By John Brummett

We’re not finished with this business about U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor’s reportedly being allied in some peripherally spiritual way with this Christian fundamentalist group called The Family.

This is the outfit that operates dormitory-like housing for Christian conservative members of Congress. A couple of the Republicans who have hung out at this “C Street house” have been famously found cheating on their wives, which provides the news context.

I’ve now heard from writer Jeff Sharlet. I apologize to him because I should have spoken with him before I let loose that column Saturday in which Pryor’s spokesman, Michael Teague, called Sharlet a “nut job” and said he’d challenged Sharlet to produce evidence of an interview with Pryor and that Sharlet had not done so.

For the record at the outset: There’s no indication Pryor ever spent time at this hypocrite’s haven.

But here’s the point: Sharlet, who has written a book about The Family and is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Harper’s, had been quoted by the Las Vegas Sun as saying, in an almost incidental reference in a lengthy interview about The Family, that Pryor once told him he had learned from The Family that the idea of separation of church and state was a secular exaggeration and that “Jesus didn’t come to make peace; Jesus came to take over.”

In response to that, I allowed Teague to say those things about Sharlet’s being a “nut job” who had never responded to a challenge to produce evidence and to say Pryor never said any such thing and never thought any such thing.

Sharlet, seeking me out since I hadn’t sought him out, said it’s all right with him if Pryor’s mouthpiece calls him a nut job. He says it’s all right with him if Pryor wants to say — though it would be untrue — that he never said any such thing. He says it is fine with him if Pryor wants to say now that, regardless of what he may or may not have said before, he absolutely does not agree with the quote attributed to him.

But Sharlet doesn’t much appreciate Teague’s saying he got challenged to produce evidence of an interview and never responded.

Sharlet doesn’t recall any such challenge, and, in fact, he says, he has notes from a phone conversation with Pryor in the spring of 2007. Sharlet also says there will be records with editors and fact-checkers at Rolling Stone of a quote of Pryor from that phone interview that was included in a draft of an article, but taken out for space reasons.

Sharlet was writing in the spring of ‘07 about another more radically insurgent Christian fundamentalist group than The Family, one headed by a Ron Luce, who had invoked Pryor as an ally. In their phone interview, Sharlet said, Pryor denied any support of Luce, but, as it happened, spoke more kindly of The Family, which sponsors and coordinates the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast that Pryor has actively organized.

That’s when Pryor offered that comment about Jesus coming not to make peace, but to take over, Sharlet said.

A key distinction here, Sharlet told me, is that The Family is not so much a Christian takeover group. It’s a political association of political establishment types who want to advance their conservative Christian values and opinions, but not, like some others, formally transform our constitutionally secular government.

That’s why, Sharlet explained, Pryor, who wears his religion prominently, wouldn’t necessarily have run in 2007 from his work with The Family in putting on these prayer breakfasts.

But when two Republican residents of this house get caught with their pants down, establishment politicians tend to want to place some distance.

Sharlet told me he gotten in touch with Teague and that Teague apologized and offered to set the record straight.

Teague told me Monday that “maybe they talked, though I think in 2006, not 2007,” and that, whatever Pryor said or didn’t, Pryor has no affiliation with The Family other than planning his prayer breakfasts and does not in any way agree with the quote attributed to him.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.