Dan Coats would be one scary Senator. Fun Fact: He is part of a fundamentalist “Christian” sect that has supported brutal dictators and believes that Jesus would have supported Hitler’s “leadership-style”

Dan Coats might be the next Senator from Indiana.  It would be bad news.

As documented in journalist Jeff Sharlet’s The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Coats is deeply connected to a group of fundamentalist but elitist Christians operating in the highest levels of American politics and business.

How does Sharlet know this?  Dan Coats allegedly called him an “enemy of Jesus” when the former and would-be Indiana Senator traveled to Germany when Coats was the  U.S. ambassador there.

Members of The Family aren’t your normal American redneck fundamentalists.  As Sharlet writes, they aren’t “Bible thumpers portrayed by Hollywood, pinched little hypocrites and broad-brown lunatics, representatives of that subset of American fundamentalism that declares itself a bitter nation within a nation. ” In fact, this is how one blog describes The Family

Things are as they are in the world because that’s the way God wants them. The poor are poor because God ordained it to be so — a condition that they may have earned through disobedience to the creator. The powerful are powerful — be they murderous dictators or corporate polluters — because they are God’s chosen. Any regulated economic system, according to this theology, is less than godly, because regulation forestalls the exercise of free will.

No, this fundamentalism is for the well-to-do and members include a list of prominent Republican (and some Democratic) Senators, including Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, Jim Demint, Chuck Grassley, and  Sam Brownback.

The Ugandan legislator who is linked to the bill that calls for the execution of homosexuals is linked to this fun bunch.

Lets pray that Dan Coats doesn’t become the next US senator with ties to the Family.