Listen to
Fresh Air yesterday? Because holy crap. The Family or The Fellowship or whatever it is called? Creepy as hell. Even the names are scary. Like every religion, this one picks and chooses what to believe, but the main thing seems to be that the wealthy and powerful are wealthy and powerful because God made them so and chose them. They are the Chosen. Regardless of what they do. Because they are in positions of power and influence, that is a sign that God Chose them. Sort of Calvinistic in that way, right? It's a weird sort of, as Jeff Sharlet puts it, trickle down religion. Get the men and women (maybe only men?) at the top and get them to do God's work, and they'll save the poor and downtrodden. Did I say creepy? Creepy doesn't even begin to cover it.
Apparently, we're all toys. God's toys. Let's forget free will because that? Not important. A man-made invention. All that matters is that those in power are in power because God deemed it so. So, in other words, General Suharto? The man who killed entire villages in Indonesia? Totally okay, because that is a man God has Chosen. After all, God is fighting communism and this man is fighting communism so happy day (oh, happy day).
I can see why the whole organization tries to be on the down low. *Shudder*
You can listen to the whole interview
here. Frankly, all Sharlet's "they really believe" stuff made the whole thing all the scarier.
Oh, and incidentally and for what it's worth, Mark Sanford and John Ensign are both Family or Fellowship members.
Comments (4)
"Get the men and women (maybe only men?) at the top and get them to do God's work, and they'll save the poor and downtrodden."
Isn't that the basic premise of modern liberalism? Or am I thinking of the Democrat's 2008 campaign platform?
...
Scaaaaryy.
To be fair, it's easy to imagine an NPR piece on Catholicism that would make the church seem totally creepy to someone who was wholly unfamiliar with it.
@Bazzer - I might have heard some of those... :p