The Family bak

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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.

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in a “meandering” speech filled with off-script jokes, recycled campaign lines, and religious-themed policy announcements, President Donald Trump addressed religious and political leaders at the controversial National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. He pledged to “protect Christians” and announced plans to direct the U.S. Department of Justice to create a task force to “eradicate” what he called “anti-Christian bias.”

“Well, we wanna bring religion back stronger, bigger, better than ever before. It’s very important,” the President declared. “We have to have religion and it suffered greatly over the last few years, but it’s coming back.”

“We have to bring religion back. We have to bring it back much stronger. It’s one of the biggest problems that we’ve had over the last fairly long period of time. We have to bring it back.”

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He promised to “protect Christians” in schools, the military, in government, workplaces, hospitals, public squares, and said, “I will always protect religious liberty,” as he continued unveiling religious policy promises.

“And that is why today,” he declared, “I’m announcing that I will be creating a brand new presidential commission on religious liberty. It’s gonna be a very big deal, which will work tirelessly to uphold this most fundamental right. Unfortunately, in recent years, we’ve seen this sacred liberty threatened like never before in American history. There’s nothing happened like the last four years what’s happened with so many things have gone bad, but religion, what they’ve done, and the persecution that they’ve executed, have been just horrible.”

“The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible. The IRS, the FBI, terrible, and other agencies,” Trump alleged. “In addition, the task force will work to fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers, nationwide. We’ve never had that before, but this is a very powerful document I’m signing, you’ve got it, you get it now.”

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Trump praised himself for “showing up to the Prayer Breakfast,” falsely implying that his predecessors had not. He also hinted at the possibility of running for a third term—an idea some Republicans are backing with congressional legislation—and firmly asserted that the President of the United States should be a person of faith.

“We have a mandate and lets say the most consequential election in 129 years, and that’s good because I’m a believer, like you’re a believer, and we want to have a believer in this position,” Trump said.

“I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief,” he added. “Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”

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The President mentioned the tragic loss of 67 lives in a recent mid-air crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, saying their time on earth was over but they are now with God. He swiftly transitioned to talk about the assassination attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, declaring, “It was God that saved me,” and claiming his son Don’s embrace of religion had increased as a result.

IFrame Content

Before falsely claiming, as he has countless times before, that his election allowed Americans to once again say, “Merry Christmas,” Trump said that “from the very beginning of our republic, America has always been a nation founded by people of faith and strengthened by the power of prayer and united by four simple, but very beautiful words: ‘in God we trust.’ And you all know there was a movement to get that out.”

“In God We Trust,” was officially adopted as the motto of the United States in 1956.

He also told attendees, “we get rid of woke over the last two weeks.”

The American Humanist Foundation on Thursday declared that the “National Prayer Breakfast and its ties to the Fellowship Foundation, an extreme Christian Nationalist organization, are a sham. Holding a government-run, taxpayer-funded Christian ceremony in the U.S. Capitol disrespects the secular ideals that founded this country.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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2019

..netflix

C Street Center went fairly unnoticed by society at large until the summer of 2009 when South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Nevada Senator John Ensign, and former Mississippi representative Chip Pickering, all of whom were tenants of the C Street Center, admitted to having adulterous affairs. At the time, the C Street Center housed numerous politicians from both the Republican and Democratic arms of Washington. The C Street Center was a crucial part of The Family's web of influence, combined with their vast Arlington estate The Cedars that housed esteemed guests from outside of the city, as well as their yearly National Prayer Breakfast which bring important political figures from around the world together under their sponsorship.

...

As reported by The New Yorker, The Fellowship enjoyed the tax benefits of being registered as a church and passed the savings onto their tenants by charging about nine hundred dollars a month in rent in one of Washington's most expensive neighborhoods. That latter detailed eventually raised the eyebrows of the Office of Congressional Ethics, who began investigating the residence. The Center's tax-exempt status was revoked in 2009, and since then the nature of what happens at the C Street Center has become as elusive as the center's dealings were prior to 2009.

While the identities of the current owner and tenants of C Street Center are unknown, the influence of The Family has not dwindled, as the continuing National Prayer Breakfast has been providing a major platform for President Trump and other politicians throughout the Trump presidency.

The C Street Center may no longer be an integral part of The Family's dealings, but given the secretive nature of the organization, there's really no way to know if the group has separated themselves from the C Street Center or if they've moved on to maintaining other properties to house new politicians who support their message.

...

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https://www.google.com/search?q=demint+c+street+family&source=hp&ei=3NvFYq_vCsHVkPIPn7S_WA&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAYsXp7PrjdAEbkse5lJYr7dn2Mlk5Hkh1&ved=0ahUKEwivzbGw-eT4AhXBKkQIHR_aDwsQ4dUDCAk&uact=5&oq=demint+c+street+family&gs_lcp=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&sclient=gws-wiz

c St.: where scandal meets spirituality - POLITICO

https://www.politico.com › story › 2009/07 › c-st-wher...

Jul 20, 2009 — 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 ...

Sex and power inside "the C Street House" - Salon.com

https://www.salon.com › ... › Jeff Sharlet's Articles

Jul 21, 2009 — Jim DeMint, one of Ensign's C Street roommates, insists that the prayer groups that meet there -- "invisible believing groups," in the Family's ...

C Street Center - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › C_Street_Center

The C Street Center is a three-story brick townhouse in Washington, D.C. operated by The Fellowship. It is the former convent for nearby St. Peter's Church.

Background · ‎Controversy · ‎Tax status, subsidized...

A Refuge For Powerful Lawmakers - NPR

https://www.npr.org › templates › story › story

Sep 23, 2010 — Jim DeMint. Sharlet writes about C Street and the politicians who are affiliated with the house in C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to ...

Behind the closed doors on C Street - Las Vegas Sun

https://lasvegassun.com › news › jul › behind-closed-do...

Jul 19, 2009 — 133 C Street S.E. is registered as a church and affiliated with a secretive ... within The Family than Ensign would be Coburn or DeMint.

C Street Scandal, the Media, the Future of the Family

https://religiondispatches.org › c-street-scandal-the-med...

Oct 1, 2009 — C Street Scandal, the Media, the Future of the Family: An Interview with ... Senator Sam Brownback, Senator Jim DeMint, and, now infamously, ...

The Boys of C Street - Vanity Fair

https://www.vanityfair.com › News › republicans

Aug 5, 2009 — Six devout “family values” politicians rent rooms at C Street House, ... /photos/$$img:/images/blogs/2009/08/head-demint.jpg]__Senator Jim ...

Did The New Yorker Really Have To Blow Every Last Member ...

https://washingtoncitypaper.com › Archives

Sep 29, 2010 — ... and connections to various official government intelligence agencies are sprinkled throughout C Street and the Family Rolodex; ...

Who Lives At The C Street Center In 2019? Netflix's ... - Bustle

https://www.bustle.com › who-lives-at-the-c-street-cente...

Aug 9, 2019 — Netflix's The Family dives into the mysterious group of the same name that, despite not being well-known outside of political circles, ...

Missing: demint ‎| Must include: demint

Secrets of C Street - The Daily Beast

https://www.thedailybeast.com › secrets-of-c-street

Jul 26, 2009 — A list of American politicians associated with the Family, most of whom are right-wing Republicans but also some Democrats, including, at one ...

