Exposing a Network of Powerful Christians

Reader Comments
Back to article

In this book jeff makes The Family sound like they are a world super power.if you ask me this book is dumb and the facts arent all right. This group may be secretive and may be a bit shady but honestly what do you think they could be doing plotting to take over the world. If they want privacy then why do people have to go writing a book of false facts that they have made. I like being private so does that mean i am up to something bad...no so this book jeff wrote is a complete violation of a humans rights and an organizations rights. Do you think they have bible studies and secretly take over other "mafias".

Bob Smith of AK 11:10PM January 08, 2010

Tolson seems to think that Sharlet is confusing The Family with American fundamentalism. THroughout, Sharlet distinguishes this elite brand of fundamentalism, that "follows" Jesus, the Jesus of Power, not Love, from mainstream fundamentalisms. In addition, he connects Jonathan Edwards and other historical figures mainl to the emotional male bonding of the Family, not necessarily to its mafia-like obsession with power.

Mallika Henry of NY 9:50AM November 11, 2009

There is one primary problem in todays America: overwhelming but also highly corruptive activities of gay (vs. all Americans) rights advocates, such as Tim Gill, essentially buying USA piece-by-piece.
WAKE UP AND DEFEND OUR COUTRY AND OUR CONSTITUTION!!!
It is very foolish to waste our best people and unaccounted for sums of money overseas while completely ignoring grave domestic problem.

chris of MN 11:39AM July 24, 2008

It's always good to examine and re-examine how much influence certain "religious" leaders have (or have had) on government. But please don't call those promoting unfettered capitalism "Christians". They aren't. They are Old-Testament worshippers at best, aka followers of Judaism
The real Jesus said that the two important commandments are 1) Love God, and 2) Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Out-trading your neighbors for profit and sport (the foundation of capitalism, mitigated only by government regulations) is not now and never was the message of Jesus. As he was famous for saying: "You cannot serve both God and money". But the "religious" leaders would have you forget that.

Daniel David of NM 3:25PM May 29, 2008

This is not a review but another dangerously placed piece of propaganda. Rather than give the academic respect that Sharlet's journalism deserves, Tolson furthers an extreme right march while shading Coe's "Family" from the cleansing light of day.
The convergence of elitist fundamentalism with the traditional, along with the neo con ideology and its bed-partner corporatism, have led us to the precipice upon which we now stand.. With his efforts of bait and switch, Tolson declares that this is just another exaggeration by a progressive writer. He does so at our risk.
Sharlet's book has been exquisitely researched and footnoted. At best, Tolson has discredited himself . At worst, he furthers the cause of Fundamentalists by helping Coe to legitimize and sanctify his cozy, do-gooder religious network.
No, Jeff Sharlet's book is not an example of overcorrection. it is instead an alarm that there are a significant number of subversive U.S. and world leaders bent upon running the world for Christ, and accruing an awful lot of power and money while doing so, consequences be damned.

Marji of OH 1:49PM May 29, 2008

I agree with with these critics above. I think Tolson missed the whole point of the book. Sharlet clearly is not an ally of his subjects, but he provides an extremely humane popularizing historical and anthropological--if you will-perspective on a social group that is not distinct from society, separated off, like some "conspiracy," as Tolson puts it. Something that struck me about the Family is that they seem so normal because they are integrated into society and politics in a way that makes them seem like an everyday, bland civic-religious organization (For example, the prayer breakfast seems harmless enough). Sharlet is able to show how bizarre they really are and also how power really works, not as some clandestine group connving behind the scenes ("Aha! It's those guys who ACTUALLY run everything!"), but rather as a social organization that participates in and feeds on certain economic, religious, and political norms typical of American culture and though secretive, completely out in the open. Tolson does not seem to be a subtle thinker, nor a close reader.

