C Street/Family

---

see bak

:{Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” law

omg perry using imperfect vessel met for trump, gave him 1 pg cheat sheet OT heroes; he is the chosen one, picked by putin?!

see drollinger, trump cabinet, 4 p's pending

merri ok

how much of all this came out of c street family?!

---

rww}:

February 1, 2024

Jonathan Larsen @ Salon: Mark Pocan launches inquiry into secretive Christian group linked to Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” law.

Democrat launches the most aggressive official inquiry ever into The Family and the National Prayer breakfast.

---

https://tyt.com/stories/7K5fbfFNXj9lcqTMpHEVRS

inside the family larsen

For nearly 70 years, and even in this moment of surging Christian nationalism, Democrats and Republicans have set aside their differences once a year to join in an event for fellowship and reconciliation: The National Prayer Breakfast.

The breakfast and the secretive religious group behind the scenes, popularly known as The Family, have been the subject of scandal over the years. Most notably, journalist Jeff Sharlet exposed the group’s theocratic, anti-labor origins, and revealed The Family’s role in Ugandan capital punishment legislation for gay people. More recently, the FBI caught Russian operatives using the breakfast to pursue back-channel connections with U.S. politicians.

But despite its dealings with international powers, The Family still enjoys the invisibility to which it attributes its influence. We’ve never had a full accounting of who works for The Family or even just who gets to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, let alone who decides. Until now.

Earlier this year, The Young Turks obtained a list of the 4465 people invited to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast.The document identifies guest connections to The Family and names virtually everyone who works for The Family, as well as numerous volunteers and allies. It also identifies which Family insiders submitted each invitee’s name.

Since then, TYT has been researching individuals named in that document and in others (including a list of 2018 breakfast attendees obtained last month). With assistance from organizations including the international journalism collective Bellingcat, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, TYT is assembling what amounts to an x-ray of The Family, and a map of its connections and endeavors around the world.

Although more remains to be learned, we can now draw some conclusions and begin reporting on what we are finding. (This is an ongoing project and we invite journalists and advocacy groups to contact us if they are interested in conducting research of their own.)

The prayer breakfast is, we’ve been told, an ecumenical, nonpartisan event for leaders of every stripe, run by prayer groups in the House and Senate. None of that is true.

The National Prayer Breakfast (NPB) is not run by Congress. The Family controls it, uses the breakfast for its own ends, and can do so thanks to the bipartisan fiction maintained by its remaining Democratic allies. (Democratic protectiveness of the breakfast may have its roots in the weekly congressional prayer meetings, which appear, like the breakfast, to offer members moments of genuine bonding and connection.)

Only a few congressional Democrats are even tangentially involved in the NPB. A handful of congressional Republicans play significant roles. But the breakfast itself is overwhelmingly a production of The Family. The event’s only significant financial backer is a well-known, right-wing theocrat.

The Family’s congressional defenders have served up portraits of the NPB that could never be refuted because they wouldn’t release the invitation list. (It has never been clear why an event ostensibly produced by Congress would be shrouded in such profound secrecy.)

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), The Family’s most prominent Democrat, said earlier this year that the breakfast “has brought together religious, political, and cultural leaders from all over the world.” But many attendees are not leaders at all; they are fellow travelers and friends of The Family. Others springboard off the breakfast to build anti-LGBTQ, anti-democratic networks in their home countries. International media portray the breakfast invitations as coming from Congress or the president, boosting the standing of the Family-allied politicians who get invited.

It’s not just Democrats perpetuating this. The Family operates in a penumbra of secrecy formed by the overlap of lax IRS disclosure laws and law-enforcement squeamishness about scrutinizing organizations appearing remotely religious.

And Coons’ implied diversity doesn’t apply to the delegations of guests from multiple countries. The breakfast is neither nonpartisan, nor ecumenical. The politics of the breakfast – its attendees and those who choose them – are a far cry from Coons’ claim. For instance, of the 20 individuals who invited the most guests in 2016, TYT was able to assess the politics of 13 – using voter registrations and political donations as gauges. Of those 13, only one was a Democrat: Grace Nelson, a former Family board member and wife of former Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). The top five inviters whose politics could be ascertained were all Republicans.

The Republicans who got to pick the most attendees are overwhelmingly Trump supporters. Their ranks range from a Chick-fil-A franchisee (who invited 38 guests) to former Gov. David Beasley (R-SC), a Trump supporter later appointed by Trump to run the UN’s World Food Programme. Many Family insiders are now actively supporting Trump’s election lies, the Christian nationalist movement undergirding those lies, and the movement’s leaders.

Two of the top inviters had no U.S. political footprint because they don’t live in America. One of them has ties to theocratic, anti-LGBTQ organizations. He got to invite 30 people to the 2016 breakfast.

The invitation list categorizes 253 invitees as non-entertainment media. Those invitees include a lot of local Washington, DC, on-air people -- even for traffic and weather. But the political media are overwhelmingly conservative: The Daily Caller, The Blaze, the Washington Times, Newsmax, the Weekly Standard, the Washington Examiner CEO’s assistant, Rush and David Limbaugh, Stephen Hayes, Laura Ingraham, etc.

Five media people are specifically noted on the list as Fox News (TYT identified at least 22 others connected to Fox News). Democratic media figures invited are likely to have appeared on Fox. CNN is mentioned in connection to one guest; MSNBC not at all.

Invited writers from mainstream outlets are often conservative pundits or cover a religion beat. Liberal and progressive names seldom appear, even from major outlets, let alone progressive media counterparts to the Daily Caller or the Blaze.

Sitting members of Congress are automatically invited, but of former members, The Family invited 20 Democrats and 38 Republicans, almost twice as many, plus former Democrat Joe Lieberman.

The invitation list reflects recurring religious discrimination, too. In nations TYT has looked at, a clear pattern emerges among who gets to choose the guests and, not surprisingly, among the guests they invite.

Christianity is favored over non-Christianity, Protestantism over Catholicism, and evangelicalism over non-evangelicalism. Non-evangelical leaders are vastly outnumbered by evangelical non-leaders.

What the documents do not show is intentional discrimination. If anything, The Family appears un-strategic in its operations, at times to its own detriment. The autonomy its associates enjoy mirrors the laissez-faire economic philosophies that helped give rise to The Family.

This makes it difficult to infer intent or to apply sweeping generalities to The Family or the breakfast. The organization is relational; if you’re friends with a Family insider, you might get an invite. Disparities in who gets invited arise less from a conscious plan and more from the vagaries of who becomes friends with someone inside The Family. Which, of course, is a textbook recipe for systemic bias. In some cases, invitations also appear to be tied to whether invitees might provide financial support for Family associates (who raise their own funds that are then administered by The Family).

It can be startling at times to come across the online ministries of Family associates. In blog posts and videos, they project inclusivity, joy, and distinctly un-Trumpian gentleness, humor, and even vulnerability.

They seldom resemble servants of an angry God or the cartoons of televangelism. The modest fundraising conducted by Family associates appears largely untouched by modern marketing. By any measure, they appear genuine in their compassion and desire to do good. They “have a heart for Africa,” many say. Some literally spend their lives overseas in conditions materially wanting but spiritually rewarding. They dedicate themselves to helping others.

But their compassion is intuitive, not strategic. Few are experts or rely on experts to determine the best way to do the most good. God leads them.

As it turns out, God seldom leads them to assist the elderly or the sick. More often, Family missionaries are led to help those whose responses happen to be the most rewarding.

So you will find Family associates working with impoverished children or remote villages in Africa, southeast Asia, or Latin America. They build schools and they teach. Typically they teach lessons premised on belief in Jesus. If you believe Jesus is the answer to all problems, after all, what solution would not include Jesus?

Kids are taught English, for instance, by learning songs about how Jesus loves them. They learn the language, but also the love…as The Family sees it. It’s a love based on surrender, accepting God’s will and Biblical authority – including condemnation of homosexuality and even, for some, the subordination of women. The Family’s students learn to speak that language, too, overseas and at Christian schools where scholarships take them here in the U.S.