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

History

The Fellowship Foundation traces its roots to its founder, Abraham Vereide, a Methodist clergyman and social innovator, who organized a month of prayer meetings in 1934 in San Francisco.^[9] Vereide was a Norwegian immigrant who founded Goodwill Industries in Seattle in 1916 to assist the city's unemployed Scandinavian immigrant population. Goodwill Industries soon occupied a city block, where they repaired and processed discarded clothing and furniture and converted "waste to wages". The Fellowship was founded in 1935 in opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.^[22] His work spread down the West Coast and eventually to Boston.^[23]

The author Jeff Sharlet described the beginning of the Family as a reaction to union activities of Harry Bridges, "The Family really begins when the founder (Abraham Vereide) has this vision, which he thinks comes from God, that Harry Bridges, this Australian labour organiser who organised really the biggest strike in American history, a very successful strike, is a Satanic and Soviet agent."^[24]

In April 1935, Vereide and Major J.F. Douglas invited 19 business and civic leaders for a prayer breakfast meeting.^[23] By 1937, 209 prayer breakfast groups had been organized throughout Seattle.^[9] In 1940, 300 men from all over the state of Washington attended a prayer breakfast for the new governor, Arthur Langlie.^[9] Vereide traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest, and later around the country, to develop similar groups.^[9] The non-denominational groups were meant to informally bring together civic and business leaders to share vision, study the Bible and develop relationships of trust and support.^[9]

The Fellowship Foundation was incorporated by Abraham Vereide in Chicago in 1942 as Fellowship Foundation, Inc. It also acquired the names International Christian Leadership (ICL), Fellowship House, and International Foundation for venues as its global outreach ministry expanded.^[9][25] The Fellowship Foundation, Inc. does most of its business as the International Foundation,^[8] which is its DBA name.^[26]

By 1942 there were 60 breakfast groups in major cities around the US and Canada, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington and Vancouver. That same year, Vereide began to hold small prayer breakfasts for members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

In 1942, the Fellowship was incorporated in Chicago, Illinois as Vereide's center of national outreach to businessmen and civic and clergy leadership. Vereide had moved the group's offices from Seattle to the more centralized location of Chicago, headquarters of the businessmen's luncheon outreach "Christian Businessmen's Committee", which Vereide led with industrialist C.B. Hedstrom. That same year the Fellowship Foundation established a delegation ministry in Washington DC on Massachusetts Avenue at Sheridan Circle named "Fellowship House". Vereide later described it as the nerve center of the breakfast groups.

In 1944, Vereide held his first joint Senate–House prayer breakfast meeting. He held another breakfast on June 16, 1946, attended by Senators H. Alexander Smith and Lister Hill, and US News and World Report publisher David Lawrence.

In 1946, Vereide wrote and released a book with Reverend John G. Magee, chaplain to President Harry Truman, entitled Together (Abingdon Cokesbury). In the book, Vereide explained his philosophy of visionary discipleship and gathering together in what he termed spiritual cells:

Man craves fellowship. Most of us want an opportunity to make our feelings known, to relate our personal experiences, to compare notes with others, and, in unity of spirit to receive renewal, inspiration, guidance, and strength from God. Such groups as we are thinking of have characterized every spiritual awakening. Jesus began with Peter and James and John. He had the twelve and the Seventy. At Bethany he established a cell... there you have the formula... faith embodied the same close informal fellowship... one common practice—gathering together in the name of Jesus.

In January 1947, a conference in Zurich led to the formation of the International Council for Christian Leadership (ICCL), an umbrella group for the national fellowship groups in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Hungary, Egypt and China. ICCL was incorporated as a separate organization in 1953. ICL and ICCL were governed by different boards of directors, joined by a coordinating committee: four members of ICCL's board and four from the ICL's executive committee.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended the Senate Prayer Breakfast Group. He was invited by fellow Kansan Frank Carlson. By that time, Vereide's congressional members also included Senators Frank Carlson, Karl Mundt, Everett Dirksen and Strom Thurmond.

By 1957, ICL had established 125 groups in 100 cities, with 16 groups in Washington, D.C. alone. It had set up another 125 groups in other countries. During 1958, a mentor from The Navigators, Douglas Coe,^[27][28] joined Vereide as assistant executive director of ICL in Washington, D.C. After over 35 years of leading the Fellowship Foundation, Vereide died in 1969 and was succeeded by Richard C. Halverson as executive director. Halverson and Coe worked side by side until Halverson's death in 1995.

Influence

Prominent evangelical Christians have described the Fellowship as one of the most, or the most, politically well-connected ministries in the world.

D. Michael Lindsay, a former Rice University sociologist who studies the evangelical movement, said "there is no other organization like the Fellowship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or clout among the country's leadership."^[13] He also reported that lawmakers mentioned the Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith.^[2] Lindsay interviewed 360 evangelical elites, among whom "One in three mentioned [Doug] Coe or the Fellowship as an important influence."^[13] Lindsay reported that it "has relationships with pretty much every world leader—good and bad—and there are not many organizations in the world that can claim that."^[2]

In 1977, four years after he had converted to Christianity, Fellowship member and Watergate conspirator Charles Colson described the group as a "veritable underground of Christ's men all through the U.S. government."^[14]

Former Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, also a former member of the Senate Prayer Group, has described Fellowship members' method of operation: "Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action"—a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—"and the others pull in behind."^[29] Brownback has often joined with fellow Family members in pursuing legislation. For example, in 1999 he joined together with fellow Family members, Senators Strom Thurmond and Don Nickles to demand a criminal investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in 2005 Brownback joined with Fellowship member Sen. Tom Coburn to promote the Houses of Worship Act.^[30]

Rob Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation's Capital, described the Family's influence as "off the charts" in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship.^[16] (These last two are associated with the Family: Traditional Values Coalition uses their C Street House^[16] and Prison Fellowship was founded by Charles Colson.) Schenck also says that "the mystique of the Fellowship" has helped it "gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital."^[8]

"The Fellowship's reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp," says David Kuo, a former special assistant in George W. Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.^[15]

Beliefs and theology

The Fellowship Foundation's 501(c)(3) mission statement is:

...

Finances

The Fellowship Foundation, which since 1935 has conducted no public fundraising programs, relies totally on private donations. In 2007, the group received nearly $16.8 million to support the 400 ministries.^[26] Among the Fellowship's key supporters are billionaire investor Paul N. Temple, a former executive of Esso (Exxon) and the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Three Swallows Foundation. Between 1998 and 2007, Three Swallows made grants totaling $1,777,650 to the International Foundation, including $171,500 in 2004,^[102] $203,500 in 2005,^[103] and $145,500 in 2006.^[104]

Another supporter, Jerome (Jerry) A. Lewis, established Denver-based Downing Street Foundation to provide support to three organizations: the Fellowship Foundation, Denver Leadership Foundation, and Young Life. Between 1999 and 2007, Downing Street Foundation donated at least $756,000 to the Family,^[140] in addition to allowing the group to use its "retreat center."

