Episode
Wayback Wednesday: The Family
- Podcast
- A View from the Bunker
- Published
- May 27, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3356
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/a-view-from-the-bunker-1393015/episodes/wayback-wednesday-the-family/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/a-view-from-the-bunker-1393015/wayback-wednesday-the-family.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
It’s Wayback Wednesday, with another interview drawn from our archive of programs dating back to June, 2009. This week, it’s a discussion from 2009 about an ostensibly Christian group that wields an inordinate amount of power behind the scenes in Washington, D. C., The Family. Originally released September 20, 2009 A SECRETIVE religious group that wields power in Washington, D.C. and other world capitals — sounds like the basis for Dan Brown’s next novel, but it’s real. Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power , has been following this group for years, even living at The Family’s headquarters for a time. What he found is a group that justifies its pursuit of political power by claiming that it’s for the kingdom of God. Read Jeff’s original expose of The Family, “Jesus Plus Nothing,” at Harper’s Magazine online. Christians are taking heat for The Family from the likes of The Huffington Post and MSNBC. The irony is that The Family isn’t promoting a Christian agenda, but a New Age agenda. See Constance Cumbey’s five-part series The Family and its Hijacking of Evangelicalism . As Jeff Sharlet asked, where is the outrage from influential evangelicals?