Because how unsatisfying would it be to make the world a better place by doing volunteer accounting in the back office of some bureaucratic (but effective and professionally run) monolith with exacting, quantitative standards? Family associates can be found instead at the low-profile, sometimes one-person nonprofits that proliferate on the IRS website like weeds in a vast orchard of Christian charities.

Some Family members have anonymous benefactors, wealthy enough to support mission work that jibes with their political inclinations. The politics matter, because The Family tasks its missionaries to bond with the leaders of their host nations – leaders who know full well, as Sharlet documented, that these bright-eyed missionaries have the ears of the Americans who hold the wallets and bombs of the U.S. government. These missionaries use their access to local leaders to help stand up miniature versions of both the prayer breakfast and The Family – iterations that share or even exceed the homophobic or theocratic leanings of their model.

Ironically, one could argue that The Family does not use its influence enough. In accordance with their famous slogan of “Jesus Plus Nothing,” The Family asks little of the leaders they minister. As we’ll report, The Family enjoys proximity to local and national leaders that entails virtually no accountability for their political decisions and accepts virtually any policy that can be seen as Jesus-based.

To The Family, accountability starts with Jesus; they seldom champion the checks-and-balances accountability that transparency brings. As one source close to The Family told me, its leaders might counsel a senator to work on his marriage, but remain silent on matters such as encouraging violent upheaval of American democracy. During a conversation with notorious Republican operative Lee Atwater, Doug Coe, the late Family leader, reportedly condemned adultery only when pressed.

And so these smiling missionaries, even those preaching inclusivity and love for sinners and enemies, end up arm in arm with unsmiling politicians feverish to squeeze voting rights, or reproductive rights. A smaller group inside the ranks of The Family flares with anger when LGBTQ rights are framed as an affront to religious freedom.

Historically, The Family’s rationale for serving leaders unconditionally is that reducing evil means engaging with it. Who needs prayer more, after all, than the worst among us?

As Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY), another Family ally, said this year, “the Prayer Breakfast reminds us to both love our neighbors and even the more challenging love our enemies.” It was an irrefutable defense right up until we could check whether The Family engages its own enemies as fervently as it engages the enemies of others.

Now, however, Suozzi’s high-minded aspirations are hard to reconcile with the 2016 invitation list. The names present, and those omitted, suggest that enemies of human rights may come and break bread, but enemies of Republicans get left out in the cold.

The Revs. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and William Barber – some of America’s top religious leaders on the left – are all absent from the 2016 invitation list. Business leaders, however, appear in abundance (although yesteryear’s captains of industry have been replaced by today’s regional managers of industry).

Non-religious leaders who advocate for the disenfranchised are hard to come by. The late AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, invited by Beasley, was one of the rare labor leaders on the list.

Still, participating Democrats claim the breakfast somehow can foster reconciliation, regardless of the short supply there of LGBTQ people, socialists, and baby-killers with whom to reconcile. “After a very divisive time in our nation’s history,” Coons said in February, “it’s my hope that this year’s breakfast offers Americans of all faiths and backgrounds the strength and courage to unite as a nation and tackle the challenges we face together.”

Except now we know that Americans of all faiths and backgrounds aren’t at the breakfast. In fact, as our first report will show, the breakfast – and some Family leaders – helped fuel our current divisions. And their secret work today is at the heart of the challenges we now face.

Jonathan Larsen is TYT’s managing editor. You can find him on Twitter @JTLarsen.

With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuela, and assistance from members of the TYT Army.

If you have tips on this subject or others you can contact us using Proton Mail at TheYoungTurks@ProtonMail.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to stay on top of exclusive news stories from The Young Turks.

---

9/21

Salon.com

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to ...

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin ...

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/03/how-mypillow-guy-mike-lindell-came-to-jesus--and-to-donald-trump_partner/

no lnx many

How MyPillow guy Mike Lindell came to Jesus — and to Donald Trump

Mike Lindell was just a guy who sold pillows on TV — until he met Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast

By JONATHAN LARSEN

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Michael Lindell, with My Pillow, laughs with President Donald Trump during a "Made in America," roundtable event in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, July 19, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)]

This article originally appeared at The Young Turks. Used by permission.

One of a series about the Fellowship Foundation, the secretive religious group that runs the National Prayer Breakfast and is popularly known as The Family. This series is based on Family documents obtained by TYT, including lists of breakfast guests and who invited them.

Perhaps as much as former President Trump himself, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has become the public face of the Big Lie. Like the Jan. 6 Capitol attackers, Lindell is brandishing openly theocratic, Christian beliefs to secure a Biblically based autocracy led by a man he sees as divinely anointed.

:{:{}:

Lindell wasn't always this way. But over the past several years, people with ties to The Family have played key roles behind the scenes in Lindell's radicalization, religiously and politically.

Family insiders and allies, for instance, have dominated the boards of Lindell's nonprofits. One man associated with The Family was part of Lindell's "legal offense fund" to challenge election results.

Lindell's faith journey often features in his speeches. As he tells it, God orchestrated a series of events that changed him from a casual Christian into the hardcore, autocratic evangelical who called for the U.S. military to install Trump in a second term.

"What gave [Lindell] the certainty he was looking for was evangelical Christianity," one Republican operative told Politico. "He was born again."

That religious certitude has proved infectious. A MyPillow employee told Politico, "There's a lot of people calling and saying Mike is a disciple of God."

Lindell's certainty rests on his conviction that God had a hand in key moments in his life. That conviction, he explains, arose from his inability to see any other explanation for those events. He called his memoir, "What Are the Odds?"

What Lindell appears not to know, however, is the full extent of Family involvement in the events that so profoundly changed him.

Publicly, Lindell has only addressed his Family ties in relation to one incident: The 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. And even there, he elides important details that we can now fill in. He has never said, for instance, who invited him or why.

Cue Stephen Baldwin

Lindell met actor Stephen Baldwin at a New York radio station. "I'd felt led to visit the station in early 2014, though at the time I wasn't sure why," Lindell wrote in his book. "Now I know it was to meet Stephen, who became like a brother to me."

In a brief call this week, Lindell told TYT how he came to attend the 2016 prayer breakfast: "I was invited at the last minute by my friend Stephen Baldwin." The Christian actor also attended that year's breakfast.

Baldwin, a Trump supporter, would be at Lindell's side for a number of important events. But, according to an internal Family document, it was not Baldwin who invited Lindell to the breakfast; at least, not directly. (Baldwin and others with ties to The Family did not respond to requests for comment, unless noted otherwise.)

The year before Baldwin met Lindell, the Christian actor and movie producer started his own religious endeavor: Friends of Stephen Baldwin Ministry. All three principals of Baldwin's nonprofit have had ties to The Family.

One of the three principals was Margie Frank, connected by court records to a Texas oil inheritance. A six-figure donor to conservative causes, including reducing reproductive rights, Frank more recently has backed Republicans pushing the Big Lie.

Frank's husband, Jonathan, was quoted in Philippine media as a spokesperson for the National Prayer Breakfast, in relation to boxer Manny Pacquiao's attendance in 2015. The religious, right-wing fighter ostensibly was invited by Congress, but the invitation reportedly was delivered by a Texas pastor named Wilfred Job.

Job, whose church had a significant Filipino population, was the second Family affiliate running Baldwin's ministry. The third principal at Baldwin's ministry was a Pennsylvania real-estate developer named Todd Hendricks. Both Job and Hendricks are connected to The Family.

A source close to The Family told TYT that Job did virtually nothing without Hendricks. Internal Family documents support this: The two men are listed as collaborating to invite 29 people in 2016. Job invited no one on his own.

(Job's nine other invitations were submitted in conjunction with two then-leaders of The Family: Doug Coe, now deceased, and former South Carolina governor David Beasley, now head of the UN World Food Programme.)

By contrast, Hendricks appears to have had more autonomy. Hendricks submitted names on his own for both 2016 and 2018. Aside from Coe, no individual submitted more guest names for the 2016 event than Hendricks did: 109. He had at least 59 people attend in 2018.

Three years after joining Baldwin's ministry, it was Job, with Coe's sign-off, who invited Baldwin's new friend, Lindell — best known back then as TV's pillow pitchman — to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast, along with his girlfriend. According to the same internal Family document, Hendricks invited Baldwin and Pacquiao.

