I'm not sure why this news hasn't hit harder now that Hillary has decided to launch into a new round of Holy Wars.

While in Washington during the Clinton administration, Hillary joined a right-wing Christianist group called "The Family."  She has been a member ever since:

There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she’s a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that “through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the “Fellowship,” aka The Family. But it won’t be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet’s shocking exposé, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.

http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2008/03/hillarys-nasty.html

Ehrenreich follows up in the comments:

This was not a premeditated hit on Hillary, nor is it gossip or a joke. I happened to have been reading a manuscript of Jeff Sharlet's book, The Family, because he sent it to me for a blurb. Late last week, when the business about Obama's pastor broke out, I had just gotten to Sharlet's section on Hillary's involvement with the Family. Already creeped out by Sharlet's account of the Family, I decided I had to blog about this.

As does the author of the book and MoJo piece, Jeff Sharlet:

What's odd about accusations that this is conspiratorial is that it's based almost entirely on the public record. We didn't need to meet anyone in a parking garage at midnight to find out that Hillary considers Doug Coe a "genuinely loving spiritual mentor"; she writes that in Living History. And if you don't want to take my word for Doug Coe's Hitler talk, there are sermons available online and 600 boxes of documents rife with such material available to the public in Collection 459 of the Billy Graham Center Archives, not an institution known for conspiracy theories or hostility to religion.

The fact is, The Family is NOT a conspiracy, it's bad theology. And challenging Hillary's association with this authoritarian interpretation of the gospel can hardly be considered anti-religious when The Family itself mocks religion as suitable for the masses but useless for God's anointed, who, they argue, are given special teachings direct from God.

And making the case that Barbara is drawing on an unsourced hit piece is really absurd. Mother Jones, like all decent magazines, does extensive fact checking -- you don't get to declare something without proof. The piece wasn't a hit piece, either. What's my evidence? I actually voted for Hillary. I've changed my mind since, but I voted for her knowing about her affiliations, worried about her affiliations, because I thought her health care plan was better and that Obama was no different on other issues. I now think I was wrong, and I'll freely admit that I've never been a fan of hers, but I can hardly be accused of pursuing an Obama agenda when I actually voted for her over Obama.

I raised the questions I did because they are there: because Hillary asks us to take her religion seriously as a part of her candidacy. Ok, so let's do so. I've tried to do that, and so has Barbara. Would that Hillary's defenders do as much as to take their candidate at her word.

Posted by: Jeff Sharlet | March 20, 2008 at 05:17 PM

Be sure to read the original article in Mother Jones in its entirety:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html