriation of another term borrowed from an enemy,<br />feminism.5 “In this closer relationship,” a document for members<br />reads, “God will give you more insight into your own geographical<br />area and your sphere of in uence.” One’s cell should become “an in-<br />visible ‘believi ng group’ ” out of which “agreements reached in faith<br />and in prayer around the person of Jesus Christ” lead to action that<br />will appear to the world to be unrelated to any centralized organiza-<br />tion.<br />In 1979, the former Nixon aide and Watergate felon Charles W.<br />Colson—born again through the guidance of the Fam ily and the<br />ministry of a CEO of arms manufacturer Raytheon—estimated the<br />Family’s strength at 20,000, although the number of dedicated “as-<br />sociates” around the globe is much smaller (around 350 as of 20 06).<br />The Family maintains a closely guarded database of associates, mem-<br />bers, and “ key men,” but it issues no cards, collects no o cial dues.<br />Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.6<br />“The Movement,” a member of the Family’s inner circle once<br />wrote to the group’s chief South African operative, “is simply inex-<br />plicable to people who are not intimately acquainted with it.” The<br />Fam ily’s “po litical” initiatives, he continues, “have always been m isun-<br />derstood by ‘outsiders.’ As a result of very bitter experiences, there-<br />fore, we have learned never to commit to paper any discussions or<br />negotiations that are taking place. There is no such thing as a ‘con -<br />dential’ memorandum, and leakage always seems to occur. Thus, I<br />would urge you not to put on paper anything relating to any of the<br />work that you are doing . . . [unless] you know the recipient well<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 21<br />enough to put at the top of the page ‘PLEASE DEST ROY AFTER READ-<br />ING.’ ” *<br />“If I told you who has participated and who participates until this<br />day, you would not believe it,” the Family’s longtime leader, Doug<br />Coe, said in a rare interview in 2001. “You’d say, ‘You mean that<br />scoundrel? That despot?’ ” 7<br />A friendly, plainspoken Oregonian with dark, curly hair, a lazy<br />smile, and the broad, thrown- back shoulders of a man who recognizes<br />few superiors, Coe has worked for the Family si nce 1959 and been<br />“First Brother” since founder Abraham Vereide was “promoted” to<br />heaven in 1969. (Recently, a successor named Dick Foth, a longtime<br />friend to John Ashcroft, assumed some of Coe’s duties, but Coe re-<br />mains the preeminent gure.) Coe denies possessing any authority, but<br />Family members speak of him with a mixture of intimacy and awe.<br />Doug Coe, they say—most people refer to him by his rst and last<br />name—is closer to Jesus than perhaps any other man alive, and thus<br />privy to information the rest of us are too spiritually “immature” to<br />understand. For instance, the necessity of secrecy. Doug Coe says it<br />allows the scoundrels and the despots to turn their talents toward the<br />service of Jesus—who, Doug Coe says, prefers power to piety—by<br />shielding their work on His behalf from a hardhearted publ ic, unwill-<br />ing to believe in their good intentions. In a sermon posted online by<br />a fundamental ist website, Coe compares this method to the mob’s.<br />“His Body” —the Body of Christ, that is, by which he means<br />Christendom—“functions invisibly l ike the ma a. . . . They keep<br />their organization invisible. Everything visible is transitory. Every-<br />thing invisible is permanent and lasts forever. The more you can make<br />your organization invisible, the more in uence it will have.”<br />For that very reason, the Family has operated under many guises,<br />some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Lead-<br />ership, International Christian Leadership, National Leadership<br /><br /><br />*In a t of pique or stunni ng stupidity, the recipient immediately responded to in form the Family<br />that he accepted the rebuke and had made multiple copies of it for the other South African opera-<br />tives as well, one of wh ich sur vives. James F. Bell to Ross Main , May 19, 1975. Folder 25, Box<br />254, Box 459, Billy Gr aham Center Archives. Mai n to Doug Coe, June 19, 19 75. Ibid.<br /><br /><br />22 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Council, the Fellowship Foundation, the International Foundation.<br />The Fellowship Foundation alone has an annual bud get of nearly $14<br />mill ion. The bulk of it, $12 million, goes to “mentori ng, counseling,<br />and partnering with friends around the world,” but that represents<br />only a fraction of the network’s nances. The Family does not pay big<br />salaries; one man receives $121,000, while Doug Coe seems to live<br />on almost nothing (his income uctuates wildly according to the<br />o -the- books support of “ friends”), and none of the fourteen men on<br />the board of directors (among them an oil executive, a defense con-<br />tractor, and government o cials past and present) receives a penny.<br />But within the organization money moves in peculiar ways, “man-to-<br />man” nancial support that’s o the books, a constant proliferation of<br />new nonpro ts big and small that submit to the Family’s spiritual<br />authority, money owing up and down the quiet hierarchy. “I give<br />or loan money to hundreds of people, or have my friends do so,”<br />says Coe.8<br />Each group connected to the Family raises funds independently.<br />Ivanwald, for example, was nanced in part by an entity called the<br />Wilberforce Foundation. Major evangelical organizations such as<br />Young Life and the Navigators have undertaken the support of Family<br />operatives, and the Fam ily has in turn helped launch Christian con-<br />servative power houses such as Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, a<br />worldwide m inistry that has declared “civil war” on secularism, and<br />projects such as Community Bible Study, through which a failing<br />Texas oilman named George W. Bush discovered faith i n 1985.<br />The Family’s only publicized gathering is the National Prayer<br />Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressio-<br />nal sponsorship, it continues to organize every February at the Wash-<br />ington, D.C., Hilton. Some 3,00 0 dignitaries, representing scores of<br />nations and corporate interests, pay $425 each to attend. For most,<br />the breakfast is just that, mu ns and prayer, but some stay on for<br />days of seminars organized around Christ’s messages for particular<br />industries. In years past, the Family organized such events for execu-<br />tives in oil, defense, insurance, and banking. The 2007 event drew,<br />among others, a contingent of aid-hungry defense ministers from<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 23<br />Eastern Europe, Pakistan’s famously corrupt Benazir Bhutto, and a<br />Sudanese general linked to genocide in Darfur.<br />Here’s how it can work: Dennis Bakke, former CEO of AES, the<br />largest independent power producer in the world, and a Fam ily in-<br />sider, took the occasion of the 1997 Prayer Breakfast to invite Ugan-<br />dan president Yoweri Museveni, the Family’s “ key man” in Africa, to<br />a private dinner at a mansion, just up the block from the Fam ily’s<br />Arlington headquarters. Bakke, the author of a popular business book<br />titled Joy at Work, has long preached an ethic of social responsibility<br />inspired by his evangelical faith and his free-market convictions: “ I<br />am trying to sell a way of life,” he has said. “I am a cultural imperial-<br />ist.” That’s a phrase he uses to be provocative; he believes that his<br />Jesus is so universal that everyone wants Him. And, apparently, His<br />business opportunities: Bakke was one of the pioneer thinkers of en-<br />ergy deregulation, the laissez-faire fever dream that culminated in<br />the meltdown of Enron. But there was other, less-noticed fallout,<br />such as the no- bid deal Bakke made with Museveni at the 1997 Prayer<br />Breakfast for a $500-million dam close to the source of the White<br />Nile—in waters considered sacred by Uganda’s 2.5-million–strong<br />Busoga minority. AES announced that the Busoga had agreed to “re-<br />locate” the spirits of their dead. They weren’t the only ones opposed;<br />rst environmentalists (Museveni had one American arrested and<br />deported) and then even other foreign investors revolted against a<br />project that seemed like it might actually increase the price of power<br />for the poor. Bakke didn’t worry. “ We don’t go away,” he declared.<br />He dispatched a young man named Christian Wright, the son of one<br />of the Prayer Breakfast’s organizers, to be AES’s in-country liaison to<br />Museveni; Wright was later accused of authorizing at least $4 00,000<br />in bribes. He claimed his signature had been forged.9<br />“I’m sure a lot of people use the Fellowship as a way to network,<br />a way to gain entrée to all sorts of people,” says Michael Cromartie,<br />an evangelical Washington think tanker who’s critical of the Fam ily’s<br />lack of transparency. “And entrée they do get.”10<br />The president usually arrives an hour early, meets perhaps ten<br />heads of state—usually from small nations, such as Albania, or<br /><br /><br />24 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Ecuador, or Benin, that the United States uses as proxies in the<br />United Nations—without publicity, and perhaps a dozen other use-<br />ful guests chosen by the Fam ily. “It totally circumvents the State<br />Department and the usual vetting within the administration that<br />such a meeting would require,” an anonymous government infor-<br />mant told a sympathetic sociologist. “ If Doug Coe can get you some<br />face ti me with the President of the United States, then you will take<br />his call and seek his friendship. That’s power.”11<br />The president always speaks last, usually to do no more than<br />spread a dull glaze of civil religion over the proceedings. For years,<br />the main address came from Billy Graham, but now it’s often deliv-<br />ered by an outsider to Christian conservatism, such as Saudia Arabia’s<br />longtime ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, or Senator<br />Joe Lieberman, or, as in 2006, Bono. “This is really weird,” said the<br />rock star.<br />“Anything can happen,” according to an internal planning docu-<br />ment, “the Koran could even be read, but JESUS is there! He is i n l-<br />trating the world.”12 Too bland most years to merit much press, the<br />breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger pur-<br />pose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent<br />prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”<br />In the pro cess of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family<br />has managed to e ect a number of behind-the- scenes acts of diplo-<br />macy. In 1978 it helped the Carter administration organize a world-<br />wide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. At the<br />1994 National Prayer Breakfast, Fam ily leaders persuaded their South<br />African client, the Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to stand down<br />from the possibility of civil war with Nelson Mandela. But such be-<br />nign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s,<br />the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and<br />some of the most oppressive regimes i n the world, arranging prayer<br />networks in the U.S. Congress for the likes of General Costa e Silva,<br />dictator of Brazil; General Suharto, dictator of Indonesia; and Gen-<br />eral Park Chung Hee, dictator of South Korea. “The Fellowship’s<br />reach into governments around the world,” observes David Kuo, a<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 25<br />former special assistant to the president i n Bush’s rst term, “ is al-<br />most impossible to overstate or even grasp.”13<br />In 1983, Doug Coe and General John W. Vessey, chairman of the<br />Joi nt Chiefs of Sta , informed the civilian ambassadors of the Cen-<br />tral American nations that the Prayer Breakfast would be used to<br />arrange “private sessions” for their generals with “responsible lead-<br />ers” in the United States; the i nvitations would be sent from Republi-<br />can senators Richard Lugar and Mark Hat eld, and Dixiec rat John<br />Stennis, the Mississippi segregationist after whom an aircraft carrier<br />is now named. The Family went on to build friendships between the<br />Reagan adm inistration and the Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios<br />Vides Casanova, found liable in 2002 by a Florida jury for the torture<br />of thousands, and the Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez,<br />who before his assassination was li nked to both the CIA and death<br />squads. El Salvador became one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of the<br />Cold War; U.S. military aid to Honduras jumpe d from $4 million per<br />year to $79 million.14 In Africa, the Family greased the switch of U.S.<br />patronage from one client state, Ethiopia, to another that they felt<br />was more promising: Somalia. “We work with power where we can,”<br />Doug Coe explai ns, “build new power where we can’t.” Former sec-<br />retary of state James Baker, a longtime participant in a prayer cell<br />facilitated by Coe, recalls that when he visited Albania after the col-<br />lapse of Eastern Europe an communism, the Balkan nation’s foreign<br />minister met him on the tarmac with the words, “I greet you in the<br />name of Doug Coe.”15<br />Coe’s status within Washi ngton has been quantitatively calcu-<br />lated by D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who traded<br />on his past work with evangelicals as a pollster—and his sympathetic<br />perspective—to wi n interviews with 360 evangelical elites. “One in<br />three mentioned Coe or the Fellowship as an important in uence,”<br />he reports. “Indeed, there is no other or ganization l ike the Fellow-<br />ship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or<br />clout among the country’s leadership.”16 At the 1990 National Prayer<br />Breakfast, President George H. W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what<br />he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy.”