Usually I wouldn't even bother with a story like this. Usually I'd say, "eh, it's a little early to rush to conclusions." Yet that attitude grows weaker and weaker when I see more and more right-wing talking points being spewed out of the mouths of some at My Direct Democracy. That patience gets thinner and thinner when I see one Clinton supporter after another sensationalizing every little thing.
A tip of the hat to Barbara Ehrenreich for her article in the Nation which can be located here; http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/eh renreich
Therefore, I am presenting you with a serious problem that Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton will have in May. It's a book that's being written about her Washington-based pastor.
Barbara Ehrenreich sums it up pretty well in her introduction;
There's a reason Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.
What?! Oh, I'm sure, some people are going to say that this is ridiculous. Right? Because Hillary's supporters know her so well. Right? They know a lot about her congregation, where it's based, the precise denomination that it is. Right?
You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as "The "Fellowship," also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.
Preposterous! Clinton in a conservation Bible study? A conservative prayer circle? NAME NAMES!
At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum.
Well, after Gonzales, I guess Ashcroft wasn't that bad. Right? Heh. Well how do we know that Clinton is in with them? Do we take the author of the upcoming novel at his word?
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."
Oh, she wrote about it. Huh. Well who is this Coe guy? Some delusion of fringe groups on the left? According to Time magazine, he's the 4th most influential Evangelical and "he specializes in the spiritual struggles of the powerful."
( http://www.time.com/time/covers/11010502
07/photoessay/4.html )
But.. what makes the Family such a weird group? Just because former Senators Allen and Santorum are members?
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.
No wonder Coulter sort-of likes her. But still, how bad can it be?
Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings. 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."
Oh my God! It's the New World Order?! No, Hillary say it isn't so! I thought you were the DLCer for the People! But hey, let's calm down a bit, okay? I respect people for their religious choices. So why the tell-all book?
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.
Where's John Grisham?! Anyways, what sort of really-bad stuff have they done or are thought to have done? As the author of the upcoming tell-all said back in 2003 to Harper magazine;
During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.
Is any of this the truth? I don't pretend to know.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/eh renreich , http://www.time.com/time/covers/11010502 07/photoessay/4.html , http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0 079525 , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(Christian_political_organization)
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