Sharlet: Little did I know that my recent book, The Family, was a sort of sequel to Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, recently made into the movie There Will Be Blood. At least, that’s how Stephen Crittendon, host of Australian national radio’s “Religion Report” sees it. “If you’ve seen the movie,” he says, leading in with a scene of Paul Dano’s preacher lording it over Daniel Day-Lewis’s oilman, “you’ll know it’s an allegory depicting the clash between two very different sides of American society, the religious and the capitalist. If they seem to mix all too comfortably together these days, ‘There Will Be Blood’ is a reminder that it wasn’t always so.Today’s program is really the story of how those two sides came together. It’s the story of a shadowy religious organisation known as The Fellowship, or The Family, founded in the 1930s by a Norwegian immigrant to the United States named Abraham Vereide. He believed that the best way to change the world was to minister to business and political leaders, powerful men like Henry Ford, who weren’t much interested in the churches.” You can hear the show or read the transcript here.

Also new on Family radio this week: “Blood Runs Thick in ‘The Family'” — a conversation with host Maureen Fiedler on “Interfaith Radio.” Of related interest in the same program is Fiedler’s conversation with former Bush faith czar John DiIulio on why he supports Obama’s plan to expand Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives program. With a response from Rob Boston, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.