Name: Anonymous 2008-07-07 14:38
Was listening to NPR the other day, and I listened to an interview they had with this guy who wrote a book about this religious organization called The Family. The guy spent months living with members of the group and looking through their archives. Apparently they're this worldwide group of politicians, businessmen and other people in high places who influence governments of countries all around the world. At first I thought it was bullshit but then I started looking into it.
They were founded in 1935 by a preacher named Abraham Vereide who believed that the Great Depression was a punishment to Americans from God for trying to regulate their economy. He believed in what he called "biblical capitalism," an ideology which says that governments should not regulate their country's economy because it disrupts the hand of God. He believed that Christianity went wrong in aiding the down-and-out (the poor, minorities, etc.) and that it needed to focus on what he called the "up-and-out" (the rich and powerful). He got together a group of businessmen who shared his vision, and began traveling the country and recruiting more people (exclusively the rich and powerful) for his cause. He began meeting personally with politicians by holding weekly prayer breakfast groups in cities all across the U.S. Then in 1941 he arrived in Washington, D.C. His first D.C. prayer meeting was attended by more than a hundred congressmen, and by the end of World War II, nearly a third of U.S. senators attended one of his weekly prayer meetings.
Vereide and his group used their connections with politicians to influence the American government. What they felt as one of their earliest and significant accomplishments was the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which greatly restricted the activities and power of labor unions. By the 1950s, they had succeeded in rolling back much of FDR's New Deal policies. They were one of the driving forces behind American involvement in the Cold War, as they felt communism was an abomination (it being the exact opposite of their biblical capitalism). Vereide was also sympathetic to fascism, believing that democracy was wrong and that people should let the select elite (the rich and powerful) make decisions for the rest of the world. He believed that people are fortunate because God made them fortunate, and that those who are unfortunate are so because God made them so. He believed that only the rich and powerful have the ability to change the world, and that God made them so to do his will. During the postwar reconstruction of Europe, Vereide and his group used their influence to blunt American de-Nazification policies in Germany in order to recruit ex-Nazis into their cause.
The book by the author who was interviewed on NPR is called "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." Its summary reads:
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. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."
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?”
Interviews with the author:
http://www.alternet.org/story/16167/
http://www.alternet.org/rights/87665
Article by the author detailing his experience in the group:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525
1) Can you believe it?
2) Can you fap to it?
They were founded in 1935 by a preacher named Abraham Vereide who believed that the Great Depression was a punishment to Americans from God for trying to regulate their economy. He believed in what he called "biblical capitalism," an ideology which says that governments should not regulate their country's economy because it disrupts the hand of God. He believed that Christianity went wrong in aiding the down-and-out (the poor, minorities, etc.) and that it needed to focus on what he called the "up-and-out" (the rich and powerful). He got together a group of businessmen who shared his vision, and began traveling the country and recruiting more people (exclusively the rich and powerful) for his cause. He began meeting personally with politicians by holding weekly prayer breakfast groups in cities all across the U.S. Then in 1941 he arrived in Washington, D.C. His first D.C. prayer meeting was attended by more than a hundred congressmen, and by the end of World War II, nearly a third of U.S. senators attended one of his weekly prayer meetings.
Vereide and his group used their connections with politicians to influence the American government. What they felt as one of their earliest and significant accomplishments was the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which greatly restricted the activities and power of labor unions. By the 1950s, they had succeeded in rolling back much of FDR's New Deal policies. They were one of the driving forces behind American involvement in the Cold War, as they felt communism was an abomination (it being the exact opposite of their biblical capitalism). Vereide was also sympathetic to fascism, believing that democracy was wrong and that people should let the select elite (the rich and powerful) make decisions for the rest of the world. He believed that people are fortunate because God made them fortunate, and that those who are unfortunate are so because God made them so. He believed that only the rich and powerful have the ability to change the world, and that God made them so to do his will. During the postwar reconstruction of Europe, Vereide and his group used their influence to blunt American de-Nazification policies in Germany in order to recruit ex-Nazis into their cause.
The book by the author who was interviewed on NPR is called "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." Its summary reads:
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. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."
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?”
Interviews with the author:
http://www.alternet.org/story/16167/
http://www.alternet.org/rights/87665
Article by the author detailing his experience in the group:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525
1) Can you believe it?
2) Can you fap to it?