“. . . private group prayers were the modern equivalent of a backroom cigar.”
― Jeff Sharlet, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy

“American fundamentalism’s original sentiments were as radically democratic in theory as they have become repressive in practice, its dream not that of Christian theocracy but of a return to the first century of Christ worship, before there was a thing called Christianity. The “age of miracles,” when church was no more than a word for the great fellowship—the profound friendship—of believers, when Christ’s testament really was new, revelation was unburdened by history, and believers were martyrs or martyrs-to-be, pure and beautiful.”
― Jeff Sharlet, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power