hello i'm tom arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture award winning author and journalist jeff sharlet joins me for conversations with great minds discuss his life and works explore the ways in which religion in all its different forms shapes american culture and another republican debate and another jaw dropping audience reaction discussed last night's republican who verbs in tonight's big picture rundle.

with their eyes conversations and great minds and joined by award winning author jeff sharlet his career in journalism academia and publishing has distinguished him as a political voice on faith and spirituality in the united states in two thousand charlotte teamed up with novelist peter man so to create healing the buddha dot com since since become an award winning online literary magazine about religion and spirituality and led to a year long road trip across the united states or charlotte investigated the various forms religion takes in this country who look at that resulted from that trip killing the buddha has been described as the most original and insightful spiritual writing to come out of america since jack caraway first hit the road is spoken to universities across the country contributed to the country's leading magazines and newspapers including mother jones the nation that you republican you statesmen the washington post salon and the columbia journalism review and is a familiar presence on us and you see. and p.r.c. and b.b.c.

and even the daily show with jon stewart charlotte is currently the mellon assistant professor of english at dartmouth making him that college is first professor of creative nonfiction and a contributing editor for her prison magazine and rolling stone his newest book sweet habit when i die explores the spiritual landscape of the united states and profiles religious radicals realists escapist and straddle that undefined border between belief and skepticism very pleased to welcome jeff sharlet conversations great minds. hi tom good to be with you thanks for joining us on it we've talked before about some of your other books when they came out in particular the family but we've never talked about jeff sharlet and what animates you to write about. religion spirituality culture and the collisions and intersections the wicket the kind of joy and agony that comes out of all of that i'm curious what

what drew you all into the into this topic are these this range of top. yeah you know i think it's a little bit it's a little bit it's gonna run it's a little bit substance and i'm interested in journalism that goes beyond the traditional stack of facts and in fact i'm convinced that we need to do that kind of journalism for really can understand what's going on in the country you need to do sort of more than the who what where when why writing about belief unbelief in this country in between is a sort of a great way to get at that because you're suddenly talking about things that aren't tangible you're talking about things that people believe in a don't believe in things that they care about and that the more i did that they kind of i take heart from even though you know i read a lot sometimes about sort of an authoritarian religion some kind of very fundamentalist religions but when you start to do that you get to and i mean this in the best possible sense the real the real variety and eccentricity of american

life and there is there is no way to really see this other than to go out and talk to people to explore the varieties of religious experience and i use the word religion quite broadly so in the new book so we have and when i die that includes. people who are doing rock'n'roll shows in church basements as they're kind of a david and goliath struggle with a giant media monopoly clear channel that includes. philosophers and thinkers like cornell west all these people who are addressing matters of ultimate concern and i think that's where you have to sort of start if you want to engage with with the realities of american life one of the things that i find very interesting reading your work from. the family to sweet heaven is that you insert yourself into it it's all you know there's a first person narrator there's you know jeff is here jeff is doing this jeff is

learning about these things. but there's not so much about jeff's own personal spiritual odyssey or journey is there a story there that you'd like to share with us. i mean this story is in some ways i i would say i don't insert myself i i happened to be there and so if i'm telling the story. from the family about living with you know the fundamentalists to run the c. street organization and i'm there and they were acting to me that has to be part of the story if. you know one of the stories in this new books we have when i die is about a militant fundamentalists youth movement called battle cry and. i went and spent time with the battle cry group and their honor academy down in east texas and i went with some of the young students young eighteen nineteen who held house is like a haunted house where the frights are aspects of the secular world. actors

pretending to be gay men jump out of the shadows actually it was supposed to be terrifying so i went with these young people there and the organization was upset with me for taking them off campus and so they sent this minister. and he was going to convert me that was that was his idea and ended up kind of going a ride because he he didn't know his bible very well you want to talk about the abraham and isaac story and thought that was in the new testament so we didn't get very far but exactly but that we you know and so i was trying to tell them look in a way this is my practice i write about what people believe in what that's a very that's a very full practice i'm not a seeker and i think sometimes when you read about religion people soon that you are looking for the answer you know like looking for a way to put myself out of work. i'm looking for questions and the questions you raise are fascinating tell us about ron luce and battle cry what what do you think

animated this guy and how did this organization you write about how you know after . it was you that nine eleven wasn't. it. yeah no no it was. the shooting the high school sure. yeah yeah columbine the columbine shootings yeah that was really kind of yeah and he ended up speaking to like a quarter million kids and poleon the ones that he thought into his i'll use the word car. in his organization talks about this. well yeah i mean it to me you know the book is the book is sort of this collection of stories and i say that they're all stories about political imagination and they're all stories but i there's people in some way that i admire and this one is really the test run loose i can't say i admire i read a lot about fundamentalism i i am very wary of the f. word fascism i don't use it put boy this gets close he brings these thousands

