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Pre-Order Jeff Sharlet's Book on The Family
Jeff Sharlet' book on The Family, is due out in May, but it can be pre-ordered from Amazon here.
The book promises to be significant for many reasons, but could also play a role in the current contest for the Democratic nomination for president. The book may well re-raise the question of the role of Hillary Clinton in this shadowy group. Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce wanted to ask her about it for an article in Mother Jones, but she declined to talk to them. They were the only one's asking at the time -- but that could easily change.
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Meanwhile, Jeff reports that the book jacket states:
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 "quiet diplomacy." Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.
The Family 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 immigrant 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 spoke the language of establishment power, a "family" that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of "biblical capitalism," military might, and American empire.
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 ask is not "What do fundamentalists want?" but "What have they already done?"
And of course, Jeff is not the only Talk to Action contributor with a new book: Sara Posner's book God's Profits about prosperity gospel preachers like Rod Parsley and Ken Copeland is recently out; and John Gorenfeld's book Bad Moon Rising about the empire of Rev. Sun Myung Moon is just out as well. |
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