Terry Gross, NPR's "Fresh Air": Since the Republican Party's defeat last November, the party has been struggling to redefine itself. That's become more difficult in the wake of John Ensign and Mark Sanford. Ensign and Sanford have something in common in addition to both being Republicans who have confessed to out-of-wedlock affairs. They're connected to a Christian group known as "The Family" or "The Fellowship." Ensign lives in a house on C Street in Washington, DC, that's registered as a church and that's owned by a foundation affiliated with the group. In Sanford's press conference about his affair, he said he'd "worked with C Street" which he described as a Christian bible study group. Usually between five and eight lawmakers live at the house on C Street. If you've never heard of C Street or "The Family," it's perhaps because "The Family" prefers it that way! It's a pretty secretive group and very powerful. The long-time leader, Doug Coe, was included on Time magazine's 2004 list of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Coe was described as "the stealth Billy Graham, specializing in the spiritual struggles of the powerful." My guest, Jeff Sharlet, is the author of the book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." (It just came out in paperback.) Sharlet is a contributing editor at Harper's and Rolling Stone, and as associate research scholar at NYU's Center for Religion and Media. ...Jeff Sharlet, what is "The Family" or "The Fellowship's" idea of Christianity that it's trying to spread?
Jeff Sharlet: Well, it's a very unusual organization. So much so that some traditional Christian right organizations consider it heretical. It goes back to this vision that the founder, a Norwegian immigrant named Abraham Vereide has in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression. He believes that god comes to him first in the person of James Farrell --who's the head of US Steel and Vereide by that time was a prominent minister travelling in those circles -- and reveals to him that the Great Depression and all economic suffering is a punishment for disobedience of god's laws. So any kind of New Deal is not the way to go! And then god gives him a second revelation which is that Christianity has been getting it wrong for 2000 years. At its best, it talks about the poor, the weak, the suffering, the down-and-out. He believes that god tells him, very literally using these words: "Abraham, your mission is to serve the up-and-up, those who are already powerful. If you can get their hearts right with god, then they in the positions of power that god has placed them in will dispense blessings to those underneath them." One Senate staffer, who had been affiliated with the group for a while, described it -- I think very aptly -- as "sort of trickle-down fundamentalism."
TG: So "The Fellowship" or "The Family" -- that's why it ministers to powerful people like congressmen and senators.
JS: Yes, absolutely. Congressmen, senators, foreign leaders -- what they want is ... one document says, "We are trying to build a family of world leaders who are bound privately through our networks with this particular understanding of Christianity. If we can just do that, we'll be able to bring peace to the world, free markets (which they equate with Christianity) and all these other blessings which they also tend to conflate with American power.
TG: What's the connection in the philosophy of "The Family" between free markets, capitalism, and Christianity?
JS: Go back to this moment in the Great Depression that I described where they see this as a sort of punishment from god for what they see as a sin of socialism. Attempts to regulate the market are "prideful". They take "the invisible hand" very literally -- the invisible hand of capitalism. They say that what you have is an invisible hand through which god touches the hearts of corporate titans, leaders, and so on. They then run their companies. "The Family" began primarily as a union-busting organization. That was their sort of first mission. They were terrified of organized labor in the 1930's. But they tapped into an order American tradition which goes back to something in the 19th century called "the businessmen's revival" -- this idea that, if you have Christian men of business and Christian politicians, and so on, you don't need laws to protect the poor because they will protect the poor. It was very paternalistic potentially very dangerous tradition because, of course, it leads you away from accountability. If you can say "we don't have regulation, we don't have oversight, we don't have laws, we just have god operating in the heart of these men," well, we're left without a lot of recourse when a powerful man like, say, Governor Sanford or Senator Ensign goes off the rails!
TG: So what about the "values agenda" which has been so important to the Republican party in the past few years? Does "The Family" emphasize an anti-gay agenda, anti-abortion, pro-abstinence education? Are they supporters of the "values agenda" in addition to emphasizing the more capitalist approach?
JS: Yes, but not rigidly and only secondarily. To them, the idea of free markets working through elites, that's the top concern. Doug Coe, the longtime leader of the group -- I sat in one time on a meeting with Doug Coe and Congressman Todd Tiahart of Kansas. Todd Tiahart was there almost auditioning to get involved in this thing. He was trying to show off his dedication to those kinds of meat-and-potatoes Christian right issues, talking about "the threat of Islam" and abortion. Doug Coe -- he doesn't necessarily disagree with this line of thinking, he sort of nods his head and says, "that's fine", but "you're really thinking very small" and "these are hot-button issues." He says, "The real work of the kind of governance we're after is what he calls "Jesus Plus Nothing." "Jesus Plus Nothing" means "Jesus Plus Everything." It means everything gets filtered through Jesus. The examples he gave: he asks "What does Jesus have to say about Social Security?" And in "The Family's" case, it's privatize -- which is almost always their answer. Privatize. "What does Jesus have to say about building roads?" "What does Jesus have to say..." about every single issue, including in your own life. You organize men like Ensign and Sanford and maybe Todd Tiahart into cells so they can ask, "What does Jesus have to say about what's in my life?" And they actually give veto power over their own lives to the other men in their prayer cells. (That's their language, by the way. "Cells" sounds like an inflammatory term, but it's actually got this old evangelical pedigree that long predates the current association.)