<br /><br /><br />26 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Bush was apparently ignorant of one of the nation’s oldest laws, the<br />Logan Act, which forbids private citizens to do just that lest foreign<br />policy slip out of democratic control. Sometimes Coe’s role is for mal;<br />in 200 0, he met with Pakistan’s top economic o cials as a “special<br />envoy” of Representative Joe Pitts, a key power broker for the region,<br />and when he and Bush Senior hosted an o -the-record luncheon with<br />Iraq’s ambassador to the United States in the mid-1980s, he may also<br />have been acting in some o cial capacity. Mostly, however, he trav-<br />els around the world as a private citizen. He has prayed with dicta-<br />tors, golfed with presidents, and wrestled with an island king in the<br />Paci c. He has visited nearly every world capital, often with con-<br />gressmen at his side, “making friends” and inviting them back to the<br />Cedars, the Family’s headquarters, bought i n 1978 with $1.5 m illion<br />donated by (among others) Tom Phillips, then the CEO of arms<br />manufacturer Raytheon, several oil executives, and Clement Stone,<br />the man who nanced the campaign to i nsert “under God,” into the<br />Pledge of Allegiance.17<br />Coe, who while I was at Ivanwald lived with his wife in an ele-<br />gantly appointed carriage house on the mansion’s grounds, considers<br />the mansion a refuge for the persecuted and the a icted: Supreme<br />Court Justice Clarence Thomas retreated there when Anita Hill ac-<br />cused him of sexual harassment; Senator David Durenberger, a conser-<br />vative Catholic, boarded there to escape marital problems that began<br />with rumors of an a air and ended with Durenberger’s pleading guilty<br />to misuse of public funds; James Watt, Reagan’s anti-environmental sec-<br />retary of the interior, weathered the controversy surrounding his<br />appoi ntment in one of the Cedars’ bedrooms.18 A waterfall has been<br />carved into the mansion’s broad lawn, from which a bronze bald ea-<br />gle watches over a forested hillside sloping down to the Potomac<br />River. The mansion is white and pillared and surrounded by magno-<br />lias, and by red trees that do not so much tower above it as whis-<br />per. The Cedars is named for these trees, but Family members<br />speak of it as a person. “The Cedars has a heart for the poor,” they like<br />to say.<br />By poor they mean not the thousands of literal poor living in<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 27<br />Washington’s ghettos, but rather the poor in spirit: the senators, gen-<br />erals, and prime m inisters who coast to the end of Twenty-fourth<br />Street in Arlington in black limousines and town cars and hulking<br />SUVs to meet one another, to meet Jesus, to pay homage to the god<br />of the Cedars. There they forge relationships beyond the “ di n of the<br />vox populi ” and “throwaway religion” in favor of the truths of the<br />Family. Declaring God’s covenant with the Jews broken, the group’s<br />core members call themselves the new chosen.<br />19<br />The brothers of Ivanwald were the Family’s next generation, its<br />high priests in training. Sometimes the brothers would ask me why I<br />was there. They knew that I was “half Jewish,” that I was a writer,<br />and that I was from New York City, which most of them considered<br />to be only slightly less wicked than Baghdad or Paris. I didn’t lie to<br />them. I told my brothers that I was there to meet Jesus, and I was:<br />the Jesus of the Fam ily, whose ways are secret. The brothers were<br />certain that He had sent me to them for a reason, and perhaps they<br />were right. What follows is my personal testimony, to the enduring<br />power of this strange American god.<br /><br /><br />At Ivanwald, men learn to be leaders by loving their leaders.<br />“They’re so busy loving us,” a brother once explained to me, “but<br />who’s loving them?” We were. The brothers each paid four hundred<br />dollars per month for room and board, but we were also the caretak-<br />ers of the Cedars, cleaning its gutters, mowing its lawns, whacking<br />weeds, blowing leaves, and sanding. And we were called to serve on<br />Tuesday morni ngs, when the Cedars hosted a regular prayer break-<br />fast typically presided over by Ed Meese. Meese is best remembered<br />for his oddly prurient antiporn crusade as Ronald Reagan’s ethically<br />challenged attorney general; less-often recalled is his 1988 resigna-<br />tion following a special prosecutor’s investigation of his intervention<br />on behalf of an oil pipel ine for Saddam Hussein. He remains a power-<br />ful Washington presence, a quick-witted man who presents himself<br />as an old gumshoe, carrying messages back and forth between social<br />and scal conservatives. In 20 05 and 20 06, he shepherded Supreme<br /><br /><br />28 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito through their nom ina-<br />tion pro cesses; in 2007, he gave the religious Right’s stamp of ap-<br />proval to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.20 Each week at the<br />Cedars, his breakfast brought together a rotating group of ambassadors,<br />businessmen, and American politicians. Three of Ivanwald’s brothers<br />also attended.<br />The morning I was invited, Charlene, the cook, scrambled up<br />eggs with blue tortillas, Ital ian sausage, peppers, and papaya. Three<br />women from Potomac Point, an “Ivanwald for young women” across<br />the road from the Cedars, came to serve. They wore red lipstick and<br />long skirts (makeup and “ feminine” attire were required on duty)<br />and had, after several months of cleaning and serving in the Cedars<br />while the brothers worked outside, grown unimpressed by the high-<br />powered clientele. “Girls don’t sit i n on the breakfasts,” one of them<br />told me, though she said that none of them minded because it was<br />“ just politics,” and the Bible generally reserves such doings for<br />men.<br />21<br />The breakfast began with a prayer and a spri nkle of scripture<br />from Meese, who sat at the head of a long, dark oak table. Matthew<br />11:27: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows<br />the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to re-<br />veal hi m.” That morning’s chosen introduced themselves. They were<br />businessmen from Dallas and Oregon, a Chinese Christian dissident<br />leader, and two ambassadors, from Benin and Rwanda, who sat side<br />by side. Rwanda’s representative, Dr. Richard Sezibera, was an i n-<br />tense man who refused to eat his eggs and melon. He drank cup after<br />cup of co ee, and his eyes were bloodshot. A man I didn’t recognize,<br />whom Charlene identi ed as a former senator, suggested that nego-<br />tiators from Rwanda and Congo, trapped in a war that had killed<br />more than 2 million, should stop worryi ng about who will get the<br />diamonds and the oil and i nstead focus on who wi ll get Jesus. “Power<br />sharing is not goi ng to work unless we change their hearts,” he said.<br />Sezibera stared, incredulous. Meese chuckled and opened his<br />mouth to speak, but Sezibera interrupted him. “It is not so simple,”<br />the Rwandan said, his voice at and low. Meese smiled. Everyone in<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 29<br />the Family loves rebukes, and here was Rwanda rebuking them. The<br />former senator nodded. Meese murmured, “Yes,” stroking his ma-<br />roon leather Bible, and the words “Thank you, Jesus” rippled in whis-<br />pers around the table as I poured Sezibera another cup of co ee.<br />The brothers also on occasion sat i n quietly on meetings at the<br />Family’s four- story, redbrick Washington townhouse, a former con-<br />vent at 133 C Street SE, run by a Family a liate called the C Street<br />Foundation. Eight congressmen lived there, paying below-market<br />rents.22 The C Street House is registered as a church, which allows it<br />to avoid taxes. There’s a house mother and a TV the size of a small<br />movie screen, usually tuned to sports, and a prayer calendar in the<br />kitchen that tells residents which “demonic strongholds,” such as<br />Buddhism or Hinduism, they are to wage spiritual warfare against<br />each day. Eight Christian college women do most of the serving, but<br />we brothers were on occasion called to stand in for them, the better<br />to nd spiritual mentors.<br />The day I worked at C Street, half a dozen congressmen were<br />trading stories over lunch about the power of prayer to “ break<br />through” just about anything: political opposition, personal pride, a<br />dull policy brie ng. They spoke of their devotions as if they were<br />running backs moving the ball, chuckling over how prayer um-<br />moxed the “other team.” They didn’t mean Democrats —a few were<br />Democrats —but the godless “enemy,” broadly de ned. All credit to<br />the coach, said one congressman, who was dabbing his lips with a red<br />napkin that read “Let Me Call You SWEETHEART . . . I Can’t Re-<br />member Your Name.” Later that day, I ran into Doug Coe himself,<br />who was tutori ng Todd Tiahrt, a Republican representative from<br />Kansas. Tiahrt is a short shot glass of a man, two parts awless hair<br />and one part teeth. He wanted to know the best way “ for the Chris-<br />tian to win the race with the Muslim.” The Muslim, he said, has too<br />many babies, while Americans kill too many of theirs.<br />Coe agreed that too many Muslim babies could be a problem. But<br />he was more concerned that Tiahrt’s focus on labels like Muslim and<br />Christian might get in the way of the congressman’s prayers. “Religion”<br />distracts people from Jesus, Coe said, and allows them to isolate<br /><br /><br />30 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Christ’s will from their work in the world. God’s law and our laws<br />should be identical “ People separate it out,” he warned Tiahrt. “ ‘Oh,<br />okay, I got religion, that’s private.’ As if Jesus doesn’t know anything<br />about building highways or Social Security. We gotta take Jesus out<br />of the religious wrapping.”<br />“All right, how do we do that?” Tiahrt asked.<br />“A covenant,” Doug Coe answered. The congressman half smiled,<br />as if caught between confessing his ignorance and pretending he<br />knew what Doug Coe was talking about. “Like the Ma a,” Coe<br />clari ed. “Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a st and<br />held it before Tiahrt’s face. Tiahrt nodded, squi nting. “See, for them<br />it’s honor,” Coe said. “For us, it’s Jesus.”<br />Doug Coe listed other men who had changed the world through<br />the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”:<br />“Look at Hitler,” he said. “Leni n, Ho Chi Minh, bin Laden.” The<br />Fam ily possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the “total Jesus” of a<br />brotherhood in Christ.<br />“That’s what you get with a covenant,” said Doug Coe. “Je sus plus<br />nothing.”23<br /><br /><br />The regimen at Ivanwald was so precise it was relaxing: no swear-<br />ing, no dri nking, no sex, no self. Watch out for magazines and don’t<br />waste time on newspapers and never watch TV. Eat meat, study the<br />Gospels, play basketball; God loves a man who can sink a three-pointer.<br />Pray to be broken. “O Heavenly Father. Dear Jesus. Help me be hum-<br />ble. Let me do Your will.” Every morni ng began with a prayer, some<br />days with outsiders—a former Ivanwald brother, now a busi ness-<br />man, or another executive who used tales of high nance to illumi-<br />nate our lessons from scripture, which he supplemented with xeroxed<br />midrash from Fortune—and Fridays with the women of Potomac<br />Point. But most days it was just us boys, bleary-eyed, gulping co ee<br />and sugared cereal as Bengt and Je C. laid out lines of Holy Word<br />across the table like strategy.<br />The dining room had once been a deck, but the boys had walled<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 31<br />it in and roofed it over and unrolled a red Persian carpet, transform-<br />ing the space into a sort of monastic meeting hall, with two long ta-<br />bles end to end, ringed by a dozen chairs and two benches. The rst<br />day I visited Ivanwald, Bengt cleared a space for me at the head of the<br />table and sat to my right. Beside him, Wayne slumped in his chair, his<br />eyes hidden by a cowboy hat. Across from him sat Beau, an Atlantan<br />with the build and athletic intensity of a wrestler, still wearing the<br />boxers and T-shirt he’d slept in. Bengt alone looked sharp, his hair<br />combed, golf shirt tucked tightly into pleated chi nos.<br />Bengt asked Gannon to read our text for that morning, Psalm<br />139: “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.” The very<br />rst line made Bengt smile; this was, in his view, an awesome thing<br />for God to have done.<br />Bengt’s manners and naive charm preceded him in every encoun-<br />ter. He was kind to his brothers and excellent with small children,<br />tall and strong and competent with any tool, deadly whenever he got<br />hold of the ball—any ball; all sports seemed to Bengt just a step<br />more chal lenging than breathing. His eyes were deep and kind of<br />sad, but he liked to laugh, and when he did he sounded like a friendly<br />donkey, an Eyore for whom things were suddenly not so bad. When<br />you told him a story, he’d respond, “Goll- y!” just to be nice. When<br />genuinely surprised, he’d exclaim, “Good ni- ight! ” Sometimes it was<br />hard to remember that he was a self-professed revolutionary. He<br />asked Gannon to keep readi ng, and then leaned back and listened.<br />“Where can I go from your Spi rit? Where can I ee from your<br />presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in<br />the depths, you are there.”<br />Bengt raised a hand. “ That’s great, dude. Let’s talk about that.”<br />The room fell silent as Bengt stared into his Bible, running his nger<br />up and down the gilded edge of the page. “Guys,” he said. “What—<br />how does that make you feel? ”<br />“Known,” said Gannon, almost in a whisper.<br />Bengt nodded. He was looking for something else, but he didn’t<br />know where it was. “What does it make you think of? ”<br />“Jesus? ” said Beau.