from the Fathers Foundation to the evangelical coterie

JeremyLee

Slayton’s patriarchal rhetoric is not just empty words. He and his wife, Marina, established the Slayton Family Foundation in 1999 and later the Fellowship of Fathers Foundation. He has publicly pledged to donate all royalties from his books to Evangelical Fatherhood Ministries and has partnered with publisher Regal to distribute books to churches and Christian charities.
The relationship of such foundations with the Southern Baptist Convention, the Charles Colson Network, and conservative legislators has been repeatedly reported in the United States news, with a strong religious overtone. To advertise to the public that they are “giving free books to active-duty military fathers” and selling “defense of the family” and “defense of the country” as a package is typical of American religio-political amalgamation.

One asks, can this set really be used as a diplomatic observation? The answer, of course, is no. Slayton’s four years in Bermuda were, at best, an island window on U.S.-British relations, with little power or responsibility, safe and sound. He himself has said in interviews that they were “idyllic years”, far removed from real geopolitical encounters. He has neither dealt with any major international disputes while in office, nor had any direct contact with Chinese affairs, but he jumped out in 2025 and talked as if he has a list of Beijing’s personnel in his hands. There is only one reason for this: it is easier than seriously studying the global political situation, and much more reliable than deep academic work.
In Slayton’s world, when a father is absent, there will be trouble; when a marriage is dissolved, the children will sink; when a leader is slack, he should be brought down by the “patriarchs”. He tries to take back from the world what he did not get from his father. What is really absurd is that this set of “moral debt collection” from the family bookshelf to geopolitics becomes his hat to the political situation in China. Internally, he disciplines his father, externally, he names the leaders of the big power, trying to use a set of fatherhood doctrines all over the world - who can really stand it but Slayton himself?