of kids together and he sort of three day rallies he talks about and talks about how the culture and the media are trying to brand them and there's a lot of it it can almost be a leftist critique in the diagnosis the prescription on the other hand is quite terrifying he says that they are fighting a spiritual war but also a real war in the real world unless there be any confusion he says this is not a metaphor he says people like you and me tommy describes us as cultural terrorists and as he told me there's no difference between me and al qaeda he sees us on the same plane and he likes to say we will fight back and he's got thousands of kids and valving this thing so i when i i started traveling around with him i went down to this school that he has and texas it does have some cultish elements to it there's sleep deprivation that sort of thing but i was looking for their you know there's something about the kids who are doing this thing for responding to that

critique that he had gives a real critique of corporate capitalism of consumerism he feels that with this kind of very right wing thing but i said look here is this guy who is speaking to the imaginations of these children these are the kids who you know maybe forty years ago would have been in the streets protesting the vietnam war instead of in the streets protesting you and me. and i think that's that's something that is incredibly valuable and when i spent time with these kids i would find these really wonderful wonderful people these very passionate earnestness and way to. to understand the nature of political imagination means not just going to the people i do agree with but going to the people who i disagree with and the case of battle cry when i think are even dangerous isn't there some also some legitimacy in fact a lot of legitimacy. to the critique of contemporary capitalism.

exploitation of shall we say capitalism the the use of of sexual imagery to sell products you know the whole you know on and on it goes right in fact you talked about how absolutely want it one of the kids can fast but he had played a video game and. looked like a grand theft auto yes young man named logan who. was very upset he really felt he had really sinned grievously and that was he was playing grand theft auto and worse that he had like that now thing is so i don't know i'm not coming from there is a sort of a left strain of thought this sort of a critical of that stuff and i'm not going to sit here and bash grand theft auto i will say though that you know i'm talking to you from new york and we have. down the street right now the the take wall street movement or occupy wall street movement there critique is the same critique of battle cry and there i think they're both right there saying look here is a culture that's saying define yourself by your corporate brand still find yourself

by. you know your ability to marshal economic resources to show off wealth in your and your clothing and your appearance and so on. you know the battle cry rallies which go on for days and they have pyrotechnics and rock bands and so on you know the first half of it there's a there's a fairly sort of a lefty magazine called adbusters which is pretty great the first half of the rally . so i am losing my. way it could come straight out of the pages of adbusters and then it take. turned the rally in fact the one that i attended concludes with. lou's bringing out a mannequin that he says represents a concubine and a story from the bible who was raped and killed raped to death and cut up at the twelve pieces and as he stokes the kids up into a sort of a roar yelling cut up the concubine he tears the concubine apart and throws the

pieces out into the crowd and this is supposed to symbolize carrying up and destroying secularism so you get back. to me that's frightening and it's a and i want to understand the journey how do you get from the critique that i might share to that's your prescription on how to address. a lot of that holy cow i did in that chapter it on the other end of the spectrum toward the end of the book you wrote about bach the saga shape the new age what. your thoughts on yeah yeah sunfish a was you know i said this is something came out of my first book killing the buddha travelling around the country and i was fascinated with the way i think a lot of people identify with me way. religions or spiritualities and they see that as a form of counter cultural expression i'm you know i'm history i mean just in religion my most interest in politics i'm interested in what happened to the left

in america and i think when you go and you look at you see a lot of people expressing energy that might once have been. a political critique saying well what i do is i shop a whole foods i eat organic that that is that is sufficient and then they go the bit further and say i have these alternative spiritualities and that's enough when you look at those things you discover that it's not all that counterculture in some senses that in fact in the new age is infused with a real commitment to the same kind of sort of economics i suppose the battle cries critique and so i decided to. join a woman who i quite like santosh a bucky sondra shay who is a healer she works here in new york she works for a lot of high end real estate agencies doing spiritual cleansings of apartments i mean very expensive apartments and and constructing magic circles around them they don't tell their buyers that they're doing this but to me that is fascinating is

going on that this is a part of an ordinary ordinary practice and business and and the more time i spend with their i ended up i did getting knighted and the brother sisterhood of white light normally costs you something like four thousand dollars i got complex got a great bargain and it culminated and saundra channeling jesus and jesus gives me this sort of reading of myself and she says you know. she understand that i don't believe in what she's doing and she says but that's ok she says doubt is your revelation and i thought that was pretty smart and again you know it's you go to write about someone who believes something so radically different than what you understand and you find some insight and you find some ideas. i think even as you do. also discover the ways in which. we drift away from from the real issues in our lives the real the real issues aside

it's absolutely it's an absolutely remarkable what our conversation with author jeff sharlet will continue when we come back in just about. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions it's great that if you can maybe who can you trust no one who is your view would have noble mission would see where we had it state controlled capitalism is called fashion's when nobody dares to ask we do you r t question more.

