I really wanted to like this book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. I think it is important. I had read an article by Sharlet in Harper’s a few years ago about his encounter with a secretive group of fundamentalist Christians playing power politics in the Washington, DC shadows. I also regularly read his blog, “The Revealer.”

He has a fascinating and frightening story to tell–and I think he is onto something and have no reason not to think he is a fairly reliable reporter.  He traces the development and philosophy of an exclusive and reclusive organization known as “the Family” through the life and work of its founder Norwegian immigrant Abraham Vereide and Vereide’s successor Doug Coe.

Most known for its sponsorship of the National Prayer Breakfast in DC and its work with the Christian Embassy, “the Family” as portrayed by Sharlet, has had a kind of Zelig-like existence in relation to many of the key events of the last half of the twentieth-century, showing up in key moments through its cultivation of close relationships with powerful people from around the world.

So, Sharlet has a noteworthy story to tell. However, as much as I wanted to like it, I ended up seeing this book as a loose, baggy monster that falls short of the task it sets out to accomplish. Sadly, it didn’t have to be this way. Sharlet has personal experience with the Family that adds important insights to his analysis. He has done extensive archival work in what appear to be largely untapped sources. He writes engagingly.

However, in the end, I felt frustrated with this book. It is way too long. It takes Sharlet forever to tell a story and then, often, the point of the story remains elusive. He gives extensive detail on Vereide’s early life but we are never quite given a clear sense of why. Then the last part of the book seems to completely spin out of focus as Sharlet gives us vignettes into Pastor Ted Haggard and contemporary evangelicals in Colorado Springs with no clear sense of their connection (if any) with the Family. The book peters out in the end (to this reader’s relief and annoyance) with no sense of resolution or concluding analysis.

I found myself trying to figure out what I had learned. I am sure that the history of the Family is very important. It’s influence seems highly problematic for people who care for genuine democracy and justice in our society and the wider world. But instead of hooking the reader with his own experience followed by an account the history of the Family (which Sharlet does do, though in an unnecessarily rambling and vague way) then leading to the payoff of an in-depth and reliable account of the problems of how the Family operates (both for American Democracy and for the witness of Christianity), Sharlet forgoes the analysis and strikes off into what seem to be largely irrelevant tangents into the by-ways of evangelical Christianity in the U.S.

I recommend this book only for those with a deep interest in fundamentalist Christianity and its influence in American political life. Sharlet gives us information unavailable elsewhere. But I can’t imagine the general reader persevering to the end of this book.

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Andrew Bacevich has emerged as an important critic of American imperialism. He retired from the Army as a colonel and for many years was active in conservative political circles. He’s now a history professor at Boston University. In his important book,The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (Oxford University Press, 2005), Bacevich argued from the right as a true conservative concerned with how the military-industrial complex has corrupted and endangered American society with its imperialism.

Since that book came out, Bacevich’s credibility has, tragically, been enhanced due to the death of his son in combat in Iraq.  He has made more common cause with progesssives, and now has published The Limits of Power as part of “The American Empire Project,” a series of books featuring numerous writers more identified with the left side of the political spectrum (such as Noam Chomsky, James Carroll, and Walden Bello).

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism is a worthy addition to this important series.  Problems identified in Bacevich’s earlier book have only intensified.  He discusses three interrelated crises in our society–the economy, the political, and the military.  With the first two, he gives a helpful if somewhat summary analysis.  It his third major discussion, of the military crisis, that the book hits paydirt.

In just 45 pages, we get an insider’s perceptive explanation of the problems that beset the American military system.  The major problem, Bacevich believes, has been incompetent leadership. He shows how military and political leaders have learned all the wrong lessons from the wars in Iraq (especially) and Afghanistan.  The lessons that have been learned (realizing that the military needs to be oriented toward the “next war” [e.g., rooting out insurgents, nation-building, and training and advising “host nation” forces], the need to empower military professionals vis-a-vis political leaders, and the need to repair the relationship between army and society [perhaps by reinstituting a draft]) are actually conclusions that will push the U.S. farther down the road of self-destruction.

Bacevich argues that instead of preparing for more effective engagement in “small wars” we need to devise a nonimperial foreign policy.  Instead of giving top military leaders more power vis-a-vis politicians, we need to find a way to develop and promote skilled leaders instead of the type who have risen in the ranks in the past generation.  And instead of expanding our military with a draft, we need to find ways to transform our professional army into a force for genuine national defense and service to the American republic (as opposed to the American empire).

Bacevich concludes, “American doesn’t need a bigger army.  It needs a smaller–that is, more modest–foreign policy” (169).

This is good stuff. All of us who oppose the Pax Americana should be grateful that Bacevich’s voice has emerged.  At some point down the road, though, after making common cause with people such as Bacevich, the Christian pacifist will recognize the need to part ways. Bacevich, in the end I think, wants to reform the system and create a kindler, gentler superpower that still relies on the power of the sword in furthering its self-interests. I suspect his reformist instincts will ultimately be shattered on the realities that our military-industrial system as its exists will never lend itself to the kind of changes Bacevich would advocate.  Perhaps then he will move further away from the idea that it is possible to have the kind of permanent military infrastructure he seems to envision and still have a functioning and humane democratic society.  Then maybe he will help in dismantling rather than reforming what we presently have.

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