Family Matters

First rule about the Family is that you don’t talk about the Family….

They prefer to keep things underground. But Jeff Sharlet, Vanity Fair columnist, actually lived among the group for several months, and he’s talking. His book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power is an expose on the group that has perked the ears of Christians in both political parties.

The Family is a group of Jesus ‘Followers.” They dislike the name “Christian,” as it’s a loaded word that alienates themselves from Muslims and Jews who, they say, can also follow Jesus. After all, Jesus wasn’t a Christian.

The group lives in a house on C. Street, in Washington DC. It is a bipartisan group that has been described by prominent evangelical Christians as the most politically well-connected fundamentalist organization in the US. Many high profile names have had some connection to the group. Mark Sanford and John Ensign are a few members of note lately.

This group, which is so covert that it sometimes denies whether it is even a group, is just now receiving media attention, after having been in existence since the 30s. Their underground power is a tad disconcerting, to say the least. Their secrecy has caused all sorts of allegations to be laid upon them; Communists, crusaders for a new world order, elitists, to name a few.

It would be an extreme generalization to dismiss the whole organization as “evil,” for the actions of a few of their members. They do a lot of good. For instance, in 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with unlikely pair, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. A peace treaty soon followed.

In 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a similar meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord.

This interdenominational [and interfaith] group is responsible for organizing the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, which every sitting president since 1953 has been a part of, as has many dignitaries from other nations.

Founded in 1935, The Family is a group of mostly Republicans, but a few Democrats, which is currently led by Doug Coe. It’s a forum for public officials to hold Bible studies, prayer meetings, worship services, and just a general support system.

Hillary Clinton, though not a member, has said, the group "is a unique presence in Washington,” and Coe is “a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

The group refers to themselves ‘the new chosen,” believing that all leadership is chosen by God. Most Christians believe this. However, The Family seems to have a strange twist on a works-based salvation that they, the “chosen,” are exempt from.

I quickly found out that The Family incorporates a lot of good things that would seem agreeable with most churches, takes them a little too far.

For instance, they are so focused on the “person of Christ.” Saying they worship a person, not an ideology. But how do they define this Christ? They meet in groups, or “cells,” believing that “Christ speaks directly to his anointed,” all but eliminating the need for scripture or church. Focusing on “the person of Christ” is appropriate. The thing is, different people have different notions of Christ. So it is curious where they are gaining their knowledge of their respective “persons of Christ.” There must be a standard by which to measure.

Sharlet writes extensively about the “secrecy” of the group. Indeed, confidentiality is appropriate in support systems. But as, Rev. Rob Schenck who leads a Bible study on the Hill inspired by C Street, wrote on his blog, “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.” But he added, “I think The Fellowship has been just a tad bit too clandestine.” Schenck has himself sent a letter to Sanford calling for his resignation.


•Origins

They are affiliated with the Oxford Group, an organization that strives to reach out to the elites, the rich, the powerful; the “Up and Out,” if you will.

He calls attention to Coe’s references to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Coe claims he was merely using their model of influence to further the Christ’s message.
The Oxford Group seems to have a strange fetish with Communism. They eschew Communism, while deifying dictators, because getting their message out is all about subversion.

Sharlet tells us, “There was bad subversion, like that of the Vietcong, and good subversion, also like that of the Vietcong, only in the name of Jesus. A subtle practice of persuasion.” They were obsessed with obtaining strength, and gaining a stronghold.

They seem to have a somewhat fascist mentality; strength through numbers. Though when I asked Sharlet how they were different, he was quick to point out three distinctions, “The Family doesn't admire violence, it's internationalist, and it doesn't revolve around a hated either.”

They believe the best way to preserve this strength is to be as “underground” as possible.

Frank Buchman founded the Oxford Group. His ideas to transform the government into "a new social order under the dictatorship of the spirit of God,” Vereide took absolutely literally.

After a little more digging on The Oxford Group, and their shadowy past, I realized that though they invoke Christian morality, and may even have the audacity to call themselves “Christian,’ a source tells me they are more about right and wrong, than embracing the entire Christian ideology. He noted that while The Oxford group was bad, that some of the offshoots of the group were positive and good. One of which is Up With People.


He tells us of founder, Abraham Vereide’s vision for The Family. He wanted to be missionaries that focused on the powerful, figuring that if the more powerful lives in leadership were changed, it would ultimately change many others. Sharlet calls this “trickle-down evangelism”

This is not a bad idea in itself. There are groups and Bible studies for all sorts of groups. It would seem a fantastic idea to narrow in on the most powerful. The Bible tells Christians to pray for their leaders because of their huge position of responsibility.

But it was so much more than this. The group takes shady dealings to a whole new level, with the twisting of economics and theology to promote their agenda. Sharlet calls it “the theology of the dollar,” In which, “First comes capitalism then comes Christ.”


Doug Coe and The Family played an integral part in Watergate felon, Chuck Colson‘s conversion. He has since reformed and been a prominent and respected Christian leader. But Colson told WORLD magazine that he now has concerns about politicians using the C Street group, for example, as a replacement for church. "It's a mistake," he said. "A leading figure ought to belong to a church." He is referring to the accountability that a church would provide, instead of an elite group, which might be inclined to interpret scripture very loosely.

