Secret christian organization

[Sky Dancer]

called THE FAMILY support Suharta and dictatorships considering them 'God's choice'. They minister only to the powerful.

Story was on Fresh Air with NPR yesterday. A journalist has written several books on the topic. In April, the AP broke the story that six U.S. congressmen were paying the bargain rate of $600 a month each to live together in a swanky DC townhouse owned by a secretive fundamentalist Christian group known as the Fellowship or the Foundation. Many, understandably, were curious. Who is this organization, and what is its agenda?

The group, the AP reported, is best known for holding the annual National Prayer Breakfast at the White House, which offers scores of national and international heavy hitters the opportunity to praise God in close proximity to the President. In the article, the congressmen boarding at the house denied owing any allegiance to the group, and several professed ignorance of even the most basic facts about the organization. Little else was reported about the group's history, motives or backers.

There is a reason for that. The Fellowship is one of the most secretive, and most powerful, religious organizations in the country. Its connections reach to the highest levels of the U.S. government and include ties to the CIA and numerous current and past dictators around the world.

Last month, Harper's magazine published a rather extraordinary article by Jeffrey Sharlet, editor of the irreverent web site killingthebuddha.com and co-author of the upcoming "Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible" (Free Press). The piece chronicled Sharlet's three-week semi-undercover stay at Ivanwald, the Fellowship's mansion:
http://sf.carnalnation.com/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(Christian_political_organization)

 

[Sky Dancer]

Jeff Sharlet’s “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” examines a group of politically engaged Christians far more secretive than Robertson or Falwell. Sharlet establishes that since the end of World War II, The Family, aka The Fellowship, has exerted its influence in an impressive and frightening array of mostly dire events. Its first coup was the wholesale exoneration of minor Nazis and major Nazi collaborators after the war. The addition of under God to the Pledge of Allegiance and In God We Trust to U.S. currency were its initiatives. Its first major government operative was Sen. Frank Carlson, R-Kan., who persuaded Dwight Eisenhower to run as a Republican, purged progressive bureaucrats from his chair at the obscure Civil Service Employees Committee and lobbied for such heads of state as Haiti’s “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Other dictators abetted by The Family included Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Park Chung Hee of South Korea, Artur da Costa e Silva of Brazil, Gen. Suharto of Indonesia, Mohamed Siad Barre of Somalia and Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova of El Salvador, which got its first infusion of special aid at the behest of Jimmy Carter, who has called Family leader Doug Coe a “very important person” in his life. Hillary Clinton has also been a Family “friend,” and not just via its major public manifestation, the relatively anodyne annual National Prayer Breakfast. The Family was instrumental in the creation of Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, and of the Community Bible Study project through which George W. Bush found Jesus in 1985.

Deeply researched yet fast paced, moving easily from first person to third person and incident to overview, “The Family” is an exceptional piece of bookcraft. Its revelations are fascinating, especially with political history having propelled Christians deep into polite discourse since 1976. Yet since it came out in May, it has attracted just two major reviews, both censorious; I found out about it only when I was asked to share a panel with Sharlet in June. You could say this reflects the dismal state of book coverage in a journalistic environment where new arts cutbacks come down from on high every month. But when I try to imagine how an unbroken phalanx of individual literary editors decided not to squeeze this book into their pathetic page allotments, I keep remembering how exotic my Village Voice co-workers found my hunch that Carter was a smart, sensible, decent guy. Secular humanists know more about Christians now, but not that much more. And “The Family” doesn’t fit their template.

