Point Of Inquiry

Jeff Sharlet is a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone, and a visiting research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media, where he has taught journalism and religious studies. He is the coauther, with Peter Manseau, of Killing the Buddha, and editor of TheRevealer.org. His latest book, a New York Times bestseller, is The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. In this in-depth interview with D.J. Grothe, Jeff Sharlet explains why secularists should not assume that just because there is a Democrat in the White House it follows that the religious fundamentalists' power has waned. He talks about how a secretive Christian political organization called The Family is founded in a doctrine of "Biblical Capitalism" and the "totalitarianism of Christ" that draws no distinction between religion, economics and politics and he recounts its origins in a supposed revelation from God that attacked organized labor and stated that Christianity has historically bee