Asked about Job, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about." Asked whether he was aware that the Lindell Foundation listed Job as its president on its 2017 tax filing, Lindell said, "No." Pressed for details, Lindell said, "Go to jail. Go somewhere and find yourself a nice jail cell because that's where you're going to end up. Goodbye."

Whether or not Lindell knows Job and Hendricks, that's how TV's pillow guy — not yet very religious, let alone political — ended up at the National Prayer Breakfast. It was at the breakfast where he would meet Dr. Ben Carson, and hear a prophecy that would change everything.

The prophecy

Although the president's Thursday morning speech is the public highlight, the National Prayer Breakfast is actually a four-day event. It's in breakout rooms and prayer sessions where the real work gets done.

The night before the breakfast, Lindell metretired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Dees.Dees told TYT he has attended a number of breakfasts over the last decade and "various other events with Fellowship members," but has "no direct association with the Fellowship Foundation."

A source close to The Family agreed with that characterization, saying Dees had ties to The Family, but was nowhere near the inner circle. Dees had, however, just started working very closely with someone who was in the inner circle.

Carson, a future Trump cabinet member, was already a Family star — having ripped into then-President Obama during a speech at the 2013 breakfast. Now, Carson himself was running for president. Dees was running Carson's campaign. And the campaign had just brought on a Family board member to head up communications.

Dees declined to reveal some specifics about his discussions with Lindell, but did share a few. "I can offer that we had a far-ranging discussion in a breakout room the day prior to the prayer breakfast," Dees said.

Lindell is only slightly more expansive in his book. "I talked with [Dees] for over an hour," Lindell writes, "in a discussion about the direction of the country."

Now the president of Resilience Consulting, Dees has worked with a wide range of conservative Christian organizations, including Liberty University and Military Ministry, which strives to convert members of the armed forces. He has also drawn scrutiny for his LGBTQ positions and views on Islam.

After the breakfast, Lindell says, he and Baldwin were "randomly" invited to a breakout room where a dozen would gather for prayer, including Ben Carson. Lindell doesn't say who picked him.

And it's not clear how random it was. Dees told TYT, "After the prayer breakfast, the NPB leadership asked me to bring Dr. Ben Carson to a small room for follow-up prayer with a small group of perhaps 15 individuals, including Mike Lindell."

Dees wouldn't say who asked him to bring Carson to meet Lindell and the others. "From my perspective," Dees said, "it was simply a courtesy to put a man of Dr. Carson's prominence together with a seemingly randomly selected group of NPB attendees."

Baldwin, however, apparently already knew Carson, because Lindell says it was Baldwin who introduced him to Carson in the breakout room. And Carson's communications director, A. Larry Ross, was also at the breakfast.

:{:{}:

Whether Lindell knew it or not, Ross is also The Family's spokesperson and a key leader. A Texas public relations man who long worked for Billy Graham, Ross has been on the board of the Fellowship Foundation, The Family's legal entity, since 2011. If Job and Hendricks brought Lindell to the starting gate, it would be Ross who eventually got Lindell to the finish line.

It's in the breakout room after the breakfast that Lindell hears the prophecy. He loves the story enough to have told it many times since, but not enough to tell it consistently.

In June, Lindell told it this way:

[I]n that room we were praying, the, a guy in there prophesied in there. He said, "Two of you in this room are gonna become great friends and change the course of history." And Ben and I are great friends! And he said, and I'm sitting there, though, as they're praying and he's saying that, I go, I go, "If one of them's me, who would the other one be?" and this, things started happening to me.

In his 2019 book, he tells the story differently. It's not just two of them, and the prophecy isn't directed specifically at him. "Two or three of you in this room are going to become great friends," the unnamed prophet says. "And you will be part of a great change in our nation."

Either way, the prophecy hit Lindell like a thunderbolt with his name on it. What he may not have known was that The Family throws the exact same thunderbolt at pretty much everyone, even printing it on breakfast literature.

It's based on Matthew 18:20: Where two or three of you gather in my name, there am I with them. As Coe put it to journalist Jeff Sharlet, "Two, or three, agree? They can do anything."

What they would do was also a topic of discussion at the breakfast breakout room. And it wasn't just faith.

"I suddenly found myself surrounded by people talking about God and politics," Lindell says in his book.

The dozen people in the room gathered in a circle and began talking about the critical importance of the 2016 election. We agreed it was going to be a real spiritual turning point for the country. One path could lead us toward national renewal. The other could lead us down a dark path from which there might be no return, a path that had begun with the removal of God from the public square.

Lindell's discussion in the breakout room — with Carson, Dees, Baldwin and others — he writes, "opened my eyes to the impact of politics on ordinary people."

After dropping out of the Republican presidential race in March 2016, Carson tells Trump about Lindell, who then gets invited to meet with Trump on Aug. 15. The day before their meeting, Lindell donates $2,700 to Trump's campaign, $17,300 to the Republican National Committee, and $20,000 to Trump Victory. (Trump Victory was later accused along with state party committees of circumventing donation limits. The first federal donation of Lindell's life had been $527.27 to the Republican Party of Virginia on May 25, the day Trump Victory was formed.)

The Family had helped to open Lindell's eyes to Trump, but his soul still needed work. Within a year, though, Lindell would be on his knees.

The operation

In the months after bringing Baldwin and Lindell to the prayer breakfast, Family insiders expanded their sphere beyond Baldwin and his nonprofits to Lindell's.

Why the interest in Lindell — who wasn't yet an evangelical?

The source close to The Family said they weren't aware of the relationships with Baldwin and Lindell, but had heard of tensions between Hendricks and Job and the internal team, including Beasley, that oversaw much of the breakfast logistics.

Referring to Hendricks and Job specifically, the source told TYT, "Those guys were always hunting a big fish like a Mike Lindell that would support their stuff."

The source said, "If you can convince him, 'Oh, we're doing this amazing work,' he might just be the kind of guy that gives you $10 million. Or he might be the kind of guy that puts you on his charitable foundation board and gives you a salary."

Baldwin's ministry never filed any federal tax forms, so it's not clear whether anyone got paid. The Lindell Foundation, however, is another story.

:{:{}:

Tax filings for the Lindell Foundation don't list any board members for 2016, but Lindell writes that Ross joined the board that year. The following year, the Lindell Foundation lists six people as officers or directors — half of them tied to The Family.

In addition to Lindell's niece and a lawyer from Texas (where Ross and Job are based), the four other people named are three board members — Lindell, Ross and Dees — and a new president: Wilfred Job, who takes home $55,385 that year.

Asked about Job by TYT, Lindell said, "I don't know who you're talking about."

In 2018, Lindell brings on a right-wing Republican from his home state, Doug Wardlow — a former intern of Family friend Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — who soon becomes MyPillow's general counsel and is now enmeshed in the company's Big Lie legal battles. Job doesn't appear on the filings anymore.

Ross, however, the Family board member and former Carson spokesperson, expands his role in the Lindell-verse.

How much Ross's communications company makes from his work we don't know, but Ross ends up serving as a spokesperson for Baldwin, Lindell, the Lindell Foundation and MyPillow. And helping Lindell get Trump elected.

Three days before the Trump/Clinton matchup, Manny Pacquiao stepped into the ring with Jessie Vargas for the WBO welterweight championship. Lindell was ringside, along with The Family.

Lindell and Baldwin had flown to Las Vegas for the fight at the invitation of a "group of [Baldwin's] friends," Lindell writes. He doesn't name these friends, but says, "One of the men in our party was a prominent Democrat I'd met at the National Prayer Breakfast."

Wilfred Job — who had delivered Pacquiao's 2015 breakfast invite — reportedly traveled with Baldwin on at least two occasions. Ross was also in town and joined Lindell for a big group dinner.

During the meal, the Trump campaign called: They wanted Lindell back in Minnesota the next day to join Trump for a rally two days before the vote. The only problem: No flights.

The group — apparently all Trump supporters — start hunting online for tickets. "Suddenly," Lindell writes, "Larry called out, 'Got it!' ... Larry hustled me out of the restaurant, and we jumped in a car for McCarran."