Interview with Jeff Sharlet

• How is their idea of government different from Fascism?


There are three important reasons why I argue that the Family isn't and never has been a fascist organization, even as it has involved a number of traditional fascists (American fascist sympathizer Merwin K. Hart, "Hitler's banker" Hermann Abs) and de facto fascists (Siad Barre, the Somali dictator; Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova): The Family doesn't admire violence, it's internationalist, and it doesn't revolve around a hated either.


There are some qualifiers to those points, though: Although the Family doesn't admire violence, it has historically tended to support violent regimes, such as Barre's, Suharto's genocidal regime, the junta of generals that ran Brazil for years, Park in South Korea, etc., etc. These have been for the most part regimes that one faction or the other of the American foreign policy establishment thought worth supporting, which points to a flaw in the Family's internationalist logic: They want to be friends with everybody, so long as "everybody" is defined as those who are useful to an aggressively expansionist view of American power. During the Cold War, that meant they often functioned as sort of para-state religious front for what former Family leader Senator Frank Carlson termed "worldwide spiritual offensive."

There are other distinctions: Fascism generally begins in the working class, while the Family has never been anything but upper crust. Fascism has a vaguely socialist element; the Family has never been anything but laissez-faire. "Free market" isn't a really accurate description, though, since members tend to favor strong state support for big business, a corporatist stand that has some overlap with fascism.

There's one last, very important distinction: There have always been a number of people who work with the Family because they genuinely want to help the poor. Their methods leave much to be desired -- helping a dictator win military aid is not helping the poor -- but their intentions are in keeping with Christian tradition.



• How far do you think they will succeed at achieving their goal? Will exposure stop them, or are they too far gone? What is the next step for the Family?


Depends on how you define the goal, which is tricky with an organization that likes to insist it doesn't exist, tax records be damned. But the clearest statement of their goals is the idea of 200 world leaders bound together through the Family, a "new world order," as founder Abraham Vereide liked to call it, that will lead to peace because we'll all be on the same team -- their team. Call me a cynic, but I don't see this happening any time soon. I think Christian Right leader Rev. Rob Schenck is closer to the mark when he calls their theology a "religion of the status quo." The Family, he says, is into things as they are. They're not some kind of theocratic conspiracy -- they're the religion of power as it is. Which is to say, in the hands of an elite. In that sense, they've been remarkably successful.

Will exposure stop them? Sometimes. A story I didn't get to tell in the book is that of Norway, where a reporter for the national daily Dagbladet noticed that the prime minister was jetting off to private prayer breakfasts on the public dime and decided to investigate. Here in the U.S., he discovered Norway's ambassador taking his policy cues from then Attorney General John Ashcroft at the Family's Arlington mansion, The Cedars. Digging deeper, he discovered a deep linkage between the Family and the faction that briefly ran Norway in the middle of the past decade. He and his colleagues put it on the front page for weeks, a sort of Norwegian Watergate. That government was voted out of power, by conservatives and liberals alike.

Here in the U.S. the Family is currently facing the fiercest scrutiny it's had to endure in 70 years, as local reporters all over the country -- in Michigan, Pennslylvania, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and elsewhere -- have begun to ask tough questions of their representatives. The point being that if, say, Rep. Joe Pitts wants to work with this group, as documents show he has since the last 1970s, he should be open with the public about it. Pitts has chosen to deny any links. So now it's not a left/right issue, but a simple transparency issue. (Important to emphasize this isn't just a Republican thing; Democratic Senator Mark Pryor's staff denied that I'd ever spoken to their boss until I offered to make transcripts public.)



•Do you think that this exposure will stop them?


I think it'll change them. For instance, World, a Christian conservative magazine, has been investigating the hell out of them for all the same reasons I do. The difference is that World, as a Christian conservative magazine, will be persuasive to people who won't listen to me. There are a lot of traditionalist Christian conservatives who are as deeply committed to open democracy as anybody else. What I like about them is that they tend to act on their convictions. They're starting to hold the Family accountable.

I've also been impressed with the work of Christian Post writer Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a conservative evangelical in the Roger Williams tradition -- a real man of conscience. Dr. Throckmorton has been very involved with exposing the involvement of some American Christian conservatives with a vicious movement in Uganda -- a major beneficiary of American foreign aid and an increasingly important country on the continent -- to not just criminalize homosexuality but to make it punishable by death. Many of the Ugandans behind this movement are linked to the Family, which has really put the heat on the group. As a result of all this, one Family member, from the "liberal" side of the movement, has decided to be open with me about debates going on within the Family right now. There's a faction that thinks the time has come to go public, to be open about their work.

