We think of them as crazies, but you know, the people who wander in and out of the Family's lodge house on C Street have clout in D.C.

A lot of jaws dropped last night when Rachel Maddow presented this segment on the fundamentalist sect The Family, which turns out to provide a creepy linking factor between those princes of "family values" NV Sen. John Ensign and SC Gov. Mark Sanford -- and that curious, cranky, and crazy loon and noodge, OK Sen. Tom Coburn.

by Ken

Even though the Family isn't totally unknown, I know a lot of people whose eyes were popping out during this segment about its connections to the Ensign and Sanford scandals. Among Rachel's guests was Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone who actually infiltrated the Family and literally wrote the book on it, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, now out in paperback.

The Family, first published last year, is yet another of those books from recent years that are by all accounts utterly splendid, which I've forlornly added to the "must read" list that I know I'll never get to. By way of summary, Jeff posted the jacket copy on his blog when the book was published, in February 2008:

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?”

With regard to the political connections popping out now, our esteemed colleague Marcy Wheeler has been exploring the Ensign and Sanford ties to the Family lodge house on C Street: "Did the Ensign Confrontation over His Affair Take Place at a 'Family' Gathering?" (June 19), "Did 'the Family' Force Sanford to Ditch His Mistress?" (June 24), and "WaPo Discovers C Street" (June 26).

The infamous Family house on C Street

SATURDAY UPDATE: RACHEL DOES ANOTHER SEGMENT
ON THE FAMILY, WITH JEFF SHARLET RETURNING

And it turns out that what I've been calling the Family's C Street "lodge house" is actually . . . a church!

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