At a meeting of the Lindell Foundation board that same month, Ross comes to Lindell's aid again. He encourages Lindell to attend a program for military veterans. The program, Lindell writes, had helped hundreds of veterans "come to a place of freedom by locating primary points of pain in their pasts, and inviting God in to heal them."

Operation Restored Warrior (ORW) has multiple connections to The Family. Ross had participated in the program, as had retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, now a vice president at the Family Research Council.

The man who ran Operation Restored Warrior was Paul Lavelle, who had met Lindell at the 2016 breakfast. Like Dees, the source described Lavelle as well outside the inner circle, but having ties to The Family.

One of ORW's funders had invited Lavelle to the breakfast (along with six people from Compassion International, a Ross client that has been accused of trying to proselytize the vulnerable children it serves). At the breakfast, Lindell later wrote in his book, Lavelle "felt led" to invite Lindell to ORW.

Pressed by both Ross and Kendra, his girlfriend, Lindell agrees to go to ORW, but he's still reluctant about it. That changes at his second National Prayer Breakfast.

:{:{}:

There, he writes, he was inspired by the "powerful, jaw-dropping message" of Senate Chaplain Barry Black. Lindell doesn't give specifics, but in his speech, Black argued for the existence of an interventionist God, still active in the matters of humanity, who takes action in response to prayers.

Three months after Ross's suggestion and just weeks after Black's speech, Lindell flies to Colorado and delivers himself up first to Lavelle, and then to Jesus.

"I went in there with hope," Lindell later told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I said, 'God please, show me you're real, show me, you know? I want that personal relationship,' And on the second day, on Feb. 18, 2017, I did a full surrender on my knees."

"I can now," Lindell says later, "talk about Jesus Christ in the same way I used to talk about a pillow."

Today

As TYT reported earlier this year, a number of known Family leaders and backers have donated to Trump and other Republicans after they began telling Americans the election was stolen. Future reports will identify others, in addition to those named here.

Much as many Family leaders reject separation of church and state, Lindell observes few distinctions between his personal, commercial, philanthropic, religious and political pursuits. Ross has continued to represent not just the Lindell Foundation but Lindell himself and MyPillow, which has been an active participant in Lindell's Big Lie crusade..

On March 17 of this year, Lindell created a new nonprofit: The Lindell Legal Offense Fund. Its purpose: "Advancing legal efforts regarding election integrity issues …"

The three-man board includes Lindell and lawyer Kurt Olsen, a lawyer and special ops veteran whose assistance to Lindell included last month's disastrous election-security summit. The third man is Paul Lavelle.

Despite the summit's outcome — which Lindell blamed on outside forces — his faith remains steady, his political convictions unshaken.

A report this summer by the conservative outlet The Dispatch says that Lindell starts most of his days on the phone with his prayer group. But it doesn't say who they are.

With additional research and reporting by TYT Investigates News Assistant Zoltan Lucas and Intern Jamia Zarzuella.

JONATHAN LARSEN

Jonathan Larsen is the managing editor and executive producer of TYT Investigates.

MORE FROM JONATHAN LARSEN • FOLLOW @JTLARSEN

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

For some Christians, the Capitol riot doesn't change the prophecy ... ›

#MAGA Church: The Doomsday Prophet Who Says the Bibl

---

hey, we missed you guys! 7/18

https://www.alternet.org/heres-how-right-wing-christians-national-prayer-breakfast-connected-recent-indictment-alleged

Alleged Russian spy Maria Butina was spotted on a C-SPAN video feed of the National Prayer Breakfast, but an expert in right-wing fundamentalism isn't shocked.

Jeff Sharlet is a researcher and author on the GOP's "C" Street house in Washington, DC and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

"What people don't understand about theNational Prayer Breakfast, is it's not a government event," Sharlet explained. "It's run by a private, sectarian, fundamentalist organize called The Fellowship and The Family that believes in precisely this kind of action. In fact, the long-time leader of the organization has called it quiet diplomacy, back channel, back door interactions between international leaders, that they use the prayer breakfast to bring them together. As recently as a year ago, the current leader, Doug Burleigh, was predicting alliance between [President Donald] Trump and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. He predicted that that at a Russian prayer breakfast." Former Department of Homeland Security Official Juliette Kayyem explained that Butina wasn't always in the United States on a student visa. Prior to that, she was allowed to come into the U.S. as a guest of the NRA, sponsored through their partnership with a Russian pro-gun organization.

Sharlet explained that the cozy relationship between Christian conservatives and Russians stems from the conservatism in Russia, mainly Putin's crusade against LGBT people and revival of the Russian Orthodox Church.[pussy riot video]

"The Fellowship, that organizes the National Prayer Breakfast, particularly admire him because they're theology, their religious view, is built around their understanding of Jesus, the strong man. They believe Christianity gets it wrong when speaking to every day people. They're called to administer to elites like Trump and Putin, who can bring peace together. That's their vision. That's what they created the prayer breakfast for."

Watch the full commentary below:

---

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-hillary-clintons-religion-and-politics

mojo?

Coe's friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe's guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protégé, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus' teachings.

from inhofe2 doc

C Street:

The Family likes to call itself the “Christian Mafia,” according to Jeff Sharlet, who literally wrote the book on them. They were established by Abraham Vereide and some businessmen during the Great Depression, which they considered God's punishment for FDR's socialism; the group arose to oppose the New Deal, especially because they thought that the labor unions were under control of Satan. Early members included Pat Robertson's father (Absalom, who refused to meet Ladybird Johnson on her whistlestop tour), Strom Thurmond, and Herman Talmadge , all segregationists. More recently,the group's DC townhouse as enabling marital infidelity (including Pickering, literally sleeping with the Telecomm industry, Mark Hiking-the-Appalachian- Trail Sanford and John Ensign (Nevada casino heir, which is in a way appropriate because the fellowship is to help “politicians struggle with their personal demons” (Shatlet). Ex-watergate felon Chuck Colson was born again in prison through C Street. However, their effect is much more than covering the asses (perhaps literally) of members. Tom Coburn (who suggested 1.2 million dollars was the proper amount to pay Pickering's mistress, who was also the wife of C Street staffer) went on junkets to Beirut and the British Virgin Islands (Doyle went to Aruba). They espouse “Biblical capitalism” They are perhaps best know for prayer breakfast, although they tend to have an abundance of defense ministers (had arranged some truces, but much more often support murderous dictators such as Suharto and latin American generals with death squads).

76% of Republicans state that they believe in End Times, and thus it would “be heretical the curb our destructive appetites under the delusion that we can do anything about pushing back God's ordained date” (“End Times Theology”). This is part of a more generalized idea that only God can affect the planet, and that He favors the US, providing a bounty of resources for us to use as we please. A NAS peer reviewed study shows that “energy efficient” on the label will make it less likely conservatives will buy them, since “dirty energy is patriotic and even 'blessed'” (Huffpo?). James Watt famously stated End Times as the reason he was giving away public resources.

Hagee son says gay marriage bad idea because only traditional marriage can “produce consumers” the basis of the economy, and thus essential for existence. Megachurch, Gov perry (pray to end drought?), back and forth with McCain). DeLay endorsed Hagee's support of the Iraq war, as it will make the end of the world sooner.

In 2005 evangelicals mobilized to stop climate change because they knew it was going to kill millions of poor people; to counter this, the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance arose, and then was absorbed by the Cornwall Alliance, a front for CFACT. [stewardship” is evil co-opting of the term] Becky Dunlop. CFACT is crypto organization to attack PIRGs, did alternative COP15 conference (Exxon, Koch, Scaife, Chevron etc).

About half of Congress gets 80-100% from the three Christian ratings, but many of those get less than 10% from the League of Conservation Voters. Some are quite senior and thus influential: McConnell, Frist, Santorum, Kyl, Hastert, Blunt, Ashcroft (anointed with Crisco, moon?), not to mention Bush 43. 100 million evangelicals, but only half believe in End Time theology (a quarter believe the rapture will happen before 2050).

