Notes and Backstory of Jeff Sharlet's "The Family"

Jeff Sharlet's magnum opus, The Family, is now a miniseries. Having followed this guy over fifteen years I could not be more pleased to see his work finally more prominently available.  Here is the trailer.

For those not familiar with his work, this 2009 Fresh Air interview of Jeff Sharlet is a is a good introduction.

Copied here is a blog post I composed in 2005 after visiting one of many Megachurches across the country, the one in Brownsville, Florida. 

Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. In the United States, the phenomenon has more than quadrupled in the past two decades. It has since spread worldwide. In 2007, five of the ten largest Protestant churches were in South Korea. The largest megachurch in the United States is Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas with more than 40,000 members every weekend and the current largest megachurch in the world is South Korea's Yoido Full Gospel Church, an Assemblies of God church, with more than 830,000 members as of 2007.

Sooner or later Jeff Sharlet's two-part examination of the mega-church phenomenon will be read and commented upon throughout the Christian community. Part I, available in the current Harper's Magazine, is also available online at The Revealer, [see footnote below] where Sharlet is a principal contributor.

“Church” is insufficient to describe the complex. There is a permanent structure called the Tent, which regularly fills with hundreds or thousands of teens and twenty-somethings for New Life’s various youth gatherings. Next to the Tent stands the old sanctuary, a gray box capable of seating 1,500; this juts out into the new sanctuary, capacity 7,500, already too small. At the complex’s western edge is the World Prayer Center, which looks like a great iron wedge driven into the plains. The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life’s founder.

There is a lot to be said for economy of scale, critical mass, social leverage and political influence. But I'm not sure how well the idea relates to faith. Faith connects inversely with threats, uncertainties, doubts and pain. Faith is in some way the opposite of certainty. It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. The mega-church mission seems to be the replacement of hope with certainty, the realization of seeing instead of squinting to understand the unseen.


I'm unconvinced, but who am I to argue with a wave of spectacular, unalloyed, in-your-face success. The Brownsville Assembly in Pensacola was as close as I ever got to a big church. It was too big for me, except as a visitor. I was impressed with what they had accomplished, but when I tried to imagine myself as a regular member there, I had a hard time seeing how that would be different from being in a big, well-organized club. That was several years ago and it was minuscule compared with today's big churches. I guess I'm just a small-church guy.

Mega-church enterprises are the result of the combined efforts of a lot of good people to create a haven of safety and support for each other. That part appeals to me, in the same way that I have a high regard for the Amish and Bruderhof communities. I have read about L'Arche communities which seek to incorporate into a larger community those who are, in the old language of the prayer-book "in mental darkness." In very alien environments the protection of a compound has always been used by organized groups, from missionaries to scientific expeditions to military bases.

As protected populations such groups are not only tolerated, but sometimes encouraged by the larger communities in which they are located. The greater community would rather not be aware of groups like the Branch Dravidians or other cult-like outfits who come and go as much as they like as long as they keep to themselves with their crazy behaviors.

In the case of a mega-church, what's not to like about a place where people can swim, exercise and play safely? Where the welcome mat is always out for anybody that wants to join? Indeed, we all know how dangerous the world can be. How corrupt. How full of crazy people. We know the public schools are a cesspool of immorality, watched over by a cadre of teachers and administrators whose mandate to teach competes with other assignments that have nothing to do with education.

Large numbers of people retreat into private schools, gated communities, and suburban or rural settings where they no longer interact daily with the detritus of modern civilization (if we can call a litany of social ills "civilization"). I suppose I see mega-churches as parallels to gated communities.

That's why I like the notion of small churches. Small churches, especially older ones, are the Kingdom's equivalent to tree bark...not too pretty, not very interesting (certainly not exciting), but totally essential, winter and summer, to the survival of the tree. As much as I appreciate the work of mega-churches, I fear for the safety and survival of the little ones. I remember a conversation I had with the rector of a small church. We were discussing the mega-church phenomenon and he pointed out that mega-churches "regard churches like ours as feeder churches." Small churches, not masses of infidels, are the fields of harvest for the big ones. There are a few big fish in small ponds, but I know good people whose little lives and visions could never withstand the gale forces of a big church. That is a population of Christians that I want to see protected. At this point I don't hear anybody speaking for them.

† Footnote:

Links at my old blog have mostly gone 404 Not Found but here is an excerpt from the linked article I copied elsewhere. Even then (2005, 14 years ago) the issue of white supremacy was a topic of discussion.
Harriet Meirs, for those who don't remember, was an American lawyer who served as White House Counsel to President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007.
Sharlet says...

