Jeff Sharlet, The Family, & Faith-Based Initiatives

Jeff Sharlet's new book, The Family - The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, will become available next month.

Mr. Sharlet has spent years researching the ultra-secretive sect known as The Family or The Fellowship. The Family is a thriving, pulsating virus striking at the very heart of constitutional government in this country.

The following comes from the bookjacket:

The Family represents "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 known to have written from inside its walls.

"The Family is about the other half of American fundamentallist 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. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, 'We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."


I was most surprised to learn that Hillary Clinton joined a Bible study group with The Family in 1993 and has spoken of its leader as a source of spiritual insight.

For additional information click here.


John Gorenfield, writing for "Talk 2 Action," reported that on Friday, April 4, Mr. Sharlet "dropped an amazing tidbit. Seems that the Faith-Based initiative--the Bush plan to send billions of tax dollars hurtling to religious groups--was dreamed up by the geniuses at The Family, the District of Columbia's spiritual mafia and no fans of the Establishment Clause."

Gorenfield goes on to describe an amusing, if ultimately frightening, series of events he was involved in some six years ago. "Way back in 2002," he says, "below the radar, a bunch of God-oriented offices sprang up within the Department of Labor and other secular agencies. The idea was to grease the path of dollar bills from the U.S. government to social programs inspired by one deity or another."

That prodded Gorenfield to get his hand in to see what he could pull out. He got "in touch on behalf of a controversial faith--the fictitious congregation from H.P. Lovecraft's classic horror stories, about a terrifying fiend from the deep." He wrote to the Department of Labor as a representative of the Church of Cthulhu, "a.k.a. 'the thing that cannot be described.'"

The Department of Labor responded by sending him a letter "Announcing Grant Opportunities," and a pamphlet with a god-awful picture of a burning bush, containing the caption "Not everyone has a burning bush to tell them their life's calling."

Gorenfield received other mail from the DOL, but he can't find it. That mail came addressed to his "fictitious Church of the Robot."


How many billions of dollars has the Bush administration wasted on this unconstitutional and illegal scheme? We'll probably never know. Another important question is "What will happen to the Faith-Based Initiative" when Bush and cronies leave office?

Last month, Bill Berkowitz, at Media Transparency, noted that none of the current presidential candidates have provided any specifics as to how FBI will be implemented or not-implemented during their tenure, but each of them has, according to Christianity Today, "voiced support for federal funding of faith-based social services."

Obama said he wants to look at the program in detail to see "how monies have been allocated ... before I make a firm commitment ..."

Clinton actually has a "director of faith-based outreach," not a good sign. His name is Burns Strider and he indicated that she could continue funding the organizations "but would seek to maintain an appropriate boundary between church and state." [There is no "appropriate boundary." The boundary has been torn down!]

A spokesman for McCain promised that McCain would essentially keep things going the way they are. Of course he would.

Berkowitz notes that Bush, in his last State of the Union speech said he wants "to make his faith-based agenda a permanent part of the federal government." Well, we've known for seven years that George neither understands the U.S. Constitution nor feels bound by it. So that's no surprise.

Bush said, "Our government should not fear the influence of faith in our society." Which faith? Any faith? From what I've read, monies distributed through this faith-based scam have gone almost entirely to fundamentalist Christian groups. Not too much has found its way to social programs sponsored by Muslims.

But Bush doesn't even understand the problem. Again, he has twisted things around to suit his own misguided view of government. The problem isn't that government "fears" the influence of faith in our society. The problem is that the government wants to define that faith and impose the strictures of fundamentalist Christianity upon the population. What he meant and would have said, if he had been truthful, is that we have nothing to "fear" from a government that's tied to faith.

That's the con, and that, of course, is precisely what we should fear the most, because historically, every time a government and a religion have joined as one, the result has been an unmitigated disaster!

Bush's current "faith-based czar," Jay Hein, submitted a "seven-year progress report," detailing the "successes" of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative. Bushites promote the report as evidence that they were right all along as it "makes ... clear that, contrary to the imaginings of some critics, this is a serious, substantive, careful, and significant effort to improve social services, make government collaboration with grassroots and faith-based groups more fruitful, and better follow the constitutional mandate to protect religious freedom and ensure equal treatment of all."

What a crock! There is nothing "serious" or "substantive" about it! The Bush Administration set up this program as a sop to the Righteous Right, and also because it falls in line with neocon thinking that the government should rid itself of providing social services. Let the churches do the social stuff, is the official line. In neocon thinking, government is bad and thus as many government services as possible should be shuffled off to other, non-governmental groups.

Furthermore, the constitutional mandate is not "to protect religious freedom and ensure equal treatment of all." The constitutional mandate is simply that the United States government shall establish no religion and that there shall be no religious test to hold office in the U.S. political establishment.

What the Bushites have done is broken down that wall of separation of church and state precisely by establishing religious groups to do government work with taypayer dollars! And, as has become clear, the religious groups which are being established have, for the most part, a fundamentalist Christian identity.

Even a number of conservative politicians and leaders have criticised the program. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, for example, were afraid that bad groups related to Scientology and Krishna would get taypayer bucks. Not entirely irrational.

But a major problem has been the lack of oversight which allows religious groups to discriminate and/or indoctrinate, and the lack of fiscal responsibility. Furthermore, as Berkowitz says, "there are still no adequate measures in place to gauge whether religious organizations providing social services outperform -- or even perform equally as well -- as their secular counterparts. In addition, the initiative has been used as a religious patronage system to recruit minority religious officials and bolster Bush's conservative evangelical constituency."


Let's see now: Seven years ago, at the instigation and with the support of The Family, the Bush administration rammed through [see below] a faith-based program to fund religious organizations providing social services. While the Bushites claim this is in line with the U.S. Constitution, many believe it to actually be in direct violation of the Constitution.

At the end of these seven years the FBI has turned out to be exactly what many of us thought it was when first announced -- a transparent effort to shunt mega-bucks to right-wing fundamentalist organizations to build up that part of Bush's political base - without which he'd still be back shoveling shit in Crawford.

At the end of seven years and billions of dollars of taxpayer money gone up in holy smoke, no adequate evaluation as to the program's effectiveness has been undertaken, especially as it relates to other, non-religious programs. The program continues to lack proper controls to ensure that these religious providers do not discriminate or proselytize.

What we do have at the end of seven years is a proliferation and expansion of the program. The Bush administration claims that "some 35 governors and 100 mayors have established faith-based offices; opened the doors for more religious organizations to be eligible to receive government grants; doled several billion dollars to (mostly) constituent religious groups; and overcame political opposition by [the] issuing of several significant executive orders to move the project forward."


Greed rules. Greed rules everywhere. Greed rules religion and religious institutions.

Perhaps you would like to join my new religion, the Church of Haysus Mexicano. We are going to apply for a grant to provide assistance to illegals who need shopping bags to pick up aluminun cans along the highway. Everyone wanting a shopping bag would, of course, need to attend a series of "workshops" titled "Haysus Mexicano can help you find a can." We wouldn't force them to join our church, but we could imply they'd find a lot more cans if they did, and that would mean they'd earn more income.

I figure our operating expenses for the first year would run about $2 million. Seems I've lost the address for the Department of Labor, however. If you know what it is, please send an email and we'll put you on our mailing list. Oops! Mailing lists are expensive. I'd better bump our application to $2.5 million.