Clinton and the Family
A few years back, I wrote about my strange Spring Break experience with The Family: a conservative religious group in DC. The cause was an article in Harpers by Jeffrey Sharlet on the group.
Last night, via cj, I learn that a) Sharlet’s written a book on The Family, due out in May, and b) he’s written an article in Mother Jones about Hilary Clinton’s long involvement with The Family:
When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian “cell” whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.
Clinton’s prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or “the Family”), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to “spiritual war” on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship’s only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has “made a fetish of being invisible,” former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.
This connection helped Clinton win over conservatives in Washington:
Senator Brownback…used to hate Clinton so much, he told us, that the hate hurt. Then came the Clintons' 1994 National Prayer Breakfast appearance with Mother Teresa, who upbraided the couple for their pro-choice views. Bill made no attempt to conceal his anger, but Hillary took it and smiled. Brownback remembers thinking, “Now, there’s gotta be a great lesson here.” He didn’t know what it was until Clinton got to the Senate and joined him in supporting DeLay’s Day of Reconciliation resolution following the 2000 election, a proposal described by its backers as a call to “pray for our leaders.” Now, Brownback considers Clinton “a beautiful child of the living God."lockquote>
Follow the links to Sharlet’s writing on The Family—and hey, read my little story for good measure, too :)—and then think about the Clinton-Family connection in the context of the Obama-Wright controversy…