“Sharlet is not an angry liberal and the tone of the book is balanced, reasonable and often good humoured.” So says the Australian Courier Mail. And it’s true! In fact, I’m happy as a hopping wallaby with David Costello‘s review of the Australian edition of The Family, which is the first to point out that it’s not so much a critique of fundamentalist faith, which is a personal affair, as of its abuses by politicians. Writes Costello:

In some ways Sharlet admires fundamentalism and recognises its place in American history — from the Mayflower to the “Great Awakening” of preacher Jonathan Edwards in 1735 and on to Billy Graham and the current flock of televangelists.

And he recognises its resilience, noting that the scandals surrounding Ted Haggard and Jimmy Swaggart strengthen the faithful in a way that a forest fire clears the underbrush.

But his exasperation rises when he contemplates how Suharto and other dictators benefited from their Family connections. In 1970, Suharto had a meeting with a Senate prayer group attended by secretary of defence Melvin Laird. Over the next two decades, Family-linked congressmen backed arms sales to Indonesia even as its military invaded East Timor and slaughtered its civilians. This, Sharlet writes, made them “brothers in blood”.

Read the whole review .