{"id":188,"date":"2009-08-02T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-02T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/dont-believe-jeff-sharlet-on-fundamentalism.html"},"modified":"2009-08-02T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-02T06:00:00","slug":"dont-believe-jeff-sharlet-on-fundamentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/dont-believe-jeff-sharlet-on-fundamentalism.html","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Believe Jeff Sharlet on &#8220;Fundamentalism&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Popular <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2009\/08\/a_book_to_give_us_all_nightmar.php\">atheist blogger PZ Myers<\/a> is all excited about a book by Jeff Sharlet,&nbsp;<i><a href=\"mailto:http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0060560053\/pharyngula-20\">The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power<\/a><\/i>. Turns out the paperback is doing incredibly well, No. 5 on Amazon, perhaps due to a sensational Bill Maher interview that PZ also links to. Sharlet is full of shocking revelations about the sinister Evangelical Christian power brokers behind the National Prayer Breakfast. Can you believe a word he says? No, you can&#8217;t.&nbsp;How do I know?<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nBecause several years ago Jeff reviewed&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Discovery-God-Abraham-Birth-Monotheism\/dp\/0385499744\/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3\">a book of mine<\/a>&nbsp;in the&nbsp;<i>Washington Post<\/i>. It was a witless review but more to the point, he tried to show he&#8217;d read my first book,&nbsp;<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lord-Will-Gather-Me-Orthodoxy\/dp\/074324267X\/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_4\">The Lord Will Gather Me In<\/a><\/i>, and described an episode in it that anyone who&#8217;s read the earlier book will remember. But Sharlet couldn&#8217;t even read a book, or a read about a book, and report accurately what was in it. He mangled the story in such a way that I appeared to be an insane victim of self-mutilation mania. For the sake of good taste, I won&#8217;t go further than that except to say that a lawyer friend after the fact told me I should have considered suing the guy. So FYI, this is how competent a journalist Jeff Sharlet is.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>(<b>UPDATE<\/b>: Sharlet responds to this post in the comments thread, without apology or comprehension. You&#8217;ll find my reply to him there.)<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Popular atheist blogger PZ Myers is all excited about a book by Jeff Sharlet,&nbsp;The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Turns out the paperback is doing incredibly well, No. 5 on Amazon, perhaps due to a sensational Bill Maher interview that PZ also links to. Sharlet is full of shocking revelations&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Don&#039;t Believe Jeff Sharlet on &quot;Fundamentalism&quot; - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/dont-believe-jeff-sharlet-on-fundamentalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Don&#039;t Believe Jeff Sharlet on &quot;Fundamentalism&quot; - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Popular atheist blogger PZ Myers is all excited about a book by Jeff Sharlet,&nbsp;The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Turns out the paperback is doing incredibly well, No. 5 on Amazon, perhaps due to a sensational Bill Maher interview that PZ also links to. Sharlet is full of shocking revelations&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/dont-believe-jeff-sharlet-on-fundamentalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-02T06:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Don't Believe Jeff Sharlet on \"Fundamentalism\" - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/dont-believe-jeff-sharlet-on-fundamentalism.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Don't Believe Jeff Sharlet on \"Fundamentalism\" - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"Popular atheist blogger PZ Myers is all excited about a book by Jeff Sharlet,&nbsp;The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Turns out the paperback is doing incredibly well, No. 5 on Amazon, perhaps due to a sensational Bill Maher interview that PZ also links to. 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His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}