Bridget of NJ 11:56PM May 28, 2008

The only thing Tolson reviews for us here is his own lack of integrity. Finally a thorough investigation of the Family hits print and his reaction is to gloss it?
And in a week where the media is over backwards trying to excuse their complicity with the Bush administration’s run up to a disastrous war?
The only thing the Family fears more than (their own private) Jesus is exposure.
Jay Tolson’s clearly not to be bothered. Through his journalistic apathy he's unable to see the stakes.

otherspoon of PA 10:27PM May 28, 2008

I must be reading a different book than the one described in this sneering review. With each of Tolson’s critiques, he manages to bungle the story and the point. The Fellowship hasn’t clearly been linked to faith-based initiatives and conservative judges, Tolson declares, so claims about their power must be exaggerated. Or, conversely, since they host, counsel and house leading congressmen, presidents and international leaders, and undeniably must have some sizable degree of power, their influence on those leaders must be benign. They’re just working towards the same establishment religious right goals, protests Tolson, then disclaims that they’re really working on policy even liberals would like. (This is a particularly misguided claim, as the religious right’s work on slavery and trafficking issues, as Tolson refers to with Browback’s legislation, has only the trappings of liberal policy. In practice, it’s been much more about cracking down on prostitution, and sex workers, than on actual instances of slavery, unsexy labor and human rights issue that it is. But that’s just dizzyingly complicated to convey through journalism, isn’t it?)
Forgive me if I find that Tolson’s protesting a little too much. These seeming contradictions don’t settle the matter of the Fellowship, as Tolson would like to do in 1,000 words; they’re just the starting point for an investigation of theological and political nuance about the way that a group with a decidedly undemocratic theology has set itself up as an underground power-broker in Washington conducting illegal diplomacy with a group of world-class creeps.
The saddest part of this reaction is that Tolson’s biggest complaint is that Sharlet undertook a investigation and followed it through with success. I suppose there’s a reason for establishment reporters on religion and politics to find that bothersome, but it reflects more poorly on them, and the state of investigative journalism today, than it does on Sharlet’s findings, which are thoroughly explained as to terminology, origin and method. Is the established press really so desk-bound, “expert”-indebted and unimaginative now that it can’t imagine a journalist or scholar accessing information without the approval of the subject they’re writing about?
Sorry – that question is as snide as the “right-wing conspiracy” set-up for Tolson’s review. Of course the established press is that fangless by now. They maintain their access by agreeing to abide by a certain conventional wisdom, rather than by digging.
But even bearing that in mind, it’s really hard to fathom why Tolson is so intent on dismissing Sharlet’s very well-documented research and findings out of hand. Tolson’s own admission, “Coe himself has often used his network of international friends to help resolve conflicts between and within nations in Africa, notably within Sudan,” seems reason enough to know more about this political “spiritual advisor” who’s had the ear of presidents for decades. Admitting further that the “pastorally helpful” Coe worked with a host of dictators involved in human rights abuses would seem further reason. But not “to Washington insiders,” and so not to Tolson.
Raise a glass to the late, great Fourth Estate.

Kath of NY 9:43PM May 28, 2008

Tolson's understanding of conservatism seems pretty narrow. The boundaries of liberalism and conservatism change during the Family's existence and part of the story this book tells is how the organization manages to build and maintain influence as the more public faces of the right wax and wane. Tolson's also misses the book's MAJOR argument: that the Family is one side of the convergence of popular and elite fundamentalism--far from arguing that the Family is a conspiracy of strong-arming backdealers, Sharlet places them in the longer historical and ideological context of conservative movements. This context reaches back more than 40 years--something overlooked when the floodgates of liberal hysteria over religion opened a few years ago. I'm enjoying this book--a corrective to standard left-right perceptions of fundamentalism.