I've a short item on Harriet Miers' church, Valley View Christian, coming out in an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone. Poking around the site, I came across a startling link, to the Gospel Broadcasting Association, which declares: "This ministry is directed to the peoples of the world which historically have embraced Christianity--namely, the Caucasians, the Anglo-Saxons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Germanic tribes, and kindred groups which inhabit Western Europe and North America. Because of their embrace of Christianity, these groups collectively have been known as 'Christendom', that is, 'the kingdom of Christ'. Not surprisingly, these traditionally-Christian peoples are none other than the literal, physical descendants of the tribes of ancient, Biblical Israel." The site goes on to claim that the Roman Catholic church is a Jewish conspiracy.

Zoinks! Is Harriet Miers a Christian Identity white supremacist? 

No. Whatever else she is, she's not that, and neither are her fellow Christians at Valley View. When I spoke to the church's pastor, Dr. Barry McCarty, last week, I asked him about his site's link to this racist fantasy. He was genuinely horrified. The link was supposed to be to the Gospel Broadcasting Mission, not the Gospel Broadcasting Association. He said he had no knowledge of the association; I verified this with the association's sole member, one Russell L. Harris, of Houston, Texas. McCarty saw to it that the link was promptly fixed. 

Case closed, as far as Miers is concerned. But the real puzzle here is why no one else caught this. When I pointed it out to McCarty, he was not only shocked, he was perplexed. He said he'd done perhaps 100 interviews since the announcement of Miers' nomination, with reporters who were clearly looking for an angle on the church's fundamentalism. Why hadn't they noticed the raging lunacy of the Gospel Broadcasting Association? Why was I the only one to catch it?

Certainly not because I'm a better reporter. I was writing a short item; I spent about an hour clicking on Miers' church's site links. And bam, there it was. That's all. 

Was it overlooked because the political reporters assigned to the Miers story simply had no taste or time for theology? When I spoke to McCarty and Miers' former pastor, Ron Key, both men volunteered responses on abortion and same-sex marriage before I even asked questions about the subject. They'd clearly been grilled dozens of times over, by reporters who understand Christian conservatism as no broader than these two issues. 

It can be much broader, and in the case of the Gospel Broadcasting Association, it can be much narrower. But picking up on the nuances requires reading religion, and that, apparently, was too much to ask of a press determined to declare a Miers a fundamentalist in the only terms they understood.

America’s dependence on Mexico has a long history.

America’s dependence on Mexico has a long history.

This is a backup copy of a Facebook Note in case the original is lost or removed by one of Facebook's algorithms.

The ICE raids remind me that undocumented workers have been an integral part of the US economy for years. The Bracero program (from the Spanish term bracero, meaning manual laborer or one who works using his arms) was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico.
That ended in 1965 with the Maquiladora program. Maquiladora is a Mexican assembly plant that imports materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis. Maquiladoras receive raw materials from companies in the U.S. to assemble and export back as finished products. That was when crossing the border became more difficult, but by no means impossible.
At that point workers from Mexico, mostly men, came into the country for better wages and predictable good work, but found it easier to remit earnings to their families instead of sneaking back and forth across the border.

Over time they were joined by their wives and girlfriends to have families living in the US. That's where the derogatory term anchor babies originated -- implying that foreign women intentionally become pregnant to have American-born children to get free stuff. That was a malicious lie, of course. They were afraid to be identified lest they be deported (and because undocumented immigrants have zero eligibility for any benefits, not even the payroll and other taxes deducted from wages when they work). I sense this is when today's DACA kids were being born into families with mixed foreign- & natural-born American siblings.

Americans who don’t live near the Mexican border or that part of the West originally settled and developed by Spain and Mexico have no sense of our interdependence with Mexico. Many elementary school history lessons mention Westward expansion and manifest destiny without fully explaining the backstory. Most residents in huge parts of the Southwest don’t have the same cultural mix or language as those from the East. A generation or two ago many were either bi-lingual or spoke only Spanish. Their roots included black, indigenous and Asian ancestors. Their heritage was not the same as Easterners pursuing a manifest destiny, claiming all of North America “from sea to shining sea.” 

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase rounded out America’s Westward expansion even before we had states in that part of the country, mostly to accommodate train travel from coast to coast, reaping the benefits of a gold rush in California. Generations of families in Mexico, Hispanic/Latino both linguistically and culturally, went to bed one night as Mexicans and woke up the next morning living in America! Over time the rest of America has forgotten that even many American place names are of Spanish origin. Montana (mountainous or montaña means “mountain") and a few other states, Los Angeles (the angels), San Antonio (Saint Anthony) and an endless list of other place names derive from Spanish. Our heritage is rich with these roots, and referring to newcomers from the South as “invaders” is profoundly ignorant as well as hateful. Since many of them are identifiably brown, language like that is an expression of white racism.

 

This is my old man's story.

