With the emergence of The Family as a subject of public interest, Religion Dispatches has posted a roundtable discussion on Jeff Sharlet's book of the same name (now out in paper), featuring Sharlet, Anthea Butler, Diane Winston, and Randall Balmer. The discussion is somewhat musty: It was conducted last summer, and so lacks references not only to recent events but also to the Obama Dispensation. It is, nonetheless, instructive.
To his credit, Sharlet has called attention to a little known religio-political enterprise that has plied its trade in Washington for a number of decades. It has operated largely under cover, reached out to political movers and shakers of both parties and different religious persuasions, and its mission is animated by a strong conservative Christian ideology. It is elitist, uninterested in democratic politics except as such politics lifts up the people who run the country. The question is: How significant a role has it played in national affairs?
Sharlet claims that this group is, as his subtitle puts it, "The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." Now, does that mean that it is the heart of American power, or just that, like many another aspiring lesion, it has glommed onto Washington's power elite? Just like, say, AIPAC, which is the Secret Zionism at the Heart of American Power. (Well, maybe not so secret.) Sharlet is canny enough to leave some ambiguity, but what's clear from the roundtable is that he's offered the left an alternate interpretation of recent political religious history--one that shows the religious right not as the product of genuine popular reaction to the direction of American culture but as an inside job stretching back to the Cold War. The Family becomes a kind of Opus Dei, with Washington playing the role of Rome.
The participant in the roundtable not buying this view is Balmer, who had just savaged Sharlet's book in the Washington Post. What he particularly didn't like was Sharlet's effort to portray The Family as the culmination of an American evangelicalism stretching back to Jonathan Edwards--a lineage that, it seems, The Family has constructed for itself. But claiming a lineage doesn't make it so.
My own view is that The Family is at most a bit player in the spiritual politics of the past generation. To be sure, it's an interesting player, not least because of its determined establishmentarianism--its genetic inclination towards bipartisanship even as religion became ever more partisan. One of the curious things about recent coverage of The Family has been the disappearance of the Hillary Clinton angle. I suspect that's because the Family ties of Clinton, the great Sataness of the 1990s religious right, upsets the interpretive applecart. After all, if the The Family had been pulling all those strings back in the 1990s, surely it would have been able to get Falwell & Co. to chill out, right?
To his credit, Sharlet has called attention to a little known religio-political enterprise that has plied its trade in Washington for a number of decades. It has operated largely under cover, reached out to political movers and shakers of both parties and different religious persuasions, and its mission is animated by a strong conservative Christian ideology. It is elitist, uninterested in democratic politics except as such politics lifts up the people who run the country. The question is: How significant a role has it played in national affairs?
Sharlet claims that this group is, as his subtitle puts it, "The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." Now, does that mean that it is the heart of American power, or just that, like many another aspiring lesion, it has glommed onto Washington's power elite? Just like, say, AIPAC, which is the Secret Zionism at the Heart of American Power. (Well, maybe not so secret.) Sharlet is canny enough to leave some ambiguity, but what's clear from the roundtable is that he's offered the left an alternate interpretation of recent political religious history--one that shows the religious right not as the product of genuine popular reaction to the direction of American culture but as an inside job stretching back to the Cold War. The Family becomes a kind of Opus Dei, with Washington playing the role of Rome.
The participant in the roundtable not buying this view is Balmer, who had just savaged Sharlet's book in the Washington Post. What he particularly didn't like was Sharlet's effort to portray The Family as the culmination of an American evangelicalism stretching back to Jonathan Edwards--a lineage that, it seems, The Family has constructed for itself. But claiming a lineage doesn't make it so.
My own view is that The Family is at most a bit player in the spiritual politics of the past generation. To be sure, it's an interesting player, not least because of its determined establishmentarianism--its genetic inclination towards bipartisanship even as religion became ever more partisan. One of the curious things about recent coverage of The Family has been the disappearance of the Hillary Clinton angle. I suspect that's because the Family ties of Clinton, the great Sataness of the 1990s religious right, upsets the interpretive applecart. After all, if the The Family had been pulling all those strings back in the 1990s, surely it would have been able to get Falwell & Co. to chill out, right?