TG: You compare "The Family" to televangelists' groups and you say that in some respects they are at opposite poles. The televangelists want to get on TV. They want to preach to a really large audience. They want a megachurch. Whereas the "The Family" is pretty secretive; they don't want any media attention; they don't want people to know their name! Why?
JS: The man I mention, the current leader, Doug Coe -- this was really his insight and it goes back to 1966. He's the second person to lead "The Family." The long-time leader was the founder, Abraham Vereide. He didn't mind public attention. He really liked it to be known that he was hobnobbing with senators and presidents and kings -- and that kind of thing. He knew, also, that you had a kind of media that at that time didn't look too closely into the religious lives of politicians. It wasn't considered that relevant. And then you get this moment in the late '60's where two things are happening. "The Family" is really expanding its reach into governments around the world -- the developing world. They're dealing with a lot more unsavory characters. At the same time, you have a media that's moving into one of these great investigative periods where the media are saying, "Hey, we're going to ask tough questions! If you're going to go and pray with General Soeharto in Indonesia and then make an oil deal, we want to know about that!" Well, Doug Coe sends out a memo to the various congressmen and politicians involved, and he says, "The time has come to submerge our public image." They got rid of the letterhead and said, "From now on, when you do something through "The Family", don't say you're doing through "The Family," just say you're doing it yourself. We're going to become invisible believing groups." This is their language. It's important because when someone says "invisible" it sounds kind of conspiritorial. This is their language, their document. They thought this would make them more effective. I always try to see it from their perspective. They do think that, "Look, we can do mroe good work for people. We can help these powerful people if we can give them a shield from public eyes." And that's fine for a pastor and an individual. But when we're talking about political deals, it's a whole different story.
TG: You mentioned that Doug Coe prayed with General Soeharto, a strong man in Indonesia, and then made an oil deal. What are you referring to?
JS: Yeh. That's one of the stories I really delved into, into these documents. The way I was able to tell the story, I should say, for all its secretiveness -- "The Family" dumped 600 boxes of documents and hundreds of tapes in the Billy Graham Center archives in Illinois. So I spent years going through these papers and so on. And I'd find the whole alternative history of the Cold War. We know about US support for Soeharto who came to power with the murders -- it's hard to know, anywhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 fellow countrymen whom he described as "communists." Sometimes Soeharto's forces would wipe out entire villages on the premise that everybody in there was a communist and had to die. He's one of the really great killers of the 20th century. And Doug Coe and Abraham Vereide took a look at him and said, "That's a man of god!" Keep in mind...
TG: ... Did they say, "That's a man of god" or did they say "That's a man we'd like to make a man of god"?
JS: Good correction. Neither. They said, "That's a man god has chosen." And this is an issue they're always dealing with. They know the dictators they're dealing with are often very scary guys. God chooses who he wants to work with. God wants to fight communism. Soeharto is a man who's fighting communism and he's killing 1,000,000 people. Just look at the bible, they'll say. The bible is filled with blood and killing and so on. "God works in mysterious ways." At the same time, they're reaching out to Soeharto, they're bring delegations of congressmen over there, they're bring delegations of oil executives who are financing their work over there. One oil man, Harold McClure, wrote in a memo which was then circulated among congressional members, that he'd had an hour-long meeting with Soeharto and some of the oil people around Soeharto of course controlled the eighth largest oil company in the world at that time. They had an hour of prayer after which they moved onto business, and he said, "It's just been one of the most spiritual encounters of [my] life." And also one of the most lucrative! Which sounds deeply cynical but when you understand "The Family's" perspective, it's not. They see wealth, influence and power in this kind of dumbed-down Calvinist way as a sign of their selection -- literally, their election by god. They've been chosen for this wealth, for this influence.
TG: So did this Christian right group, "The Family," make money on the Indonesia oil deal orwas it not about money for them? The oil deal wasn't in their name. It was for another party. But what did they get out of it?
JS: "The Family" is never about money for "The Family." I think this is important for secular and liberal folks to understand about fundamentalism in general and this organization in particular. They really believe what they believe. They believe they're working for god. This is not a simple exercise! What they got out of it was the sense that they were helping Soeharto do his work as god's chosen man for this country.
TG: What is the house on C Street?
JS: The house on C Street one of the ways "The Family" pursues its ministry of reaching out to powerful people and serving them. It's a former convent. It's registered as a church so it doesn't pay taxes at which "The Family" provides housing for at any given time 5 to 8 congressmen at below market rates -- so there's a bit of an ethical question there. And they also play host to many other congressmen who want to come by for lunch or just to hang out. Christian right leaders can use the house on C Street as a place where they can sit down in private with politicians and talk to them. They'll have prayer sessions. When I spent some time there they had a calendar prominently displayed on the wall with instructions for daily spiritual war. So on Tuesday, for instance, you are to pray against the demonic stronghold of Buddhism. Wednesday Hinduism is the problem. Most of the guys who live there are a little more laid back than that. And "The Family" doesn't require a doctrinal statement of loyalty. You want to live there and be in fellowship with these guys? That's fine. It's soft-sell evangelism, not that kind of hard bible-thumping that you see on TV.