This Note was prompted by the ICE raids mentioned above. As I was writing about an experience I had years ago, getting an INS audit as a cafeteria manager, I realized the story no longer has meaning because so much has changed since then. As everyone knows, US immigration policy has been an unresolved mess forever, subject to change at the drop of a hat according to what political winds are blowing in Washington and across the country.
When I asked the INS agent at the time I was audited what was going to happen with US immigration policy he tossed it aside and replied candidly “Oh, someone will write a new policy. There will be another amnesty like we had during the Reagan years and we’ll start all over again.” I had been terrified about being audited. I didn’t dare mention it to anyone til my appointment was over, not even my associate manager or my wife! But he seemed unconcerned about the future. For him this was just another day at work.
Something tells me the people at ICE are not very different. They simply follow orders, and most of them, like that agent, are just doing their jobs. Like people everywhere, they mostly follow directions and do the best they can with the training and resources they get. That, of course, is the real problem ICE did not exist until after the World Trade Center attack which revealed how fragmented our security was which allowed a handful of terrorists, prepared to die for a cause, to fly airplanes into buildings. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was formed pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and is the largest investigative arm of the DHS and second largest contributor to the nation's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Events of the last couple of years indicate that with too much power in one place ICE has become a rogue agency and needs to be dismantled. It’s hard to know whether the mistreatment of families and children has been an unintended consequence of a poorly planned policy or a deliberate attempt to display cruelty in some savage attempt to “teach them a lesson” or “act as a deterrent.” It really makes no difference. With leadership more divided collaboration of more moving parts will be essential. Just as it takes whole departments to manage local, state and national missions, handling thousands of unarmed adults and children, without resources, who don’t even speak a common language is an unimaginable challenge. They come unarmed, not trying to sneak in, driven only by the knowledge that nothing can be worse than the life they are escaping. (In many ways FEMA faces similar challenges but that is another conversation. At least FEMA has, or should have, state and local resources available when needed.)

White Racism Notes

I'm sure it's true everywhere, but those of us who have grown up in the South learn early on how best to conceal racism in a semi-public place. It typically happens when someone is about to make a racist remark or tell a racist joke. Sensing those in earshot might enjoy a bit of racist humor, one makes a silent signal to "gather around and listen," glances around to insure no one in the target group can hear, then quietly shares the humor with the others. I have witnessed this countless times, always being extra careful to conceal my identity as a closet liberal, sometimes even joining in by looking amused.
Believe me when I say I know the drill. After having been a civil rights activist for a couple of years away at college I had to drop out of school, return home and get a job to repay the money I had borrowed. The job I found was semi-skilled labor in a paint shop, working with a crowd of good old boys who had worked together for several years. This was when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted and conversations among working class white guys invariably mentioned the KKK. As far as I know none of the men around me were members, but I recall one of them speaking well of the Klan, citing how they did a lot more than persecute black people. He told of a situation in rural Alabama that involved a man who was known to be abusive to his wife and prone to drunken misbehavior. One night members of the Klan paid him a visit, warned him to clean up his act and literally whipped him, physically. After that, the story went, he was a different guy. He quit drinking so much and stopped beating his wife -- and the Klan got credit for having done something good than had nothing to do with black people.
Now, over fifty years later, circumstances have changed but the dynamic of being a closet liberal remains the same. Even (or especially) with social media I find myself being careful not to offend a few among my family and friends. Too much candor can cause trouble among those we know and we learn to overlook differences of opinion for the sake of relationships. I'm sure the reader knows what I'm talking about. It's one of the most important bonds of human behavior.

Having said all that, I must note that for the first time in my experience the subject of racism generally and white nationalism specifically is being discussed openly in the press and hopefully among ordinary people. Issues of race that simmered for years burst into the public square with the election of a black president, but he successfully calmed the fears of many white people, despite the relentless opposition of the man who has now become his successor. Which brings us to the subject of this post -- the racism of Donald Trump and his embrace of white nationalism. No need for me to list examples here. That assignment is done well by others. This, however, is what is happening at the moment in the aftermath of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

This appeared in Facebook today:

This handy collection of images with
the "Crazy conspiracy theory"
underscores the point.

Crazy conspiracy theory of the day... As Trump read from the TelePrompTer, he ordered that all American flags at military installations, federal facilities, and the White House be flown at half-staff until sunset on August 8.
That is 8/8. Why THAT date?“88 is a white supremacist numerical code for "Heil Hitler." H is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 = HH = Heil Hitler. One of the most common white supremacist symbols, 88 is used throughout the entire white supremacist movement, not just neo-Nazis. One can find it as a tattoo or graphic symbol; as part of the name of a group, publication or website; or as part of a screenname or e-mail address. It is even sometimes used as a greeting or sign-off (particularly in messages on social networking websites).”
Did white supremacist Steven Miller write his speech? Somebody up there is messing with trump now.

Taken alone this does indeed appear to be a "crazy conspiracy theory." But it doesn't take long to find similar examples of concealed racism described above in another instance noted in Salon over a year ago.

