How would you feel if you knew that your elected representatives belonged to a secret religious cult that praised the likes of Hitler, Pol Pot, Papa “Doc” Duvalier, Mao, and other despots. According to this insider, these politicians make up as much as 30% of our elected officals of mostly Republican and a handful of Democrats. They feel they are chosen by God to be our leaders, and because of this all their transgressions from simple adulterous behavior to the toppling and ruin of foreign governments are forgiven and protected by the Family.
In a new August 17, 2009 Maddow Show segment, Rachel Maddow and Jeff Sharlet discuss, among many new revelations, the disturbing fact that the “Christian Embassy” scandal, propelled by a complaint to the Department of Defense from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, was investigated by a Pentagon Inspector General who is in fact a Family member.
The Family, also known as “The Fellowship”, is a secretive fundamentalist Washington DC ministry which runs the National Prayer Breakfast and Bible study groups attended by numerous US Senators and Congress members, wields global influence, and celebrates the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin, and Mao.
Over the course of the summer of 2009, Washington’s Family-run “C Street House” has become notorious as a string of sex scandals have engulfed national GOP political figures who live at, have lived at, or attended Bible study classes at the secretive former convent turned church-cum cheap-rent high end boarding house: Senator John Ensign, former Congressman Charles “Chip” Pickering, and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
By far the story has been driven, first, by Jeff Sharlet, who wrote the 2008 book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at The Heart Of American Power, which followed Sharlet’s 2003 Harper’s expose Jesus Plus Nothing. But MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who has pursued breaking new aspects of the festering scandal with a long-term dedication only rarely seen in mainstream media news coverage, has played an invaluable role in giving the mafia-like “Family” widespread public exposure.
Maddow’s willingness to cover the story of The Family and the C Street House in an ongoing manner, week to week over the summer, implicitly indicts much of mainstream news coverage as suffering from collective attention-deficit disorder; given the level of international, geopolitical influence The Family apparently wields, its members’ penchant for describing their group as a Christian “mafia”, and in light of Family head Doug Coe’s zest for celebrating useful leadership lessons Coe says can be gleaned from studying Lenin’s Bolsheviks, Mao’s Red Guard willing to chop off their own parents’ heads for the good of the revolutionary state, and Hitler’s Nazis, it’s nothing less than astonishing and appalling that most of mainstream news media has neglected for so long to dig further into revelations seeded in Jeff Sharlet’s The Family book, which came out early in 2008.
You can see a list of members here, and act appropriately when it’s time to vote.
Papa
Brian, #30,
how about you stick to the topic?
Not smart or well-read enough to comment on this topic? then don’t comment at all.
Looks like little pedro and the other wingnuts have run away.
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Seriously people. This is crazy tin-foil hat, Art Bell, Coast to Coast AM, X-files stuff. I included the Coast to Coast numbers because that is the only venue this should be discussed.
#32 Phydeau
Interestingly, Al Gore was a member of “The Family”. At least according to this: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4908.shtml
Yes, he would have started the Afghan war after 9/11. Iraq? Hard to say, but my guess is that he would have been even more heavy handed in response to 9/11 to prove that he’s not soft, or worse, militarily incompetent like his former boss, Bill C. No aspirin factories for Mr. Gore!
#35 Have you read the book, Benjamin? Can you point us to links where the people allegedly involved have denied this? Or are you just blowing smoke?
#35,
keep telling yourself that Ben, if it makes you feel better. By the way did you read it? of course not, you’re too smart, you already know everything….lol. thats why your life is the way it is….
It’s all misdirection. While the powers that be have all the mindless sheeple scared of fictional Islamic bogeymen, the real threat to our way of life is at hard at work… right in our own backyard.
#36 Cheney and his group pushed very hard for the invasion of Iraq, stovepiping evidence, ignoring evidence that didn’t fit their worldview. It took a lot of effort to start that war. I think you are in a small minority if you think Gore would have done the same thing.