Two main strands, differing mainly in what role humans have in bringing on the end: Reconstructionists/Dominionists (Katherine Harris, Sec of State Ohio Ken Blackwell, Bachmann see Obama and the Democrats as”demonic forces.” The Apocalypse must be prepared for by replacing democracy with theocracy (hence most Christian organization have a legal arm for breaking down church-state separation, especially in schools, may also espouse creationism /intelligent design, and provide cover for teachers to teach climate denialism.) Sarah Palin is in a branch rooted in tent revivals of 50-60's in which certain believers will be given supernatural powers to take over, the younger ones forming Joel's Army to conquer the earth.

Dispensationalists (aka Christian Zionists?): Pat Robertson; literal interpretation of the Bible which provides a detailed timeline for End Times, and social and environmental chaos are harbingers. Hagee: sinners will go to hell, Jesus will re-green the planet and rule for a thousand years. Cut all social programs and regulatory agencies because they distract from fundamental tasks. Delay and Inhofe.

Summary;

Evangelicals have been crucial ever since Rove figured out how to use them, because they are excellent in the “ground war” of get out the vote electoral politics, and perhaps to a lesser degree for astroturfing (but note they have an air war contingent as well, Christian radio and TV). [Black churches are important in Democratic politics to a smaller degree, but the GOP is trying to neutralize this by Voter ID in general and restricting early voting, especially on Sunday]. Very conservative voters turn up in primaries (which presumably have a high ratio of evangelicals), so incumbents are terrified of compromising on anything, much less proactively working for climate legislation. Quite a lot overlap between Christians and Tea Party, the source of many rightwing flanking attacks, produced the 2010 takeover of the house by climate “zombies.” end 813

Uganda be kidding me

What the Family isn’t saying about the kill-the-gays bill in Uganda

By Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

“We didn’t want to go too public at first. You pushed us—you and others.”

That’s Bob Hunter, speaking to Rachel Maddow on Wednesday’s program on behalf of the secretive religious organization that runs the C Street House, known as The Family, or the Fellowship. After decades of silence and denials, Rachel Maddow, and my book on the group’s history, The Family, have forced the organization’s hand. At stake is the group’s relationship to the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill -- the “kill-the-gays” bill -- and how far the Family will go to stop the Ugandan politicians it’s supported from embracing genocide.

Over the course of a recent three hour interview I conducted with Hunter, I learned that last fall the Family held a summit of sorts in search of a strategy with which to respond to the unwanted scrutiny. The Christian Right World magazine reported that the meeting became a referendum on the Family’s decades-old culture of secrecy and denials, with professional media advice coming from one of Rick Warren’s PR advisors and far-right columnist Cal Thomas.

The result is a strange mix of candor and evasion. As the architect of the Family’s 24-year relationship with Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni, Hunter wants it clear that killing gay people was not what he had in mind. He told me he wanted to speak with Rachel to denounce the bill and put pressure on Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe -- the Family’s formally designated point man for Uganda. In a subsequent conversation, Hunter clarified that had been willing to talk about Inhofe but preferred not to.

Instead, he attacked me. My facts? No. My arguments? Not so much. No, Hunter went for the jugular: my book cover. Declared Hunter: “I think a lot of what has been said historically has been inaccurate. And Jeff Sharlet in interviews with me has admitted a lot of it has been inaccurate. In fact, he even has said that the cover of his book is inaccurate.”

How can a book cover be “inaccurate”? Hunter nailed me: I did indeed tell him I don’t like the cover much. What can I say? I would have preferred some color. But the facts inside? I’ll stand by those, with one exception.

Working with two documents Hunter prepared for government and Family leaders, “Re: organizing the invisible” and “A Trip to East Africa—Fall 1986,” and Family leader Doug Coe’s account of Hunter’s trip, I argued that Hunter traveled at the behest of the U.S. government. Hunter’s correction? He didn’t go at the government’s behest; American politicians went to Uganda at his behest. He didn’t work for them; they worked for him.

Hunter also told Rachel, “I also gave you the clips on the fact that [Sharlet] said that the Fellowship does not engage in politics as evidenced by the fact that we attract politicians of all stripes.” The truth is that much of 32,000-word transcript of our interview Hunter had professionally prepared is dedicated to a polite but firm argument between us over this very point. Nowhere do I say that the Family does not engage in politics.

Writing on the blog of Warren Throckmorton, a conservative Christian scholar of real conscience who has taken the lead in fighting the kill-the-gays bill, I responded to Hunter:

The Family/Fellowship has functioned as a political organization ever since it was first formed in the 1930s to elect Arthur Langlie to the office of the Washington governor’s office. It was political when it threw its muscle behind the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act that undid much of the New Deal; it was political when it lobbied vigorously against the creation of Israel; it was political, in 1959, when it arranged U.S. support for the Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier; it was political in the late 60s, when it became the back channel of communication between the Nixon administration and the genocidal regime of Indonesian dictator Suharto; it was political when became a forum through which associates lobbied for billions of U.S. aid to the junta of Brazilian generals in the early 70s; it was political when it sentSenator Chuck Grassley to Somalia (and Uganda) in the early 80s to build U.S. support for the genocidal regime of dictator Siad Barre; and it’s political now, as it struggles to do damage control over the Uganda issue. Sending someone like Senator Jim Inhofe to meet with foreign leaders — readers should know that goes through the State Department — on the taxpayer’s tab is political.

Hunter contacted Throckmorton to complain about my comment. Throckmorton cited the examples above as evidence that the group is, indeed, political. Hunter’s response? “Ancient history.” Nonetheless, he contacted another senior Family member, Kent Hotaling, who has been involved with the Family’s foreign affairs since the 1960s. Hunter agreed to share with me their exchange. Hotaling informed Hunter:

“I think it is impossible to say that we are not political when we work with so many in the political world. However, the key issue is that we do not as a group have a political agenda that we are promoting. We support one another because of the friendships that develop."

There you have it: The Family is political, but it has no political agenda. This in keeping with Hunter’s insistence that there is no membership despite the fact that he refers to prominent politicians as members, that the group is too secretive, even though he can’t really tell you about it.

The Family says that it’s dedicated to holding its powerful members accountable, but Hunter didn’t have much to say about Museveni. Instead, he threw two other Family men connected to the bill under the bus. Speaking of Uganda’s minister of ethics, James Nsaba Buturo, one of the bill’s chief backers, Hunter said, “I’ve never heard of the… guy.” (Hunter later told me he meant to say he’d never heard of Buturo before this controversy.) Buturo, who told my researcher that’s he planning on attending the Family’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington this February (Hunter says otherwise) is an organizer of the Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast -- an event Hunter helped found. Says Hunter in our interview: “He inherited [the job], because they decided the minister of ethics should run it.”

Hunter argues that there is no “control or command” in the Family. The nearly 600 boxes of documents the Family dumped at the Billy Graham Center Archives – membership lists, authority flow charts, minutes of leadership meetings, budgets, and more – tell another tale. Said Hunter when I raised this point: “I really don’t know the history as well as you do. “

The Family is not a conspiracy. But it is a very well organized social movement, with clearly designated roles and responsibilities, as revealed by a documents related to the Family’s African work supplied to me this week by a Family associate troubled by Hunter’s contradictions. Here’s astatement of purpose for part of the African mission:

:{:{2. THE EXECUTION OF THE VISION}:

A. Acongressman and/or Senator from the United States will befriend the leader of another country and tell him/her how Jesus and His teachings will help his country and its poor.

B. U.S. leader and foreign leader will select 5 men (mentors) from the foreign country to commit to learn about Jesus and how He will help themselves, their country and the poor.

… We will teach the mentors to confess their sins (known or unknown) and to ask the Holy Spirit of Christ to live in them, and to teach them how to live, what to think and what to say.}:

When Hunter met kill-the-gays bill author David Bahati in the United States at the National Prayer Breakfast, was he here to learn “how to live, what to think and what to say?” We don’t know. (Hunter says he doesn’t, either.) But a 2003-4 budget for the project makes clear who the U.S. Senator is: Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, designated as partner for 11 African leaders, including the presidents of Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda, relationships supported by funds raised by teams of American businessmen and religious activists. Inhofe’s Uganda mission was budgeted for $70,000 – he traveled there on the taxpayers’ dime – almost twice as much as that for the other nations.

