[Vision2020] Book Recommendation/Request

Sun Jul 12 14:47:10 PDT 2009

Sigh.

I read this book about six months and found it to be a well-documented trip into a place I would never want to go.  Basically, it's about a group of "Christians" who, under the banner of "Jesus-Plus-Nothing," seek out men in positions of power, prominence, and privilege so that they can . . . preach the Gospel?  No.  Feed the poor?  No.  Seek to identify with the widow, orphan, outcast and scorned?  Well, no.  Somehow, Abraham Verghese founded a group, now headed by a shadowy figure named Douglas Coe, that wends its way through the halls of power hear and across the country like a toxic vapor of political manipulation in the name of Jesus, forging contacts and alliances with truly awful dictators (Suharto, anyone?) who pledge momentary, frail allegiance to Christ as a means of maintaining power or realizing more of it.  It made me sick.  The Gospel was first preached to the poor, the stranger, the outcast, the shunned, and the real Church of Jesus Christ is the Church of those who seek nothing in this world but fellowship with him and service to those around them in his name.  Any "ministry" to the powerful that leads to politics, not personal transformation, is no ministry at all.

I cannot for the life of me fathom how this parallel world of "Jesus-Plus-Nothing" has come to co-exist so comfortably with those who in every decision, in every deliberation, violate the Kingdom message of Christ.  

Oh, wait -- I get it.  

It's because all too many Western Christians stupidly believe that "civil religion," "cultural Christiandom," and rote religiosity is good enough -- worse, even faithful to Christ -- if it'll result in a few political victories and a bit of political power.

It makes me absolutely sick.  The biggest victory of Satan has been to convince the world that civic Christiandom is the goal, and the Church has taken the bait and fished not for the souls of humankind, but for the "right" words, the "right" political platforms, and the "right" posturing of something that looks just enough like faith to comfort the comfortable.

God have mercy.

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/

Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:41:41 -0700
From: starbliss at gmail.com
To: thansen at moscow.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com; BookPeople at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Book Recommendation/Request

This past week, the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC featured a piece on "The Family," as you describe it... I can't but wonder if you saw this broadcast, or just coincidentally mentioned this subject/book this week:

It's already on YouTube, I guess:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dox4jdW4UyQ

Ted Moffett 

On 7/10/09, Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:

I have just finished browsing an extremely abridged version of a book that
I find to be revealing and very thought-provoking.

"The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" By
Jeff Sharlet

>From the book's introduction:

"The Avant-Garde of American Fundamentalism

This is how they pray: A dozen clear-eyed, smooth-skinned 'brothers'

gather in a huddle, arms crossing arms over shoulders like the weave of a
cable, leaning in on one another and swaying like the long grass up the
hill from the house they share, a handsome, gray, two-story colonial that

smells of new carpet, Pine-Sol, and aftershave.  It is decorated with
lithographs of foxhunters and pictures of Jesus, and, in the bunk room, a
drawing of a 'C-4' machine gun given to them by their six-year-old

neighbor.  The men who live there call the house Ivanwald.  At the end of
a tree-lined cul-de-sac in Arlington, Virginia, quiet but for the buzz of
lawn mowers and kids playing tag in the park across the road, Ivanwald is

one house among many, clustered like mushrooms, nearly two dozen
households devoted, like these men, to the service of a personal Jesus, a
Christ who directs their every action.  The men tend every tulip in the
cul-de-sac, trim every magnolia, seal every driveway smooth and black as

boot leather.  Assembled at the dining table or on their lawn or in the
hallway or in the bunk room or on the basketball court, they also pray,
each man's head bowed in humility and swollen with pride (secretly, he

thinks) at being counted among the select corps for Christ, men to whom He
will open his heart and whom He will remember when he returns to the world
not born-again but remade, no longer an individual, but part of the Lord's

revolution, His will transformed into a weapon for what the young men call
'spiritual war'."

I could purchase it through Amazon at:

http://tinyurl.com/mfhky6

But, I prefer buying this book locally (ya listenin', BookPeople).

Does anybody know where this book is available locally?

Thanks,

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change

and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown

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