About

The Family an American documentary miniseries that premiered on Netflix in August 2019. The series examines a conservative Christian group known as the Family or the Fellowship and its history of influence on American Politics. The series focuses on the family's alleged belief that god chooses imperfect vessels as therefore relieving political leaders of their earthly wrongdoings. The docuseries created controversy as some believed it to be biased.

History

On July 24th, 2019, Netflix released the official trailer for "The Family" on YouTube (shown below). The trailer received over 456,700 views in a month. The documentary was produced by the author Jeff Sharlet who wrote C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. The five-part series was released to Netflix on August 9th, 2019.^[6]

Reception

On August 10th, 2019, following the series release many Twitter users and media outlets gave The Family positive reviews. Some found there to be some inconsistencies and bias in the Documentary In a review published by the The Vulture^[1] the writer states that, "the series doesn’t make clear that, historically, Democrats have been involved in the Fellowship, too, nor does it explain what role, if any, Democrats currently play in the organization." One Anonymous reviewer for Movie Guide^[2] wrote "THE FAMILY ultimately promotes a very strong anti-Christian, humanist, politically bigoted worldview that misrepresents Christian conservatives in a cult-like fashion as power-hungry elitists. As such, THE FAMILY is a false, abhorrent piece of bigoted propaganda." The documentary began appearing in Twitter threads involving Religion and politics. For example, on August 21st, @loren_rosalin^[3] replied to another Twitter user saying that they "will never vote for anyone that attends their annual DC Prayer Breakfast again!!!!!" (shown below).

The shows producer Jeff Sharlet^[4] continued to stay active on Twitter and stay involved in conversation about the documentary. On August 21st, he tweeted, "Week after our show #TheFamilyNetflix drops Trump confirms our conclusion about the Christian nationalism, declaring himself “the chosen one.” Nice timing! But of course he was “joking.” Sort of." (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 400 likes in five days. Other Twitter users announced that the series had a non-christian bias, like Twitter user @harleyrider4jc^[5] (shown below, right).

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