Madelynn Winstead, a Downing Street Foundation director, was paid $21,600 by the Fellowship Foundation as managing director of the retreat center.^[141]

The Kingdom Fund (Kingdom Oil Christian Foundation t/a Twin Cities Christian Foundation) also provides support to the Family and World Vision.^[142]

The Fellowship Foundation earns more than $1,000,000 annually through its sponsorship of the National Prayer Breakfast.^[26]

History

In April 1935, Vereide and Major J.F. Douglas invited 19 business and civic leaders for a prayer breakfast meeting.^[20] By 1937, 209 prayer breakfast groups had been organized throughout Seattle.^[9] In 1940, 300 men from all over the state of Washington attended a prayer breakfast for the new governor, Arthur Langlie.^[9] Vereide traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest, and later around the country, to develop similar groups.^[9]The non-denominational groups were meant to informally bring together civic and business leaders to share vision, study the Bible and develop relationships of trust and support.^[9]The Fellowship Foundation traces its roots to its founder, Abraham Vereide, a Methodist clergyman and social innovator, who organized a month of prayer meetings in 1934 in San Francisco.^[9] Vereide was a Norwegian immigrant who founded Goodwill Industries in Seattle in 1916 to assist the city's unemployed Scandinavian immigrant population. Goodwill Industries soon occupied a city block, where they repaired and processed discarded clothing and furniture and converted "waste to wages". The Fellowship was founded in 1935 in opposition to FDR's New Deal.^[19] His work spread down the West coast and eventually to Boston.^[20]

The Fellowship Foundation was incorporated by Abraham Vereide in Chicago in 1942 as Fellowship Foundation, Inc. It also acquired the names International Christian Leadership (ICL), Fellowship House, and International Foundation for venues as its global outreach ministry expanded.^[9][21] The Fellowship Foundation, Inc. does most of its business as the International Foundation,^[8] which is its DBA name.^[22]

Man craves fellowship. Most of us want an opportunity to make our feelings known, to relate our personal experiences, to compare notes with others, and, in unity of spirit to receive renewal, inspiration, guidance, and strength from God. Such groups as we are thinking of have characterized every spiritual awakening. Jesus began with Peter and James and John. He had the twelve and the Seventy. At Bethany he established a cell... there you have the formula... faith embodied the same close informal fellowship... one common practice—gathering together in the name of Jesus.

By 1957, ICL had established 125 groups in 100 cities, with 16 groups in Washington, D.C. alone. It had set up another 125 groups in other countries. During 1958, a mentor from The Navigators, Douglas Coe,^[23][24]joined Vereide as assistant executive director of ICL in Washington, D.C. After over 35 years of leading the Fellowship Foundation, Vereide died in 1969 and was succeeded by Richard C. Halverson as executive director. Halverson and Coe worked side by side until Halverson's death in 1995.

Influence

Prominent evangelical Christians have described the Fellowship as one of the most, or the most, politically well-connected ministries in the world.

In 1977, four years after he had converted to Christianity, Fellowship member and Watergate conspirator Charles Colsondescribed the group as a "veritable underground of Christ's men all through the U.S. government."^[14]

Former Senate Prayer Group member and current Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has described Fellowship members' method of operation: "Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action"—a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—"and the others pull in behind."^[25] Brownback has often joined with fellow Family members in pursuing legislation. For example, in 1999 he joined together with fellow Family members, Senators Strom Thurmond and Don Nickles to demand a criminal investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in 2005 Brownback joined with Fellowship member Sen. Tom Coburn to promote the Houses of Worship Act.^[26]

Rob Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation's Capital, described the Family's influence as "off the charts" in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship.^[16] (These last two are associated with the Family: Traditional Values Coalition uses their C Street House^[16] and Prison Fellowship was founded by Charles Colson.) Schenck also says that "the mystique of the Fellowship" has helped it "gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital."^[8]

Beliefs and theology

The Fellowship Foundation's 501(c)(3) mission statement is:

To develop and maintain an informal association of people banded together, to go out as "ambassadors of reconciliation," modeling the principles of Jesus, based on loving God and loving others. To work with the leaders of many nations, and as their hearts are touched, the poor, the oppressed, the widows, and the youth of their country will be impacted in a positive manner. Youth groups will be developed under the thoughts of Jesus, including loving others as you want to be loved.^[22]

Newsweek reported that the Fellowship has often been criticized by conservative and fundamentalist Christian groups for being too inclusive and not putting enough emphasis on doctrine or church attendance.^[18] NPR has reported that the evangelical group's views on religion and politics are so singular that some other Christian right organizations consider them heretical.^[19]

David Kuo, staffer in President George W. Bush's Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, who has been affiliated with the Fellowship since college, said of the Fellowship:

For all the hysteria about Christian organizations, the irony that the Fellowship is being targeted as a bad egg is jaw-dropping. This is so not Focus on the Family, this is so not the Christian Coalition. There are other Christian groups that are truly insane. Who purport to follow Jesus Christ and who I would submit do not. The Fellowship is a loosely banded group of people who have an affinity for Jesus.^[18]

Current Fellowship prayer group member and former U.S. Representative Tony P. Hall (D-OH) said, "If people in this country knew how many Democrats and Republicans pray together and actually like each other behind closed doors, they would be amazed." The Fellowship is simply "men and women who are trying to get right with God. Trying to follow God, learn how to love him, and learn how to love each other." When he lost his teenage son to leukemia, Hall says, "This family helped me. This family was there for me. That's what they do."^[18]

Hillary Clinton described meeting the leader of the Fellowship in 1993: "Doug Coe, the longtime National Prayer Breakfast organizer, is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship to God."^[27]

Investigative reporter Jeff Sharlet wrote a book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,^[3] as well as an article in Harper's^[28] magazine, describing his experience while serving as an intern in the Fellowship. Sharlet did intensive research in the Fellowship's archives before they were closed to the public. He also spent a month in 2002 living in a Fellowship house near Washington, and wrote a magazine article describing his experiences.^[28] According to his 2008 book,^[3] their theology is an "elite fundamentalism" that fetishizes political power and wealth, consistently opposes labor movements in the US and abroad, and teaches that laissez-faire economic policy is "God's will."

He opines that their theological teaching of instant forgiveness has been useful to powerful men, providing them a convenient excuse for misdeeds or crimes and allowing them to avoid accepting responsibility or accountability for their actions.^[29] Sharlet's book was endorsed by several commentators, including Frank Schaeffer, once a leading figure of the Christian right, who called Sharlet's book a "must read... disturbing tour de force," and Brian McLaren, one of Time's "25 most influential evangelicals" in the U.S., who said: "Jeff Sharlet [is] a confessed non-evangelical whom top evangelical organizations might be wise to hire—and quick—as a consultant."^[30][31] Lisa Miller, who writes a column on religion at Newsweek, called his book "alarmist" and says it paints a "creepy, even cultish picture" of the young, lower-ranking members of the Fellowship.^[18][32]

Leadership model

Jeff Sharlet stated in an NBC Nightly News report that when he was an intern with the Fellowship "we were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao" and that Hitler's genocide "wasn't really an issue for them, it was the strength that he emulated."^[33] He opined that the Fellowship fetishizes power by comparing Jesus to "Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden" as examples of leaders who change the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their 'brothers'".^[16][18] In his book The Family, Sharlet said Fellowship leader Doug Coe preached a leadership model and a personal commitment to Jesus Christ comparable to the blind devotion that Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot demanded from their followers.^[34]

In one videotaped lecture series in 1989, Coe said,

Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had... But they bound themselves together in an agreement... Jesus said, 'You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.' Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people.^[33][34]

In the same series, Coe also compared Jesus's teachings to the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution:

I've seen pictures of young men in the Red Guard of China... They would bring in this young man's mother and father, lay her on the table with a basket on the end, he would take an axe and cut her head off... They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of the mother-father-brother-sister — their own life! That was a covenant. A pledge. That was what Jesus said.^[33][35]

David Kuo, a former White House aide to George W. Bush, said that Coe is using Hitler as a metaphor for commitment. The NBC report said "a close friend of Coe told NBC News that he invokes Hitler to show the power of small groups—for good and bad. And, the friend said, most of the time he talks about Jesus."^[33]

Secrecy

In a report on the Fellowship, the Los Angeles Times found:

[Fellowship members] share a vow of silence about Fellowship activities. Coe and others cite biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting they would not be able to tackle their diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention. Members, including congressmen, invoke this secrecy rule when refusing to discuss just about every aspect of the Fellowship and their involvement in it.^[8]

