The Patriarchal Allure of <em>The Family</em>

In 2007, the Nevada senator John Ensign was a glittering star in the Republican firmament with a maple-syrup tan, born-again bona fides, and presidential ambitions. He was one of a handful of congressmen who lived in a C Street rowhouse owned by an organization known as “the Fellowship,” an unorthodox group home that the New Yorker once likened to a frat house for Jesus. Its members crossed party lines, but they had a few things in common. They were male. They were white. They paid a token fee to occupy rooms rented out by a nebulous faith group that encouraged them to believe they were chosen as leaders by God Himself, and none but God could judge them.

For Ensign, at least, it didn’t quite work out that way. In 2009, he was forced to confess that he’d been having an extramarital affair with the wife of his staffer and friend, Doug Hampton. Then, it emerged that Ensign’s parents had given the Hamptons a “gift” of $96,000 after Hampton discovered the affair, while Ensign had in Las Vegas, where he also volunteers for a charity offering low-cost spaying and neutering services. There are some ignominious second acts in American politics, but the path from one of Jesus’s own representatives on Earth to a humble agent in the fight against animal overpopulation nevertheless stands out.