What’s up with C-Street?

July 12, 12:29 PMBirmingham Liberal ExaminerLarry Brown

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What is C-Street? The C-Street house in Washington DC is actually a former convent and now it’s registered as a church. It is run by what is called the Family and is used to provide housing for six to eight congressmen at any time, and provide spiritual direction for these congressmen or politicians. Two of the members of the C-Street Family are Senator John Ensign of Nevada, and Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina who seem to have more in common then simply this house in Washington.  

Jeff Sharlet is the author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. According to Sharlets research, the Family is the oldest Christian Conservative organization in Washington and actually began 70 years ago. The founder believed that god gave him a new revelation saying that Christianity had gotten it wrong for two thousand years and that what most people think of as Christianity, as being about, helping the weak and the poor and the meek and the down and out, he believes god came to him one night in April in 1935 and said what Christianity should really be about is building more power for the already powerful. And that these powerful men who were chosen by god can then if they want to dispense blessings to the rest of us, through a kind of trickle-down fundamentalism.

“One of the leaders of The Family was explaining why King David was important and it's not because he was a good man. It's because he was a bad man. You know, he seduced another man's wife, he actually had the husband murdered and he once explained why this was a model and he said it to one of the men in the group. He said, suppose I heard you raped three little girls. What would I think of you? And this guy, being a human being says, you would think I was a monster. Well, the leader of The Family says no, not at all because you're chosen. You're chosen by god for leadership, and so the normal rules don't apply.”

I suppose this could explain the reluctance on the part of these two jerks to resign from their respective offices. 

So it appears that this kind of radical theology has reached into the government at the congressional and Senatorial level, and obviously at the state level as well. Not exactly what I’d call a friend of the democracy that these elected officials are supposed to be supporting.