The Fellowship has long been a secretive organization.^[36][37] The Reverend Rob Schenck, who leads a Bible study on the Hill inspired by C Street, wrote that "all ministries in Washington need to protect the confidence of those we minister to, and I'm sure that's a primary motive for C Street's low profile."^[38] But he added, "I think The Fellowship has been just a tad bit too clandestine."^[38]

Prominent political figures have insisted that confidentiality and privacy are essential to the Fellowship's operation. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan said about the Fellowship, "I wish I could say more about it, but it's working precisely because it is private."^[39] At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, President George H.W. Bush praised Douglas Coe for what he described as "quiet diplomacy, I wouldn't say secret diplomacy."^[15] In 2009, Chris Halverson, son of Fellowship co-founder Richard C. Halverson, said that a culture of pastoral confidentiality is essential to the ministry: "If you talked about it, you would destroy that fellowship."^[2]

In the 1960s, the Fellowship began distributing to involved members of Congress notes that stated that "the group, as such, never takes any formal action, but individuals who participate in the group through their initiative have made possible the activities mentioned."^[40]

In 1974, after several Watergate conspirators had joined the Fellowship, a Los Angeles Times columnist discouraged further inquiries into Washington's "underground prayer movement", i.e. the Fellowship: "They genuinely avoid publicity... they shun it."^[41][42]

In 1975, a member of the Fellowship's inner circle wrote to the group's chief South African operative, that their political initiatives

... have always been misunderstood by 'outsiders.' As a result of very bitter experiences, therefore, we have learned never to commit to paper any discussions or negotiations that are taking place. There is no such thing as a 'confidential' memorandum, and leakage always seems to occur. Thus, I would urge you not to put on paper anything relating to any of the work that you are doing... [unless] you know the recipient well enough to put at the top of the page 'PLEASE DESTROY AFTER READING.'^[43][44]

In 2002, Coe denied that the Fellowship Foundation owns the National Prayer Breakfast. Jennifer Thornett, a Fellowship employee, said that "there is no such thing as the Fellowship".^[8]

Former Republican Senator William Armstrong said the group has "made a fetish of being invisible".^[45]

On January 5, 2010, Fellowship member Bob Hunter gave an interview on national television in which he stated:

But I do agree with you, that The Fellowship is too secret. We don't have a Web site. We don't have – we have a lot of good ministers, 200 ministers doing good works that nobody knows about. I think that's wrong, and there's a debate going on among a lot of people about whether and how we should change that.^[46]

Activities

National Prayer Breakfast

Main article: National Prayer Breakfast

Fellowship Foundation is best known for the National Prayer Breakfast, held each year on the first Thursday of February in Washington, D.C.^[19][29] First held in 1953, the event is now attended by over 3,400 guests including dignitaries from many nations. The President of the United States typically makes an address at the breakfast, following the main speaker's keynote address. The event is hosted by a 24-member committee of members of Congress. Democrats and Republicans serve on the organizing committee, and chairmanship alternates each year between the House and the Senate.

At the National Prayer Breakfast, the President usually arrives an hour early and meets with eight to ten heads of state, usually of small nations, and guests chosen by the Fellowship.^[47][48]

G. Philip Hughes, the executive secretary for the National Security Council in the George H.W. Bush administration, said, "Doug Coe or someone who worked with him would call and say, 'So and so would like to have a word with the president. Do you think you could arrange something?'"^[8] However, Coe has said that the Fellowship does not help foreign dignitaries gain access to U.S. officials. "We never make any commitment, ever, to arrange special meetings with the president, vice president or secretary of State," Coe said. "We would never do it."^[8]

At the 2001 Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearings for State Department officials, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), whose wife was on the board of the Fellowship, lamented that the State Department had blocked then-President Bush from meeting with four foreign heads of state (Rwanda, Macedonia, Congo and Slovakia) at the NPB that year.^[8] Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) said of Nelson's complaint: "I'm not sure a head of state ought to be able to wander over here for the prayer breakfast and, in effect, compel the president of the United States to meet with him as a consequence... Getting these meetings with the president is a process that's usually very carefully vetted and worked up. Now sort of this back door has sort of evolved."^[8]

"It [the NPB] totally circumvents the State Department and the usual vetting within the administration that such a meeting would require," an anonymous government informant told sociologist D. Michael Lindsay. "If Doug Coe can get you some face time with the President of the United States, then you will take his call and seek his friendship. That's power."^[49]

Year	Keynote Speaker	Chairpersons
2006	King Abdullah II of Jordan and humanitarian/musician Paul Hewson (Bono)^[50]	Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Mark Pryor (D-AR)
2007	Francis S. Collins, director of the Human Genome Project	Reps. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO) and Jo Ann Davis (R-VA)
2008	Ward Brehm, Chairman of the United States African Development Foundation^[51]	Senators Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Mike Enzi (R-WY)
2009	Former Prime Minister Tony Blair^[52]	Reps. Heath Shuler (D-NC) and Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
2010	Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero andSecretary of State Hillary Clinton	Senators Johnny Isakson (R-GA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)^[53]
2011	Screenwriter Randall Wallace^[54]	Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL) and former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ)^[55]
2012	AuthorEric Metaxas^[56]	Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL)^[56]
2013	Ben Carson, M.D., Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital^[57]	Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL)^[57]
2014	Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development^[58]	Reps. Janice Hahn (D-CA) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX)^[58]
2015	Darrell Waltrip, Former NASCAR driver^[59]	Senators Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) and Roger Wicker (R-MS)^[59]
2016	Television producer Mark Burnettand actress Roma Downey^[60]	Reps. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA)^[61]
2017	Chaplain of the US Senate Barry Black^[62]	Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and John Boozman (R-AR)^[63]
2018	Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)^[64]	Reps. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and Charlie Crist (D-FL)^[65]
2019	Gary Haugen, CEO of International Justice Mission^[66]	Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and James Lankford (R-OK)^[67]

Prayer Breakfast movement

A primary activity of the Fellowship is to develop small support groups for politicians, including Senators and members of Congress, Executive Branch officials, military officers, foreign leaders and dignitaries, businesspersons, and other influential individuals. Prayer groups have met in the White House, the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense.^[68] By the early 1970s, prayer groups, breakfasts, and luncheons, including those sponsored by ICL, had become commonplace in the Pentagon.^[69]

J. Edwin Orr, an advisor to Billy Graham and friend of Abraham Vereide, helped shape the prayer breakfast movement that grew out of ICL.^[70]

Role in international conflicts

The Fellowship was a behind-the-scenes player at the Camp David Middle East accords in 1978, working with President Jimmy Carter to issue a worldwide call to prayer with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Beginand Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.^[8] Carter hosted Coe and former Senator Harold E. Hughes, the President of the Fellowship Foundation, for a luncheon at the White House on September 26, 1978.^[71] Six weeks later, the President and the First Lady traveled by Marine helicopter to Cedar Point Farm, Hughes' home on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where he placed a telephone call to Menachim Begin.^[72]

Author Jeff Sharlet has criticized the fellowship's influence on US foreign policy. He argues that Coe and the "networking" (or formation of prayer cells) between foreign dictators and US politicians, defense contractors, and industry leaders has facilitated military aid for repressive foreign regimes.^[29][73] Regarding his relationships with foreign dictators, Coe said in 2007, "I never invite them. They come to me. And I do what Jesus did: I don't turn my back to any one. You know, the Bible is full of mass murderers."^[74]

Private diplomacy

The Los Angeles Times examined the Fellowship Foundation's ministry records and archives (before they were sealed), as well as documents obtained from several presidential libraries and found that the Fellowship Foundation had extraordinary access and significant influence over U.S. foreign affairs for the last 75 years.^[8]

