Sharlet’s “Fundamental” Mistake
This is the third installment of my detailed review of Jeff Sharlet’s expose entitled The Family. Much of my dispute with the book involves the hype that is attached to the subtitle: “The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” My first installment laid the groundwork in noting how the endorsements and publisher comments expanded the target of Sharlet’s book beyond the group he was investigating. The second drew some issues with the use of the first part of the subtitle “secret.” This installment questions the use of the word “Fundamentalism.”
In the course of these reviews, I have made use not only of Sharlet’s book, but interviews has done on the project that are readily available on the internet. In order to help identify my sources, I will reference the quotes as follows: LLS for Sharlet’s interview on the Leonard Lopate Show on June 3rd, 2008; ALT for the alternet.org interview; HARP1 for his original article printed in Harpers entitled Jesus Plus Nothing; HARP2 will refer to the follow up interview in 2008; FDL for the Fire Dog Lake interview.
The reason I hit on Sharlet’s book is that on such incendiary topics as the Religion/Politics connection, terms must be exact. If not, the whole book—against Sharlet’s wishes I am certain—will be used to tar and feather people that have nothing to do with its premise. Case in point, note one of the comments listed in response to an article on Sharlet’s book here:
Thank you for posting this. Dangerous people like these fundies need more light cast on them, and more people paying attention to what they’re really about.
Other commenters note how this book exposes “the Christian Right.” The dislike American currently has for Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, the Christian Right, etc. is being fed by Sharlet’s book and the hype attached to it. It becomes guilt by association or category.
So back to my lead question, is the Family, as Sharlet describes it, Fundamentalist? Even Sharlet appears to dance around the term, sometimes affirming it but always with qualification. He wants to distinguish the “Fundamentalism” of the Family from the “Fundamentalism” as most known by the public at large, or “popular Fundamentalism” to use his terms.
Another thing that I think is very important is the distinction I make in the book is between the popular front of fundamentalism which is James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Pat Robertson, and this self described avant-garde of Fundamentalism, this elite. (LLS)
So the normal targets the public has in mind when they hear “Fundamentalist”, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and the like, actually have nothing to do with Sharlet’s group. Though Sharlet also tags this group with other terms, such as Dominionist (FDL), theocrats (HARP1), Evangelicals (LLS), he sticks with “Fundamentalist” as their main identifier.
Is use the term—in the book I describe—we need to use the term “fundamentalism” in the traditional sense of what goes back to 1920; which is the idea of creating a fixed religion, a fixed set of truths upon which everything else can rise .. Fundamentalist is the most accurate term for the shape of his [Doug Coe's-ed] faith. But he himself will say, “I am not even a Christian.” He says, “I am just a follower of Christ.”(LLS)
The Fundamentalism to which Sharlet accurately refers was shaped by the publication of a series of essays entitled “The Fundamentals” which were published (actually) from 1910 to 1915. According to Wikiperdia: “The volumes defended orthodox Protestant beliefs and attacked higher criticism, liberal theology, Catholicism (also called by them Romanism), socialsim, Modern Philosophy, atheism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Spiritualism and evolutionism (an article by geologist (George Frederick Wright).”
Many things in Doug Coe’s Foundation or Family organization just don’t appear to match up with those publications or the theological framework they espouse. (Yes, I have a copy.) Or to put it another way, “This is not your father’s Fundamentalism.” Many of their beliefs, if Sharlet presents them accurately—and I have no reason to think he does not—just don’t match up with the common perceptions of Fundamentalists. For example, do you perceive Christian Fundamentalists as holding or doing to the following?
- Meetings held where the Koran is read, but “Jesus is there”? (HARP2)
- Deriding the term “Christian” as too narrow? (HARP1)
- Not really caring about abortion? (ALT)
- Loving the atheistic amoralist philosopher Nietzsche? (ALT)
- Even knowing who Nietzsche is?
- Not being interested in people’s souls? (LLS)—I would bet most of us think they are all too interested in our souls, thank you very much.
- Not believing in the Rapture, ala Left Behind, but are Postmillennial instead. (Actually, The Fundamentals does not have a particular Eschatological viewpoint but favors Premillennialism over the Postmillennial view.)
- Believe that decisions are not made by democracy, the church, or even Scripture. That believe that the Bible is for the masses, but Christ reveals a higher set of commands to the anointed few? (RDL)
- That doesn’t demand “doctrinal loyalty” and thinks “liberals are free to join them” (RDL)—What were the Fundamentals about if not “doctrinal loyalty?”
- Maintains relationships with the Moonies and the Scientologists? (RDL)
- That believes you can just sit there and Jesus will tell you what to do. (ALT) (Use the Force, Luke!)
- Says that the Sermon on the Mount was part of the “strange things” things Jesus sometimes said. (I would love to know the context of that oft repeated quote.)
- When they speak of Covenant, the first thing that comes to their mind is not Abraham, Noah, or Jonathan and David, but Hitler, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Ben Laden. (HARP1)
(The last one may prompt some agreement among the anti-Fundy crowd, but believe me. I have sat through a few Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and even Christian Right sermons. The only time I heard the name of Hitler mentioned was during an anti-abortion sermon. It was not a favorable reference.)
I cannot verify the historicity of the Family’s connection to the 1915’s Fundamentalism: but if this was its source, I can truly say “this apple has fallen very far indeed from the tree.” In fact, it has morphed into something else besides an apple altogether.
In looking over the above points, I find that—except for the last—these statements would find agreement in many a mainstream Protestant Church in America today. Read by themselves, they sound pretty pluralistic to me. Though the Family is conservative politically and economically, they are clearly something else religiously. The fundamentalists would call them liberal.
Next: Is Sharlet Right About The Right?