<br /><br /><br />32 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Bengt stroked his chin. “Yeah . . . Let me read you a little more.”<br />He read in a monotone, accelerating as he went, as if he could per-<br />suade us through a sheer heap of words. “For you created my inmost<br />being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb,” he concluded.<br />His lips curled into a half smile. “Man! I mean, that’s intense, right?<br />‘In my mother’s womb’—God’s right in there with you.” He grinned.<br />“It’s like,” he said, “it’s li ke, you can’t run. Doesn’t matter where you<br />turn, ’cause Jesus is gonna be there, just waiting for you.”<br />Beau’s eyes cleared, and Gannon nodded. “Yeah, brother,” Bengt<br />said, an eyebrow arched. “Jesus is smart. He’s gonna get you.”<br />Gannon shook his head. “Oh, he’s already got me.”<br />“Me, too,” Beau chimed. Then each man clasped his hands into<br />one st and pressed it against his forehead or his chin and prayed,<br />eyes closed and Jesus all over his ski n.<br /><br /><br />The sweetest words of devotion I heard at Ivanwald came from the<br />one man there who thought Jesus had a message more complicated<br />than “Obey.” Riley was the son of a Republican busi nessman from<br />Wisconsi n, but he sounded like a Spaniard who’d learned his English<br />in Sweden. He’d “spent time overseas,” he explained, and the accent<br />had just rubbed o . Nobody believed him—he was clearly the most<br />pretentious follower of Jesus since Saul changed his name to Paul and<br />declared hi mself a Christian—but nobody scorned him for his airs.<br />Riley wore his dirty brown hair long and tied in a braided ponytail,<br />and if it was cool outside he favored a Guatemalan- style poncho. He<br />didn’t share the views of the other brothers; in fact, he stayed only<br />long enough to attend a demonstration in Washington against Plan<br />Colombia, a nearly $5- bill ion military aid package for that cou ntry’s<br />right-wing regime and U.S. defense contractors that began in 1999.<br />The Saturday of the demonstration, Riley slipped out before<br />dawn, and I woke up early to attend a three-hour prayer meeti ng at<br />the Cedars with some elder brethren: a Republican political couple<br />from Oregon, an old stalwart of the movement who had for many<br />years presided over a Family retreat in Bermuda called Willowbank,<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 33<br />and John Nakamura, a businessman who that year was volunteering<br />as host of the Cedars. We met in a room appointed with statues of<br />bald ea gles and photos of friends of the Family: there was Richard<br />Nixon, scowling over the sofa, and there was Jimmy Carter, the rst<br />openly evangel ical chief executive, ashing his toothy smile in a<br />frame on the co ee table.24 We got on our knees and held hands, and<br />together we prayed, some of us rocking, some of us approaching the<br />gi ft of tongues, Jesus-Jesus-Jesus, praying with Nakamura’s guidance<br />for Dick Cheney’s ailing heart and for Bush, “who has said he knows<br />the Lord.” Roy Cook, one of Doug Coe’s oldest friends, prayed for<br />Jesus to “turn the evil” in the hearts of journalists, who “tell stories<br />that go against the work Jesus is doing at the Cedars.” Then we began<br />praying about the demonstration Riley was attending. We prayed<br />that the “stratagems of evil and wickedness” —that’d be Riley—<br />would be washed from the streets by God’s rain.<br />That night the brothers had their weekly house meeting. There<br />was serious business. While I’d been praying at the Cedars, Riley had<br />been arrested at the demonstration. Released after several hours, he<br />hunkered down on Ivanwald’s oor cross-legged and unraveled a tale<br />of crowds and cops, handcu s, and what he believed to be gentle<br />heroism. He’d ridden in a police van with an old man, impossibly<br />frail, soaked from the rain. “ I asked him if he knew Jesus,” Riley said,<br />“and this old man smiled. So I asked him why he had done this thing,<br />let himself be put into jail, and do you know what he said? ” The<br />brothers did not. “He said, ‘For me it is a form of prayer.’ ” After the<br />police let Riley go, he took the metro to Arlington and walked to<br />Ivanwald in a drivi ng rain. “At rst I was not happy. But then I<br />thought about what that old man said, and the rain began to change,<br />or maybe I did. As I walked home to you brothers, the rain felt like a<br />baptism.”<br />The brothers were quiet. Finally, Je C. spoke up from across<br />the room. “Thank you, brother.” Murmurs rippled around the circle.<br />Nervous laughter followed. Beau said, “Riley, can we pray for you?”<br />and Riley said yes. Beau then asked Riley if he would lead us in this<br />prayer. He would. So we closed our eyes and prayed with Riley for<br /><br /><br />34 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />the old man soaked to the bone and then for the police and for an end<br />to Plan Colombia, at which point the men’s prayers sputtered into<br />confusion; wasn’t military aid between one God-led government and<br />another a good thi ng? The brothers were relieved when Riley an-<br />nounced he was going back to Wisconsi n. He walked into the pour-<br />ing rain with his backpack and his sleeping bag. It was a mile and a<br />half to the station. Nobody o ered him a ride.<br />After Riley left, the brothers stood up and started movi ng furni-<br />ture. “Okay,” Je C. said, clapping his hands. “You ready, brothers?”<br />I looked around. My brothers were blank-faced or smirking, clearing<br />a space on the oor. “Je ,” Je C. said to me, “Andrew” —the other<br />new man, a balding Australian who said he’d come to Ivanwald at the<br />recommendation of a conservative Australian politician named Bruce<br />Baird—“you guys are going to arm wrestle. Think of it,” he said,<br />putting a nger on his chin and mocki ng a pose of thoughtfulness, “as<br />a test of your manhood.”<br />He instructed us to lie down on our bellies. We lay like snakes<br />facing each other and rose up on torsos, gripping hands, awaiting the<br />signal.<br />“Fumble!” someone shouted. “Fumble! Fumble!”<br />I twisted around to nd out what they meant, but not in time—all<br />I saw was a blur of T-shirts and legs ying at me, and then the rst<br />man hit, slapping me back to the oor and attening my lungs into<br />empty airbags. Then the second man landed, and the third, and some-<br />one shouted, “Get his arms!” Did they think I was a stratagem of wick-<br />edness? Had they decided that the evil in my journal ist’s heart could<br />not be overcome even by Jesus? I swung my one free st and felt it col-<br />lide with a stomach that remained unmoved because it was being<br />pressed down by the weight of two, three more men, each of them<br />ailing away at my ribs. I felt my face redden and my ears ll with a<br />roar, and if I’d had any breath left, I would have screamed. But then I<br />heard the brothers laughing, and in between blows I felt hands slap-<br />ping my ass and ru ing my hair, and I understood what was happen-<br />ing. This was scripture in action, the verses we all memorized together<br />(failure to do so meant sleeping in the cold basement): Ecclesiastes<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 35<br />4:9, “ Two are better than one”; Philippians 2:2, “ ful ll ye my joy that<br />ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one<br />mind.” The brothers were of one mind and thirteen bodies, crushing<br />Christ into me, and there was nothing I could do but to give in to<br />their love. T hey wanted to welcome me. To brotherhood, to Jesus, to<br />the Family. I gasped. A man near the bottom of the pile on top of me<br />squeaked. “ I can’t breathe,” someone above me whispered. One<br />more man fell on top of us, jumping from the couch onto the tower.<br />The Australian, who’d somehow escaped full fumble, gave it a push.<br />It tumbled, I was free, and Je C. o ered me his hand. Ecclesiastes<br />4:10: “If one falls down, his friend can help him up.”<br />“Congratulations, brother,” he said. “You’re one of us.”<br /><br /><br />A few weeks into my stay, David Coe, Doug’s son, dropped by Ivan-<br />wald. My brothers and I assembled in the living room, where David<br />had draped his tall frame over a burgundy leather recliner like a frat<br />boy, one leg hangi ng over a padded arm.<br />“You guys,” David said, “are here to learn how to rule the world.”<br />He was in his late forties, with dark, gray- ecked hair, an olive com-<br />plexion, teeth li ke a slab of white marble, dark eyes so big they didn’t<br />need to move to take in the room. We sat around him in a rough<br />circle, on couches and chairs, as the afternoon light slanted through<br />the wooden blinds onto a wall adorned with a giant tapestry of the<br />Last Supper. Rafael, a wealthy Ecua doran, had a hard time with En-<br />glish, and he didn’t understand what David had said. He stared, lips<br />parted in puzzlement. David seemed to like that. He stared back,<br />holding Raf ’s gaze like it was a pretty thing he’d found on the ground.<br />“You have very intense eyes,” David said.<br />“Thank you,” Raf mumbled.<br />“Hey,” David said, “let’s talk about the Old Testament.” His voice<br />was like a river that’s smooth on the surface but swirling beneath.<br />“Who”—he paused—“would you say are its good guys? ”<br />“Noah,” suggested Ruggi, a shaggy-haired guy from Kentucky<br />with a silver loop on the upper ridge of his right ear.<br /><br /><br />36 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />“Moses,” o ered Josh, a lean man from Atlanta more interested<br />in serving Jesus than his father’s small empire of shower door manu-<br />facturing.<br />“David,” Beau volunteered.<br />“King David,” David Coe said. “That’s a good one. David. Hey.<br />What would you say made King David a good guy?” He giggled, not<br />from nervousness but from barely containable delight.<br />“Faith?” Beau said. “His faith was so strong?”<br />“Yeah.” David nodded as i f he hadn’t heard that before. “Hey, you<br />know what’s interesting about King David?” From the blank stares of<br />the others, I could see that they did not. Many didn’t even carry a full<br />Bible, preferring a slim volume of New Testament Gospels and Epis-<br />tles and Old Testament Psalms, respected but seldom read. Others<br />had the whole book, but the gold gilt on the pages of the rst two-<br />thirds remained undisturbed. “King David,” David Coe went on,<br />“liked to do really, really bad things.” He chuckled. “Here’s this guy<br />who slept with another man’s wife—Bathsheba, right?—and then<br />basically murdered her husband. And this guy is one of our heroes.”<br />David shook his head. “I mean, Jiminy Christmas, God li kes this guy!<br />What,” he said, “is that all about?”<br />“Is it because he tried?” asked Bengt. “He wanted to do the right<br />thing? ” Bengt knew the Bible, Old Testament and New, better than<br />any of the others, but he o ered his answer with a question mark on<br />the end. Bengt was dutiful in checking his worst sin, his erce pride,<br />and he frequently turned his certai nties into questions.<br />“That’s nice, Bengt,” David said. “But it isn’t the answer. Anyone<br /> else?”<br />“Because he was chosen,” I said. For the rst time David looked<br />my way.<br />“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Chosen. Interesting set of rules, isn’t it?”<br />He turned to Beau. “Beau, let’s say I hear you raped three little girls.<br />And now here you are at Ivanwald. What would I think of you, Beau?”<br />Beau, given to bellowing Ivanwald’s daily call to sports li ke a bull<br />elephant, shrank i nto the cushions. “Probably that I’m pretty bad?”<br />“No, Beau.” David’s voice was kind. “I wouldn’t.” He drew Beau<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 37<br />back into the circle with a stare that seemed to have its own gravita-<br />tional pull. Beau nodded, brow furrowed, as if in the presence of<br />something profound. “Because,” David continued, “I’m not here to<br />judge you. That’s not my job. I’m here for only one thing. Do you<br />know what that is?”<br />Understanding blossomed in Beau’s eyes. “Jesus?” he said. David<br />smiled and winked. “Hey,” he said. “Did you guys see Toy Story?” Half<br />the room had. “Remember how there was a toy cowboy, Woody?<br />And then the boy who owns Woody gets a new toy, a spaceman?<br />Only the toy spaceman thinks he’s real. Thinks he’s a real spaceman,<br />and he’s got to gure out what he’s doing on this strange planet. So<br />what does Woody say to him? He says, ‘You’re just a toy.’ ” David sat<br />quietly, waiting for us to absorb this. “Just a toy. We’re not really<br />spacemen. We’re just toys. Created for God. For His pleasure, noth-<br />ing else. Just a toy. Period.”<br />He walked to the National Geographic map of the world mounted<br />on the wall. “You guys know about Genghis Khan? ” he asked. “Geng-<br />his was a man with a vision. He conquered” —David stood on the<br />couch under the map, tracing, with his hand, half the northern<br />hem isphere—“nearly everythi ng. He devastated nearly everything.<br />His enemies? He beheaded them.” David swiped a nger across his<br />throat. “Dop, dop, dop, dop.”<br />Genghis Khan’s genius, David went on, lay i n his understanding<br />that there could be only one king. When Genghis entered a defeated<br />city, he would call in the local headman. Conversion to the Khan’s<br />cause was not an option, as Genghis was uninterested in halfhearted<br />deputies. Instead, said David, Genghis would have the man stu ed<br />into a crate, and over the crate’s surface would be spread a tablecloth,<br />on which a wonderful meal would be arrayed.<br />“And then, while the man su ocated, Genghis ate, and he didn’t<br />even hear the man’s scream s.” David stood on the couch, a nger in<br />the air. “Do you know what that means?”<br />To their credit, my brothers did not. Perhaps on account of my<br />earlier insight, David turned to me. “I thi nk so,” I said. “Out with the<br />old, i n with the new.”<br /><br /><br />38 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />Yes, he nodded. “Christ’s parable of the wineskins. You can’t<br />pour new into old.” One day, he continued, some monks from Eu-<br />rope show up in Genghis Khan’s court. Genghis welcomes them in<br />the name of God. Says that i n truth, they worship the same great<br />Lord. Then why, the monks ask, must he conquer the world? “I don’t<br />ask,” says Genghis. “I submit.”<br />David returned to his chair. “We elect our leaders,” he said. “Je-<br />sus elects his.”<br />He reached over and squeezed the arm of Pavel. “Isn’t that great? ”<br />David said. “That’s the way everything in life happens. If you’re a per-<br />son known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything. And that’s<br />who you guys are. When you leave here, you’re not only going to<br />know the value of Jesus, you’re going to know the people who rule the<br />world. It’s about vision. Get your vision straight, then relate. Talk to<br />the people who rule the world, and help them obey. Obey Him. If I<br />obey Him myself, I help others do the same. You know why? Because<br />I become a warning. We become a warning. We warn everybody that<br />the future king is coming. Not just of this country or that but of the<br />world.” T hen he pointed at the map, toward the Khan’s vast, reclaim-<br />able empire.<br /><br /><br />Th at nigh t, I sl ipped out of the house at close to eleven, padded<br />around the pool of light cast by the streetlamp, and began making my<br />way up the grassy hill of the park across the road. I had my cell phone<br />with me, and behind the big oak tree at the top I hoped I could call a<br />friend undetected. David Coe’s lesson had been more than I could<br />take without a dose of ordinary conversation, the kind that doesn’t<br />involve “warnings” and decapitations. But halfway up the slope a<br />voice shot through the dark and hit me like a hardball: “ Halt! Who<br />goes there?”<br />Ten yards to my right stood Je C., lit by a pale yellow full<br />moon.<br />“Secret orders, man,” I said. “Going to have to kill you.” The joke<br />was as lame as Je C.’s, and neither of us laughed. I walked slowly in<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 39<br />his direction, debating whether I should tel l him I was out there for<br />meditation or for exercise. Phone calls—contact with the outside<br />world—was allowed but discouraged for new brothers. A late-night<br />run, I decided. Endurance was something the brothers respected, en-<br />durance and strength and coordination, honing your body with exer-<br />cise just as you hone your soul with prayer. Cardiovascular health was<br />especially important if you wanted to have a heart for spiritual war.<br />But that night, Je C. had a heart for contemplation. “Look at the<br />old fort,” he said, gesturing down the hill at Ivanwald. “Guys come<br />here and get changed. I think of all the guys that have gone through<br />here over the years, and I wonder, How many of ’em come back?<br />How many of ’em end up staying at the mansion?”<br />Along with Bengt, Je C. was a house leader, but if you asked<br />him what he did for a l iving, he would cock his head, half sm ile,<br />crinkle his sapphire- blue eyes like a natural- born southern lawyer—<br />which is what his father was—and say, “Well, I work for the revolu-<br />tion.” He’d studied rhetoric at Chapel Hill, and he loved making<br />declarations that begged a conversation mainly because he’d laced<br />them with subtle, nagging aggression.<br />“Maybe you’ll come back to the Cedars one day,” he said. He<br />squeezed my shoulder. “C’mon, brother,” he said, his ngers digging<br />in and guidi ng me down the hill. “You can make your calls tomor-<br />row.”<br />The next morning, Je C. and I were up early, lacing our sneak-<br />ers for a run down by the river. Sitting on the porch, he asked me<br />why my Bible was a King James. I said I liked the passion of the lan-<br />guage. “Yeah,” Je C. said—he always agreed with everything, at<br />rst. Then he looked up from his sneakers as if something had just<br />occurred to him. “You know, I’m not sure it’s about passion.”<br />“No?” I said.<br />“No, I think it’s about Jesus.”<br />“Not the Old Testament,” I said.<br />“Well,” said Je C., “you take Psalms, for example, every one of<br />them, the way to read it is like it’s just another piece of Jesus.” He<br />stared at me, half smiling, head cocked.<br /><br /><br />40 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />“Which part,” I asked, “would you say is in Psalm 137? ” Je C.’s<br />lip twitched, his eyes shifted. “You know,” I said, “ ‘O Daughter of<br />Babylon’?” He arched his left eyebrow. “ ‘O Daughter of Babylon,’ ” I<br />recited, “ ‘who art to be destroyed, happy shal l he be that rewardeth<br />thee as thou hast served us, happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth<br />thy little ones against the stones.’ Which part of Jesus is that?”<br />Je C. smiled fully and nodded. “ Brother,” he said, clapping a<br />hand on my knee. “I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure He’ll let you<br />know when it’s time.” Then he stood up and ran, waving over his<br />shoulder as he went. He knew he was too fast for me.<br /><br /><br />We wer e at Ivanwald, a Family associate named Terry instructed,<br />to study “the fu ndamentals, as opposed to the fancy plays,” by which<br />he meant “ discipline,” as opposed to “sissy stu ,” an authoritarian<br />faith, not a questioning one. Terry—golf- shirted and twitchy, drum-<br />ming his ngers on our dining room table—was one of the many<br />middle- aged men in the c ul-de- sac who seemed to have no other job<br />than to dispense wisdom. We should pray to be “nothing.” We were<br />there to “soften our hearts to authority.” Democracy, we were told,<br />was “rebelliousness.” We instituted a rule that every man must wipe<br />the toilet bowl after he pisses, not for cleanliness but to crush his “in-<br />ner rebel.”<br />Je C. crushed his by abstaining from “shady” R-rated movies,<br />lest they provoke lusty dreams. He was a beautiful man, but he was<br />indi erent to the e ect he had on the opposite sex. The Potomac<br />Point girls brought him cookies; the wives of the Family’s older men<br />asked him to visit. One night, when the guys went on a swing-<br />dancing date with the Potomac Pointers, more worldly women<br />ocked to Je C., begging to be dipped and twirled. The feeling was<br />not mutual. “I just don’t like girls as much as guys,” he told me one<br />day while we painted a new coat of “Gettysburg Gray” onto Ivan-<br />wald. He was speaking not of sex or of romance but of brotherhood.<br />“I li ke”—he paused, his brush suspended m idstroke—“competence.”<br />He wasn’t gay. He wasn’t, technically, anything. He was twenty-<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 41<br />ve, but he was a virgin. He had kissed a girl once, and the experi-<br />ence had not moved his heart li ke Jesus did every day. He asked me<br />once what sex with a woman was like, “emotionally,” but before I<br />could even think of how to answer, he silenced me. Sex for him was<br />pure and nonexis tent in the natural order of things, a myth, elusive<br />and sweet. Je C. didn’t need to sully it with details for it to be<br />true.<br />He ran nearly every day, often alone, down by the Potomac. On<br />the basketbal l court anger sometimes overcame him: “Shoot the ball!”<br />he would snap at Rogelio, a shy eighteen-year-old from Paraguay, one<br />of several internationals and the youngest brother. But later Je C.<br />would turn his lapse into a lesson, citing scripture, a verse we were<br />to memorize or else be banished, by Je C. himself, to a night in the<br />basement. Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 26–27: “In your anger do not<br />sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not<br />give the devil a foothold.”<br />Je C.’s pride surfaced in unexpected ways. Once, together in<br />the kitchen after lunch, I mentioned that I’d seen the Reverend Al<br />Green perform, up in Massachusetts, no less. This bothered Je C.<br />He was a southerner and I was not, and he did not like this news of<br />Yankee privilege. Also, he was certain I considered him racist, be-<br />cause that’s what he believed al l New Yorkers thought about all<br />North Caroli nians. He wanted me to know that as a southern white<br />man, he was blacker than me. “ I got an Alabama blacksnake in my<br />pants,” he said. He was not just black, he was a black man. “Brother,<br />you’re nothing but a white boy.”<br />“Agreed,” I said, hopi ng to calm him down.<br />But he could not be soothed. He left the room and returned with<br />a box and put in a CD and cranked up Al Green. He started to<br />groove. His hands balled into sts, his blue eyes wide. He began sing-<br />ing, a honey falsetto. “Here I a-a-m . . .” He grabbed his crotch and<br />shook his head li ke a rag, wrenched his shirt up and ran his hand over<br />his hard stomach, going deeper and deeper into Green. Then he<br />froze, dropped back to his ordinary voice as if he was narrati ng. “ In<br />college, I used to work in this pizza parlor,” he said. “It was a buncha,<br /><br /><br />42 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />I dunno, junkies. Heroin.” He grinned. “But, man, they loved Al Green.<br />We had a poster of him. He was, he was—man! Shirtless, leather<br />pants. Low leather pants.” Je C. tugged his waistband down. “Hips<br />cocked.” He slid across the oor and grabbed my waist so tight I<br />could feel his pulse beating. Then he moonwalked away and snapped<br />his knees together with his feet spread wide, hands in the air, testify-<br />ing, baring his smooth, at torso.<br /><br /><br />The spiritual bonds among Family members were, Doug Coe re-<br />minded us, expressions of love, though he used the term not merely<br />to connote a ection. Love in the Family was the love that “conquers,”<br />the love that “consumes.” It was the love of competition, the love that<br />“ breaks a man down”; the love without which one was “a nothing,” “a<br />minus,” “a zero.” But with it one was a “plus,” a “warrior,” a man. The<br />love, a Family elder once explained to me, that Jesus himself pro-<br />claimed when he said, “I came not to bring peace but a sword. For I<br />am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter<br />against her mother.” The se nior brother who quoted Christ’s sword at<br />me did not mean anything so blunt as an actual blade but rather the<br />divisiveness of a faith that scorns earthly a ections that come be-<br />tween Jesus and his soldiers. The word heart was similarly unmoored<br />in the Family’s vocabulary, made weirdly functional, an expression of<br />a quality or skill. A leader, for instance, was said to have a “ heart for<br />the Lord”; a man lower down in rank m ight have a “ heart for His<br />Word,” a “ heart for laborers” (not the working class but missionar-<br />ies), or, like my brothers and me, the men-in-training, a “ heart for<br />spiritual war.”<br />Spiritual war was a struggle to be fought everywhere, at all<br />times. Through witnessing and activism and proselytizing and the<br />passage of laws—or, rather, the “discovery” of laws already written<br />for us by God—and, most of al l, through prayer. The brothers prayed<br />after sports and before every meal, over Froot Loops in the morning<br />and steaks at night. At the beginning of each workday, or before we<br />went out on a “ date” —chastely accompanying a group of Potomac<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 43<br />Point sisters to a suitable movie, or an evening of swing dancing—we<br />prayed. Our prayers were contradictions: We prayed because God<br />was “awesome,” because we were “nothing,” and because the only<br />thing we were good for was His praise. But we also prayed because<br />we wanted things, like, say, a BMW, or divine guidance for our lead-<br />ers, or a sunny day on which to paint the house. “Prayer,” Andrew<br />the Australian told me, “ is everything you need.” A gentle sentiment,<br />at rst blush, seemingly uncontroversial. But consider what Andrew<br />did not think one needed: “rights,” a word I put in quote marks be-<br />cause he did. “ Rights,” the Family taught, are the product of an ar-<br />rogant mind—an infringement on God’s sovereignty.<br />The more I learned about the Family, the more di culty I had in<br />classifying its theology. It is Protestant, to be sure, though there are<br />Catholic members. Its leadership regards with disdain not only the<br />mainline denominations, but also evangelicals they consider “ luke-<br />warm.” And yet they distance themselves from the bullying of tel-<br />evangelists and moral scolds as well, in part because of theological<br />di erences (Jesus, they believe, instructs them to cultivate the pow-<br />erful regardless of their doctrinal purity) and in part based on style<br />(the Family believes in a subtler evangelism). “ They take the same<br />approach to religion that Ronald Reagan took to economics,” says a<br />Senate sta er named Neil MacBride, a political liberal with conser-<br />vative evangelical convictions that put him at odds with the Family’s<br />unorthodox fundamentalism. “ Reach the elite, and the blessings will<br />trickle down to the underlings.”<br />Based on the almost-ecumenical face it presents at the National<br />Prayer Breakfast—that of a Jesus to whom the Family welcomes non-<br />Christians to pray—the Family might be considered neo-evangelical.<br />Neo-evangelicals distance themselves from populist fundamentalism,<br />which they consider a “ fol k”—read: white trash—rel igion, given to<br />unseemly displays of emotion and tied too closely to cultural tradi-<br />tions. Whereas populist fundamentalists are strident and hectoring,<br />neo-evangelicals pride themselves on exibility. Unlike many pre-<br />millennialists w ho, a wa iting Ch r ist’s imminent r etur n, mer ely do th eir<br />best to stay out of trouble and to keep their eyes shut in prayer,<br /><br /><br />44 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />neo-evangelicals are willing to engage the world in the hope that<br />they can neaten things up in time for His arrival. They hew to Cal-<br />vi n’s belief that worldly power can help shape a holy community, but<br />they resist any ki nd of ethics or man-made morality, which they dis-<br />miss as legalism and consider almost a sin in itself.