It’s clear that the kill-the-gays bill is an embarrassment to the Family, even to Senator Inhofe, who once took to the floor of the Senate to proudly boast that there are no homosexuals in his family. But Bob Hunter’s not cut from the same cloth as Jim Inhofe. Most of his personal efforts in the Family really do come under the heading of “good works,” helping orphans and hospitals, recruiting political figures such as Senator Chuck Grassley and Andrew Young to bring warring parties in Africa to the negotiating table. (In our interview, Hunter refers to them as “bait. They wouldn’t like to hear me say that, but that’s what they were.”) When Hunter told me he wanted to fight the bill, I was glad to help reach out to media outlets. Stopping the kill-the-gays bill from becoming law is more important than any argument we have between us. And I believe Hunter when he says the Family is now working “privately on the ground” to kill the kill-the-gays bill. I even believe Hunter when he says he wants the Family to be more transparent.

But the interview he gave Rachel on Wednesday’s show was a bad start on both scores. Not only were his statements lacking in transparency, they also fell far short of accountability. “I think one of the points that you make is valid,” Hunter told me when we spoke, “is the tension between accessibility and accountability.” The tension, that is, between winning access to power and holding power accountable. By refusing to take responsibility for its relationships with the three key Ugandan political figures associated with the bill – Bahati, Buturo, and President Museveni – the Family has chosen access over accountability rather than reaching for what’s best about their own Christian tradition—bearing witness, speaking truth to power.

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule.

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand âCommunistsâ killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. "We work with power where we can,â the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, âbuild new power where we can't.

---

http://dir.salon.com/topics/christian_right/ news

Jeff Sharlet (fresh aire) The Family: the secret fund at heart of Am Power

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/21/c_street

The Family likes to call itself a "Christian Mafia," but it began 74 years ago as an anti-New Deal coalition of businessmen convinced that organized labor was under the sway of Satan.The Great Depression, they believed, was a punishment from God for what they viewed as FDR's socialism. The Family's goal was the "consecration" of America to God, first through the repeal of New Deal reforms, then through the aggressive expansion of American power during the Cold War. They called this a "Worldwide Spiritual Offensive," but in Washington, it amounted to the nation's first fundamentalist lobby. Early participants included Southern Sens. Strom Thurmond, Herman Talmadge and Absalom Willis Robertson -- Pat Robertson's father. Membership lists stored in the Family's archive at the Billy Graham Center at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois show active participation at any given time over the years by dozens of congressmen.

Today's roll call is just as impressive: Men under the Family's religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there's Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.,Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There's Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama's labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he'd learned through the Family: "Jesus didn't come to take sides. He came to take over." And by Jesus, the Family means the Family

prayer breakfast tends to be defense ministers

---

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand âCommunistsâ killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. âWe work with power where we can,â the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, âbuild new power where we can't.â

At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as âquiet diplomacy, I wouldn't say secret diplomacy,â as an âambassador of faith.â Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, âmaking friendsâ and inviting them back to the Family's unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978 with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation. A waterfall has been carved into the mansion's broad lawn, from which a bronze bald eagle watches over the Potomac River. The mansion is white and pillared and surrounded by magnolias, and by red trees that do not so much tower above it as whisper.

...

Another Family project, Youth Corps distributes pleasant brochures featuring endorsements from political leadersâamong them Tsutomu Hata, a former prime minister of Japan, former secretary of state James Baker, and Yoweri Museveni, president of Ugandaâ

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525

Doug Coe(sp)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnC8p5X1X4

Fundamental

Evangelical

Born-Again

---

Lawmakers flock to 133 C St. SE for cheap rent, weekly dinners, Bible studies and spirituality sessions that serve as a sort of group therapy for some of the country’s most powerful men.

But now the stately brick house is becoming known for something else: It’s ground zero for Republican sex scandals. In February, Nevada Sen. John Ensign — who lives at the house — was confronted at C Street by colleagues who wanted him to end his affair with a staffer.

Earlier this month, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford — who lived at C Street when he served in the House — said C Street was where he’d been asked the “hard questions” that were “very, very important” in his decision to admit an affair with an Argentine woman.

And last week, the estranged wife of former Rep. Chip Pickering said he carried on a long-term extramarital affair while living at the “well-known C Street Complex.”

The trifecta of trysts has made C Street an easy target for charges of “family values” hypocrisy — see the New York Times columns by Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins over the weekend.

But Christian lawmakers say Washington prayer and Bible-study groups — and the secrecy that surrounds them — provide crucial counseling for their lives in the nation’s capital.

“One thing about having members meet with members is they kind of understand what each other goes through and the stresses and the pressures and those kinds of things,” Congressional Prayer Caucus Chairman Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), who participates in a small Bible study group on Wednesday mornings. “And one member can tell another member, ‘I don’t think that’s the right thing for you to do.’”

In an interview with the evangelical World Magazine, Sen. Jim**DeMint(R-S.C.) described living at C Street as “one of the best parts” of life in Washington.

“We kind of make that commitment to each other to get together once a week,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a Bible study; we always have a spiritual or scriptural thought. But sometimes we just talk about each others’ lives, try to get to know each other, remind each other that we are not important, that it’s just a title.”

Although titles may not be important, there are plenty of them at C Street. In addition to DeMint and Ensign, C Street residents include Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.). Sen.Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) lived in the house before moving to his own condo, and he still attends events there. Former Reps. Steve Largent (R-Okla.),Jim Ryun (R-Kan.), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have also studied at C Street.

The large townhouse, valued at more than $1.8 million, is run by Christian network of nonprofits and ministries known as “The Fellowship.” Headquartered in Arlington, Va., the group focuses on what Fellowship leaders call the “up and out,” or powerful politicians struggling to confront their personal demons. By ministering to the most powerful, The Fellowship believes, it can bring Christian beliefs to the larger culture. Jeff Sharlet, who wrote a book about his time in The Fellowship's Virginia headquarters, said the group believes that lawmakers have been "chosen" to lead by Jesus Christ.

...

---

Sharlet is the author of the bestselling "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power."

I can't say I was impressed when I met Sen. John Ensign at the C Street House, the secretive religious enclave on Capitol Hill thrust into the news by its links to three political sex scandals, those of Gov. Mark Sanford; former Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., who allegedly rendezvoused at the C Street House with his mistress, an executive in the industry for which he then became a lobbyist; and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Although Sanford declared today that his scandal will actually turn out to be good for the people of South Carolina because he's now more firmly in God's control, the once-favored GOP presidential prospect will finish out his term and fade away. And Ensign's residence at the C Street House during his own extramarital affair now threatens to end a career that he and other Republicans hoped would lead him to the White House.

When I met Ensign, he was just back from a run, sweaty and bouncing in place, boasting about the time he'd clocked and teasing a young woman from his office. She seemed annoyed that the senator wouldn't get himself into a shower and back on the job. When I wrote about Sen. Ensign in my book about the evangelical political organization that runs the C Street House, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," I described him as a "conservative casino heir elected to the Senate from Nevada, a brightly tanned, hapless figure who uses his Family connections to graft holiness to his gambling-fortune name."

Now, of course, I know I was wrong: John Ensign is a brightly tanned, hapless figure who used his Family connections to cover up the fruits of his flirtations, to make moral decisions for him, and to do his dirty work when his secret romance sputtered. Doug Hampton, the friend and former aide whom Ensign cuckolded, tells us that it was Family leader David Coe, along with Coe's brother Tim and Family "brother" Sen. Tom Coburn, who delivered the pink slip when it was time to put Cynthia Hampton out of Ensign's reach.

If sexual license was all the Family offered the C Street men, however, that would merely be seedy and self-serving. But Family men are more than hypocritical. They're followers of a political religion that embraces elitism, disdains democracy, and pursues power for its members the better to "advance the Kingdom." They say they're working for Jesus, but their Christ is a power-hungry, inside-the-Beltway savior not many churchgoers would recognize. Sexual peccadilloes aside, the Family acts today like the most powerful lobby in America that isn't registered as a lobby -- and is thus immune from the scrutiny attending the other powerful organizations like Big Pharma and Big Insurance that exert pressure on public policy.