The Fellowship has funded the travel expenses of members of Congress to various hot spots throughout the globe, including Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Al.) to Darfur,^[75] Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.) to Lebanon,^[76] Rep. Aderholt to The Balkans,^[77][78] and Reps John Carter (R-Tex.) and Joseph Pitts (R.-Pa.) to Belarus.^[79][80]

In 2002, Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan on a fact-finding congressional trip, meeting with the leaders of both Muslim countries. According to Pitts, "The first thing we did when we met with [Afghan] President Karzai and [then Pakistan] President Musharraf was to say, 'We're here officially representing the Congress; we'll report back to the speaker, our leaders, our committees, our government. But we're here also because we're best friends... We're members of the same prayer group'".^[8]

Coe has been dispatched to foreign governments with the blessing of Congressional representatives and has helped arrange meetings overseas for U.S. officials and members of Congress.^[8] In 1979, for instance, he messaged the Saudi Arabian Minister of Commerce and asked him to meet with a Defense Department official who was visiting Riyadh, the capital.^[8]

The Fellowship has brought controversial international figures to Washington to meet with U.S. officials. Among them are former Salvadoran Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who in 2002 was found liable by a civil jury in Florida for the torture of thousands of civilians in the 1980s. He was invited to the 1984 prayer breakfast, along with Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, then head of the Honduran armed forces who was linked to a death squad and the Central Intelligence Agency.^[8][81]

Coe was quoted in a rare interview regarding the Fellowship's associations with despots as explaining, "The people that are involved in this association of people around the world are the worst and the best, some are total despots. Some are totally religious. You can find what you want to find."^[8]

Coe also has claimed that the Fellowship does not help foreign dignitaries gain access to U.S. officials. "We never make any commitment, ever, to arrange special meetings with the president, vice president or secretary of State", Coe said. "We would never do it". The LA Times found that "the archives tell another story".^[8]

In January 1991, Fellowship associate and financial supporter Michael Timmis met President Pierre Buyoya of Burundi on behalf of the Fellowship, then flew to Kenya with Arthur (Gene) Dewey, the former second-in-command at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Sam Owen, then living in Nairobi.^[82] Timmis wrote that he had obtained permission to fly over Tanzanian air space, even though the U.S. Department of State had ordered American citizens to stay clear of Tanzania.

The Fellowship has promoted reconciliation between the warring leaders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda. In 2001, the Fellowship helped arrange a secret meeting at The Cedars between Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame — one of the first discreet meetings between the two African leaders that led to a peace accord in July 2002.^[8]

In 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Fellowship helped to persuade South African Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi not to engage in a civil war with Nelson Mandela.^[83]

According to Jeff Sharlet, Senator Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) is a Fellowship member who leads a secret "cell" of leading U.S. Senators and Representatives to influence U.S. foreign policy.^[84] Sharlet reports that the group has stamped much of U.S. foreign policy through a group of Senators and affiliated religious organizations forming the "Values Action Team" or "VAT".^[84] One victory for the group was Brownback's North Korea Human Rights Act, which establishes a confrontational stance toward North Korea and shifts funds for humanitarian aid from the UN to Christian organizations.^[84]

The Fellowship is behind an international project called Youth Corps, a network of Christian youth groups that attract teenagers, and only later steer them to Jesus.^[28][85] The Youth Corps web site does not mention an affiliation to the Fellowship or religion.^[86] A non-public, internal Fellowship document, "Regional Reports, January 3, 2002," lists some of the nations where Youth Corps programs are in operation: Russia; Ukraine; Romania; India; Pakistan; Uganda; Nepal; Bhutan; Ecuador; Honduras; Peru.^[28][85]

Fellowship funds have gone to an orphanage in India, a program in Uganda that provides schooling, and a development group in Peru.^[8]

The Fellowship and Uganda

In a November 2009 NPR interview, Sharlet alleged that Ugandan Fellowship associates David Bahati and Nsaba Buturo were behind the recent proposed bill in Uganda that called for the death penalty for gays.^[87]Bahati cited a conversation with Fellowship members in 2008 as having inspired the legislation.^[88]

Sharlet reveals that David Bahati, the Uganda legislator backing the bill, reportedly first floated the idea of executing gays during The Family's Uganda National Prayer Breakfast in 2008.^[89] Sharlet described Bahati as a "rising star" in the Fellowship who has attended the National Prayer Breakfast in the United States and, until the news over the gay execution law broke, was scheduled to attend the 2010 U.S. National Prayer Breakfast.^[89]

Fellowship member Bob Hunter gave an interview to NPR in December 2009 in which he acknowledged Bahati's connection but argued that no American associates support the bill.^[90] President Barack Obama, in his address to the Fellowship at their National Prayer Breakfast in early 2010, directly criticized the Uganda legislation targeting gay people for execution. In calling for a renewed emphasis on faith and civility, Obama stated, "We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary [Clinton] mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda."^[91]

Relationships with other organizations

The Fellowship Foundation is linked to numerous other organizations:

Wilberforce Foundation^[2] IRS Form 990 filings confirm that Wilberforce is related to and shares common management with the Fellowship Foundation.^[92]
Traditional Values Coalition. Uses the C Street Center for "faith-based diplomacy"^[16] in the fight against what Louis P. Sheldon calls the "Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition."^[93]
Three Swallows Foundation^[94][95][96]
International Center for Religion & Diplomacy^[97]
Young Life International^[98]
Trees for the Future^[99]
National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise^[99]
Cornerstone Development^[99]
World Concern^[99]
Project Mercy^[99]
Timothy Trust^[99]
Associación Desarrollo en Democracia^[99]
World Vision^[100]

Current and former members

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding i*t*.

Handling of politicians' extramarital affairs

In 2009, the Fellowship received media attention in connection with three Republican politicians who reportedly engaged in extra-marital affairs.^{[7][103][104][105]} Two of them, Senator John Ensign, chairman of the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate and the fourth-ranking member in his party's Senate leadership, and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, immediate past Chair of the Republican Governors Association and U.S. Representative from 1995 to 2001, were considering running for President in 2012.^{[7][103][104][106][107]} The affairs of Ensign and then-Congressman Chip Pickering, R-Miss., took place while they were living at the C Street Center.

Ensign affair

Ensign, a Fellowship member and longtime resident of the C Street Center, admitted in June 2009 to an extra-marital affair with Cindy Hampton. Hampton was Ensign's campaign treasurer and the wife of his co-chief of staff, longtime friend and fellow worshipper Doug Hampton.^[108]

The Washington Post reported that the C Street House "pulsed with backstage intrigue, in the days and months before the Sanford and Ensign scandals" and that residents tried to talk each politician into ending his philandering. An emotional meeting was reportedly held to discuss "forgiveness" between Hampton, the husband of Ensign's mistress, and Senator Tom Coburn.^[7] Coburn, with Timothy and David Coe, leaders of the Fellowship, attempted to intervene to end Ensign's affair in February 2008 by meeting with Hampton and convincing Ensign to write a letter to Hampton's wife breaking off the affair.^{[7][103][104]} Ensign was chaperoned by Coburn and other members from C Street, where Ensign lives with Coburn, to post the letter.^{[7][103][104]} Ensign called Hampton's wife hours later to tell her to ignore the letter and flew out to spend the weekend with her in Nevada.^{[7][103][104]}

Doug Hampton said he was not directly advised by the Fellowship to cover up Ensign's affair with his wife, but instead to "be cool". After losing his job with Ensign and losing a subsequent lobbying job, Hampton has said that was in financial distress and reached out to Coburn—a C Street resident—in an effort to reach an agreement with Ensign.^[108] Coburn has denied negotiating a deal, but has stated that he "had worked to 'bring two families to a closure of a very painful episode'".^[108] Hampton has expressed the belief that his friends at C Street abandoned him by choosing to close ranks around Ensign, and that for them, the episode was "[more] about preserving John [Ensign], preserving the Republican party...preserving C Street" than about doing the right thing.^[108]

