If you are anything of a conspiracy theoriest, you are going to love Netflix’s documentary series, The Family. Yes, some of the conspiracy is in the telling and the series clearly has an agenda.

Just because there is an agenda to show a religious group (The Fellowship – often referred to as The Family) as a secretive puller of strings in Washington, doesn’t mean there is not some truth in it. The fact that people work together for an agenda is indeed a conspiracy, but that doesn’t make it evil.

What makes it evil is the tale of how the members are selected, how they believe they are predestined to rule the world, how they work to avoid attention to their machinations. You can say it is just good for business, but in a world where media has changed from an investigatory enterprise shining light on actions in these type of dark corners,  into a promotional tool for those same underground groups, it is clearly nefarious.

I believe Netflix greenlit the series because it paints religion in a bad light, the politics of Netflix have long been quite left-wing. I am a Christian and I, in no way, think of religioun in a negative light. Instead, I see these are some bad actors in a group of well-meaning people. I adhere to a saying I’ve heard often in my church, “The church is true. The people are not.”

I think much of The Fellowship is a cabal of elitist people who have bastardized the teaching of Jesus Christ – picking and choosing the parts that fit their goals. They are a group that does one of the things that irritates the heck out of me – use religion as a lead-in to their own personal agendas.

I also think that most of The Fellowship members are decent people with good intentions. Just as the documentary filmmakers justify their angle on telling the story by picking and choosing part that fit their goals, even those well-intentioned members justify the action of the bad ones because of their perceived “greater good.”

You too will likely take away from The Family whatever narrative fits your world view. Regardless, as Louis Brandeis said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” and shining light on this group is a good thing.

by Chris Doelle

Rating 9 of 10