Posted by
CRB on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 8:18:07 AM
Ingredient #1:
There is a group in Washington, D.C., known as the "Fellowship Foundation". The theology is not orthodox evangelical theology. The leader is Douglas Coe. It is a very public group. As I understand it, it is so public that if you purchase a ticket to the National Prayer Breakfast then you automatically become a member. Apparently Hillary Clinton is a member and even a participant.
Ingredient #2:
The radical Left does not want the Clinton machine back in office. (Neither does the Right, but that would be another post.) The Left is today a de facto single-issue machine: Get the US out of Iraq. And Hillary is their current enemy.
Ingredient #3:
Jeff Sharlet wants to sell books. He may only make $0.25 per book, but if he can get a million of them out to stores and direct purchasers, there might be some decent income. (Why write a book if nobody buys it?)
Now mix. Put in the oven. Add a little heat.
Jeff Sharlet has come out with a book: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. The premise is that the Fellowship Foundation is (a) secretive, (b) the real fundamentalist power behind the Religious Right, and (c) is manipulating the processes of government. This is no conjecture. In his interviews with the ever-vigilant and always gullible Fred Clarkson, he said the following:
... American fundamentalism really has to be understood as two movements - the Popular Front of televangelists and mass rallies and voter drives, and the elites of groups like The Family.
... they've done an end run around the Democratic process.
Sharlet clearly has little or no clear understanding of historic evangelicalism, or if he does, he decided to set this knowledge aside in order to complete this convoluted attack on Hillary Clinton.
I don't think it is a far stretch to say that the efforts to attack Clinton might go to this extent. After all, anyone can publish a book and some publishers will print anything for a buck. But in context, Clarkson seems always to be looking for a way to attack or otherwise humiliate anyone who looks like an orthodox Christian, or, in this case, who would dare associate with them.
This casserole is expected to be finished sometime in late Summer or early Fall.