Dr. Vendre un Canard a Moitie (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} blackpepper) wrote,@ 2008-03-20 08:41:00 |
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Does anyone in America NOT have a crazy pastor these days?
Sure, we can talk ourselves blue in the face about how John McCain backer John Hagee said the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon, or that McCain's own "spiritual guide" condemned the American government for committing "black genocide" in the form of grants to Planned Parenthood. (Seriously, in this video you almost expect Rod Parsley to erupt in "God damn America" at any second.)
No one will pay attention because crazy white Protestants are expected to hang out with Republicans, and these extremists can advocate the violent overthrow of the US government without anyone batting an eyelash. It's all gravy as long as you're railing against abortion and gay rights while you plot your coup.
Far more surprising is the news of Hillary Clinton's own religious affiliations, which will probably turn into a media controversy once a book by Jeff Sharlet is published in May. Barbara Ehrenreich writes in The Nation of "the Family," a secretive quasi-Christian organization that Clinton joined as First Lady:
Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells" -- their term -- and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners -- alone.
The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes -- knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs ...
Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."
Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics...
The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power -- cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."
Sure, we can talk ourselves blue in the face about how John McCain backer John Hagee said the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon, or that McCain's own "spiritual guide" condemned the American government for committing "black genocide" in the form of grants to Planned Parenthood. (Seriously, in this video you almost expect Rod Parsley to erupt in "God damn America" at any second.)
No one will pay attention because crazy white Protestants are expected to hang out with Republicans, and these extremists can advocate the violent overthrow of the US government without anyone batting an eyelash. It's all gravy as long as you're railing against abortion and gay rights while you plot your coup.
Far more surprising is the news of Hillary Clinton's own religious affiliations, which will probably turn into a media controversy once a book by Jeff Sharlet is published in May. Barbara Ehrenreich writes in The Nation of "the Family," a secretive quasi-Christian organization that Clinton joined as First Lady:
Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells" -- their term -- and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners -- alone.
The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes -- knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs ...
Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."
Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics...
The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power -- cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."