TG: When you say that below-market rental rates pose ethical questions, did you mean because the house is officially called a "church" and it doesn't have to pay taxes so it can afford cheaper rates and it's questionable whether it's really or church or not? Is that what you meant?
JS: The whole deal. Registering as a church so as to avoid taxes looks a little sketchy. You have these congressmen who are living in a church which is not a church by any recognizable standards. That seems like a tax dodge.
TG: I've read there's a chapel inside?
JS: Well, it's a former convent -- kind of an interesting building! It doesn't function as a church. Not only doesn't it function as a church, but the leader of the organization, Doug Coe, who's going there. And Doug Coe will speak very openly against church. Doug Coe doesn't like church. He doesn't like that whole idea of Christianity as something you limit to Sunday mornings. He doesn't like the idea of a church because churches historically are about sort of a bottom-up faith where everybody has equal access, right? But Doug Coe teaches a very different idea. He says that when you read the New Testament, you discover that there are concentric rings of authority. There's the masses and Jesus speaks one way to them. Then there's the disciples speaks one way to them. And Coe says, "That's true now as well. Jesus reveals himself more fully to his chosen." And Coe believes -- Coe doesn't use the word "chosen" casually, they refer to themselves as the "new chosen" because they believe the Jews broke the covenant with god. So the Jews are no longer the chosen people. "The Family" are the new chosen. They don't operate through churches. So there's a little bit of a dodge there. There's also (and I think this is a very minor question -- it's easy to get distracted by the ethical quibbles around the edges when there's this big giant question of transparency and openness in democracy. But there is a question of whether these guys are getting below-market housing and should this be registered as a gift especially given that Christian right leaders are going there to lobby for the cause -- that there is unofficial lobbying going on in the house.
TG: Although "The Family" is a very secretive group, the thing that's best known about it ... is that "The Family" or the foundation created the annual National Prayer Breakfast which is attended by the president, members of Congress, and important people from around the world. Can you give the short version of how and why they created it?
JS: The "why" first: they wanted an annual ritual of consecration of the US to Jesus and they thought that if they could install this right at the heart of American civil religion they would be slowly moving America to becoming the godly nation they wanted it to be. So in 1953, working with Billy Graham and Senator Frank Carlson who was Eisenhower's right-hand man, they went to Ike and said, "We want to do this." They'd tried with Truman and FDR, too, and didn't get anywhere! Ike immediately recognized it for what it was -- a blatant violation of separation of church and state, didn't want to do it, but he owed Senator Frank Carlson who was then one of the leaders of "The Family" a big favor. Carlson had helped organized the evangelical vote for Ike. Eisenhower agreed to do it. "The Family" knew that once they got it rolling, then it becomes a tradition. So now I've talked to congressmen. You mentioned that you didn't know "The Family" runs it. Almost nobody does. The invitation comes on congressional letterhead. I've talked to congressmen who believe that it goes back to the beginning days of the republic. (You can imagine James Madison rolling over in his grave at the thought of this!) It's a pretty bland event on the surface of it. It's supposedly ecumenical though their planning documents say -- one document describes this as "anything can happen and even the Koran can be read but Jesus is there infiltrating the world." Well, this is the ecumenical event, supposedly, that has the sanction of US government and the US president and also becomes sort of a week-long lobbying festival for foreign officials. One of the things that bothered me is that when I looked at who was coming -- the delegations from around the world -- almost more often than not it was led by the defense minister of small nations like Albania, Ecuador, and so on. They're coming there to lobby and "The Family" is only too ready to help them do that in exchange for influence in their governments.
TG: Is there anything you'd like to tell us about the Sanford story or the John Ensign story that you feel you understand because you've studied "The Family"?
JS: I was especially fascinated when Governor Sanford explained his decision not to resign by referring to King David. He said, "Look, here's King David when the skies fell mightily but he went on." By "fell mightily," he meant that King David had an adulterous affair and then had the husband murdered. That's actually one of the core parables of "The Family" that I encountered and describe this experience with David Coe, the son of Doug Coe, who came around and gave us this long lesson and asked, "What made King David great?" And the men I was with were all trying to say, well, he loved god and all this, and he said, "No, no, that's not it. King David was a terrible man. He was an adulterer, a murderer. So why is he a hero of the bible?" And the answer is, "Because god chose him. King David is beyond morality." Their limited understanding of scripture. That's a central parable in "The Family's" thinking and I could almost hear Doug Coe's voice when Governor Sanford is saying, "I need to keep governing because I'm like King David."
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TG: Jeff Sharlet is the author of "The Family"... He also co-edited the new book, "Believer Beware! First Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith," a collection of articles from the website he co-founded, "Killing the Buddha."
