Abram Vereides, founder of The Fellowship, formed that group specifically to fight unions. I have read a lot about the group also known as the Fellowship, and I realized they believed in empowering the "up and out"...as opposed to the down and out.
I am reading Jeff Sharlet's book, and it took one or two paragraphs for the true purpose of that group to really hit home. They are not just about empowering the "up and out"...they are about making sure the down and out stays out of power.
This part showed a sharp contrast between the wealthy and the workers. They seemed to take the efforts of the unions to gain power very personally...or as Sharlet once said Vereides considered it a challenge to God's sovereignty. From page 104 about the 1934 union strikes:
Seven hundred policemen in dark blue patrolled the waterfront on foot and in black cars and on high chestnut horses. Twice that number and more picketed and searched for strikebreakers. The middle class began contemplating last minute vacations. The wives of the wealthy bunkered up at the Union Club, where Abram led prayer meetings for businessmen. As the blue tear gas sent tendrils up the hill, they must have felt frustrated by his optimistic lessons in biblical capitalism. Scripture has much to say about honest dealing and even more about handling the heathen, but not once does it mention organized labor.
From page 108:
The strike went on, but the shippers were defeated by the time the coffins went into the ground. Their old beliefs could not compete. Management-capital-would require a new faith if it was to survive.
The strike of 1934 scared Abram into launching the movement that would become the vanguard of elite fundamentalism, and elite fundamentalism took as its first challenge the destruction of militant labor. Destruction was not the word Christians used however. They called it cooperation.
I feel like I should put quotes around that word "cooperation". It sure sounds like bipartisanship to me.
Jeff Sharlet also covered the anti-unionism in an interview last year with ABC radio. From the transcript at
The Religion Report. Stephen Crittenden: Jeff, let's go back to the early history of The Family and look in more detail at its political program during the 1930s and '40s which seems to focus primarily on destroying trade unionism in the United States, and in that, they completely succeeded.
Jeff Sharlet: Yes, they really did. I mean I think that again takes me back to this question, people always ask what the fundamentalists want to do? I think the more relevant question is what have fundamentalists done. And you look in the United States and say Why do we alone in the developed world, not have a serious organised labour movement? Our organised labour movement is nowhere near as powerful and influential as yours in Australia. I think we really have to look to groups like The Family and elite fundamentalism. They came into being to opposed organised labour, worked steadily at that, and counted as one of their first big victories a law that was passed here in 1947 which essentially rolled back many of the rights to organise and to form unions, that had been won under Franklin Roosevelt. They counted that as their first victory, and then they just sort of went forward from there and played this role of driving the centre to the right, they were very involved in the Cold War, very involved in the economics of globalisation. These are their projects, but they see them as religious ends.
Abram Vereides was given much power by the end of WW II.
By the end of the war, nearly a third of U.S. senators attended one of his weekly prayer meetings.
In 1944, Vereide had foreseen what he called 'the new world order.' 'Upon the termination of the war there will be many men available to carry on,' Vereide wrote in a letter to his wife. 'Now the ground-work must be laid and our leadership brought to face God in humility, prayer and obedience.' He began organizing prayer meetings for delegates to the United Nations, at which he would instruct them in God's plan for rebuilding from the wreckage of the war. Donald Stone, a high-ranking administrator of the Marshall Plan, joined the directorship of Vereide's organization. In an undated letter, he wrote Vereide that he would 'soon begin a tour around the world for the (Marshall Plan), combining with this a spiritual mission.' In 1946, Vereide, too, toured the world, traveling with letters of introduction from a half dozen senators and representatives, and from Paul G. Hoffman, the director of the Marshall Plan. He traveled also with a mandate from General John Hildring, assistant secretary of state, to oversee the creation of a list of good Germans of 'the predictable type' (many of whom, Vereide believed, were being held for having 'the faintest connection' with the Nazi regime), who could be released from prison 'to be used, according to their ability in the tremendous task of reconstruction.' Vereides met with Jewish survivors and listened to their stories, but he nevertheless considered ex-Nazis well suited for the demands of 'strong' government, so long as they were willing to worship Christ as they had Hitler.
They base their right to power on Romans 13.
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
In another interview Sharlet was asked about their believing in the right to power.
Lindsay Beyerstein: Where did they get the idea that they should be ministering to the up-and-out? There doesn't seem to be a lot basis in Christianity for that view.
Jeff Sharlet: Two places. The founder of the Family, Abraham Vereide, would describe it as his "new revelation" that came to him in the middle of the night, very literally: in a vision from God in 1935 in response to the Great Depression and, more particularly, to a series of very successful labor strikes that he saw as challenging God's sovereignty.
Early on, Vereide and the Family weren't actually talking about scripture, but as time went on they began invoking more and more a particular verse of Paul's Letter to the Romans, which is popular among fundamentalists, Romans:13: "The Powers that Be are Ordained of God." And it goes on to say that if you resist those powers, you're in a lot of trouble. Interpreted literally, this is the key text in authoritarian Christianity. So, that's where they're getting it.
It is not about religion to them, it is about power. I ran across a comment about that power in another interview with Sharlet by a Kansas-based writer. It points out the way this Family is willing to mix power with religion and not worry about it.
“Once you’ve been a member of The Family, because it is a type of bastardized Calvinism, you’re always a member of The Family,” says Sharlet. “God uses you for a purpose. In Brownback’s case, it really seemed in my conversation with him, it really seemed like he felt that if he could show me what he did and what he believed that I would be overwhelmed by the goodness of it and come back to the fold.”
Sharlet also describes a vivid example where Kansans don’t have to look far to see the impact of the Family on the state.
“A bunch of Family guys on a Senate appropriations committee are in charge of military construction. What they’ve been doing is green lighting mega-church size and style chapels across the country. And Fort Riley’s got one under construction that came through Sam Brownback. Keep in mind Fort Riley (already) has a chapel. They don’t need a new chapel for $18 million,” says Sharlet.
“At the same time, this committee couldn’t fund a much more modest and ecumenical chapel at the Dover Air Force Base that would have been for the families of the war dead. They couldn’t find three million bucks for that.”
How a religious group you’ve never heard of influences policy in both Washington and TopekaI knew the group was anti-union, we have often discussed that here at DU. But when I read the part I transcribed about the 700 policemen, the strikes, and Vereides praying inside with the business leaders...it hit home. The founding of that group really was based on giving the "chosen", the "elite" a way to get power behind the scenes, away from the crowds that they disdain.
Their Jesus Plus Nothing philosophy is not about religion or Christianity as much as it is about power.
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