The Family
The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
Chapter One
Ivanwald
Not long after September 11, 2001, a man I'll call Zeke1 came to New York to survey the ruins of secularism. "To bear witness," he said. He believed Christ had called him.
He wandered the city, sparking up conversations with people he took to be Muslims—"Islamics," he called them—knocking on the doors of mosques by day and sliding past velvet ropes into sweaty clubs by night. He prayed with an imam (to Jesus) and may or may not have gone home with several women. He got as close as possible to Ground Zero, visited it often, talked to street preachers. His throat tingled with dust and ashes. When he slept, his nose bled. He woke one morning on a red pillow.
He went to bars where he sat and listened to the anger of men and women who did not understand, as he did, why they had been stricken. He stared at photographs and paintings of the Towers. The great steel arches on which they'd stood reminded him of Roman temples, and this made him sad. The cit ... read full excerpt from: The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power ebook