Sharlet is a 36-year-old historian and journalist of religion, the son of a Jewish father and a Pentecostal mother. He’s a contributing editor at Harper’s and Rolling Stone and has founded two online journals of religion: the NYU-backed The Revealer and Killing the Buddha, which is also the title of his first book, written with co-editor Peter Manseau. While clearly a left-leaning skeptic, Sharlet is just as clearly drawn to spiritual quests. “Killing the Buddha” alternates between heretical interpretations of Bible chapters—by such guests as Francine Prose (Exodus) and Rick Moody (Jonah), though most are less prominent and several outshine the stars—and sojourns with cultists nationwide, more than half Christian. These tales are both more empathetic than the standard yahoo-bashing expos and less polite than the pained coverage of evangelical activists that has become a journalistic staple since Karl Rove transformed churchgoers into margins of victory. Sharlet and Manseau feel the pain of almost everyone they write about, but that doesn’t blind them to the foolishness of these suffering seekers and penny-ante ideologues, which they’re not above mocking when the joke is good enough.

The world of “The Family” is much different. For its first three quarters, the individuals Sharlet observes and interviews come from more money and wield more power than those who populate “Killing the Buddha.” Yet you won’t meet the usual cast of hucksters and theocrats—James Dobson, Tony Perkins, John Hagee, Rick Warren, Tim LaHaye, whoever. A few politicians pass through, notably Sam Brownback, but for the most part you’ve never heard of these rather colorless people, every one of whom Sharlet engages on a human level. This failure to flatter stereotype couldn’t have helped Sharlet get reviewed and typifies his insight into American Christianity, which subdivides endlessly. The most important such grouping, argues Gallup-pollster-turned-Rice-University-sociologist D. Michael Lindsay in “Faith in the Halls of Power” (a well-researched—and widely reviewed—2007 overview of American evangelicals whose “sympathetic perspective” Sharlet notes with some asperity), pits populists against cosmopolitans. The populists have become familiar figures in secular humanist folklore. The Family—which is neither an official organization nor a coherent
conspiracy—enlists only cosmopolitans.

Truthdig - Arts and Culture - Robert Christgau on America’s Secret Fundamentalists

 

[editec]

Spooky, huh?

Basically these guys have reconsitutied the Puritanical belief in the ELECT.

Evil motherfuckers.

 

[strollingbones]

i just wished the damn masons would take over and be done with it

 

[manifold]

Sky,

Why would you post this obviously fact-based, whistle-blowing sensational piece of news in this forum? Don't you know that nobody takes any thread in this forum seriously?

 

[RodISHI]

Sky,

Why would you post this obviously fact-based, whistle-blowing sensational piece of news in this forum? Don't you know that nobody takes any thread in this forum seriously?

I'm sure some people will be along shortly to discuss the evil Christians.

 

[strollingbones]

shhhhhhhh manie...i read it

 

[strollingbones]

evil christians.....did you know the masons are have to believe in a higher power....i am still going with the masons and all their secrets...

 

[manifold]

But the masons must be feeling the squeeze considering they've lowered themselves to actually advertising for new membership.

 

[manifold]

Ask a Mason!

 

[RodISHI]

Ask a Mason!

But I don't care for the guy at all and now he is sleeping with the neighbors wife or so says the neighbor anyhow...

 

[strollingbones]

But the masons must be feeling the squeeze considering they've lowered themselves to actually advertising for new membership.

o hell no...that is against all them masons rules...you cannot invite a person to join they must approach a mason and ask to join...be voted on...so forth and so on....i know a lot about the masons, shriners, knights templer and the rosetta on and on they go...i do know when you go to a meeting...the first thing they ask for is your dues card....

 

[manifold]

I'm not making it up Bones. They advertise on the radio. apparently you are now allowed to approach them online at www.askafreemason.org

 

[strollingbones]

o the old ask a mason and end up paying dues....i knew the average age was older than dirt....and a lot of lodges are "going dark" as they say.....

 

[Sarah G]

I'm not making it up Bones. They advertise on the radio. apparently you are now allowed to approach them online at Ask A Freemason :. Home

There's been a lot of information out there about them. They aren't the big mysterious organization they used to be. They must need the money now.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Spooky, huh?

Basically these guys have reconsitutied the Puritanical belief in the ELECT.