Silk, this isn't serious argument. I'm not even sure how to engage it. Talk about strawmen and caricature.
You're smacking down arguments I don't make, just like Randy Balmer, who violated the Washington Post's ethics policy to write that review, lied to the Post, me, and Religion Dispatches about when he'd agreed to do it, made numerous factual errors, libeled me, and then wrote me a private email saying his real beef was that I hadn't done enough to build bridges between left and right. Last I checked, that wasn't part of a journalist's job description.
You write: "My own view is that The Family is at most a bit player." What's that view based on Mark? C'mon, man, present some facts. I did, with notes. But I'm sure you couldn't be bothered to read the book. You've had your say on these issues, and it seems you'd like yours to remain the last word. God forbid we do new archival research.
Did you read the book? Because if you didn't, this post is irresponsible at best. I certainly did not make an effort to portray the Family as the culmination of Edwardsian thought. No honest reader of the book could claim that. But Randy Balmer didn't read the book -- as became evident when he made his glaring factual errors.
Wanna talk about "canny"? That'd be your protocols insinuation. No, "at" doesn't mean "is," Mark -- that's why we spell them differently. And nowhere -- not in the book, not in the many dozens of interviews I've given about it, have I said that The Family controls American government. In fact, I've been emphatic that they don't, and that they're not a conspiracy. I argue just the opposite -- that they are a "religion of the status quo," in the admiring words of the Rev. Rob Schenk.
I haven't "offered the left" anything. In fact, the only group that bought the book in bulk was a self-described fundamentalist organization fed up with the Family's anti-democratic style, which they'd experienced first hand. And I sure as hell do not suggest that the religious right is an "inside job." Just the opposite. In everything I've written and taught, I've made the argument that religious conservatism is deep in the DNA of American life, and that the rise of the populist movement since the 1960s was a genuine social movement. I don't know how many times I've waded into debate with leftists who insist that religious conservatism is false consciousness or some other condescending horseshit. The argument of the whole book you trash without reading is that most scholarship and journalism has focused primarily on the broad, popular -- and democratic -- religious right social movement, at the expense of attention paid to elites.
I'm certainly not being canny here, Mark. I'm being blunt as can be without being as rude as you've been: You want to trash me and my book? Do it with facts or genuine argument. This is really disingenuous stuff.
Goodness. I pledge to reread and determine whether I have done Jeff a gross (disingenuous?) injustice.
Did I miss another post? I read Mark's blog entry and thought: "hmm, good book to check out." I've read you being snarky, and this ain't one of those posts.
Having read both Mark Silk's comment and the rebuttal by Jeff Sharlett twice, I can't for the life of me think that Sharlet is writing/talking/rebutting about something other than what Silk's comment stated. I did not and do not assume Silk's commentary is a review of Sharlet's book. Full disclosure: I haven't read the book!
Mark, you use "the paranoid style" -- a cliche by now -- as a title for a commentary on a book you clearly haven't read. Lacking any particular knowledge of the book's subject, you then badly misrepresent my arguments and dismiss my contention that this group has been influential. Along the way, you cite Randy Balmer's libelous and unethical review, which would be fine, I suppose, if you were summarizing responses; but you let Randy stand for the whole, dismissing Anthea Butler and Diane Winston, both far more vigorous and thoughtful scholars these days, as, apparently, "buying it," unlike Randy.
Forgive me for characterizing this as disingenuous. I will accept that you wrote in good faith -- genuinely sloppy, ill-informed good faith.
Jeff is nothing but a shrill for the Zionists. This battle goes back 2000 years. His book is ANTI-CHRIST AND ANTI-CHRISTIAN. He is the counterpart to the anti-Jews. His book makes about as much sense as Dr. David Duke's books, "My Awakening" or "Jewish Supremacy".