<br />But at Ivanwald, or in a prayer cell at the Cedars, or in conversa-<br />tions with world leaders, the Family’s beliefs appear closer to a more<br />margi nal set of theologies sometimes gathered under the umbrella<br />term of dominionism, characterized for me by William Martin, a reli-<br />gious historian at Rice University and Billy Graham’s o cial biogra-<br />pher, as the “ intellectual heart of the Christian Right.” Dominionist<br />theologies hold the Bible to be a guide to every decision, high and<br />low, from whom God wants you to marry to whether God thinks<br />you should buy a new lawn mower. Unlike neo-evangelicals, who<br />concern themselves chie y with getting good with Jesus, dominion-<br />ists want to reconstruct early Christian society, which they believe<br />was ruled by God alone. They view themselves as the new chosen<br />and claim a Christian doctrine of covenantalism, meaning covenants<br />not only between God and humanity but at every level of society,<br />replacing the rule of law and its secular contracts. Since these cove-<br />nants are signed, as it were, in the Blood of the Lamb, they are writ-<br />ten in ink invisible to nonbelievers.<br /><br /><br />One night I asked Josh Drexler, a brother from Atlanta who was<br />hoping to do mission work overseas, if I could look at some materi-<br />als the Family had given hi m. “Man, I’d love to share them with<br />you,” he said, and retrieved from his bureau drawer two folders full<br />of documents. While my brothers slept, I sat at the end of Ivanwald’s<br />long, oak d ining table and copied passages from them into my note-<br />book.<br />In a document titled “Our Common Agreement as a Core Group,”<br />members of the Family are instructed to form a core group, or a cell,<br />which is de ned as “a publicly invisible but privately identi able group<br />of companions.” The cell has “veto rights” over each member’s life,<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 45<br />and everyone pledges to monitor the others for deviations from<br />Christ’s will. A document called “Thoughts on a Core Group” ex-<br />plains that “Communists use cells as their basic structure. The ma a<br />operates like this, and the basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four<br />man squad. Hitler, Lenin, and many others u nderstood the power of<br />a small core of people.”<br />Jesus, continues the document, does not relate to all souls equally.<br />“He had levels of relationships much like concentric rings.” The<br />masses were the outermost fringe; next were the hundreds who saw<br />Jesus after he rose from the dead, and then came a ring of seventy,<br />and so on until one reached the “inner circle.” “ It’s quite obvious,”<br />the document concludes, “that he revealed more of himself to these.”<br />Later, I’d learn that the Family had drawn up blueprints for an under-<br />ground chapel-cum-bunker beneath the Cedars, its altar designed on<br />this concentric model of access to Christ’s love. At its heart would<br />stand Doug Coe, said by the brothers to be as close to Jesus as the<br />disciple John. That’s why Coe could walk into any politician’s o ce,<br />went thei r thin king; Jesus held the doors to power open.<br />Another document sets forth self-examination questions:<br />“4. Do I give only verbal assent to the policies of the Family or<br />am I a partner in seeking the mind of the Lord? ” The Family is aware<br />that politicians and busi nessmen use it for strictly worldly ends, but it<br />constantly pushes even its most cynical members toward sincerity.<br />The Fam ily does not ask them to stop seeking power or raking in<br />pro ts; rather, it wants them to believe that they do so not for their<br />own gain but for God’s.<br />“7. Do I agree with and practice the nancial precepts of the<br />Family? ” These precepts do not require one to tithe to good works.<br />Rather, the Family’s two major nancial principles concern appear-<br />ances. To practice the precepts of the Family, one must declare one’s<br />own fortune—great or small—wholly a gift from Jesus. It’s not yours,<br />even if it is; you’re not really rich, even if you are. This allows Family<br />members to be li ke Jesus himself by giving freely to other Family<br />members without regard for formality—a pro cess that has the added<br />advantage of being o the books.<br /><br /><br />46 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />“13. Am I willing to work without human recognition?” The<br />Family’s com mitment to secrecy—they cal l it privacy—demands a<br />sort of political ascetism that they think of as humility. It is nothing<br />of the sort; the Family renounces public accountability, not power.<br />Long-term goals are best summarized in a document called<br />“Youth Corps Vision.” Another Fam ily project, Youth Corps distrib-<br />utes pleasant brochures featuring endorsements from political<br />leaders —among them Tsutomu Hata, a former prime m inister of<br />Japan, former secretary of state James Baker, and Yoweri Museveni,<br />president of Uganda—and full of enthusiastic rhetoric about helping<br />you ng people to learn the principles of leadership. The name Jesus is<br />never mentioned.<br />But “Youth Corps Vision,” which is intended only for members of<br />the Family (“ it’s kinda secret,” Josh cautioned me), is more direct.<br />The Vision is to mobilize thousands of young people worldwide—<br />com mitted to the principles, precepts, and person of Jesus<br />Christ . . . <br /><br />A group of highly dedicated individuals who are united together<br />having a total com mitment to use their lives to daily seek to<br />mature into people who talk like Jesus, act li ke Jesus, thin k<br />like Jesus. This group will have the responsibility to:<br />—see that the commitment and action is maintained to<br />the overall vision;<br />—see that the nest and best invisible organization is<br />developed and maintained at all levels of the work;<br />—even though the structure is hidden, see that the Fam-<br />ily atmosphere is maintained, so that all people can feel a part<br />of the Fam ily.<br /><br />Youth Corps, whose programs are often centered around<br />Ivanwald- style houses, prepares the best of its recruits for positions<br />of power in business and government abroad. Its programs are in<br />operation in Rus sia, Ukrai ne, Romania, India, Pakistan, Uganda,<br />Nepal, Bhutan, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, and other countries. The<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 47<br />goal: “Two hundred national and international world leaders bound<br />together relationally by a mutual love for God and the family.”<br /><br /><br />From time to time, Bengt would walk down to the Cedars or next<br />door to the house of Lee Rooker, a Department of Education o cial,<br />or hop onto his bike or into his Volkswagen and drive over to—the<br />brothers didn’t know where he went, just that he was missing. No<br />one worried. They all knew Bengt was having leadership lessons.<br />Bengt had been tapped to become a future father of the Family.<br />Sometimes, though, he seemed skeptical about his patrimony.<br />One day not long after I’d arrived, Bengt and I drove into Wash-<br />ington to pick up a new brother at the bus station. I’d spent the day<br />chipping and sanding green paint, and because there’d been no mask<br />most of the time, I was still coughing up paint dust. “You’ll get used<br />to it,” Bengt said.<br />“It’s ne,” I said. “ This is what I’m here for.”<br />Bengt laughed. “Paint in your nose?”<br />“The work,” I said. “It’s a kind of prayer, right?”<br />Bengt glanced over at me. “Can be,” he said.<br />I pressed the point. “ You do the work every day until it’s like<br />praying. Isn’t that the idea?”<br />“It is,” Bengt said. “But you have to be careful. Even work can<br />distract you.” We stopped at a red light. “Sometimes,” Bengt said.<br />“Lately. Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been losi ng the vision.<br />Work is just work. Not because I don’t like it. Because I like it so<br />much. I l ike what I’ve learned to do. I can let my head ll up with this<br />whole world of details until there’s no room for God. I know He’s in<br />there, but I’m not paying Him the attention He’s due.”<br />“What do you do then? Do you pray?”<br />“I’ve had my more nihilistic moments.” He paused, and we drove<br />in silence, cruising through downtown D.C.’s deserted nighttime<br />streets. Bengt turned right onto Rhode Island Avenue. “Yeah,” he<br />said. “I pray. But sometimes it’s like putting pieces together. Trying<br />to get this thing to work like it’s supposed to.”<br /><br /><br />48 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />“Which is . . . ?”<br />“I have enjoyed,” Bengt said, “in the past anyway, the complete<br />absence of doubt.”<br />We pulled up to the bus depot, a squat, pale brick of a building<br />tucked behind Union Station. We were a few mi nutes early, and we<br />talked. Bus station hustlers drifted toward the car but kept their dis-<br />tance; addicts who couldn’t even stand watched us through cloudy<br />eyes.<br />“That’s what prayer is? ” I asked. “Absence? ”<br />Bengt paused. “Yeah, I think it is.”<br />Bengt stared at a fat woman in a red halter top; she was slapping<br />a skinny drunk on the shoulder. When his Redskins cap fell o , he<br />looked as i f he might cry.<br />“You go in,” Bengt said. “ I’ll wait here.”<br />Most of the brothers didn’t know it, but Bengt was thinking of<br />going to graduate school. He had chosen a university close enough to<br />com mute to from Ivanwald, and a course of study in the classics that<br />would complement his understanding of Jesus and provide him with<br />an advanced degree that could prove useful on a political résumé.<br />Two weeks into my stay, he began working on his application. After<br />dinner every night, he’d disappear into the little o ce beside his up-<br />stairs bunk room to write his essay on the house’s one computer. At<br />breakfast Je C. would ask him how it was goi ng, and he’d plow his<br />ngers through his hair and sigh. Handing out work assignments for<br />the day, he’d repeat himself needlessly.<br />One swelteri ng afternoon, he gave up writing and decided to<br />chop down two magnol ia trees in the front yard. All of Ivanwald’s<br />neighbors agreed that they were a shady, symmetrical adornment of<br />what, without them, would look like a parking lot, but Bengt couldn’t<br />be stopped: the trees had to go. They had to die, and they had to be<br />killed by his hand. With a long- blade Stihl chewing up magnolia,<br />green leather mu s protecting his ears, his eyes hidden by goggles,<br />Bengt relaxed for the rst time i n days. It took just a few hours to<br />reduce the trees to a stack of ve-foot lengths of branch. He put a<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 49<br />booted foot on the pile and pressed, listening to the wood crack, and<br />he smiled. “ I just love getting a job done,” he said.<br />“Bengt,” I said later that night, “I may be able to help with your<br />essay.” Bengt looked confused. “Before I came here,” I said, “that sort<br />of thing was my job.” Bengt smiled, clapped me on the shoulder—<br />he’d just found the tool he needed.<br />A few days later, he gave me the essay. After I’d done some edit-<br />ing, we sat down in the o ce one night after dinner to talk it over.<br />The room was barely big enough for the two of us; we sat with our<br />legs c rossed in opposite directions so as not to knock knees. “All<br />right, dude,” Bengt said. “Lay it on me. I’m ready.” He leaned for-<br />ward to peek at the pages. When he saw the amount of ink I’d added,<br />he gu awed, slapped his knee, frowned, crossed his arms over his<br />chest. “ I can take it, boy,” he said.<br />And he could; we marched through the text l ine by l ine, dissect-<br />ing run-ons and shu ing clauses and chain-sawing irrelevant phrases.<br />When we were done with the line-edit, we began moving whole sec-<br />tions, crafting from Bengt’s collage of his life a chronological intel-<br />lectual autobiography. My formal education has been a progression from<br />confusion and despair to hope, the essay began. Its story hewed to the<br />familiar fundamentalist arc of lost and found: every man and woman<br />a si nner, fallen but nonetheless redeemed. And yet Bengt’s sins were<br />not of the esh but of the mi nd. In college he had abandoned his boy-<br />hood ambition of becoming a doctor to study phi losophy: Nietzsche,<br />Kierkegaard, Hegel. Raised i n the faith, he saw his ideas about God<br />crumble before the disciplined rage of the philos ophers. “ I cut and<br />ran,” he told me. To Africa, where by day he worked on ships and in<br />clinics, and by night read Dostoyevsky and the Bible, its darkest and<br />most seductive passages: Lamentations, Job, the Song of Songs. These<br />authors were ali ke, his essay observed. They wrote about [su ering] like<br />a companion.<br />I looked up. “A double,” I said, remembering Dostoyevsky’s alter<br />egos.<br />Bengt nodded. “You know how you can stare at something for a<br /><br /><br />50 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />long time and not see it the way it really is? That’s what scripture had<br />been to me.” Through Dostoyevsky he began to see the Old Testa-<br />ment for what it is: relentless in its horror, its God a re, a whirl-<br />wind, a plague. Even worse is its Man: a rapist, a murderer, a<br />wretched thief, a fool.<br />“But,” said Bengt, “that’s not how it ends.”<br />Bengt meant Jesus. I thought of the end of The Brothers Karamazov:<br />the saintly Alyosha, leading a pack of boys away from a funeral to<br />feast on pancakes, everyone clapping hands and proclaiming eternal<br />brotherhood. In Africa, Bengt had seen people who were diseased,<br />starving, trapped by war, but who seemed nonetheless to experience<br />joy. Bengt recalled listening to a group of starving men play the<br />drum s. “Doubt,” he said, “ is just a prelude to joy.”