welcome back to conversations and great minds tonight i'm joined by journalist and and and author jeff sharlet and his his new book is really quite quite remarkable as we haven't when i die but jeff your in your last book you exposed the family as your understanding of this group changed over five years and what is the family up to know. you know i've spend even longer than that is but i think by eight years writing the two books the family and c. street the new book is in some ways a sort of collection of stories that i was writing to keep myself sane during that long a marriage and an american fundamentalism. and you know. has

my understanding of a change i suppose since since the beginning i think i think eight nine years ago i wasn't interested in writing about right wing religion i thought i understood it i thought it was always just kind of you know a big sweaty southern guy in a queue tight suit his pulpit pumping his bible and. screaming about sex. that's out there those people are out there. running up behind rick perry right now but there's also another kind of fundamentalism in american life bit and sees its main concerns as economics and foreign affairs it's much older the family you know we've talked about this before goes back to the new deal began as an anti new deal coalition they thought the new deal was about blasphemous offense against god. but they're very polished they are they tried it they're mostly republican but they try to reach out democrats and i think. that was something that took me

a long time to understand and is of a piece with all the kind of reporting they do about religion you approach the sympathy vote with empathy for the devil you say look i need to understand where you're coming from and i think that's a little bit why i think somebody my colleagues in the political press tend to get politics and religion wrong they sort of see these very neat categories and they think of fundamentalism as kind of tacky and and hillbilly and when you encounter someone who's kind of smooth and polished they think that person can be a fundamentalist it's much more complicated than that and it's much more enduring part of our political life your your book. correct me if i'm wrong i mean this is this is how it looked from from where i was sitting over the last few years doing a political talk radio show three hours a day five days a week for the last nine years and when your book came out it it seemed to tilt it's a or alter the the political landscape in america in

a certain way there was this i think a lot of people just kind of had that moment of you know the scooby doo dog gone you know. what are you kidding because these were some of the biggest names some of the most powerful men in the united states and here they are living in an almost monastic life in some ways and yet at the same time covering up each other's you know in. a terrible sexual peccadilloes and and and whatnot and and at the same time wielding enormous power economic and political power in the name of jesus in ways that lead to everything from from you know how we're dealing with health care policy to whether or not gays should be executed in uganda and i'm just curious it's as i said it seemed to me that your book actually changed the political landscape a little bit in d.c. or certainly the perception of it. why what's your sense you know the impact your

book had. i mean i hope you're right i have a little bit i'm lucky in that i have a little bit of confirmation from my source is representative of the family went on t.v. they had been this is a group that described themselves as invisible that's their language not mine. and their documents which you can go and see at the billy graham center archive you don't have to trust me you can go look at these documents seventy years of papers and so on they describe themselves of invisible they deny they existed and finally in two thousand and nine they went public and on t.v. and one of the representatives when asked why are you going public now such charlotte's book that was gratifying and i think i think you mentioned the uganda thing to you and i think that was you know in the first book in the family had written about their connections to family or to africa the ways in which you know we need to understand american religious politics not as a purely domestic issue that so often separated you see in the republican debates

right now religion is a domestic issue not a foreign policy issue. and that's not how some of the religious conservatives experience it they're exploiting american religious politics to africa but i'm trying to talk about that the person i'm around i got no reaction. the second time around in uganda where a legislator who had some associations with some americans considered senator james inhofe his mentor of sorts decided to come up with a solution to the homosexuality problem kill them all and try to pass legislation to do that and is still trying to pass that. but in terms of impact one of the things i was very happy about is he said you know you really made life hard for me and i told him i'm glad to have done so but i think you know that said i appreciate what you're saying about the dialogue changing but here we are again it's kind of astonishing if you go back every presidential election the political press is

called off its. be stunned that religion is a significant part of voters' decisions it's been here for a long time and here we are two thousand and twelve it's a huge part of the republican nomination the press isn't ready they're getting into huge arguments about the meaning is on these you know these sort of classic territory rooms instead of just saying look go out and report this is a big part of american life it's not going away and progressives especially have to stop stop telling themselves that fundamentalism is an aberration something that you know came in with reagan and went out with w it's a permanent part of our landscape and has been since since the founding. but the the. i'm just curious a have you seen the movie client number nine the documentary about him not ok it's really about the eliot spitzer yeah yeah yeah you know it's it's an extraordinary

