“Just when we thought the Christian right was crumbling, Jeff Sharlet delivers a rude shock: One of its most powerful and cult-like core groups, the Family, has been thriving. [1]
Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Harper, 2008) and a contributing editor for Harper’s and Rolling Stone, has been writing about the intersection of religion, politics, and culture for more than a decade. [2]
In 2003, Jeff Sharlet published an article in Harper’s Magazine called ‘Jesus Plus Nothing,’ which tells the bizarre and troubling story of Sharlet’s month-long stay at Ivanwald, a Fellowship-run retreat house for young men in Arlington, Virginia. [3]
Jeff Sharlet (born 1972) is an American journalist and author best known for writing about religious subcultures in the United States. [4]
The Revealer is on summer hiatus, but I’m currently blogging at KillingTheBuddha.com, an online literary magazine about religion I created with novelist Peter Manseau back in 2000. [5]
The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. [6]
Many years ago I wrote an angry letter to the editor of Rolling Stone, doubting whether that magazine ever would give serious attention to religion and believers. [7]
His writing on religion has earned him praise from writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich, who calls The Family ‘one of the most compelling and brilliantly researched expos?s you’ll ever read,’ and condemnation from the likes of Ann Coulter, who declares Sharlet one of the ’stupidest’ journalists in America. [2]
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power dramatically challenges conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. [1]
The slow but sure formation of a new evangelical Protestantism that will shape American life and politics — and thus the life and politics of the world — for decades to come. [7]
Sharlet is the co-creator of two online journals, Killing the Buddha, a literary magazine about religion, and The Revealer, a review of religion and media published by the New York University Center for Religion and Media. [4]
His recently published book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Harper Collins, 2008, $25.95 cloth) was every bit as good as I expected it to be. [3]
His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Mother Jones, New York, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Columbia Journalism Review, Oxford American, New Statesman, Forward, Nerve, and The Baffler. [4]
But I’m guessing Revealer traffic today will be driven by NPR’s “Fresh Air,” on which I discuss my book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, and the Family’s connections to Senator John Ensign’s and Governor Mark Sanford’s public confessions of adultery. [5]
My religion writing career began in 1998 when I quit my first serious job as editor in chief of Pakn Treger, a magazine of Jewish history and culture, when my boss told me to lay off stories about politics, religion, and sex. [7]
Sources:
[1] The Revealer: A new book from Revealer creator Jeff Sharlet
[2] Jeff Sharlet | Bio | About Jeff Sharlet
[3] Book Review: “The Family” by Jeff Sharlet at bendaniel.org
[4] Jeff Sharlet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[5] The Revealer
[6] Call Me Ishmael: Jeff Sharlet, The Family, 2008
[7] 5Q 1 visits the ubiquitous Jeff Sharlet ” GetReligion