Evil motherfuckers.

They are interested in ministering only to the poweful. They believe in the divine right of kings, so to speak.

They don't discriminate against people like Suartha from Indonesia.

They see Christian teachings as being of two types: one for the masses and one for 'disciples'.

It's a extreme form of Calvinism. Too bad no one is interested in this group. I find them fascinating. But let's just make fun of the guy who did a ton of research on this group both written and in interviews when he went undercover to the Fellowship aka the Family.

 

[manifold]

let's just make fun of the guy who did a ton of research on this group both written and in interviews when he went undercover to the Fellowship aka the Family.

I'm down with that.

 

[Uknow_me72]

Yea this is all part of the illusion melting away.

Trust me you don't want any of them. You won't need them.

The revelations of facts and realization of many will leave them in a frenzy.

It's too late for the world to turn back. Critical Mass was hit along time ago. You are now just seeing the tidal wave of the currents changing.

A change will be made and the retarded power struggle to do things with the economic and poitical system agenda's that are currently installed will be disregarded and oppossed.

This is just another chance for people to hold on to their false reality.

The day you stepped foot in a scholastic school is the day they captured your mind. All they need is you to start listening the junk they feed you before the age 7 and they know they will have a mindless drone. Don't take my word for it, look at your kids and grand kids. Stop lying to yourself. Why are your 6 year old kids fat? Stop feeding them that shit. Don't you get it yet?

This is just more information into the information war to capture your mind. They want you to choose what you believe based out of the options they have provided you.

It is fair for people not to trust anyone that is involved in these organizations due to the amount of secrecy that they claim and some of the agenda's they are accused of being associated with.

--------

I really do not think that people reading in these conspiracy files have seen the big picture or able to comprehend what all of this means to them. They are seeing all these different pieces thrown their way but based on responses(in general) that the actual depth of thought has not yet taken place on what all this actually means. When something takes these people out of the conservative shell it just seems like the mental capacity to accept the information and process, it just doesnt exist.

It goes right in one ear out the other.

I just stopped in to check what was going on and I see that they had to get some more shit in while I was gone. Look at the trends of the topics. Fuck people, lol. Investigate. Stop listening to others especially me. Read the sig it is why I am.

Take Terrels plane crash photo for example.... GOOGLE PLANE CRASHES. You will find 1,000's of airline crash photos and non of them even close to vaporizing/desenigration.

Stop thinking your hurting yourself associating your thought with the brain wash you were fed by the scholastic, economic. entertainment and political system. You will never understand as long as you to choose to side your thought based on what you were taught by teachers that graded you.

We have all said it before, the world is not what it seems to be. Stories like the OP is your Truth on how the world really is. If you didn't know about it. Your not part of it.

We have extended our hands and asked for help. We have taken additional steps to distribute information so that others may have a chance. Take all this as a grain of sand. You have to do something for youself.

If you still can not comprehend what you need to do in this life time then you might want to turn of the internet, TV, iPod, radio and listen to yourself. All of this is here to entertain you and keep you focused on the world they have created. It fills you with so much information that you can not ever decide for yourselves and you stay on the tread mill that keeps the machine going, because you want to eat.

Your a slave of survival and your survival has been explotted for control.

What do you want to do about this problem we have on our hands?(rhetorical) Seriously that is directed to everyone single person in the entire world.

 

[Sky Dancer]

I'm not making it up Bones. They advertise on the radio. apparently you are now allowed to approach them online at Ask A Freemason :. Home

There's been a lot of information out there about them. They aren't the big mysterious organization they used to be. They must need the money now.

Exactly. Tell me why this thread needed to be moved from the poltics and religion thread to the conspiracy thread?

Keep it from being read as much?

The mod who moved it removed another past post of mine which asked him a few pointed questions about his religious background and motivation. Interesting phenomena.

 

[manifold]

fwiw: It's neither interesting nor phenomenal.