The Family likes to call itself a "Christian Mafia," but it began 74 years ago as an anti-New Deal coalition of businessmen convinced that organized labor was under the sway of Satan. The Great Depression, they believed, was a punishment from God for what they viewed as FDR's socialism. The Family's goal was the "consecration" of America to God, first through the repeal of New Deal reforms, then through the aggressive expansion of American power during the Cold War. They called this a "Worldwide Spiritual Offensive," but in Washington, it amounted to the nation's first fundamentalist lobby. Early participants included Southern Sens. Strom Thurmond, Herman Talmadge and Absalom Willis Robertson -- Pat Robertson's father. Membership lists stored in the Family's archive at the Billy Graham Center at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois show active participation at any given time over the years by dozens of congressmen.

Today's roll call is just as impressive: Men under the Family's religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there's Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There's Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama's labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he'd learned through the Family: "Jesus didn't come to take sides. He came to take over." And by Jesus, the Family means the Family.

Family leaders consider their political network to be Christ's avant garde, an elite that transcends not just conventional morality but also earthly laws regulating lobbying. In the Family's early days, they debated registering as "a lobby for God's Kingdom." Instead, founder Abraham Vereide decided that the group could be more effective by working personally with politicians. "The more invisible you can make your organization," Vereide's successor, current leader Doug Coe preaches, "the more influence you can have." That's true -- which is why we have laws requiring lobbyists to identify themselves as such.

But David Coe, Doug Coe's son and heir apparent, calls himself simply a friend to men such as John Ensign, whom he guided through the coverup of his affair. I met the younger Coe when I lived for several weeks as a member of the Family. He's a surprising source of counsel, spiritual or otherwise. Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply.

So it is for Ensign. Sen. Jim DeMint, one of Ensign's C Street roommates, insists that the prayer groups that meet there -- "invisible believing groups," in the Family's words, designed to facilitate private prayer between partners of equally high status -- are all about accountability. That is, the kind that takes place behind closed doors. We now know that the Family was aware of Sen. Ensign's affair long before Doug Hampton's wounded pride forced it into the public. What's more, if Hampton is to be believed, their concern with the payoffs made by Ensign and his parents to his mistress's family was that they were too small; operating in a medical and spiritual capacity, Sen. Coburn counseled $1.2 million, according to Hampton. Coburn is no hypocrite -- he's a true believer in the faith of the Family, the idea that the chosen need to look out for one another. Christian right leader -- and Watergate felon -- Chuck Colson, converted through the efforts of the Family, has boasted of it as a "veritable underground of Christ's men all through government."

What do they do? Rep. Zach Wamp, one of Ensign's fellow C Streeters who's been in the news for defending the Family's secrecy, has teamed up with Family-linked Reps. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., and John R. Carter, R-Texas, on an obscure appropriations committee to help greenlight tens of millions in federal funds for new megachurch-style chapels on military bases around the country. Former Rep. Chip Pickering was not only sleeping on the sly with a representative of the telecom industry, he was living with one -- former Oklahoma Republican Rep. Steve Largent, a C Streeter who in his post-Congress capacity as the head of a telecom association paid for travel by Pickering and John Ensign. Some might call that "crony capitalism"; Family members call it "biblical capitalism."

A review of Ensign's and Sen. Coburn's travel records, undertaken with researcher Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, reveals an even more disturbing overlap of the pious and the political. On at least three occasions in recent years, Sen. Ensign traveled to Asia and the Middle East on what he described as official policy trips, paid for entirely by the International Foundation, one of the network of little-known nonprofits that make up the Family. Sen. Coburn, meanwhile, traveled to Beirut in 2005 on the Family's dime, with the explicit mission of setting up Lebanese political prayer groups, just like the one that covered for Ensign. The following year, Coburn humbled himself in prayer at a special Family event in the British Virgin Islands, a Christian mission of earthly rewards also undertaken, at Family expense, by fellow C Streeter Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Penn., who also sacrificed himself for God with a Family-paid trip to Aruba.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/21/c_street

---

The younger Talmadge saw combat in the United States Navy during World War II. On his return from the South Pacific as a lieutenant commander, Herman ran his father's successful campaign for governor in 1946. Supporters of Eugene Talmadge were unsure of Eugene's chances of surviving until he was sworn in, so they did some research into the state constitution and found that if Eugene died, the Georgia General Assembly would choose between the second and third place finishers. The elder Talmadge ran unopposed, so they arranged for write-in votes for Herman as insurance. In December 1946, the elder Talmadge died. Ultimately, the lieutenant governor-elect, Melvin E. Thompson, the prior Governor, Ellis Arnall, and Herman Talmadge all had themselves sworn in and were concurrently trying to conduct state business from theGeorgia State Capitol. Arnall relinquished his claim and supported Thompson. Ultimately, Thompson was supported by the Supreme Court of Georgia.

Career after 1946

Talmadge soon gave in to the court decision and prepared for the special election in 1948, in which Talmadge defeated Governor Thompson. Talmadge was then elected to a full term in 1950. During his terms, Talmadge encouraged industry to move into Georgia. He remained astaunch supporter of racial segregation.

Talmadge was barred by law from seeking another full term as Governor in 1954. He was elected to theUnited States Senate in 1956. That same year, a "faithless elector" from Alabama cast a single Electoral College vote for Talmadge as Vice President of the United States. During his time as U.S. Senator, Talmadge remained a foe of civil rights legislation. After President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Talmadge, along with more than a dozen other southern Senators, boycotted the 1964 Democratic National Convention.^[1] With the help of Richard Russell, Talmadge was appointed to the Agriculture Committee during his first year in Washington and to the Senate Finance Committee shortly thereafter. Talmadge would eventually be named chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.^[2] He sponsored bills to help farmers, an important constituency, and served on the Senate Watergate Committee

In 1968, Talmadge faced the first of his three Republican challengers for his Senate seat. E. Earl Patton(1927-2011), later a member of the Georgia State Senate, received 256,796 votes (22.5 percent) to Talmadge's 885,103 (77.3 percent). Patton, a real estate developer, was the first Republican in Georgia to run for the U.S. Senate since the Reconstruction era.^[3] Talmadge won another large reelection margin in 1974, but he ran afoul of Republican Mack Mattingly in 1980.

On October 11, 1979, Talmadge was "denounced" by an 81–15 vote of the Senate for "improper financial conduct" between 1973 and 1978, after having accepted reimbursements of $43,435.83 for official expenses not incurred and for improper reporting of such as campaign expenditures.^[4]

Talmadge also went through a divorce from his wife and a tough primary challenge from Zell Miller in 1980. Talmadge defeated Miller but lost to Mack Mattingly in the general election. Mattingly was the first Republican to represent Georgia in the Senate since Reconstruction, but he was unseated in 1986 by the Democrat Wyche Fowler.

After his defeat, Talmadge retired to his home where he died more than two decades later at the age of eighty-eight. Talmadge had two sons, Herman E. Talmadge, Jr., and Robert Shingler Talmadge.

---

“The movie never asks the seminal question as to why the people of Iraq are fighting back against us in the very first place,” said Mikey Weinstein, whom I reached by phone in New Mexico. Weinstein, who worked in the Reagan White House and is a former Air Force officer, is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which challenges the growing Christian fundamentalism within the U.S. military. “It made me physically ill with its twisted, totally one-sided distortions of wartime combat ethics and justice woven into the fabric of Chris Kyle’s personal and primal justification mantra of ‘God-Country-Family.’ It is nothing less than an odious homage, indeed a literal horrific hagiography to wholesale slaughter.”

Weinstein noted that the embrace of extreme right-wing Christian chauvinism, or Dominionism, which calls for the creation of a theocratic “Christian” America, is especially acute among elite units such as the SEALs and the Army Special Forces.

http://www.publiceye.org/christian_right/dominionism.htm

Christian Right & Theocracy

When Michelle Goldberg wrote “A Christian Plot for Domination?” for the Daily Beast she chose her terms carefully. The subhead stated “Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry aren't just devout—both have deep ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians should rule the world.” Within hours both critics and supporters of Goldberg’s thesis littered the Internet with posts that drew no distinctions among the Christian Right, Dominionism, and Christian Reconstructionism. There are important differences, and this essay seeks to explain them. PRA takes no position on the 2012 elections, but we do take a position supporting the accurate use of language.