<br />I had heard this before from mainstream Christians, but I sus-<br />pected Bengt meant it di erently. A line in Dostoyevsky’s The Pos-<br />sessed reminded me of him: Shatov, a nationalist, asks Stavrogin, the<br />coldhearted radical whom he had revered, “Wasn’t it you who said<br />that even if it was proved to you mathematically that the Truth was<br />outside Christ, you would prefer to remain with Christ outside the<br />Tr ut h?”<br />“Exactly,” Bengt said. In Africa he had seen the trappings of<br />Christianity fall away. All that remained was Christ. “You can’t argue<br />with absolute power,” Bengt said.<br />I put the essay down. Bengt nudged it back into my hands. “ I<br />want to know what you think of my ending.” He had written about a<br />passage from the Gospel of John in which John, with two travelers,<br />encounters Jesus on the road. John hints at Christ’s importance, so<br />the two men travel with him. “Then Jesus turns around and asks the<br />two men one question,” Bengt had written. “ ‘What do you want?’ he<br />asks.” The question, Bengt thought, might mean, “Why are you fol-<br />lowing me? ” or “What is it that you are doing? ” But Bengt had de-<br />cided that what Christ was asking was “What do you desire? ”<br />The word was important to him. “ That’s what it’s about,” he said.<br />“Desire.” The way he said the word made it sound almost angry. He<br />shifted i n his chair. “Think about it: ‘What do you desire?’ ”<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 51<br />“God?”<br />“Yes.”<br />“That’s the answer? ” I asked.<br />“He’s the question,” was Bengt’s retort. Downstairs, most of the<br />men had gone to sleep; from the living room we could hear someone<br />quietly picking a guitar.<br />“Bengt,” I said, “I don’t understand.”<br />“You know,” he said, “I don’t either. That’s what I’ve kind of<br />come to realize. The thing is, I don’t need to. I can just trust i n the<br />Lord for my directions. He’ll tell me what I need to know.”<br />“A voice? ” I said, surprised.<br />“A prayer,” he answered. The voice he heard was his own, his<br />prayers, transformed by his inverted theology into revelation. What<br />he wanted was what God wanted.<br />“Absence?” I said, realizing that what he’d meant by the absence<br />of doubt was the absence of self- awareness, the absence of an under-<br />standing of his thoughts as distinct from God’s and thus always sub-<br />ject to—doubt. But I did not say this. Instead, I just repeated myself.<br />“Absence,” I said, without a question mark.<br />“Totally, brother.”<br />He half smiled, satis ed with this alchemy of logic by which<br />doubt became the essence of a dogma. God was just what Bengt de-<br />sired Him to be, even as Bengt was, in the face of God, “nothing.”<br />Not for aesthetics alone, I realized, did Bengt and the Family reject<br />the label Christian. Their faith and their practice seemed closer to a<br />perverted sort of Buddhism, their Christ everywhere and nowhere at<br />once, His commands phrased as questions, His will as palpable as<br />one’s own desires. And what the Fam ily desired, from Abraham Ver-<br />eide to Doug Coe to Bengt, was power, worldly power, with which<br />Christ’s kingdom could be built, cell by cell.<br /><br /><br />Whenever a suf ciently large crop of God’s soldiers was bunked<br />up at Ivanwald, Doug Coe made a point of stopping by for din ner.<br />The brothers viewed his visit as far more important than that of any<br /><br /><br />52 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />senator or prime mi nister. The night he joined us, he wore a crisply<br />pressed golf shirt and dark slacks, and his skin was well tanned. He<br />brought a guest with him, an Albanian politician whose pale face and<br />ill- tti ng gray suit made Doug Coe seem all the more radiant. In his<br />early seventies, Coe could have passed for fty: His hair was dark, his<br />cheeks taut. His smile was like a lantern.<br />“He hates the limelight,” Gannon had warned me. “It’s not about<br />him, it’s about Jesus, so he doesn’t like people to know who he is.”<br />But he knows who you are. When I reintroduced mysel f that night,<br />he cut me short. “I remember you,” he said, and moved on to the<br />next man.<br />“Where,” Coe asked Rogelio, “are you from, i n Paraguay?”<br />“Asunción,” he said.<br />Doug Coe smiled. “I’ve visited there many times.” He chewed<br />for a while. “Asunción. A Lati n leader was assassinated there twenty<br />years ago. A Nicaraguan. Does anybody know who it was?”<br />I waited for someone to speak, but no one did. “Somoza,” I said.<br />The dictator overthrown by the Sandinistas.<br />“Somoza,” Coe said, his eyes sweeping back to me. “An interest-<br />ing man. I liked to visit him. A very bad man, behind his machine<br />guns.” He sm iled like he was going to laugh, but instead he moved his<br />fork to his mouth. “And yet,” he said, a bite poised at the tip of his<br />tongue, “ he had a heart for the poor.” There was another long si-<br />lence.<br />“Do you ever think about prayer? ” he asked, but it wasn’t a ques-<br />tion. Coe was preparing a parable.<br />There was a man he knew, he said, who didn’t really believe in<br />prayer. So Doug Coe made him a bet. If this man would choose<br />something and pray for it every day for forty- ve days, he wagered<br />God would make it so. It didn’t matter whether the man believed or<br />whether he was a Christian. All that mattered was the fact of prayer.<br />Every day. Forty- ve days. He couldn’t lose, Coe told the man. If<br />Jesus didn’t answer his prayers, Coe would pay him $500.<br />“What should I pray for?” the man asked.<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 53<br />“What do you think God would like you to pray for? ” Doug Coe<br />asked him.<br />“I don’t know,” said the man. “ How about Africa? ”<br />“Good,” said Coe. “Pick a country.”<br />“Uganda,” the man said, because it was the only one he could<br />remember.<br />“Fine,” Coe told him. “Every day, for forty- ve days, pray for<br />Uganda. ‘God, please help Uganda. God, please help Uganda.’ ”<br />On the thirty-second day, Coe told us, this man met a woman<br />from Uganda. She worked with orphans. Come visit, she told the<br />man, and so he did, that very weekend. And when he came home, he<br />raised $1 million in donated medicine for the orphans. “ So you see,”<br />Doug Coe told him, “God answered your prayers. You owe me ve<br />hundred dollars.”<br />There was more. After the man had returned to the United<br />States, the president of Uganda called the man at his home and said,<br />“I am maki ng a new government. Will you help me make some deci-<br />sions?”<br />“So,” Doug Coe told us, “my friend said to the president, ‘Why<br />don’t you come and pray with me in America? I have a good group of<br />friends—senators, congressmen—who I like to pray with, and they’d<br />like to pray with you.’ And that president came to the Cedars, and he<br />met Jesus. And his name is Yoweri Museveni, and he is now the<br />president of all the presidents in Africa. And he is a good friend of<br />the Family.”<br />“That’s awesome,” Beau said.<br />Coe had told this story many times before, I’d learn; it now ap-<br />pears recycled in evangelical sermons around the world, a bit of fun-<br />damentalist folklore. It’s false. Doug’s friend was not just an ordinary<br />businessman but a well-connected former Ford adm inistration o cial<br />named Bob Hunter. He may have made a bet with Coe, but his trip<br />was hardly as casual as Coe suggested; I later found two memos total-<br />ing eighteen pages that Hunter had submitted to Coe, “A Trip to East<br />Africa—Fall 1986,” and “Re: Organizing the Invisible,” detailing his<br /><br /><br />54 | The Family by Jeff Sharlet<br />meetings with Ugandan and Kenyan government o cials (many of<br />whom he already knew) and the possibility of recruiting each for the<br />Fam ily. Central to Hunter’s mission was representing the interests of<br />American political gures —Republican senator Chuck Grassley and<br />Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for Africa, Chester A. Crocker,<br />among them—who might in uence newly independent Uganda away<br />from Africa’s Left.25 The following year, Museveni met with Ronald<br />Reagan at the White House; he’s served as an American proxy ever<br />since. O nce heralded as a democratic reformer, Museveni rules Uganda<br />to this day, having suspended term limits, intimidated the press, and<br />installed the kind of corrupt but stable regime Washington prefers in<br />struggl ing nations.<br />“Yes,” Coe told us, “ it’s good to have friends. Do you know what<br />a di erence a friend can make? A friend you can agree with?” He<br />smiled. “Two or three agree, and they pray? They can do anything.<br />Agree. Agreem ent. What’s that mean?” Doug looked at me. “You’re a<br />writer. What does that mean? ”<br />I remembered Paul’s letter to the Phil ippians, which we had be-<br />gu n to memorize. Ful ll ye my joy, that ye be likeminded.<br />“Unity,” I said. “Agreement means unity.”<br />Doug Coe didn’t smile. “Yes,” he said. “To tal unity. Two, or<br />three, become one. Do you know,” he asked, “that there’s another<br />word for that?”<br />No one spoke.<br />“It’s called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They can do any-<br />thing. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you thi nk of anyone who<br />made a covenant with his friends? ”<br />We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked<br />numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting be-<br />side Coe, cleared his throat: “Hitler.”<br />“Yes,” Doug Coe said. “Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The Ma a<br />makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful thing. Two, or three,<br />agree.” He took another bite from his plate, planted his fork on its<br />tines. “Well, guys,” he said, “I gotta go.”<br /><br /><br />The Family by Jeff Sharlet | 55<br />As Doug Coe left, my brothers’ hearts were beating hard: for the<br />poor, for a covenant. “Awesome,” Bengt said. We stood to clear our<br />dishes.<br /><br /><br />On one of my last nights at Ivanwald, the neighborhood boys asked<br />my brothers and me to play ashlight tag. There were six boys, rang-<br />ing in age from maybe seven to eleven, all junior members of the<br />Fam ily. It was balmy, and the streetl ight glittered against the black-<br />top, and hiding places beckoned from behind trees and in bushes.<br />One of the boys began counting. My brothers, big and small, scat-<br />tered. I lay at on a hillside. From there I could track movement in<br />the shadows and smell the mint leaves planted in the garden. A gure<br />approached. I sprang up and ran, down the sidewalk and up through<br />the garden, over a wall that my pursuer, a small boy, could hardly<br />climb. But once he was over, he kept charging. Just as I was about to<br />vanish into the trees, his ashl ight caught me. “Je -I-see-you, you’re<br />It!” the boy cried. I stopped and turned. He kept the beam on me. I<br />heard the slap of his sneakers as he ran across the driveway. “Okay,<br />dude,” he whispered. He clicked o the ashlight. Now I could see<br />him. Little Stevie, whose drawing of a machine gun we’d posted in<br />our bunk room. He handed the ashlight to me, spun around, started<br />to run. Then he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “ You’re It<br />now,” he whispered and disappeared into the dark.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-86580657091045314292009-07-12T00:04:00.000-07:002009-07-12T02:05:29.809-07:00The Family - Introduction<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;">THE AVANT - GARDE OF AMERICAN FUNDAMENTALISM<br /></span></div><br /><br />This is how they pray: a dozen clear – eyed, smooth - skinned<br />“ brothers” gather in a huddle, arms crossing arms over shoul-<br />ders like the weave of a cable, leaning in on one another and swaying<br />like the long grass up the hill from the house they share, a hand-<br />some, gray, two-story colonial that smells of new carpet, Pine-Sol,<br />and aftershave. It is decorated with lithographs of foxhunters and<br />pictures of Jesus, and, in the bunk room, a drawi ng of a “C –4” ma-<br />chine gun given to them by thei r six-year-old neighbor. The men<br />who live there c all the house Ivanwald. At the end of a tree-lined<br />cul-de- sac in Arlington, Virgi nia, quiet but for the buzz of lawn<br />mowers and kids playing tag i n the park across the road, Ivanwald is<br />one house among many, clustered like mushrooms, nearly two dozen<br />house holds devoted, like these men, to the service of a personal Je-<br />sus, a Christ who directs their every action. The men tend every<br />tulip in the cul-de- sac, trim every magnolia, seal every driveway<br />smooth and black as boot leather. Assembled at the dining table or<br />on their lawn or in the hallway or in the bunk room or on the bas-<br />ketball court, they also pray, each man’s head bowed in humility and<br />swollen with pride (secretly, he thinks) at being counted among this<br />select corps for Christ, men to whom he wil l open his heart and<br />whom he will remember when he returns to the world not born- again<br />but remade, no longer an individual but part of the Lord’s revolu-<br />tion, his will transformed into a weapon for what the young men call<br />spiritual war.<br /><br />2 | JEFF SHARLET<br />“Je ,” says Bengt, one of the house leaders, “will you lead us in<br />prayer?”<br />Surely, brother. I have lived with these men for close to a month,<br />not as a Christian—a term they deride as too narrow for the world<br />they are building in Jesus’ honor—but as a follower of Christ, the<br />phrase they use to emphasize what matters most to their savior. Not<br />faith or kindness but obedience. I don’t share their faith, in fact, but<br />this does not concern them; I’ve obeyed, and that is enough. I have<br />shared the brothers’ meals and their work and their games. I’ve<br />wrestled with them and showered with them and listened to their<br />stories: I know which man resents his father’s fortune and which man<br />succumbed to the esh of a woman not once but twice and which<br />man dances so well he is afraid of being taken for gay. I know what it<br />means to be a brother, which is to say I know what it means to be a<br />soldier in the army of God. I have been numbered among them.<br />“Heavenly Father,” I begin. Then, “O Lord,” but I worry that<br />doesn’t sound intimate enough. I settle on “ Dear Jesus.” “Dear Jesus,<br />just, please, Jesus, let us ght for Your name.”<br /><br /><br />This is a story about two great spheres of belief, religion and politics,<br />and the ways i n which they are bound together by the mythologies of<br />America. America—not the legal entity of the United States but the<br />idea with which Europe clothed a continent that it believed naked<br />and wild—America has been infused with religion since the day in<br />1630 when the Puritan John Wi nthrop, preparing to cross the Atlan-<br />tic to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared the New World<br />the city upon a hill spoken of by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Three<br />hundred and fty-nine years later, Ronald Reagan, during the last<br />days of his presidency, would see in Washington’s tra c jams that<br />same vision, like a double exposure: “a tall proud city, built on rocks<br />stronger than oceans, wind- swept, God-blessed.” In his farewell ad-<br />dress he’d call it a shining city upon a hill. This is a story about that<br />imaginary place, so real in the minds of those for whom religion,<br />politics, and the mythologies of America are one singular story, and<br /><br />THE FAMILY | 3<br />how that vision has shaped America’s projection of power onto the<br />rest of the world.<br />My “brothers” were members of a very peculiar group of believers,<br />not representative of the majority of Christians but of an avant- garde of<br />the social movement I call American fundamentalism, a movement that<br />recasts theology in the language of empire. Avant- garde is a term usually<br />reserved for innovators, artists who live strange and dangerous l ives<br />and translate their strange and dangerous thoughts into pictures or<br />poetry or fantastical buildings. The term has a political ancestry as<br />well: Lenin used it to describe the el ite cadres he believed could spark<br />a revolution. It is in this sense that the men to whom my brothers ap-<br />prenticed themselves, a seventy-year-old self-described “ invisible” net-<br />work of followers of Christ in government, business, and the military,<br />use the term avant-garde. They call themselves “the Family,” or “The<br />Fellowship,” and they consider themselves a “core” of men responsible<br />for changing the world. “Hitler, Lenin, and many others understood<br />the power of a small core of people,” instructs a document given to an<br />inner circle, explaining the scope, if not the ideological particulars, of<br />the ambition members of this avant-<br />garde are to cultivate.1 Or, as a<br />former Ivanwald brother who’d used his Ivanwald connections to nd<br />a foothold in the insurance industry told my brothers and me during a<br />seminar on “ biblical capitalism,” “Look at it like this: take a bunch of<br />sticks, l ight each one of ’em on re. Separate, they go out. Put ’em to-<br />gether, though, and light the bundle. Now you’re ready to burn.”<br />Hitler, to the Family, is no more real than Attila the Hun as drafted<br />by business gurus who promise unstoppable “leadership” techniques<br />drawn from history’s killers; or for that matter Christ, himself, as ren-<br />dered in a business best seller called Jesus, CEO. The Family’s avant- garde<br />is not composed of neo-Nazis, or crypto- Nazis, or fascists by any tradi-<br />tional de nition; they are fundamentalists, and in this still-secular age,<br />fundamentalism is a religion of both a uence and revolution.<br />“Fundamentalist” is itself a relatively recent and much-contested<br />word, coined early in the last century by a conservative Baptist who<br />wanted to clear away the confusion about what Christians, by his<br />lights, <br />were supposed to stand for.2 What they stood for, in fact, was<br /><br />4 | JEFF SHARLET<br />confusing. One of the biggest surprises to be found in “The Funda-<br />mentals,” a series of dense pamphlets published between 1910 and<br />1915, is the argument that evolution is reconcilable with a literal<br />reading of scripture. Much has changed since then; such is the evolu-<br />tion of American fundamentalism. Imagine it traveling a path twisted<br />like that of a Möbius strip, the visual paradox made popular in M. C.<br />Escher’s optical illusions, from liberation to authoritarianism. Amer-<br />ican fundamentalism’s original sentiments were as radically demo-<br />cratic in theory as they have become repressive in practice, its dream<br />not that of Christian theocracy but of a return to the rst century of<br />Christ worship, before there was a thing called Christianity. The “age<br />of m iracles,” when church was no more than a word for the great<br />fellowship—the profound friendship—of believers, when Christ’s<br />testament really was new, revelation was unburdened by history, and<br />believers were martyrs or martyrs-to- be, pure and beautiful.<br />Is fundamentalism too limited a word for such utopian dreams?<br />Lately some scholars prefer “maximalism,” a term meant to convey<br />the movement’s ambition to conform every aspect of society to God.<br />In contemporary America—from the Cold War to the Iraq War, the<br />period of the current i ncarnation’s ascendancy—that means a cul-<br />ture remade in the image of a Jesus strong but tender, a warrior who<br />hates the carnage he must cause, a man-god ordi nary men will follow<br />as he conquers the world in order to conform it to his angry love.<br />These are days of the sword, literally—wealthy members of the<br />movement gift one another with real blades crafted to battle stan-<br />dards, a fad inspired by a Christian best seller called Wild at Heart:<br />Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul. As jargon, then, maximalism isn’t<br />bad, but I think fundamentalism still strikes closest to the move-<br />ment’s desire for a story that never changes, a story to redeem all that<br />seems random, a rock upon which history can rise.<br />I o er these explanations not as excuses for the consequences of<br />American fundamental ism, an expansionist ideology of control bet-<br />ter suited to empire than democracy, but to point to the de ning<br />tension of a creed that is both fearful and proud even as it proclaims<br />itself joyous and humble. It is a martyr’s faith in the hands of the<br /><br />THE FAMILY | 5<br />powerful, its cross planted in the blood- soaked soil of mani fest des-<br />tiny. It is the strange and dangerous o spring of two intensely ferti le<br />sets of stories, “America” and “Christianity.”<br />Before moving into Ivanwald, I spent several months on the road,<br />researching God in America for an earlier book. My quarry soon<br />became the gods of America: a pantheon. Not Vishnu or Buddha or<br />the Goddess, though they reside here too, but a heaven crowded with<br />the many di erent Christs believed in by Americans. There’s a Jesus<br />in Miami’s Cuban churches, for instance, who seems to do nothing<br />but wrestle Castro; a Jesus in Heartland, Kansas, who dances around<br />a re with witches who also consider them selves Christians; a Jesus<br />in Manhattan who dresses in drag; a baby Jesus in New Mexico who<br />pulls cow tails and heals the lame or simply the sad by giving them<br />earth to eat; a muscle- bound Jesus in South Central L.A. embla-<br />zoned across the chest of a man with a gun in his hand; a Jesus in an<br />Orlando megachurch who wants you to own a black Beamer.<br />So many Jesuses. And yet there has always been a certain order<br />to America’s Christs, a certain hierarchy. For centuries, the Christ of<br />power was high church, distant, and well mannered. The austere,<br />severe god of Cotton Mather, the Lord of the Ivy League and country<br />club dinners. But from the begin ni ng another Christ has been vying<br />for control, the ecstatic Christ of the Great Awakeners, Jonathan<br />Edwards and Charles Grandison Finney, the angry farmer god Wil-<br />liam Jenni ngs Bryan saw cruci ed on a cross of gold, the sword-<br />tongued, re-eyed Revelation Jesus of a thousand street-corner<br />ranters. A Christ of absolute devotion, not questions. A volatile, exu-<br />berant, American god, almost democratic, almost totalitarian. This<br />wild Christ is not supplanting the old, upper-crust Jesus; rather, the<br />followers of these two visions of the divi ne are nding common<br />cause. The elite and the populist Jesuses are merging, becoming<br />once again a Christ who thrives not so much as a deity or through a<br />theology as what the historian Perry Miller called in The New England<br />Mind, his 1939 classic account of Puritanism, a mood.<br />• • •<br /><br />6 | JEFF SHARLET<br />“You can’t put a heart in a box,” one of my Ivanwald brothers, a<br />Senate aide named Gannon Sims, told me one night. He was trying<br />to make me understand why political terminology, left and right,<br />liberal and conservative, could not contain the movement’s vision. We<br />were sitti ng on Ivanwald’s porch, listening to the c rickets and watch-<br />ing a silvery moon over t he Potomac River wink through the trees.<br />Gannon, former student body president of Baylor University, twisted<br />his class ring. He had blue eyes and blond hair and a voice like an<br />angel born in Texas; he sang in a choir and wrote songs about Jesus<br />and hoped one day to be a senator like the one he worked for, Don<br />Nickles, then the second-ranking Republican. Gannon wanted<br />power. Not for hi mself but for God. It wasn’t up to him; Jesus would<br />use him. “ I don’t try to explain,” he told me. “ I just get involved.”<br />Gannon referred to Senator Nickles as a member of the Family,<br />and he dropped names of others he called members with ease: Sena-<br />tor James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, for instance, who’d trav-<br />eled across Africa on the Fam ily’s behalf, insisting that the conti nent’s<br />leaders hear hi m out about his American Christ before any busi ness<br />could occur, and Representative Joe Pitts, Republican of Pennsylva-<br />nia, a leader of the anti- abortion movement since the 1970s who of-<br />ten stopped by the Cedars, a Family retreat for political leaders. But<br />such elected o cials—means to an end—didn’t really impress Gan-<br />non because in the end he hoped for, the kingdom of heaven on earth<br />toward which both he and the congressmen in the Family were<br />working wouldn’t be a democracy.<br />“It won’t? ” I asked.<br />“King-dom,” said Gannon.<br />I remembered somethi ng another brother, Pavel, had said. He<br />was Czech. His father had been in uential in the former communist<br />regime and the post-Soviet one that followed, but now he was a busi-<br />nessman, which was why, Pavel told me, he had sent him to Ivan-<br />wald. “Contacts,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. One time we had<br />a visitor, a Venezuelan evangelist, who asked Pavel if he had come to<br />Ivanwald to learn about the American way of life. Pavel smiled. He<br />was very tall, and he had a head shaped like a lightbulb. Alone among<br /><br />THE FAMILY | 7<br />the brothers he possessed what might be called a sense of irony. “This<br />is not America,” he replied.<br />But it is.<br /><br /><br />What follows, “Awakenings,” begins with my own, at Ivanwald.<br />Not to the exclusive truth of Ivanwald’s Christ but to what Charles<br />W. Colson, the Watergate felon who was born again through the<br />Family, called in his memoir, Born Again, “a veritable underground of<br />Christ’s men all through government.” This so-called underground is<br />not a conspiracy. Rather, it’s a seventy-year-old movement of elite<br />fundamentalism, bent not on salvation for all but on the cultivation of<br />the powerful, “ key men” chosen by God to direct the a airs of the<br />nation. From Ivanwald I traveled backward, to American fundamen-<br />talism’s forebears: Jonathan Edwards, there at the creation of the<br />First Great Awakening in 1735, and Charles Grandison Finney, who<br />awakened the nation again a century later.<br />Edwards, remembered mostly for one violent phrase—“We are<br />sinners in the hands of an angry God”—gave to what would eventu-<br />ally become American fundamentalism not its fury but its “ heart,” a<br />sentimental story shaped and softened ever since by elite believers.<br />Finney, the great revivalist of the Second Great Awakening, provided<br />to the growing evangelical movement the theatrical tools for rallying<br />its masses. Edwards and Finney are ancestors of the two great strands<br />of American fundamentalism, elite and populist. Populist fundamen-<br />talism takes as its battleground domestic politics, to be conquered<br />and conformed to the will of God; elite fundamentalism sees its mis-<br />sion as the manipulation of politics in the rest of the world. Both<br />populists and elites call their attempts to control the lives of others<br />“evangelism.”<br />Secular America recognizes radical religion only when it marches<br />into the public square, bellowing its intentions. When Charles Finney<br />built the nation’s rst megachurch 170 years ago —at Broadway and<br />Worth, in lower Manhattan—he understood that making a spectacle<br />of faith provided a foundation for power. More recently, Jerry Fal-<br /><br />8 | JEFF SHARLET<br />well and Pat Robertson translated the tent revivals of old i nto politi-<br />cal networks, moral majorities, and Christian co alitions. But now,<br />even that modernization has become shiny with age. Falwell is dead;<br />Robertson is a farce. The secular media nds itself wondering—as it<br />has periodically ever since the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925—<br />whether theocratic pol itics are gone for good from America.<br />Not likely. From Jonathan Edwards and the Revolutionary War<br />that followed the First Great Awakeni ng to the War on Terror, the<br />theocratic strand has been woven into the American fabric, never<br />quite dominant but always stronger and more enduring than those<br />who imagine religion to be a personal, private a air realize.