Ensign's efforts to cover up his affair were investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and the Department of Justice.^[109]

Role in affair of Mark Sanford

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who served as a Congressman from 1995 to 2001, admitted in June 2009 to having an extramarital affair and said he had sought counseling at the C Street Center during the months before the news broke.^[110][111] Sanford "was a frequent visitor to the home for prayer meetings and meals during his time in Congress".^[105]

Pickering case

Chip Pickering was a U.S. Representative from Mississippi from 1997 to 2008. In 2009, his wife filed suit against Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, his former college sweetheart and alleged mistress.^[105][112] Mrs. Pickering alleged that her husband restarted his relationship with Byrd while he was "a United States congressman prior to and while living in the well-known C Street Complex in Washington, D.C."^[105][112]

C Street Center

Main article: C Street Center

The Fellowship runs a $1.8 million three-story brick mansion in Washington D.C. known as "C Street."^{[113][114][115][116][117][118]} It is the former convent for nearby St. Peter's Church. It is located a short distance from the United States Capitol. The structure has 12 bedrooms, nine bathrooms, five living rooms, four dining rooms, three offices, a kitchen, and a small "chapel".^[8]

The facility houses mostly Republican members of Congress.^[7][8][119] The house is also the locale for:

Wednesday prayer breakfasts for United States Senators, which have been attended by Senators Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, John Ensign, Susan Collins and Hillary Clinton.
Tuesday night dinners for members of Congress and other Fellowship associates.
An annual Ambassador Luncheon.^[120] The 2006 event was attended by ambassadors from Turkey, Macedonia, Pakistan, Jordan, Algeria, Armenia, Egypt, Belarus, Mongolia, Latvia, and Moldova.
Receptions for foreign dignitaries, including the Prime Minister of Australia.^[who?]

C Street has been the subject of controversy over its claimed tax status as a church, the ownership of the property and its connection to the Fellowship, and the reportedly subsidized benefits the facility provides to members of Congress.

Property holdings

Arlington

Fellowship Foundation purchased a large old house in 1978, named the Doubleday Mansion. The home which also has a detached two story garage and a gardener's cottage, is zoned as a worship and teaching center. The home is used as a center for Bible studies, counseling, hymn sings, life mentoring, prayer groups, prayer breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, and hospitality receptions for international reconciliation and conflict resolution initiatives. The home was once surrounded by cedar trees and so was renamed Cedars. Its location is near Georgetown University in the Arlington Woodmont community. It is a historic landmark house and is situated adjacent to a commemorative recreational county park, once the homestead of writer C. F. Henry.^[121]

Coe has described Cedars as a place "committed to the care of the underprivileged, even though it looks very wealthy." He noted that people might say, "Why don't you sell a chandelier and help poor people?" Answering his own question, Coe said, "The people who come here have tremendous influence over kids." Private documents indicate that Cedars was purchased so that "people throughout the world who carry heavy responsibilities could meet in Washington to think together, plan together and pray together about personal and public problems and opportunities."^[8] Cedars is host to dozens of prayer breakfasts, luncheons and dinners for ambassadors, congressional representatives, foreign religious leaders and many others.

In March 1990, Youth With A Mission (YWAM; organization which also previously owned the C Street Center) purchased a nearby property located at 2200 24th Street North for $580,000.^[122] The property was used as another gathering place for bible study. Ownership of 2200 24th Street was transferred to the C Street Center on May 6, 1992, and again to the Fellowship Foundation on October 25, 2002. This house had been owned by Timothy Coe, who sold the property to his father, Douglas Coe on November 30, 1989, for $580,000.

A second property, located at 2224 24th Street North and assessed at $916,000, is used as a men's mentoring ministry, known as a Navigator house. The property was purchased by Jerome A. Lewis and Co. in 1986, and sold to the Wilberforce Foundation in 1987. In 2007, the Wilberforce Foundation transferred it to the Fellowship Foundation for $1 million. Lewis is a trustee emeritus of the Trinity Forum and the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Petro-Lewis Corporation.^[123]

Douglas Coe once owned a lot at 2560 North 23rd Road, which he sold to Ohio Congressman Tony P. Hall (D-OH) and his wife on September 22, 1987, for $100,000.^[124] Upon leaving Congress in 2002, Hall donated some of his excess campaign funds including $20,000 to the Fellowship Foundation on September 4, 2002,^[125] $1,500 to the Wilberforce Foundation,^[126] and $1,000 to the Jonathan Coe Memorial of Annapolis, Maryland during the 2001 campaign cycle.^[127]

The residence located at 2244 24th Street North, assessed at $1,458,800, is owned by Merle Morgan, whose wife, Edita, is on the board of the Cedars.^[128] It also is identified as the offices of the greeting card firm of Morgan Bros. Corp. (d/b/a Capitol Publishing).

LeRoy Rooker, the one-time treasurer of Cedars and former Director of the Family Policy Compliance Office at the U.S. Department of Education, and his wife own 2222 24th Street North.^[129]

Arthur W. Lindsley, a Senior Fellow at the C.S. Lewis Institute owns 2226 24th Street North.^[130]

Cedar Point Farm

According to White House records from 1978, President Jimmy Carter traveled to Cedar Point Farm by Marine helicopter on November 12, 1978, to attend a Fellowship prayer and discussion group.^[72] President Carter placed a call to Menachim Begin while at Cedar Point Farm.^[72] The White House records reflect that Cedar Point Farm was owned by Harold Hughes, a former Senator from Iowa and the President of the Fellowship Foundation.^[72] Cedar Point Farm was later used by the Wilberforce Foundation.

Other Fellowship properties

"Southeast White House", located at 2909 Pennsylvania Avenue, Southeast, which is a center of urban reconciliation, youth mentoring, community prayer breakfasts, Bible studies, life principle teaching and racial relational healing initiatives. University students come for internships in urban reconciliation and in community service for the bereft.^[131] This property is assessed at $736,310 for the 2009 tax year.^[132]
"19th Street House," a two-story, brick apartment building located at 859 19th Street NE,^[2] in the Trinidad neighborhood of northeast Washington, D.C., which is assessed at $358,250 for the 2009 tax year.^[133] The 19th Street Center is used for afterschool activities.
Mount Oak Estates, Annapolis, Maryland. One residential property, formerly owned by Timothy Coe, was sold to Wilberforce Foundation, Inc. for $1.1 million. A second residence is owned by David and Alden Coe and a third is owned by Fellowship associate Marty Sherman. Another nearby property, 1701 Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard, was owned by the Fellowship Foundation.
Until 1994, the Fellowship Foundation owned the aged French revival historic "Fellowship House", the former base of Vereide's ministry located at 2817 Woodland Drive in Washington, D.C., which was sold to the Ourisman Chevrolet family for $2.5 million and which was then fully architecturally and historically restored and preserved.

Finances

The Fellowship Foundation, which since 1935 has conducted no public fundraising programs, relies totally on private donations. In 2007, the group received nearly $16.8 million to support the 400 ministries.^[22] Among the Fellowship's key supporters are billionaire investor Paul N. Temple, a former executive of Esso (Exxon) and the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Three Swallows Foundation. Between 1998 and 2007, Three Swallows made grants totaling $1,777,650 to the International Foundation, including $171,500 in 2004,^[94] $203,500 in 2005,^[95] and $145,500 in 2006.^[96]

Another supporter, Jerome (Jerry) A. Lewis, established Denver-based Downing Street Foundation to provide support to three organizations: the Fellowship Foundation, Denver Leadership Foundation, and Young Life. Between 1999 and 2007, Downing Street donated at least $756,000 to the Family,^[134] in addition to allowing the group to use its "retreat center."

