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© Jeff Sharlet
Six years ago journalist Jeff Sharlet went undercover in the underground evangelical organization known as the "The Family." The group consists of Congressmen, members of the executive branch and many other D.C. powerbrokers. Unlike Pat Robertson and other widely known Christian conservatives, the Family operates outside of the public eye - but that by no means limits their influence or power. Sharlet's book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power exposes the real people behind the growing evangelical movement in America.

Can you tell me how you got the idea for the book?

I was working on my first book, Killing the Buddha. A co-author and I were traveling around the country visiting unusual religious communities, and a friend was concerned that her brother had gotten involved in a cult. He got involved in this group called "The Family," which is not exactly a cult - it's much bigger and much more powerful, but in the short term all I knew is that this guy was involved in it and he said it was really much different from anything that I'd ever seen, and that I should go check it out for myself. That indication was crucial because you don't get in without getting invited.

You joined the ranks pretty quickly, right?

Yeah, I went under my real name, recommended by a guy who'd known me for 12 years, and I told him I was working on a book called Killing the Buddha. I was like, "Oh no," they're going to Google me and see that I'm not their kind of guy, but of course they didn't. There was a sort of "entrance" interview, because they're so elite. If you're there, it means you're associating with the right sort of people. And it means God has chosen you, and who are they to object to God's choices?

It always strikes me when reading the book that they didn't become suspicious.

I think that for those who believe in open democracy, the great solace is here's this very powerful, ultimately very conservative group and they're remarkably uncurious. Curiosity is not a virtue to them - obedience is, and the result of that is they are not alert when they're challenged.

I'm surprised that I haven't heard of this group before. You think it be the kind of thing that would be publicized at some point.

They have been publicized at points. And there's this weird non-response on the part of the rest of the press back in the 1990s. Originally this group goes back to 1935. They weren't the self-described "invisible" group until 1966. Between 1935 and 1966 they were sort of coasting on a culture of elites in which beliefs didn't get challenged. You didn't report on these private matters of elites. In 1966 they decide to "submerge" - that's the word they use - "We're going to 'submerge' our public profile." [In]1974 Playboy has a long investigative piece that shows money moving around in fishy ways. Nothing happens. Dan Rather challenges Nixon's press secretary about why Chuck Colson, the Nixon dirty-trickster who'd been given the boot, was still showing up at the White House? Press secretary says, "He's there for prayer meetings." But then no follow-up. So this goes on every so many years. And in the '90s a Florida paper noted that Taiwan was forking over big chunks of change in order to get good seats at the National Prayer Practice because they understood this was a backdoor into American power. In 2002, The Los Angeles Times did a year-long investigation. Should have been a huge follow-up. Nothing.

So the weird thing is why haven't you heard about it? It's partly this media that is disposed to understand fundamentalism only when it's a sweaty Southern guy in a two-piece suit, pounding the pulpit, and along come these very sophisticated, very polished internationalist guys and they just don't register, even though they're more enduring and more powerful.

Tell me about the logistics of your time there.

I went for a visit and then I went another time for an interview, and then I moved in for a little bit under a month. I moved into this house where younger guys were being groomed for leadership. And you live in this house that's one amongst this cluster of about 20 houses all owned by family members and the centerpiece of which is this big mansion called "The Cedars," overlooking the Potomac River, where they host foreign heads of state [and] various important visitors.

Mostly, the idea is that you're building a network. You're building a behind-the-scenes brotherhood that you can call upon if you move ahead in the world of business or government or whatever you end up doing. When I left, I discovered that they dumped 600 boxes of papers in the Billy Graham center archive in Wheaton, Illinois. So I moved there, got myself an apartment with no furniture and just spent every day going through this archive, Xeroxing as much as I could to get as much out of there because I knew they were eventually going to restrict the archive. I suspected they would and indeed they did.

I'm curious to hear how the whole experience changed your perception of who the Evangelical community is and what they are.

I think one of the main arguments of the book is that we have misunderstood what Evangelicalism and Christian conservatism are in American history. We're familiar with the pulpit pounders - the Jerry Falwells, the guys who are on TV - the guys who want a lot of attention. They're not insiders to power, they're outsiders. And then there's this whole other parallel movement that's been really understudied and I think people are starting to pay attention to them now. I call them the avant-garde of American fundamentalism. It's a term they use themselves - and they're using it in the sense that Lenin used it. They think that democracy has run its course. They don't need to call attention to themselves partly because they're not trying to gain access. They're not doing this from the outside, they're doing this from the inside. They're not breaking laws, they're making laws.

Did you hear any feedback from the Family? Are they angry with you?

Because I first published about this several years ago in Harper's, there was a response then and ever since then it's been this weird ongoing relationship. You know, one of the things about becoming a member of the Family, which I did, is that you are forever a member of the Family. It's sort of this Calvinist theology, this idea that you are one of God's elect, one of God's chosen. So I'm still a brother - I'm a bad brother, but I'm still a brother and after I first wrote about them they would do all these weird things and I immediately saw right through it.