The Revealer

"One of those books that changes how one looks at the whole world."

The Revealer — 2008-05-10T12:57:24-05:00

Media scholar Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform and editor of a new volume, Loser Takes All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008, responds to The Family: "One of...

Hillary's Third Way

The Revealer — 2008-05-10T01:27:03-05:00

Adapted from "Interesting Blood" in The Family for The New Republic.

By Jeff Sharlet

Lost in the hysteria over Reverend Jeremiah Wright's remarks is the fact that the current race offers a rare snapshot of the three great strands of American political religion. It's ironic that Wright occupies center stage, since, in the twenty-first century, his is by far the weakest of these--a progressive Christianity which stretches from the Social Gospel to black liberation theology, a big tent of liberal and left religion that's not very crowded anymore. John McCain's problem pastor, a Texas pulpit-pounder named John Hagee, stands in for a more familiar faith: populist fundamentalism, a crowd-pleasing mix of hellfire and the kind of prosperity preaching that encourages followers to ante up to the Lord in both spirit and dollars. And then there's Hillary Clinton's religion: the third strand of political faith, the least understood and arguably the most powerful.

Clinton, an evangelically inclined Methodist, is by far the most religiously rooted and theologically astute of the three candidates, a Christian intellectual schooled in the cold war religion of Reinhold Niebuhr's post-leftist years. Don Jones, her youth pastor and a lifelong spiritual mentor, calls the faith he instructed her in then and which they still share a third way between old-school fundamentalism and liberal Christianity. It's not centrism, though; Jones describes it in terms of Burkean conservatism, after the eighteenth-century reactionary philosopher's belief that change should be slow and come without the sort of "social leveling" that offends class hierarchy.

That's the crux of the conflict between the progressive Christianity that's broad enough to encompass both Jeremiah Wright and Jimmy Carter, and the elitist variation long embraced by Hillary: The former dreams always, if imperfectly, of challenging power, while the latter works to reaffirm it. Clinton's faith is not the liberal version of Christianity that Democratic leaders have traditionally invoked--instead, her version, exemplified by her alliance with a shadowy network of powerful conservative Christians, is steeped in the kind of establishmentarianism that she has otherwise tried to distance herself from throughout the primary season.

To continue reading, go toThe New Republic.

Please Destroy After Reading

The Revealer — 2008-05-09T20:45:01-05:00
Sharlet: Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution makes a connection between the secrecy of The Family the subject of my new book (disclosure: HarperCollins sent A Tiny Revolution a copy. Got a decent blog? Write me and I'll have them send you one, too.) and John McCain's national finance co-chair, Fred Malek.

The Church of Politics

The Revealer — 2008-05-09T13:11:15-05:00
Pastor Dan of Street Prophets, a progressive religious group blog, parses the Wall Street Journal's coverage of a Christian Right group's attempt to provoke a legal battle to redefine the churches' ability to politick....

Clinton's Pastor Problem Redux

The Revealer — 2008-05-08T13:54:40-05:00
Jeff Weiss of the Dallas Morning News wonders if Hillary Clinton's Doug Coe connection is as troubling to her campaign as Obama's "pastor problem." Weiss asks, I get to answer....

In Pork She Trusts

The Revealer — 2008-04-30T14:46:17-05:00
Republicans aren't the only ones who believe in using faith-based initiatives to win votes. In the month before the Reverend Calvin Butts, one of the most influential black pastors in New York City, surprised his Harlem congregation by endorsing Hillary,...

Crossing the Line

The Revealer — 2008-04-30T13:22:50-05:00
Rob Boston, church/state separation activist and writer, caught a recent episode of Christian Right leader Janet Folger's "Faith2Action" radio show that should make news among reporters on the campaign trail...

NYT vs. Jeremiah Wright, Pt. 3

The Revealer — 2008-04-30T12:09:24-05:00
Maureen Dowd, the noted columnist and student of African American religious history, jumps on the NYT Jeremiah Wright hate train, reducing Wright's learned history of the black church and why it should matter to all Americans to a "’60s maelstrom."...

Tulsa, City of (Somebody's) Dreams

The Revealer — 2008-04-30T11:57:45-05:00
Akshay Ahuja on tour with Cremated Souls, an Indian death metal band for whom Tulsa is a distant city of dreams...

Radio Show

The Revealer — 2008-04-30T00:56:18-05:00
Sharlet: I believe I'll be on the CBC -- Canadian Broadcasting Company -- program "The Current" Wednesday morning, discussing the pundit assault on Jeremiah Wright and black liberation theology. Whether or not they use my comments, I suspect the show...

Mormon "Genocide"?

The Revealer — 2008-04-29T18:20:37-05:00
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has created a blog, Captive FLDS Children.org, to update its position in the ongoing fight over custody of its children. The group is charging Texas with genocide...

Faith in the Halls of Power

The Revealer — 2008-04-29T11:50:52-05:00
Sociology and evangelical power -- NYU, Tuesday, April 29...

Real Wright and Wrong

The Revealer — 2008-04-29T11:37:50-05:00
Sharlet: I'm putting Diana Butler-Bass' response to the Jeremiah Wright media tour in the "timeless" category because her response on Beliefnet's "God's Politics" blog speaks of enduring questions and ideas. It's the exact opposite of the literally pathetic fretting of Obama supporters who want Wright to just go away so they can go back to believing that Obama's candidacy signals the end of racial division in America...

NYT vs. Jeremiah Wright, Pt. 2

The Revealer — 2008-04-29T11:25:39-05:00
The NYT's Bob Herbert (writing in the opinion pages, at least), joins the liberal elite's outrage over Jeremiah Wright. Yes, I just said "liberal elite"; there is no other term with which to describe the big media Obama backers distressed...

NYT to Rev. Wright: Be Quiet!

The Revealer — 2008-04-29T00:41:55-05:00
Holly Berman: A surrogate for the Obama campaign announced today that in light of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's decision to defend himself in the public square, it's clear that "Mr. Wright doesn’t hate America, he loves the sound of his...