P. Tangot of NY 8:22PM May 28, 2008

Jay Tolson, usually a nuanced and thoughtful writer, resorts to the most juvenile method of criticism in his attack on my book, The Family: He sets up a caricture, then dismantles it. Tolson is absolutely correct in mocking the idea that The Fellowship, aka The Family, is at the heart of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy,” or any other conspiracy. Unfortunately, those are Tolson’s words, not mine. I’m not sure how I could have made my view any clearer than this, on page 7 of my introduction: “This so- called underground is not a conspiracy.”
If that’s too vague for Tolson, there’s always this, later in the book, referring to Fellowship founder Abram Vereide: “Abram’s upper-crust faith was not a conspiracy.” And if Tolson was still confused, he might have skipped ahead further, to this, in response to current Fellowship leader Doug Coe’s documented decision to “submerge” the profile of the organization: “The decision was not so much conspiratorial, as it seemed to those among Abram’s old-timers who responded with confusion, as ascetic, a humbling of powers.”
Is The Fellowship secretive? Yes, by its own declaration. Does that make it a conspiracy? Not in any court of law I know. Rather, as I argue in the book Tolson so knowingly skimmed, The Fellowship represents a strand of evangelical activism that has clearly been influential among some of America’s most powerful Christians and yet which to date has never been subject to any kind of in-depth study. That’s a more modest claim than Tolson’s tin-foil caricature, yes, but one that I think would withstand Tolson’s scrutiny if he bothered to review my book rather than his own assumptions about my political views.
Had he done so, he might have noticed the explanation I offer in the introduction, with reference to respected scholars such as George Marsden, Martin Marty, Scott Appleby, and Nancy Ammerman, for my decision to use the term “fundamentalism” as more accurately descriptive of the movement as a whole than “evangelicalism.” Tolson thinks to school me on the conventional historiography of the terms, according to which fundamentalism was a separatist movement under the umbrella evangelicalism. With respect for scholars who hold that position, I’ve explicitly argued for re-definition of terms based on the actual history of the movements in question rather than the formal declarations of leaders. Many evangelicals are not fundamentalists, but plenty of fundamentalists – Abraham Vereide, ostensibly a Methodist, among them—did not think of themselves as part of evangelicalism. Doug Coe, the current leader, denies the name “Christian” all together, and yet his oft-stated view that all governance should be according to Jesus rather than the will of the people marks him as a far more extreme believer than the vast majority of evangelicals who respect the First Amendment as much as every other American.
Most puzzling of all in Tolson’s article, though, is his insistence that we trust him because he has access to Washington insiders, not usually known for their candor. One such he cites is Michael Cromartie, head of the Evangelical Studies Projects at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Cromartie assures us that Coe’s publicity-shy ways are “politically harmless.” Tell that to the people of Somalia. As The Fellowship’s own documents demonstrate, Coe arranged meetings between that blighted country’s late dictator Siad Barre and high American officials, including then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Vessey. A document prepared for The Fellowship by Barre’s government notes that it had already provided for the Pentagon a list of desired armaments. Barre received most of them, as the United States greatly amplified the firepower he then turned on his own people, providing Somalia with its only moment of unity in recent decades when everyone in the country turned on the vicious dictator. Did Coe pull the triggers? No. Did he speak truth to power? No. Did he flatter power and at the very least act as its secretary? Undeniably. “Politically harmless”? You decide.
Cromartie tells Tolson he thinks so. Ethics, in Cromartie’s apparent definition, must mean a very relativist understanding of truth. Several years ago, he told the LA Times that “a lot of people use the Fellowship as a way to network, as a way to gain entrée to all sorts of people. And entrée they do get.”
“Insiders” such as Cromartie and Tolson may think that’s hunky-dory, but to me, that sounds like bad religion – an insult not just to open and transparent democracy but to the vast majority of Christians in America for whom faith is a path toward God, not power.
Cromartie used to think so himself – several years ago, when I was an invited guest at a Key West junket organized by Cromartie’s group, he told me that my characterization of Coe and The Family in the original Harper’s article out of which this book grew was dead-on. But that was back when I could conceivably pass as a chummy insider myself, enjoying a luxury vacation on the tab of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Between friends, apparently, it’s ok to criticize power; but before the public, insiders close ranks.

Jeff Sharlet of NY 7:14PM May 28, 2008