the family

Vote Out The Religious Right

Screen shot from video below

Al Capone didn't go to prison for murder, extortion, or bootlegging. He was sent away for not paying taxes. Likewise, we have at hand a way to eradicate the political religious right, get them out of our government, based on a too-long-ignored paper trail of their ethical and financial misconduct. We just have to be willing to get up and do it. During this month-long series on the religious right, I have exposed the large and secretive christianist cult that drives members of the religious right's science-denying, constitution-free, punishing laws and judicial decisions. It's called The Family (aka The Fellowship) and ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Miseducation of the Religious Right

by Kevin Dooley Flickr/creative commons

A vivid memory of mine is the night about 10+ years ago when Dan Massey and I concluded that mixed-up Republicans out there were no longer making any attempt to hide their misanthropic adventurism. They were just saying whatever was on the top of their minds and hearts, not caring whether it made any sense, and worse, whether or not it fully disclosed to anyone paying attention their general dislike, utter disregard, and hate for humankind. We predicted (dreamt) that this trend would lead swiftly to their final undoing, and that seems to be happening. What began as Nixon's Southern ...

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in Campaigns / Dan Massey / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Thoughts on July 4 (Part 1 of 2)

by Benjamin Lehman Flickr/creative commons

Independence Day has always been a mixture of emotions for me. While I believe that America may be the world's best hope for universal human rights and peace, its antecedent history is permanently marred, always with an asterisk, because of the geneocide that wiped out 90% of First Peoples and an economy based on slavery, the repercussions of which are damning us to this day. When I was young, I coped with this dissonance by focusing on individual independence: that it should be a day when we each reflect our own liberation from ideas that restrain and diminish our own selves. ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Watch: Jeff Sharlet on The Family, the Huge, Secret Cult Driving the Religious Right

Screen Shot 2015-07-03 at 3.42.52 PM

"American power worldwide, unfettered capitalism, no unions, no programs to help poor people, all with this idea that godly, powerful, rich men should get as many resources as possible personally and they should just privately help everyone else." (Rachel Maddow's impression of The Family after reading one of Jeff Sharlet's definitive, investigative books on the organization, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (2009) and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy (2011) Jeff Sharlet. This continues our month-long series on the The Family (aka Read More›

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Religious Right’s Last Stand

Editorial Cartoon by Joe Wolf Flickr/creative commons

Back now from a few days meditation on the shifting political sands brought about by recent Supreme Court rulings (healthcare, marriage, and against gerrymandering) and other intersecting events, such as  President Obama's Eulogy for Clementa Pickney. I've been soaking in all that has been written about this extraordinary week and how it relates to the future fortunes of the religious right. You can catch up with the last few weeks of my posts which have focused exclusively on the religious right, and in particular the dominionist, political-religious philosophy that ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The Christian Fundamentalist’s Erotic Dream

by Chicago Man Flickr/creative commons

"[T]he erotic dream of Amreican fundamentalism: a restoration of chivalry, a cleansing of impurity, a nation without sin, an empire of the personal as political." From Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (2009)

This dream is especially important to understand, particularly as we await the pending Supreme Court decision that is likely to authorize federal same-sex marriage without interference from the states. Either way the court goes, this singular decision promises to further divide the christian right from everyone else. This dream, this sexual fantasy, helps explain the root of the intense, ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

From The U.S. Capitol to Kampala, Uganda, the Dominionist Cult Called The Family Runs Deep

President Ronald Reagan meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at The White House,1987 Wiki.commons

The large and secretive dominionist cult called The Family (aka The Fellowship), through the agency of thousands of its American members, view foreign nations, especially developing nations, as more fertile ground than Main Street to pursue their culture wars, but it goes so much deeper than that. Practically every country in the world has been targeted by The Family to be made over as experiments in faith-based initiatives aimed at establishing theocratic regimes throughout the world for one purpose: to reap maximum profits for their members, who don't even have to be christian as long as they fulfill ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 1 comments

A Further Introduction to the Cult Known as The Family or The Fellowship

by Elyce Feliz Flickr/creative commons

"The love of power--world changing power, messianic power--is not an American invention; but our civil religion, the belief that such a move can coexist peacefully with both God and democracy is." [Jeff Sharlet, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (2009)] Following up my related posts last week (linked below), here is the first in a promised series of short articles attempting a rounded introduction to The Family (aka The Fellowship) in the form of Opinion-Editorials for educational purposes. I crave your feedback and participation. If you are not already familiar with ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Dominionism — learn about it and then do something

Flickr/creative commons

This post has been updated (6/8/15, 9:15 PM).

Whether addressing the many issues of social, economic, and environmental injustice, (trying to mirror the mission of Martin Luther King, Jr., to eradicate racism, poverty, and war), many of us are engaged in exposing the mostly all-fringe, white, christian, male GOP who are  fomenting a theocracy to replace our government and rule of law. I've even coined a word, "theocrants," as in miscreants, to describe them, but it's no laughing matter. Just to be clear, I am not talking about christian believers sitting in the pews, many of whom are sincere and loving ...

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in Campaigns / Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Israel’s Messy Package (Part 2)

Yesterday, in Part 1, I told my personal family's jewish history in an attempt to put the existence of Israel into a broader context. Earlier enough, I had dispensed with the myth of my youth, that Israel was simply the world's and Palestine's gift to the jewish culture, a safe harbor for Jews following the atrocities of WWII. In fact, Israel was conceived by a militant zionist movement begun in the late 1800s, so it is motive that has to be understood for anything to change. (We use the word, zionists, as we use the word, christianists, to denote ...

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in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments