Several powerful Republicans at the heart of recent sex
scandals—including Senators John Ensign and Tom Coburn and Gov. Mark
Sanford—are members of The Family, a secretive religious right organization running a compound for Christian politicians on C Street in Washington D.C., called the C Street House, which is owned by Youth With a Mission of Washington DC. (More here from Bruce Wilson.)
Jeff Sharlet, from the discussion on Religion Dispatches concerning The Family and American Christian fundamentalism:
[F]undamentalism...sought power post-Scopes trial by building up a social movement of para-church organizations, educational institutions, and, most understudied by academic scholars—an elite cadre, best exemplified by The Family. This American fundamentalism looked like a democratic bunny—they built schools, they organized, they elected their champions to office—but it swims like a shark, seeking anti-democratic ends: restricting the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, ignoring the establishment clause altogether, and supporting an imperial vision of American power that imposes its hybrid-version of American democracy/American gods around the world through support of dictators considered “men of God” (Haiti’s Papa Doc Duvalier, for whom Family members arranged congressional support, Efrain Rios Montt, the Guatemalan killer championed by Pat Robertson, etc.).