Read the book or for that matter watch any interview with the author. If the story is for real these guys aren’t Christian. At least not any version that I had ever heard of unless just saying you believe in Christ makes you a Christian.
Religion is for people who cannot accept the responsibility for their actions, when their actions would be deemed reprehensible by a logical society. It is for those who feel that they need to control others through threats of death for not believing like they do. It is for the weak willed and weak minded.
It allows them to justify what they believe, rather than what they KNOW to be fact.
It is ignorance personified.
This article reminds me of the old joke, “Oh Lord, save me from your followers!”
But seriously, reading that WORLD magazine article made me think of the Scientologists. A secretive society, catering to powerful figures.
#30
You crack me up…Stay on topic on DU? Crazy talk.
Why is it that Republican Christians always end up allied with all kinds of noxious dictator types and radical groups? From the Online Journal article:
WMR also previously reported on another link between the Fellowship and Honduras’s right wing through the DeMoss Foundation, which is linked to Fellowship ministry operations: The DeMoss Foundation is anti-gay, anti-abortion, and favors close links between church and state.
Arthur [DeMoss] dropped dead of a heart attack at age 53 while playing tennis at his ritzy Main Line estate in Bryn Mawr, outside of Philadelphia.
In addition to supporting [Charles] Colson’s [Prison Fellowship] group, the foundation gives generously to the American Center for Law and Justice, the legal group run by Pat Robertson. DeMoss also supports the Plymouth Rock Foundation, an extreme right-wing Christian Reconstructionist movement that advocates the imposition of Biblical law in the United States and the death penalty for adulterers, homosexuals, heterosexual sodomists, non-Christians, and witches.
DeMoss’s son, Mark, a former employee of Jerry Falwell, is also a member of the DeMoss Board of Directors. It is significant that Sun Myung Moon has bailed out Falwell’s Liberty University on a number of occasions.
A daughter of Arthur DeMoss, Deborah DeMoss-Fonseca, worked for 10 years for Senator Jesse Helms and was the senator’s liaison to a number of Latin American dictators and death squad leaders, including Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet and Salvadoran pro-Nazi anti-Semitic death squad leader Roberto D’Aubisson.
Why are Republican Christians so… comfy around these nasty kinds of people?
I’m a Christian and don’t want (to) or condone the killing of anyone. Guess I can’t be part of this “Family”.
And, Obama is back to having been born in Kenya again, huh? Some of you people just scare the shit out of me!
Alfred1 #47,
“From the title”
How about you don’t comment and do more than read the title? A title reading moron who feels he knows everything but chooses to read nothing. Wow you’re a real hero.
Dennis #42,
Very well said.
When not overstating your case, you make good sense:
From the title it appears Christians run things…/// interfere in everything
Abortion is outlawed in America /// Free choice is under constant restrictions and continuing attackes making full abortion rights not available in the USA.
Porn no longer exists /// Sex Education called Kiddie Porn, Statues in Court Houses covered up for Modesty.
God is overtly worshipped in every school /// He’s on our money and touted that way.
Evolution has been outlawed as a fraud /// Yes, bills and school texts introduced every year to that effect.
Yes, these Christians are very powerful…you do well to be afraid of them /// Held in check only by their own hypocrisy and competing even more cultish offshoots and madeups.
Thanks ALFIE, for your tin foil hat…here it is back… /// I’d keep it for the memories, but it’s got cooties.
Please. “up to 30% of elected officials.” Sounds about right. I would say about 30% of our country are fundamentalist Christians who completely agree with them. Since this is a republic, then they are accurately representing a part of our country.
The book has all the makings of a conspiracy theory. If you visit my house, the walls are lined with books, most of which I have read. I haven’t read they others because I buy books faster than I read them. They will all get read eventually.
I won’t read this book because it is nonsense. It sounds like something from the Art Bell show.
