We are in a high season of political showboating. On the debate stage, candidates for the Democratic nomination tussle for our attention, straining to exploit their allotted seconds of screen time. But televised debates are electoral theatrics, not governance: Most of the people who run the world have little to no face recognition. I don’t think I could pick Robert Mercer out of a line-up, for example, and he bankrolled Brexit and Trump’s candidacy.



But that public-private boundary is fraying. President Trump’s atrocious behavior in office has begun to sully the public image of many of his major donors, with billionaires like Equinox-owner Stephen Ross suffering boycotts waged by his high-income, left-leaning customers. Things have gotten so perilous for plutocrats that Joaquin Castro, a congressman whose brother, Julián, is one of those Democratic candidates for president, was accused of harassment when he publicly named a few of Trump’s campaign contributors—which of course was already a matter of public record.

The scrutiny has extended to evangelical Christians, who have confusingly been a pillar of support for the president, despite the fact that he behaves in decidedly un-Christian ways and frequently takes the Lord’s name in vain. A new documentary faces both issues—the private money behind the government, and Trump’s alliance with the religious right—head on. The Family is a Netflix miniseries based on two books by the investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet. Across five episodes, director Jesse Moss lays out a series of shocking claims regarding a secretive Christian organization variously called The Family, The Fellowship, or nothing at all. It has no hierarchy, no staff, and its members prefer not to acknowledge the group’s existence. But if Sharlet and Moss are to be believed, The Family is one of the preeminent powers behind the throne. It doesn’t merely run a system of private prayer meetings to funnel tax-exempt cash to favored individuals, or promote a warped interpretation of Christian scripture. Its goal is to undermine the project of American democracy itself.

It’s the kind of story we’re hungry for now, because The Family, like any good conspiracy theory, makes sense of what would otherwise be absurd, nonsensical. We begin with Jeff Sharlet himself. As a young writer in New York City in the early 2000s, Sharlet recalls, he was asked by family friends to check on their son, who they worried had joined a cult. The two men met, and the son invited Sharlet to take a look at the community he had joined near Washington, D.C. There, Sharlet found a group of young men all living together, fraternity-style, spending their days playing sports or reading from a slim volume simply titled Jesus. Also: The young men were told they were being trained to rule to world.

The organization running the community claimed to have no name and no real mission, aside from spiritual matters. So why was Sharlet noticing so many politicians—from U.S. senators to the leaders of foreign nations—visiting their compound? From its narrow initial focus, the show’s narrative opens up to incorporate a huge story that has its origins in the Great Depression.