That faction isn't winning yet, but they might, in the future. Longtime leader Doug Coe is in his early 80s, and his health isn't great. Most Family insiders I've spoken to assume leadership will pass to two of his sons, David and Tim. The problem is that they lack Coe's powerful charisma and his unusual blend of mysticism and golfer's bonhomie. David, in particular, seems like a potential weak link; one person associated with the Family compares David to the emperor's son in "Gladiator." If you haven't seen the movie, trust me: it's scary. So if the Coe family -- there are 11 Coes on the payroll -- loses control, the Family could change pretty dramatically.


• What is the main danger with a group like this? Are they too secretive?


Secrecy. I happen to disagree with a lot of what they try to do -- I think Suharto, for instance, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his fellow Indonesians, was a monster we should have opposed -- but, then, I disagree with most Christian Right groups. The difference is that it's easy to disagree with, say, the Family Research Council, because they're open about their positions. They're playing the rules of democracy, making their case in the public square. The Family doesn't believe in the public square. Not only do they not want to be accountable to it; they want politics to work outside of it.


• Do you think the people in the Family are evil?


There have been evil men associated with the Family, that's for sure, but no, in general people in the Family aren't evil. In fact, that's the tragedy of this movement: most people get involved with the best of intentions. Too often, they're blinded by their good intentions, unable or unwilling to recognize the consequences to which their actions contribute. Those consequences -- I'm thinking not just of their subversion of open democracy but of their crucial support for lunatic regimes such as those of Siad Barre or Papa Doc Duvalier -- often are evil, by anyone's standards. The lesson we learn from the Family isn't so much about the banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt put it, as about the evil of banality.


• What do you think their level of influence on the Obama administration is? How do you think the Obama administration will affect The Family?


That's a tough question. The only cabinet member with serious ties that I'm aware of is Ray LaHood, and transportation isn't exactly a make or break position. As I write in the book, Hillary Clinton has long been considered a "friend" of the Family; she calls leader Doug Coe a "genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide," strange words for a man who routinely invokes the leadership lessons to be learned from Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. (When I teamed up with NBC Nightly News to do a segment on her connection, her people told NBC that she'd never given money to the group.) But for her those ties are more about building bridges to conservatives than about the "Jesus plus nothing" agenda of the Family, and I don't think that influence is deep. I'm curious about General James Jones -- he seems to have popped up on the Family's Prayer Breakfast circuit a lot -- but I haven't investigated. That's for some other reporter. My instinct was to say that the level of influence was: Not much. But Family associates have since told me that they have "a lot of friends" in the administration. Bluff? I don't know.

Regardless, I don't think the Obama administration is much of a threat to any powers that be in America. It's a business-as-usual administration. That's the Family's style.



• How do you think the present economy will affect the Family’s efforts ?


Not much. They began in the Depression, as a response to the Depression, and have weathered all the ups and downs -- and political swings -- since. They've endured because they prize power over purity, access over accountability, flexibility over orthodoxy.

That said, if the economy were to get much worse -- or a real populist movement were to develop -- I think a lot of Family politicians would be out of work.




• Why are the foreign policy efforts limited to nations like Uganda, which are under the radar, so to speak? Why not the president of Iraq?


Who says they're not talking to Iraq? The bulk of my book is based on archival records, so it's hard for me to know what's going on right now. Uganda was easy to verify. Maybe Iraq would be too, if someone cared to investigate. But based on their history, they're involved pretty much everywhere. For instance, they're strong in Australia, hardly a country dependent on US aid, like Uganda. But they do tend to look for weaker countries, where it's easier to have an outsized influence. If Senator Jim Inhofe goes to France, he's no big deal. In Uganda, he's a big man. A lot of Family politicians seem to enjoy that. One Family associate spoke of visiting small Pacific nations as being like a "white god," parachuting out of the sky.




• What is the usual response you get from Christians? I would imagine that it kind of transitions between a dubious reluctance to judge them at first, and then a horror of the realization. Have many been reluctant to hear and/or accept your account?


It's been interesting. I've always said that if I'd had my druthers, I would have published my first report on the Family in Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical magazine. But there really has been a "see-no-evil" attitude in some corners. Not all, though. Populist and traditionalist Christian conservatives, including a lot of self-described fundamentalists, were the first to get it. The first organization to buy my book in bulk was a hard right Christian group that is serious about democratic and theological transparency. They sent out copies to their supporters with a note saying that the author is a heathen, but the book is valuable. Leftist Christians and a lot of African American Christians had no problem grasping the facts, either. The biggest resistance has come from the mushy middle, the center-right and center-left folks who are quick to condemn fundamentalism so long as it's poor, tacky, and Southern. They don't like having their cliches overturned. These are folks who like things are they are, people who are constitutionally uncomfortable with democracy, with the idea that neither education nor wealth entitle anyone to "more" citizenship than another.

That changed a bit this summer and fall. First, there were the C Street sex scandals. A lot of folks who tune out when you talk about real abuses of democracy perk right up when you speak of sexual hypocrisy. As my friend JoAnn Wypijewski, a radical journalist put it, "Christians thunder, liberals sneer, but it amounts to the same counting of sins." Be that as it may, that counting of sins led to an accounting for the Family. So now we're starting to see a great Christian response, from the left, right, and middle. Christianity Today still hasn't come around, though.

c. 2009