Alfred1, #51,52,
Again you choose to spew your useless “wisdom” while refusing to actually read the book. I don’t care how smart you THINK you are, to me you are just another moron who is so stubborn and stuck-in your way as to be a useless citizen. Your opinion is worthless.
The real citizens are in the process of taking back our freedom from The Patriot Act and Homeland security, while the useless little pee-ons like you are crying about it but doing nothing.
Take a break from posting here, go see some of the world, read some books, get a life and spare us your useless drivel.
OK?
Since I haven’t read he book…
“every freaking thing that our Government is doing, from killing babies, to pushing porn…” /// The facts outside your cone of darkness is that our Government does neither and your inability to tell the difference defines your religion.
alfred1, you are a crazy right-wing Christian freak and you scare me.
BTW, God doesn’t exist. God is a made-up concept to control weak-minded people.
“They feel they are chosen by God to be our leaders, and because of this all their transgressions….are forgiven and protected…”
I seem to remember our founding fathers went to great lengths to discourage this type of thinking. They may have even started a rebellion to remove themselves (and their descendants) from one such a believer.
Brave New World, indeed.
#20
First, Hitler was a Catholic. Second, 3/4 of the deaths under Mao were due to famine which means either Hitler or Stalin is the top dog on deliberate killings depending on what you include. Third, Stalin’s and Mao’s atheism was incidental to their killing. The real common thread between those two is not their atheism but communism or more specifically totalitarianism.
It is indeed interesting how all this stuff comes out (and CAN come out) about some organization that labels itself “Christian”. And yet other secretive organizations, such as the Mormon Church, and Scientology, can’t so easily be exposed. Why? Well these groups apparently got far more legal muscle (and fanatical followers) that threaten to do a world of hurt to anyone who dares talk about them, or write about them. And they already have, by many accounts.
But apparently this “The Fellowship” bunch doesn’t believe in threatening lives and livelihoods, to protect its existence. So maybe there’s something to be said for that. And maybe we should be a lot more concerned about those that employ more lethal tactics to preserve their cult. I’m thinking this “Fellowship” is just small potatoes, compared to the others.
How could anybody be denying this is real? Douglas Coe (the head of the group)has been caught on video praising Hitler, Stalin and Mao as being the truest expression of the message of the new testament! It’s all over youtube, heck Maddow showed it on national television fer God’s sake.
These guys aren’t Christians, they are false worshipers of power and money; if there are true Christians that are listening, don’t be deceived! How could a man who cozies up to the worst dictators the world over merely for their power, and dictates a gospel of an unassailable chosen elite destined to hold a 1000 year reign over the deceived masses be a follower of Jesus? This man is a little Hitler, and he’s very dangerous, and we should recognize that. Hitler himself dressed himself in the guise of Christianity, even called himself the defender of Christendom, when he was following the other guy.
Don’t be deceived.
“Thanks Mr. McCullough, for your tin foil hat…here it is back…”
That is SO 1950’s. Tinfoil hats rust under the constant rain of enlightment found here on DU. Now, try my new aluminum alloy model…
#65 These people aren’t Christian, you idiot, though if porn and child sexual abuse in schools (that is legal?) are your top priorities in a nation racked by hunger, debt, disease and fundamentalism, then I wonder whether you are either.
Though I can understand why you would be confused, given the things you have said here in the past. Here, let me make it simple for you; these are the false ‘Christians’ who laugh behind the curtain at how gullible people like you are, while never giving you anything in return for the power and money that you give them. They will use you and the insecurities and biases that they have carefully inculcated in you, they will divide you with controversies that they have no intention of addressing, and they will do this to their benefit (and your detriment) till their true master drags them down to Hell.
Stop being suck a sucker Alfred.
Ha, I meant to say ‘judgementalism’ but it came out of the spell checker as ‘fundamentalism.’
Though I suppose it is appropriate. Do you know who else were fundamentalists? The Pharisees. No working on the Sabbath, even if it is to heal some one, remember?