---

PRA's definition since 2005:

Dominionism: The theocratic idea that regardless of theological view or eschatological timetable, heterosexual Christian men are called by God to exercise dominion over secular society by taking control of political and cultural institutions. Competes in Christianity with the idea of Stewardship, which suggests custodial care rather than absolute power. Used here in the broader sense, some analysts use the word only to refer to forms and offshoots of Reconstructionism.

---

Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy

Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have all flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but there's lots of misinformation about just what that means.

Dominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country. Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots.

At the same time, legitimate questions have been raised about whether or not potential Republican presidential nominees Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin have moved from a generic form of Christian Right Dominionism toward the more totalitarian form know as Dominion Theology.

Clueless journalists and crafty Christian Right pundits have mocked the idea that Dominionism as a religiously motivated political tendency even exists. Scholars, however, have been writing about Dominionism for over a decade, some using the term directly, and others describing the tendency in other ways. Many articles on Dominionism can be found on Talk to Action, especially by authors Rachel Tabachnick, Bruce Wilson, Frederick Clarkson. Several of the authors who pioneered the discussion of Dominionism have written for the Public Eye Magazine.

Dominionism is a broad political impulse within the Christian Right in the United States. It comes in a variety of forms that author Fred Clarkson and I call soft and hard. Fred and I probably coined the term "Dominionism" back in the 1990s, but in any case we certainly were the primary researchers who organized its use among journalists and scholars.

Clarkson noted three characteristics that bridge both the hard and the soft kind of Dominionism.

Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe the United States once was, and should again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.
Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.
Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, believing that the Ten Commandments, or "biblical law," should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.

At the apex of hard Dominionism is the religious dogma of Dominion Theology, with two major branches: Christian Reconstructionism and Kingdom Now theology. It is the latter's influence on the theopolitical movement called the New Apostolic Reformation that has been linked in published reports to potential Republican presidential nominees Perry, Bachmann or Palin. All three of these right-wing political debutantes have flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but how far they have danced toward the influence of hard-right Dominion Theology is in dispute. It would be nice if some "mainstream" journalists actually researched the question.

"While differing from Reconstructionism in many ways, Kingdom Now shares the belief that Christians have a mandate to take dominion over every area of life," explains religion scholar Bruce Barron. And it is just this tendency that has spread through evangelical Protestantism, resulting in the emergence of "various brands of `dominionist' thinkers in contemporary American evangelicalism," according to Barron.

The most militant Dominion Theologists would silence dissenters and execute adulterers, homosexuals and recalcitrant children. No...seriously. OK, they would only be executed for repeated offenses, explain some defenders of Christian Reconstructionism. Even most Christian Right activists view the more militant Dominion Theologists as having really creepy ideas.

Much of the controversy over the issue of Dominionism is caused by writers who use the term carelessly, often conflating the broad term Dominionism with the narrow term Dominion Theology. Some on the Left have implied that every conservative Christian evangelical is part of the Christian Right political movement; and that everyone in the Christian Right is an active Dominionist. This is false. Some critics even state that the Christian Right is neofascist. Few serious scholars of fascism agree with that assessment, although several admit that if triggered by a traumatic societal event, any contemporary right-wing populist movement could descend into neofascism.

Advocates of Dominion Theology go beyond the democracy eroding theocracy of Dominionism into a totalitarian form of religious power called a "theonomy," in which pluralistic democracy and religious tolerance are seen as a problem to be solved by godly men carrying out God's will. Karen Armstrong calls Christian Reconstructionism "totalitarian" because it leaves "no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom." Matthew N. Lyons and I call Christian Reconstructionism a "new form of clerical fascist politics," in our book Right-Wing Populism in America, because we see it echoing the religiously based clerical fascist movements that existed during World War II in countries including Romania and Hungary.

According to Fred Clarkson:

Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God's covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are "in submission" to him. In turn, the husband "submits" to Jesus and to God's laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God's laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called "theonomy."

Christian Reconstructionists believe that as more Christians adopt Dominion Theology, they will eventually convert the majority of Americans. Then the country will realize that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely codicils to Old Testament biblical law. Because they believe this is God's will, they scoff at criticism that what they plan is a revolutionary overthrow of the existing system of government. Over the past 20 years the leading proponents of Reconstructionism have included founder Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, Gary DeMar, and Andrew Sandlin. Kingdom Now theology emerged from the Latter Rain Pentacostal movement and the concept of Spiritual Warfare against the literal demonic forces of Satan. It has been promoted by founder Earl Paulk as well as C. Peter Wagner, founder of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.

For many, President Obama and the Democratic Party are among these "demonic forces." This has real world consequences.

In 2006 former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris told thousands of cheering Christian Right activists that beating the Democrats in the upcoming elections was a battle against "principalities and powers," which many in the audience would hear as a Biblical reference to the struggle with the demonic agents of Satan. Harris (who played "ballot bowling" in Florida to elect George W. Bush in 2000) told the audience at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington DC that she had studied religion in Switzerland with the godfather of the Christian Right, theologian Francis A. Schaeffer. Her speech there, which I witnessed and wrote about, qualifies her as a Dominionist.

In 2004 Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, another Dominionist, oversaw the election apparatus giving his favored candidate George W. Bush a boost into the Oval Office.

Religion scholar Bruce Barron explains that "unlike the Christian Right, Reconstructionism is not simply or primarily a political movement; it is first and foremost an educational movement fearlessly proclaiming an ideology of total world transformation." According to sociologist Sara Diamond, Christian Reconstructionism spread the "concept that Christians are Biblically mandated to `occupy' all secular institutions" to the extent that it became "the central unifying ideology for the Christian Right."

William Martin is the author of the 1996 tome With God on Our Side, a companion volume to the PBS series of the same name (Martin and I were both advisers to the PBS series). Martin is a sociologist and professor of religion at Rice University, and he has been critical of the way some critics of the Christian Right have tossed around the terms "dominionism" and "theocracy." According to Martin:

It is difficult to assess the influence of Reconstructionist thought with any accuracy. Because it is so genuinely radical, most leaders of the Religious Right are careful to distance themselves from it. At the same time, it clearly holds some appeal for many of them. One undoubtedly spoke for others when he confessed, `Though we hide their books under the bed, we read them just the same.'

Martin reveals that "several key leaders have acknowledged an intellectual debt to the theonomists." The late Christian Right leaders Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy "endorsed Reconstructionist books" for example. Before he died in 2001, the founder of Christian Reconstuctionism, R. J. Rushdoony, appeared several times on Christian Right televangelist programs such as Pat Robertson's 700 Club and the program hosted by D. James Kennedy.

"Pat Robertson makes frequent use of dominion' language," says Martin. Robertson's book, The Secret Kingdom, "has often been cited for its theonomy elements; and pluralists were made uncomfortable when, during his presidential campaign, he said he would only bring Christians and Jews into the government,' as well as when he later wrote, `There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world.' "

Martin also pointed out that Jay Grimstead, who led the Coalition on Revival, "brought Reconstructionists together with more mainstream evangelicals." According to Martin, Grimstead explained "`I don't call myself [a Reconstructionist]," but "A lot of us are coming to realize that the Bible is God's standard of morality...in all points of history...and for all societies, Christian and non-Christian alike....It so happens that Rushdoony, Bahnsen, and North understood that sooner."

Then Grimstead added, "there are a lot of us floating around in Christian leadership--James Kennedy is one of them--who don't go all the way with the theonomy thing, but who want to rebuild America based on the Bible."

So let's choose our language carefully, but let's recognize that terms such as Dominionism and Theocracy, when used cautiously and carefully, are appropriate when describing troubling tendencies in the Christian Right that are helping push the current political scene toward confrontation and intolerance.

---

More background articles on the roots of Dominionism:

The Roots of Dominionism

---

[editor's note:] Author Chip Berlet was co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements and a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism and the second edition of theEncyclopaedia Judaica. Originally posted on Alternet.org.

---