God's Senators - traveling the world on The Family's dime spreading prayer cells

[Shallah Kali]

God’s Senators
By: Jeff Sharlet Tuesday July 14, 2009 4:25 pm
http://firedoglake.com/2009/07/14/gods-senators/

America's favorite bloodsport -- scandal -- has thrust the Family, the subject of my 2008 book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, back into the news. Lucky for me, the revelations of Senator John Ensign's and Governor Mark Sanford's sex scandals -- and their links to the Family -- come just as the book is being released in paperback. At first, I was reluctant to comment -- what's a sex scandal compared to the real business of the Family? Not cover-ups for congressmen but the projection of American power through the lens of piety and the sacralization of free market fundamentalism.

Then Mark Sanford invoked King David as a justification for staying in power, an unorthodox reading of scripture I was familiar with from my time as a member of the Family. In short, Sanford was telling the public that he's governor not because they elected him but because he was chosen by God. That, to me, is a lot more disturbing than the news that he has a libido.

Things got more interesting -- and more troubling with the revelation that not only had John Ensign and his parents paid his mistress off, the Family played a role in the arrangements. The man Ensign cuckolded, Doug Hampton, insists that Senator Tom Coburn, a resident with Ensign at the Family's C Street House for congressmen, urged Ensign to offer even more than the $96,000 we know about -- $1.2 million to make the Hampton family "whole."

Coburn's no cynic. In fact, despite his extreme right-wing views -- he's proposed the death penalty for abortion providers -- he's known for personal integrity. The pay-off scheme, if it's what it looks like, isn't proof that he's a hypocrite; it's evidence that he's operating under a different system of ethics than most of us are familiar with. The ethics, that is, of biblical capitalism, the belief that everything can be bought and sold, and that God sets the price. What looks like pimping to outsiders may well strike Senator Coburn as justice -- a $1.2 million price tag for sex with another man's wife and the destruction of a family.

And it keeps getting worse. Working with Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, I've learned that Ensign, Coburn, and several other congressmen have been representing the U.S. overseas on official business even as they traveled on the Family's dime. Congressmen confused about who they were working for spread the Family's unique American fundamentalism as far afield as Serbia, Sudan, Belarus, and Pakistan. Senator Coburn traveled to Lebanon to establish the same kind of Family prayer cells -- that's their word for them -- that provided cover for Ensign in that religiously torn country. And, like many of his brothers in the Family, he humbled himself with strenous vigorous missions to the British Virgin Islands; the Family's also been paying for travel to Aruba.

Several chapters of Sharlet's book can be read for free on google books here: http://books.google.com/books?id=NVmcx-8zdGEC

also interview w/Sharlet on Nevada public radio: http://knpr.org/son/archive/detail.cfm?ProgramID=1662
download mp3 http://www.knpr.org/audio2009/SON-mp3/090715_j-sharlet.mp3 or listen http://www.knpr.org/audio2009/090715_j-sharlet.m3u

[Karenina]

1. These bots are the low-hanging fruit.

Check out Christian Reconstructionism for a thrill. Be sure to have clean undies nearby. :evilgrin:

[doni_georgia]

5. The connection - The Seeker Friendly Church

both the members of the fellowship and Christian Reconstructionists want to create a government run by god's chosen. The difference between the two is that strict Christian Reconstructionists want to convert the world - have everyone follow Christian law. Christian Reconstructionists are hardcore fundamentalists. The Family or The Fellowship is far more dangerous. The Fellowship - or Family - doesn't care about converting everyone. The poor and powerless are nobodies to them - they don't matter. Theirs is a trickle down Christianity. Convert the powerful but don't use traditional evangelical lingo to do so. They (like so many mega churches involved in the seekers movement) use new language. They talk about Jesus as a real guy - downplaying the son of god stuff. They talk about the people in the Bible who were really flawed but used by god anyway - like King David. They focus on the humanity rather than the divinity. That's what the seeker friendly churches do. They don't talk about sin. They don't talk about the miracles of Jesus much. They focus on the humanity, the every guy stuff. They use language that is inoffensive that will draw in those who have never been really religious. All of the seeker friendly mega churches have cells (family groups, neighborhood fellowships, etc.) where members get to know a small core group of people. You hang out with this cell group, convide in them, etc. Many of these churches have thousands of members but most people involved in these church only really know the people in their cells. They have church health clubs, gyms, basketball and softball leagues, movie theaters, coffee houses, etc. There is no reason to seek outside the church for entertainment.

We attended one of these seeker friendly churches for a couple of years in the 1990s. It's something else. People are seen as flawed, but forgiven, because they are god's chosen. In the church we went to, the pastor's wife had an affair with one of the deacons. Every thing was confessed in a teary testamonial. It couldn't have been any more theatrical had it been staged. Flawed but forgiven! Morals and rules and such are for the unbelievers! God gave Jesus to the believers so they wouldn't have to be perfect. Screw ups are not only forgiven they are expected. Seriously!

When I was watching Rachel Maddow last night, I called my husband in and asked, "What does this sound like?" He replied that it sounded just like the church we used to go to. Funny thing is both that church and The Family are connected to Youth With a Mission, which owns the property on C-Street. These people are not stupid. This is "Christianity" (they really don't use that word in the seeker churches much) for the educated. Check out Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church and the Purpose Driven Life. These groups have a purpose. Power is at the forefront in all of them. The church we attended is trying to gradually become more powerful than the local government, but they are doing it in a totally non-threatening way - loaning out their facilities to the local schools for concerts, plays, and events; sending volunteers to help at local events; sponsoring prayer breakfasts for politicians and teachers, etc. The Fellowship in DC is just this same thing on a much broader scale, but it goes so much deeper than that. The local fundamentalist churches that are open about their theocratic beliefs are not the real threat. Fear these seek-friendly churches and the movement behind it.

[Karenina]

6. Your words are ignored at the reader's peril.

Thank you for your post!

[Karenina]

2. OOPS!

[Karenina]

3. These bots are the low-hanging fruit.

Check out Christian Reconstructionism for a thrill. Be sure to have clean undies nearby. :evilgrin:

[Karenina]

4. These bots are the low-hanging fruit.

Check out "Christian Reconstructionism" a real thrill. Be sure to have clean knickers nearby. :evilgrin:

[eppur_se_muova]

7. "Spreading cells" -- aka metastasis -- how appropriate. nt