Free The Family by Jeff Sharlet Page B

of recruiting each for the Family. Central to Hunter’s mission was representing the interests of American political figures—Republican senator Chuck Grassley and Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for Africa, Chester A. Crocker, among them—who might influence newly independent Uganda away from Africa’s Left. 25 The following year, Museveni met with Ronald Reagan at the White House; he’s served as an American proxy ever since. Once heralded as a democratic reformer, Museveni rules Uganda to this day, having suspended term limits, intimidated the press, and installed the kind of corrupt but stable regime Washington prefers in struggling nations.
    “Yes,” Coe told us, “it’s good to have friends. Do you know what a difference a friend can make? A friend you can agree with?” He smiled. “Two or three agree, and they pray? They can do anything. Agree. Agreement . What’s that mean?” Doug looked at me. “You’re a writer. What does that mean?”
    I remembered Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which we had begun to memorize. Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded.
    “Unity,” I said. “ Agreement means unity.”
    Doug Coe didn’t smile. “Yes,” he said. “ Total unity. Two, or three, become one. Do you know,” he asked, “that there’s another word for that?”
    No one spoke.
    “It’s called a covenant . Two, or three, agree? They can do anything. A covenant is…powerful. Can you think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends?”
    We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting beside Coe, cleared his throat: “Hitler.”
    “Yes,” Doug Coe said. “Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The Mafia makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful thing. Two, or three, agree.” He took another bite from his plate, planted his fork on its tines. “Well, guys,” he said, “I gotta go.”
    As Doug Coe left, my brothers’ hearts were beating hard: for the poor, for a covenant. “Awesome,” Bengt said. We stood to clear our dishes.
     
     
     
    O N ONE OF my last nights at Ivanwald, the neighborhood boys asked my brothers and me to play flashlight tag. There were six boys, ranging in age from maybe seven to eleven, all junior members of the Family. It was balmy, and the streetlight glittered against the blacktop, and hiding places beckoned from behind trees and in bushes. One of the boys began counting. My brothers, big and small, scattered. I lay flat on a hillside. From there I could track movement in the shadows and smell the mint leaves planted in the garden. A figure approached. I sprang up and ran, down the sidewalk and up through the garden, over a wall that my pursuer, a small boy, could hardly climb. But once he was over, he kept charging. Just as I was about to vanish into the trees, his flashlight caught me. “Jeff-I-see-you, you’re It!” the boy cried. I stopped and turned. He kept the beam on me. I heard the slap of his sneakers as he ran across the driveway. “Okay, dude,” he whispered. He clicked off the flashlight. Now I could see him. Little Stevie, whose drawing of a machine gun we’d posted in our bunk room. He handed the flashlight to me, spun around, started to run. Then he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “You’re It now,” he whispered and disappeared into the dark.

EXPERIMENTAL RELIGION
     
     
    …the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded.
    — JONATHAN EDWARDS, “SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD”
     
    L ITTLE S TEVIE WAS RIGHT: As soon as I left Ivanwald, I became It. That is, I’ve been chasing the story I first encountered there ever since, trying to fit the religious practice I found in that Arlington cul-de-sac onto a spectrum of belief where it seems to have no place. It was at once as ordinary as a game of golf and stranger than anything I’d seen in years of reporting from the margins of faith. Maybe it was nothing but country club