When there is no low beneath which a president and his administration will not sink, and no rule or norm which he, his allies and his supporters will not break, almost anything is possible. This atmosphere of chaos and unpredictability is one of Donald Trump's great political advantages.
Last week, reporters and those others who monitor hate groups and extremist movements called attention to a little noticed press release issued in February by the Department of Homeland Security. Its title was unremarkable, at least by the standards of Trump administration propaganda: "We Must Secure the Border and Build the Wall to Make America Safe Again."
Two things about that title have now attracted notice. It consists of 14 words, and its phrasing is strikingly similar to the 14 words of the neo-Nazi movement's semi-official slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
Just a coincidence? Probably. But the DHS release also contained another odd passage where, instead of using percentages or presenting statistics as a proportion of 10 or 100, as is routine, specific numbers were used: “On average, out of 88 [asylum] claims that pass the credible fear screening, fewer than 13 will ultimately result in a grant of asylum.”
The number 88 has a special significance to neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, as does the number 14. At Law and Crime, Colin Kalmbacher explains: "The '14 words' are frequently used in conjunction with the number 88 because 'H' is the eighth letter of the alphabet and therefore 88 becomes 'HH' which stands for 'Heil Hitler.'" Kalmbacher observes that in addition to its 14-word headline, the DHS release also contains "14 distinct sets of claims; 13 of which are bullet-pointed–one of which is not."

There is more at the link, but this is enough to make the point. I will add that the same date, whether coordinated or not, was also chosen by Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis. 

To honor the victims of the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings, which occurred just hours apart, President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have ordered flags to be flown at half-staff.

Conspiracy or not, the significance of numbers and symbols is no longer a secret. 

Addendum, August 6...

This move addresses the point.
We have no way of knowing whether the initial date was chosen for it's symbolic message, or the order to "re-raise" flags is to correct or underscore that very point.

Trump has ordered flags to be reraised on 8/8. Perhaps he doesn't know any better, maybe he does. But neo-nazis will take it as a sign. It's one of their numbers. Who is advising him on this stuff? pic.twitter.com/p60dhLMwgR

— Alternative NOAA (@altNOAA) August 7, 2019

Science Is Not a Political Subject

We need a thread reader app for conversations. This important conversation is happening in real time via Twitter, but like a few other subjects it has little chance of becoming mainstream, whatever that is.

Facebook has chosen to label climate change science content as 'political' and is rejecting related ads and page boosts, with no reasonable workaround: https://t.co/Q8mDmwMXJ0. Is there a tech journalist who wants to cover this story? Please RT.

— Christine Larivière (@cdlariviere) July 31, 2019

Requires authorisation for anything that’s a “social issue” but how do you define that? According to $FB, very vaguely… pic.twitter.com/4LG483QLtR

— Aaron Gillett (@aaron_gillett) July 31, 2019

Yup. It's reinforcing the wrongful and deeply problematic positioning of climate change as a polarizing political issue, instead of what it is—science—which leads to ingroup-based denial or skepticism, and resistance to climate action.

— Christine Larivière (@cdlariviere) July 31, 2019

Agreed. Though at its best, perhaps this will limit disinformation and misinformation?

— Aaron Gillett (@aaron_gillett) July 31, 2019

It *could* have been implemented to address fake news, denial, etc. But, I've been appealing ads for several months now. I've also personally appealed to their client support. Such a broad-sweep implementation is wrong, it penalizes climate change conspiracies & science equally.

— Christine Larivière (@cdlariviere) July 31, 2019

The media needs to cover this. Only, pls don’t express *puzzlement* at seeing climate denial & disinformation by Facebook. They hired fact checkers literally from the Koch Brothers https://t.co/9myrtjcO0U It’s all out in the open 🤷🏽‍♀️ /@PrivacyProject @TspBackgroundEK @berndulrich

— Paul Maidowski (@_ppmv) July 31, 2019

When @PriceofOil (typical for well-meaning climate folks) write “In what can only be described as verging on the bizarre (sic!), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given the contract to fight fake news” I just shake my head. There’s nothing bizarre about it. It’s literally the plan

— Paul Maidowski (@_ppmv) July 31, 2019

cc @NicoleGoodkind (they actually did this to some of my QL posts, too, that weren't political at all. Their algo is fucked)

— Shawna Ohm (@ShawnaOhm) July 31, 2019

Can confirm for Germany. I have worked for a campus of a world-renowned university with a focus on studies for sustainable, climate-friendly technology. We advertised with positive CTAs as main messages. After a few first successful test posts we were cut to virtually zero reach.

— jonathannausner (@thenausner) August 1, 2019

Yep, basically it’s the same thing for them pic.twitter.com/rYhDGJzp3q

— Raffaele Angius (@faffa42) July 31, 2019