C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy

[RamboLiberal]

Sept 27 release

Review
"At once a gripping political thriller, a masterpiece of investigative journalism, and a timely call to arms, C Street reveals all that can be hidden within an innocuous Washington address. Jeff Sharlet delivers a warning that the blurring of the line between church and state is both an urgent local problem and a matter of global concern." (Peter Manseau, author of Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead and Songs for the Butcher's Daughter )

"Jeff Sharlet has an incredibly rare double talent: the instincts of an investigative reporter coupled with the soul of a historian." (Hanna Rosin, author of God's Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America )

"Jeff Sharlet is one of the very best writers covering the politics of religion." (Ken Silverstein, author of Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship )

"Few writers can pull off investigative journalism, historical research, and elegant storytelling. Sharlet does all this with a story that a lot of people don't want to hear and others won't believe." (Diane Winston, author of Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of The Salvation Army )

"Sharlet writes with insight, verve, and, thankfully, none of the bogus punditry and bad sociology that often passes for informed discourse about the contemporary role of religion in public life. His refreshing narrative style is as engaging as his groundbreaking information." (Frederick Clarkson, The Public Eye )

"Un-American theocrats can only fool patriotic American democrats when there aren't critics like Jeff Sharlet around-careful scholars and soulful writers who understand both the majesty of faith and the evil of its abuses." (Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America )

Product Description
The secretive Christian fundamentalist group known as "The Family" is leading a new crusade for a "God-led government." Jeff Sharlet, author of the New York Times bestseller The Family, is the only journalist to have reported from within the organization, garnering intense media coverage when it was revealed that their townhouse on Washington DC's C Street was central to three Republican politicians' sex scandals in the summer of 2009.

In C STREET, Sharlet shows how the Family, steeped in the influence and corruption one usually associates with the notorious lobbying industry, fuels and funds political fundamentalism from within our government. His exclusive access to sources and explosive documents show the true implications of fundamentalism in American politics--now, leading up to the next election, and beyond.

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Fundamentalist-Threat-American-Democracy/dp/0316091073/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283886046&sr=1-1

Saw this new book mentioned in this article from New Yorker


Frat House for Jesus
The entity behind C Street.
by Peter J. Boyer


One midwinter night in 2008, Senator John Ensign, of Nevada, the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, was roused from bed when six men entered his room and ordered him to get up. Ensign knew the men intimately; a few hours earlier, he had eaten dinner with them, as he had nearly every Tuesday evening since he’d come to Washington. Now they were rebuking him for his recklessness. They told him he was endangering his career, ruining lives, and offending God.

The men leading this intervention considered themselves Ensign’s closest friends in Washington. Four of those who confronted Ensign—Senator Tom Coburn and Representatives Bart Stupak, Mike Doyle, and Zach Wamp—lived with him in an eighteenth-century brick row house on C Street, in southeast Washington, a short walk from the Capitol. The men regarded themselves in part as an accountability group. Despite their political differences—Coburn and Wamp are Republicans, Stupak and Doyle are Democrats—they had pledged to hold one another to a life lived by the principles of Jesus, and they considered the Tuesday supper gatherings at C Street an inviolable ritual.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/13/100913fa_fact_boyer?currentPage=all#ixzz0ys8qpiNI