<br />Part Two, “Jesus Plus Nothing,” brings the elite thread into the<br />twentieth century through the story of the founder of the Family, a<br />Norwegian immigrant named Abraham Vereide, and his successor,<br />Doug Coe. Vereide counseled presidents and kings and was spiritual<br />adviser to more senators and generals than Billy Graham has prayed<br />with in all his days of bowing to power. And yet his story is un-<br />known. He preferred it that way; God, thought Vereide, works<br />through men who stay behind the scenes. In Vereide’s day, the Fam-<br />ily maintai ned a formal front organization, International Christian<br />Leadership. In Coe’s, it “submerged,” following instructions he is-<br />sued in 1966, an era of challenge to the kind of establishment power<br />Vereide and Coe protected as God-ordained.<br />Why haven’t we seen them and their work? The secular assump-<br />tion since the Scopes trial has been that such beliefs are obsessions of<br />the fringe. In their populist mani festations—prurient antipornogra-<br />phy crusaders, rabid John Birchers, scream ing foes of abortion wield-<br />ing bloody fetuses like weapons —they often are. But there is another<br />thread of American fundamentalism, i nvisible to secular observers,<br />that ran through the post-Scopes politics of the twentieth century,<br />concerned not so much with individual morality as with “Christian<br />civilization,” Washington, D.C., as its shining capital. It is this elite<br />thread, the avant- garde of American fundamentalism, and the ways<br />in which it has shaped the broad faith of a nation and the uneasy poli-<br />tics of empire, that is at the heart of my story.<br /><br />THE FAMILY | 9<br />Part Three, “The Popular Front,” carries that story into the pres-<br />ent. The current manifestation of fundamentalist power is only—<br />only!—the latest revival of emotions stirred by Jonathan Edwards<br />nearly three hundred years ago, the fear of an angry God, the love of<br />a personal Jesus, and the ecstasy wrought by the Holy Ghost. That<br />trinity of sentiments was bound together then by the belief that to<br />the Europe an conquerors of the New World was given the burden of<br />spreading their light—their power—to all of humanity.<br />This is not a book about the Bible thumpers portrayed by Holly-<br />wood, pinched little hypocrites and broad- browed lunatics, repre-<br />sentatives of that subset of American fundamentalism that declares<br />itself a bitter nation within a nation. Rather, it’s a story that begins on<br />Ivanwald’s suburban lawn, with a group of men gripping each other’s<br />shoulders in prayer. It is the story of how they got there, where they<br />are going, and where the movement they joined came from; the story<br />of an American fundamentalism, gentle and militant, conservative<br />and revolutionary, that has been hiding in plain sight all along.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-5206884093936343822009-07-12T00:40:00.001-07:002009-07-12T00:40:59.039-07:00About The Family - The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power<h1 style="text-align: center;"><em></em></h1> <h4></h4><div style="text-align: center;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-35" src="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/the_family_cover.jpg" alt="Book cover of The Family, by Jeff Sharlet" height="304" width="200" /><br /></div><br /><p>“Of all the important studies of the American right, <em>The Family</em> is undoubtedly the most eloquent. It is also quite possibly the most terrifying.”<br />–Thomas Frank, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>What’s the Matter with Kansas?</em></p> <p><em>A journalist’s penetrating look at the untold story of Christian fundamentalism’s most elite organization, a self-described “invisible” network dedicated to a distortion of Christianity they call “Jesus plus nothing”— a religion of power for the powerful</em></p> <p>They are the Family—fundamentalism’s avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the “new chosen,” congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a “leadership led by God,” to be won not by force but through what they call quiet diplomacy. Their headquarters is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.</p> <p><em>The Family</em> is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an itinerant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the far right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who speak the language of establishment power, a “family” that thrives to this day. In public, they host the National Prayer Breakfast; in private they preach a gospel of “biblical capitalism,” military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as model leaders, the Family’s current leader, Doug Coe, declares, “we work with power where we can, and build new power where we can’t.”</p> <p>Sharlet’s discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must as is not “What do fundamentalists want?” but “What have they already done?”</p> <p>Part history, part investigative journalism <em>The Family</em> is a gripping account of how fundamentalism came to be interwoven with American power, a story that stretches from the religious revivals that have shaken this nation from its beginning to fundamentalism’s new frontiers. No other book about the Right has exposed the Family or revealed its far-reaching impact on democracy, and no future reckoning of American fundamentalism will be able to ignore it.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-62191265186255849812009-07-12T00:37:00.000-07:002009-07-12T00:39:24.207-07:00Biography About Jeff Sharlet<h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;">BIO of Jeff Sharlet</span><br /></h1> <!--Content Below --> <div id="content" class="narrowcolumn"><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div class="post" id="post-136"><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div class="entry"><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><h2 style="text-align: center;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-131" src="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeff_sharlet_sm1.jpg" alt="Jeff Sharlet" height="358" width="358" /></h2><h2 style="text-align: center;">ABOUT Jeff Sharlet</h2> <p>Jeff Sharlet, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power</em> (Harper, 2008) and a contributing editor for <em>Harper’s</em> and <em>Rolling Stone</em>, has been writing about the intersection of religion, politics, and culture for more than a decade. His writing on religion has earned him praise from writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich, who calls <em>The Family</em> “one of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposés you’ll ever read,” and condemnation from the likes of Ann Coulter, who declares Sharlet one of the “stupidest” journalists in America.</p> <p>Since 2003, Sharlet has been an associate research scholar at New York University’s Center for Religion and Media, where he has taught graduate seminars in American religious history and journalism. He has also spoken on religion, politics, and media at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and at colleges across the country. At NYU, Sharlet created <em>TheRevealer</em>.org, a review of religion and the media, with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust.</p> <p>In 2000, Sharlet cofounded an online literary magazine, <em>KillingTheBuddha</em>.com, winner of an Utne/Alternative Press Award, which in 2004 led to a book coauthored with Peter Manseau, <em>Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible</em> (Free Press), a travelogue based on a year Sharlet and Manseau spent exploring the “margins of faith” – a cowboy church in Texas, a military pagan coven in Kansas, a Pentecostal exorcism in North Carolina. The book was celebrated on NPR’s <em>Morning Edition</em> as “a mix of hymn and history, poem and prophecy, story and sermon” and named by <em>Publishers Weekly</em> one of the top 10 religion titles of a year. <em>KillingTheBuddha</em>.com has been anthologized as <em>Believer, Beware</em>, published by Beacon Press in 2009. <em>Library Journal</em> calls it “shocking, exhilarating, and never dull — highly recommended.”</p> <p>In addition to <em>Harper’s</em> and <em>Rolling Stone</em>, Sharlet has written for <em>Mother Jones</em>, <em>New York</em>, <em>The Nation</em>, <em>New Statesman, The Washington Post</em>, <em>The Dallas Morning News</em>, <em>Nerve</em>, <em>Salon</em>, <em>The Chronicle of Higher Education</em>, <em>Columbia Journalism Review</em>, <em>Oxford American</em>, <em>The Baffler, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Forward</em>, and <em>Pakn Treger</em>, an award-winning magazine of Jewish history literature which he created for the National Yiddish Book Center. He has commented on religion and politics for NBC News, CNN, NPR, BBC, CBC, Al Jazeera, Air America, Radio France, <em>The New York Times</em>, <em>Newsweek</em>, and other media venues. A 2005 <em>Harper’s</em> cover story was part of <em>Harper’s</em> winning National Magazine Award entry, and a 2003 <em>Harper’s</em> cover story was anthologized in Best Music Writing 2004. A 2007 feature for Oxford American is anthologized in the 2008 edition of Best Music Writing. Sharlet is currently working on <em>The Hammer Song</em>, a history of postwar American protest music to be published by Basic Books in 2009. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, historian Julia Rabig, and a fascist cat named Richard.</p> <p style="margin-top: 50px;">Press Images</p> <div style="margin: 20px; width: 90%; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeff_sharlet_sq.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-132" title=" " src="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeff_sharlet_sq-150x150.jpg" alt="Jeff Sharlet" height="100" width="100" /></a> <a href="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeff_sharlet_horz.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-133" src="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeff_sharlet_horz.jpg" alt="Jeff Sharlet" height="100" width="188" /></a><a href="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeff_sharlet_bw.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-134" src="http://jeffsharlet.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/jeff_sharlet_bw-200x300.jpg" alt="Jeff Sharlet" height="100" width="66" /></a></div> <p style="clear: both;">Click images for full size view, or right-click and choose “Save Target As”</p> </div> </div> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4083546959581100548.post-52540250001787199992009-07-11T23:40:00.000-07:002009-07-11T23:41:09.679-07:00The Family - The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power Review"A brilliant marriage of investigative journalism and history, an unsettling story of how this small but powerful group shaped the faith of the nation in the 20th century and drives the politics of empire in the 21st. Anyone interested in circles of power will love this book." -- <i>Debby Applegate, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher</i><br /><br />"An astounding entrée to a fascinating Christian network unknown to most Americans. . . . A must-read for any American who wants to know who is actually pulling the strings at the highest levels of power." -- <i>Heidi Ewing, co-director Jesus Camp</i><br /><br />"I was once an insider’s insider within fundamentalism. Unequivocally: Sharlet knows what he’s talking about. . . . Those who want to be un-deceived (and wildly entertained) must read this disturbing tour de force." -- <i>Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy For God: How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back</i><br /><br />"Jeff Sharlet is one of the very best writers covering the politics of religion. Brilliantly reported and filled with wonderful anecdotes, THE FAMILY tells the story of an influential group that you haven’t previously heard of, and need to know about." -- <i>Ken Silverstein, Washington editor of Harper's and author of The Radioactive Boy Scout</i><br /><br />"Jeff Sharlet provides a fascinating account of how part of American Christianity has gone off on a dangerous tangent. It should worry everyone—maybe especially those of us who understand the Gospels to be a call to help the powerless, not prop up the powerful." -- <i>Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and The Bill McKibben Reader</i><br /><br />"Of all the important studies of the American right, THE FAMILY is undoubtedly the most eloquent. It is also quite possibly the most terrifying." -- <i>Thomas Frank, New York Times bestselling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?</i><br /><br />"One of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you’ll ever read—just don’t read it alone at night!" -- <i>Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch</i><br /><br />"This is a gripping, utterly original narrative about an influential evangelical elite that few Americans even know exists. . . . The Christian Right will never look the same again." -- <i>Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: the Life of William Jennings Bryan and The Populist Persuasion: An American History</i><br /><br />"Un-American theocrats can only fool patriotic American democrats when there aren’t critics like Jeff Sharlet around—careful scholars and soulful writers who understand both the majesty of faith and the evil of its abuses. A remarkable accomplishment in the annals of writing about religion." -- <i>Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America</i><br /><br />"[Sharlet] has managed to infiltrate the most influential and secretive fundamentalist network in America, and ground his reporting in the most astute and original explanation of fundamentalism I’ve ever read. . . . Indispensable." -- <i>Hanna Rosin, former religion reporter for the Washington Post and author of God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save the Nation</i> <em>--This text refers to the <span class="product">Hardcover</span> edition.</em>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03289228813431913898noreply@blogger.com0