Madelynn Winstead, a Downing Street director, was paid $21,600 by the Fellowship Foundation as managing director of the retreat center.^[135]

The Kingdom Fund (Kingdom Oil Christian Foundation t/a Twin Cities Christian Foundation) also provides support to the Family and World Vision.^[136]

The Fellowship Foundation earns more than $1,000,000 annually through its sponsorship of the National Prayer Breakfast.^[22]

References

http://www.jedmorey.com/tag/douglas-coe/

rev of the fam bk jeff s

no lnx

The Republican Convention was going rather poorly. The crowd was homogenous, the speakers were flat and the enthusiasm in the room was manufactured at best. And Clint Eastwood hadn’t even begun a rambling conversation with a chair. The Republican Party’s best hope for the convention was for its candidate to appear “human.”

Although “Eastwooding” would eventually enter the American lexicon and Willard Romney would do his best to connect with his fellow Homo sapiens, it was a quiet delegate from New York who captured the essence of the modern GOP.

Wading in among his fellow delegates, billionaire industrialist David Koch smugly took in the proceedings. Though the convention offered little in the way of celebration, he told a group of supporters at a nearby reception later that he and his brother, Charles, were “in this for the long haul.” Indeed they are. The Koch brothers are part of a well-established movement designed to vilify liberalism and many of the core tenets of democracy.

They are hardly original. But they are unique in that they have elevated their insidious brand of propaganda to a high art form. Groups such as the nativist Know Nothings of the 1850s or the John Birch Society of the 1950s espoused similar hate-filled political messages as today’s GOP but they flamed out as quickly as their stars rose. In terms of longevity, the Kochs and their inspired think tanks such as Americans for Prosperity—busy these days attempting to deny Hurricane Sandy relief funds to our region—have succeeded where their predecessors have failed. For the first time in American history, a small band of angry white men has galvanized a vast number of Americans and irrevocably turned public policy on its ear. The modern American conservative movement has finally arrived.

Much of this has been accomplished through the elaborate and coordinated messaging emanating from the right-wing propaganda machine. Theirs is a two-part strategy. The first is to consistently contend that the media have a liberal bias when the opposite is true. Talk radio is virtually owned by the right wing. Fox News has become an insanely biased juggernaut and the print media, with few exceptions, has essentially fallen in line with the conservative agenda. Even the majority of the New York newspapers—The Daily News, Wall Street Journal, Newsday and New York Post—endorsed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. But to hear conservative pundits talk about media bias, one would think the New York Times is the only newspaper on the planet.

The second part of the strategy is to plant false information from seemingly credible sources with patriotic names such as the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity and the American Enterprise Institute. Representatives from these organizations, which are funded by billionaires such as the Koch brothers, routinely appear on right wing talk shows spouting bogus statistics. These sources are then quoted in newspaper articles that are again mentioned in on-air reports. This is what is known as “the echo chamber.”

The rationale behind their approach is simple and time-tested. Over time repetitious lies begin to have the resonance of truth, no matter how far fetched. Selling an idea as its exact opposite, a mirrored reality, via the continual amplification of such lies has been an effective strategy employed by tyrannical regimes since time immemorial. For example, Adolf Hitler extolled the virtues of physicality, and gushed over the domineering blond-haired, fair-skinned Aryan, who was tall, reasoned and even-tempered. But Hitler himself possessed none of these traits. He was short, pudgy, greasy, and ill tempered.

Likewise, the right-wing echo chamber has been successful in instilling a backward self-loathing belief system among its followers who blithely campaign on behalf of billionaires.

Witness the retired worker receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits carrying a sign bashing entitlements at a Tea Party rally. Or the middle-income wage earner resisting tax increases on the wealthiest Americans because they’ve been told it smacks of socialism. Or perhaps the enraged grandmother who believes “Obamacare” is a Communist plot, even though the concept was hatched in a conservative think tank and first passed into law by a Republican governor.

Brilliantly, there is no single face of modern conservatism, only a secret cabal of dangerous men such as Charles and David Koch, who work behind the scenes to pull the last remaining threads from our democracy. In another stroke of genius, the GOP has joined forces with Christian Fundamentalists to misappropriate scripture while wrapped in the flag to sell the American people on perverted interpretations of the teachings of Christ.

The GOP has wed itself to fundamentalist leaders such as Douglas Coewho, since 1969, as the head of a secret society known as “The Family,” has presided over several Washington “prayer cells” that have been linked to some of the most deadly despots in modern times such as Indonesia’s General Suharto, Haiti’s Papa Doc Duvalier and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Not only have Coe’s associates been linked to some of the most heinous genocidal acts in history, they were all at one time members of Family-sponsored prayer cells. Genocide, it seems, is easily overlooked in Coe’s movement so long as lip service is paid to Christ and oil and other natural resources are provided to well-heeled Family members.

Beyond warping the Bible to suit the Republican ideology, there are secular issues that have been upended by its truth-twisting dogma. The vilification of labor in this country, for one, is sickening and self-defeating. To wit, only 12 percent of the American workforce is unionized, but conservative pundits would have the public believe that unions are wholly responsible for our employment woes and lack of competitiveness. They would also have us believe that Social Security is collapsing under its own weight even though it is, by design, self sustaining and fully funded.

Equally as disturbing is the malicious stance toward immigrants in the United States. The extent of Republican soul-searching post election was to examine strategies going forward that would deal with the problem of changing demographics: how to woo more Latinos into the fold instead of actually adopting more progressive policies.

In fact, Republicans were anything but contrite in the wake of electoral defeat. Forgotten were the insults to women, equating nearly half of America with system-sucking leeches, and the notion of self deportation. The GOP has built a platform based upon misogyny, fervent nationalism, elaborate propaganda, and suppression of intellectualism—each one a hallmark of fascism. Others include high levels of incarceration, secrecy, militarism, and anti-union rhetoric.

These are the enduring legacies of a party gone horribly wrong. The problem we face is that the men behind the curtain believe this past election was a momentary setback, a bump in the road. But this stands to reason. They are, after all, in this for the “long haul.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family:_The_Secret_Fundamentalism_at_the_Heart_of_American_Power

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power is a 2008 book by American journalist Jeff Sharlet. The book investigates the political power of The Family or The Fellowship, a secretive fundamentalist Christian association led by Douglas Coe. Sharlet has stated that the organization fetishizes power by comparing Jesus to “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden” as examples of leaders who change the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”.^[1][2][3][4] It was published by HarperCollins.

One year after the book's initial publication, the sex scandals of prominent members of the Family, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, as well as accusations that the Family was illegally subsidizing the rent of members of Congress and involved in the proposed bill which would impose the death penalty for homosexuality in Uganda, thrust the notoriously secretive organisation into the national spotlight.

