Subject: More on Hillary's secretive church, The Foundry (this time with the quoted material)

Date: 3/27/2008 7:38:40 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time

Oh, man!  As if Hillary were not scary enough, now it turns out that someone has written a book about the dark doings at The Foundry  . . . . or, "Skull & Bones, the Religious Version."  Why is it that only whackos run for president any more?

The Foundry is, incidentally, Senator Clinton's old church.

BTW --- in the context of her statements about Obama's membership in the Trinity UCC it's fair to note that Hillary "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," (aka The Family) * for the past 15-years. "Is she triangulating—or living her faith?"

"Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity United Church of Christ. Now it's up to Clinton to explain - or, better yet, renounce - her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family." *

An exposé on the group, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet will be published in May. From the book jacket:

“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, Doug Coe, the Family’s current 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?’”

More ropes, more hopes, no dopes . . . not too much to ask!

Editor:  Is It Hillary's Turn to 'Denounce and Reject' a Problematic Pastor?