vovat | Keeping It in The Family (Reply)

Secret societies have long been a popular subject for conspiracy theorists. The Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, Skull and Bones, the Elders of Zion, and the 4-H Club have all been identified as secretly ruling the world. I'm sure the amount of truth in this varies. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was, from what I've heard, both forged AND plagiarized, although that doesn't stop actors from movies about survival in post-apocalyptic Australia from believing it. But with some of these other organizations, even if there isn't really anything underhanded and Satanic going on (and most of the time there probably isn't), I'm sure they sometimes can help people make useful connections. And I've actually just learned recently about a secret society with a lot of connections to power, known simply as "The Family" or "The Fellowship," although it has other names as well. Its current leader refers to it as the "Christian Mafia," even though the actual Mafia is already Christian (maybe "Protestant Mafia" would work better?). As that last name suggests, they're allegedly a Christian group, but they want no truck with the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, and all those other unpleasant people that somebody named Jesus talked about on a mountain all those years ago. Instead, they make alliances with people in power, apparently reasoning that the powerful must be that way because of God's election, and the Elect can do no wrong. The group was founded by a Norwegian-American minister in 1935, in order to oppose the New Deal and what he saw as the rise in socialism (which makes me wonder what he thought of Acts 4:32-37). It's been said that they've held up dictators like Hitler, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, and Osama bin Laden as role models, at least in terms of gaining and retaining power. They're also down with the marriage of fundamentalism and corporate control, which is quite common nowadays, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it.

Recently, The Family has been somewhat in the news (although not the mainstream news, as far as I can tell) for the house that they own on C Street in Washington, which houses several Congressmen and Senators. It seems to especially attract members of government who participate in scandals, including John Ensign, Mark Sanford, Chip Pickering (who, it turns out, is actually a former Representative, not a member of the cast of Hee Haw), Oliver North, and Watergate cover-up orchestrator Charles Colson. Yes, people who belong to a group that promotes Hitler's tactics can apparently still be elected to public office. Isn't that good to know?

Honestly, from what I've heard of this organization, they scare me even more than the Church of Scientology. I mean, having members of government on your team seems more dangerous than having Vinnie Barbarino. And The Family's religion is allegedly mainstream, even though it seems to have to less to do with the teachings of Jesus and Moses than those of the Dark Lord Sauron.