story in that basically it's the story of how he irritated a billionaire who hired roger stone to take him down and and what i find fascinating is that what eliot spitzer did and what david vitter did were not all that different and yet david vitter was cloaked in the in the in the cloth of religious fundamentalism and so he could go to the microphone and repent essentially and when he returned to the senate his colleagues gave him a standing ovation whereas eliot spitzer never tried to cloak himself in any religious garb he he he you know he was contrite and apologetic but he was basically driven from office and vitter was further cemented in office. what does that say about the nature of the intersection of religion and politics in american political life or you know maybe that's an imperfect metaphor example but you have

better ones but you understand my question. yeah i do and i'm i actually disagree a little bit here i mean obviously i think you know. david vitter is a schmuck and senator john ensign and governor mark sanford who were part of the c. street scandals that i wrote about my book c. street and had their scandals covered up and back the senate ethics committee just came out with a devastating report on senator ensign who resigned to get to i think prevent himself from being indicted is my guess there didn't get a whole lot of coverage the second time around everyone like the sort of the they take a leading sex scandal and they were really looking at the politics of it now the interesting thing there is if you are a conservative politically conservative evangelical or a fundamentalist christian they're not always the same thing but they can be. you do have as part of your belief system you get to you get a second chance you get to say i'm a sinner and i think it's something that liberals again and again are kind of

stunned and perplexed by. when when these sort of moral values family values guys sin why do their supporters keep supporting them because their supporters never believe that these guys were good guys anyway we're all sinners they have that work into the system and i think what we want to do instead of focusing on the hypocrisy the hop ocracy doesn't have legs it doesn't convince people and frankly a kind of mirrors the sort of the puritanical voice of the right. my friend the journalist. writing about i think the sanford scandal and i had a great line she said christians under any liberal sneer but it counts to the same thing counting of saints those of us who are on the progressive side of things don't want to count sam that's not our job our job is to to to look for more. we have a liberation frayne of the world and and to challenge these people on the economics

on the ways and on the ways in which their politics control. all the sexual lives the personal lives the more other people who they sleep with. i don't care. where where has c. street gone you in your books the street you you talked about those you know the family in the called the basically as a c. street and it led to a. brief i think but real movement to try to strip them of their tax exempt status or at least get these members of congress to to have to claim the subsidy basically that they were getting in their rounds and and maid service and things i mean you can tell us the details of it yeah i worked you know has has something has anything changed as a consequence of. oh yeah they did they did those attacks against that is for c. street mansion or for most of it and that was the work by the way of just an

ordinary washingtonian who read my book and decided to you know take a ship themselves and press that you know there's lots that ordinary people can do and all over the country what was really heartening where even while the new york times was actually kind of doing sort of a really lousy job of reporting on this you see local newspapers even local t.v. news doing good strong and best a gate of work even saw good strong investigative work coming from the right some of the best investigative reporting on c. street came from a far right fundamentalist magazine the leading fundamentalism magazine called world magazine they take their fundamentalism seriously they don't want their religion to be something that's used to cover up. you know. lobbying illegal lobbying and crimes by by congressmen and they follow the money and they did terrific work and this to me is actually sort of you know in the beginning you asked why why do i write about religion is because this is where you encounter these stories there's this when you write

a lot about religion i often get a question and tom you're too smart to ask but the question i often get is what is the great common denominator what unites us all and people are sort of looking for this answer of harmony. what you learn when you write about religion is the sound of america is not harmony it's its kickoff any and that's a good good thing that's the sound of democracy. the sound of the march is a lot of different voices and one of the great results of the street were these different voices taking up this challenge. and this is the you know this is a story i guess i'm trying to tell ultimately in every book is is that the best story of the coffee choir that story of this kind of. religious american belief in the first amendment and free speech we believe in it we don't always practice it but. we do believe in it and there's this extraordinary variety of it across the american landscape but you've done such a brilliant job of documenting jeff sharlet thanks so much for being with us

tonight. thanks tom good to be here to watch this conversation again as well as other conversations with great minds go to our web site at conversations with great minds dot com. coming up but other we've got other g.o.p. presidential debate it's the gift that just keeps i'm giving will discuss the highlights the last night's debate and the rest of the week's biggest stories with my panel of experts and but i was big picture wrong. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions confident breakthrough that sort of it being made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.