Beliefs and theology

Journalist Jeff Sharlet did intensive research in the Fellowship's archives, before they were closed to the public. He also spent a month in 2002 living in a Fellowship house near Washington, DC, and wrote a magazine article describing his experiences.^[5] In his 2008 book about the Family,^[6] he criticized their theology as an "elite fundamentalism" that fetishizes political power and wealth, consistently opposes labor movements in the U.S. and abroad, and teaches that laissez-faire economic policy is "God's will." He criticized their theology of instant forgiveness for powerful men as providing a convenient excuse for elites who commit misdeeds or crimes, allowing them to avoid accepting responsibility or accountability for their actions.^[7]

Controversial leadership model

Jeff Sharlet and Andrea Mitchell have described Fellowship leader Doug Coe as preaching a leadership model and a personal commitment to Jesus Christ comparable to the blind devotion that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot demanded from their followers.^[8] In one videotaped lecture series in 1989, Coe said:

Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had... But they bound themselves together in an agreement... Two years before they moved into Poland, these three men had... systematically a plan drawn out... to annihilate the entire Polish population and destroy by numbers every single house... every single building in Warsaw and then to start on the rest of Poland." Coe adds that it worked; they killed six and a half million "Polish people." Though he calls Nazis "these enemies of ours," he compares their commitment to Jesus' demands: "Jesus said, ‘You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.' Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people.^[9][8]

Coe also compared Jesus's teachings to the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution:

I’ve seen pictures of young men in the Red Guard of China... they would bring in this young man’s mother and father, lay her on the table with a basket on the end, he would take an axe and cut her head off... They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of the mother-father-brother-sister – their own life! That was a covenant. A pledge. That was what Jesus said.^[9][10]

Jeff Sharlet told NBC News that when he was anintern with the Fellowship "we were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao" and that Hitler's genocide "wasn't an issue for them, it was the strength that he emulated."^[9]

Reception

Sharlet's book was endorsed by several commentators, including Frank Schaeffer, once a leading figure of the Christian right, who called Sharlet's book a "must read ... disturbing tour de force," and Brian McLaren, one of Time"s "25 most influential evangelicals" in the U.S., who said: “Jeff Sharlet [is] a confessed non-evangelical whom top evangelical organizations might be wise to hire—and quick—as a consultant."^[11][12]

Lisa Miller, who writes a column on religion at Newsweek, called his book "alarmist" and says it paints a "creepy, even cultish picture" of the young, lower-ranking members of the Fellowship.^[1][13]

Rudy Nelson, an uncredited screenwriter for the movie The Blob, has disputed assertions about the film made on pp. 181–2 of Sharlet's book. He denies that the film was intended as a metaphor for Communism, or that the movie was conceived at the 1957 National Prayer Breakfast, where director Irvin Yeaworth, a maker of evangelical films, met screenwriter Kate Phillips.^[14][15]

References

^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family:_The_Secret_Fundamentalism_at_the_Heart_of_American_Power#cite_ref-LisaMiller_1-1) Miller, Lisa (September 8, 2009). "House of Worship". Newsweek. Retrieved August 14, 2009.
^ Jeff Sharlet, The Family (Harper, 2008), p. 259.
^ Sharlet, Jeff (July 21, 2009). "Sex and power inside "the C Street House:{":(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". Salon.com. Retrieved November 28, 2009.
^ "Jeff Sharlet on "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power:{":(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". Democracy Now!. August 12, 2009. Retrieved November 28, 2009.
^ Sharlet, Jeff (March 2003). "Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats". Harper's Magazine. Archived from the original on July 1, 2009. Retrieved July 20, 2009.
^ Sharlet, Jeff (2008). The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-055979-3.
^ Sharlet, Jeff (2008). *The Family: Power, Politics and Fundamentalism's Shadow Elite*. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 0-7022-3694-2.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family:_The_Secret_Fundamentalism_at_the_Heart_of_American_Power#cite_ref-SharletP254t5_8-1) Jeff Sharlet, The Family (Harper, 2008), pp. 254–5.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family:The_Secret_Fundamentalism_at_the_Heart_of_American_Power#cite_ref-poli-ties_9-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family:The_Secret_Fundamentalism_at_the_Heart_of_American_Power#cite_ref-poli-ties_9-2) Mitchell, Andrea; Popkin, James 'Jim' (April 3, 2008). "Political ties to a secretive religious group". NBC News. Retrieved January 28, 2010.
^ Jeff Sharlet, The Family (Harper, 2008), p. 255.
^ Book review quotes, Amazon, ASIN 0060560053.
^ "Quoting book reviews for The Family", *The Revealer*.
^ "Lisa Miller", Newsweek (biography).
^ "DOES ANYONE ELSE FIND IT PECULIAR...:". BrothersJudd Blog. October 2008. Retrieved July 17, 2011.
^ "The Blob and I". Books and Culture. 2008. Retrieved July 17,2011.

External links

hide <ul style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" width="%225%22" height="%2213%22%3E" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="%222.5%22" cy="%229%22" r="%222.5%22" fill="%22%23222%22/%3E" c="C" e="E" display="display" inline="inline" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap" line-height="line-height" inherit="inherit" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data"><li class="nv-view" style="margin: 0px; display: inline; word-spacing: -0.125em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:The_Fellowship" title="Template:The Fellowship" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><abbr title="View this template" style="border: none; cursor: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; background: none transparent; box-shadow: none; padding: 0px;">v</abbr></a></li><li class="nv-talk" style="margin: 0px; display: inline; word-spacing: -0.125em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:The_Fellowship" title="Template talk:The Fellowship" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><abbr title="Discuss this template" style="border: none; cursor: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; background: none transparent; box-shadow: none; padding: 0px;">t</abbr></a></li><li class="nv-edit" style="margin: 0px; display: inline; word-spacing: -0.125em;"><a class="external text" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:The_Fellowship&action=edit" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none !important; padding: 0px !important;"><abbr title="Edit this template" style="border: none; cursor: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; background: none transparent; box-shadow: none; padding: 0px;">e</abbr></a></li></ul> The Fellowship	hide <ul style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" width="%225%22" height="%2213%22%3E" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="%222.5%22" cy="%229%22" r="%222.5%22" fill="%22%23222%22/%3E" c="C" e="E" display="display" inline="inline" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap" line-height="line-height" inherit="inherit" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data"><li class="nv-view" style="margin: 0px; display: inline; word-spacing: -0.125em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:The_Fellowship" title="Template:The Fellowship" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><abbr title="View this template" style="border: none; cursor: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; background: none transparent; box-shadow: none; padding: 0px;">v</abbr></a></li><li class="nv-talk" style="margin: 0px; display: inline; word-spacing: -0.125em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:The_Fellowship" title="Template talk:The Fellowship" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><abbr title="Discuss this template" style="border: none; cursor: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; background: none transparent; box-shadow: none; padding: 0px;">t</abbr></a></li><li class="nv-edit" style="margin: 0px; display: inline; word-spacing: -0.125em;"><a class="external text" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:The_Fellowship&action=edit" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none !important; padding: 0px !important;"><abbr title="Edit this template" style="border: none; cursor: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: initial; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; background: none transparent; box-shadow: none; padding: 0px;">e</abbr></a></li></ul> The Fellowship
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Criticism	The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
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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 the National 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:

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 sent Senator 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 a statement of purpose for part of the African mission:

THE EXECUTION OF THE VISION

A. A congressman 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.

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 â??Communistsâ? 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, â??build 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 â??Communistsâ? 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. â??We work with power where we can,â? the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, â??build 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 â??quiet diplomacy, I wouldn't say secret diplomacy,â? as an â??ambassador of faith.â? Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, â??making 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 leadersâ??among 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.

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[edit]

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 a staunch 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.

The Family bak

History

Influence

Beliefs and theology

Finances

See also

History

Influence

Beliefs and theology

Leadership model

Secrecy

Activities

National Prayer Breakfast

Prayer Breakfast movement

Role in international conflicts

Private diplomacy

The Fellowship and Uganda

Relationships with other organizations

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Handling of politicians' extramarital affairs

Ensign affair

Role in affair of Mark Sanford

Pickering case

C Street Center

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Arlington

Cedar Point Farm

Other Fellowship properties

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References

Beliefs and theology

Controversial leadership model

Reception

References

External links