Some shocking views of the group known as The Family or the Fellowship. [View all]

[madfloridian]

There are reasons why some have concerns about their goals.

Interestingly enough the group was founded as an anti-union movement.

While 700 plus policemen patrolled the 1934 union strikes, The Family founder prayed with the elite.

These are a couple of paragraphs I transcribed from Jeff Sharlet's book The Family.

This part showed a sharp contrast between the wealthy and the workers. They seemed to take the efforts of the unions to gain power very personally...or as Sharlet once said Abram Vereides considered it a challenge to God's sovereignty. From page 104 about the 1934 union strikes:

From page 104 about the 1934 union strikes:

Seven hundred policemen in dark blue patrolled the waterfront on foot and in black cars and on high chestnut horses. Twice that number and more picketed and searched for strikebreakers. The middle class began contemplating last minute vacations. The wives of the wealthy bunkered up at the Union Club, where Abram led prayer meetings for businessmen. As the blue tear gas sent tendrils up the hill, they must have felt frustrated by his optimistic lessons in biblical capitalism. Scripture has much to say about honest dealing and even more about handling the heathen, but not once does it mention organized labor.

From page 108:

The strike went on, but the shippers were defeated by the time the coffins went into the ground. Their old beliefs could not compete. Management-capital-would require a new faith if it was to survive.

The strike of 1934 scared Abram into launching the movement that would become the vanguard of elite fundamentalism, and elite fundamentalism took as its first challenge the destruction of militant labor. Destruction was not the word Christians used however. They called it cooperation.

Abram Vereides was given much power by the end of WW II.

In 1944, Vereide had foreseen what he called 'the new world order.' 'Upon the termination of the war there will be many men available to carry on,' Vereide wrote in a letter to his wife. 'Now the ground-work must be laid and our leadership brought to face God in humility, prayer and obedience.' He began organizing prayer meetings for delegates to the United Nations, at which he would instruct them in God's plan for rebuilding from the wreckage of the war. Donald Stone, a high-ranking administrator of the Marshall Plan, joined the directorship of Vereide's organization. In an undated letter, he wrote Vereide that he would 'soon begin a tour around the world for the (Marshall Plan), combining with this a spiritual mission.'

In 1946, Vereide, too, toured the world, traveling with letters of introduction from a half dozen senators and representatives, and from Paul G. Hoffman, the director of the Marshall Plan. He traveled also with a mandate from General John Hildring, assistant secretary of state, to oversee the creation of a list of good Germans of 'the predictable type' (many of whom, Vereide believed, were being held for having 'the faintest connection' with the Nazi regime), who could be released from prison 'to be used, according to their ability in the tremendous task of reconstruction.' Vereides met with Jewish survivors and listened to their stories, but he nevertheless considered ex-Nazis well suited for the demands of 'strong' government, so long as they were willing to worship Christ as they had Hitler.

More from a Salon article in 2009.

Sex and power inside “the C Street House”

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.

In 2007 the Miami Herald quoted Grace Nelson, wife of Florida's Senator Bill Nelson.

Mother Jones, the progressive politics magazine, delves into Dem prez contender Hillary Clinton's religious and political life - and among the few in her inner circle who would talk for the story was Grace Nelson, wife of Florida Sen. Bill Nelson.

Nelson, the magazine notes, was one of Clinton's "cell mates" in the DC-based Fellowship, described by the magazine as "a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business and military leaders dedicated to 'spiritual war' on behalf of Christ."

The magazine quotes Nelson - whom it describes as "a piety broker in Florida politics" because of her role as organizer of the Governor's Prayer Breakfast - as cautioning that she's not "at liberty" to reveal much.

Here's what the story says:

"Clinton's prayer cell was tight-knit, according to Nelson, who recalled that one of her conservative prayer partners was at first loath to pray for the first lady, but learned to 'love Hillary as much as any of us love Hillary.' Cells like these, Nelson added, exist in 'parliaments all over the world,' with all welcome so long as they submit to 'the person of Jesus' as the source of their power."

There are two more shocking statements from the Salon article. The statement by the son of the present head of The Family is especially shocking in light of recent news stories.

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.

Their support of dictators around the world who commit atrocities is also a shocking stance, and it seems to prove the point about the group being about power....not about religion.

If the Family men who stood over John Ensign as he wrote a baldly insincere breakup letter to his mistress were naive about hearts that want what they want, they don’t claim ignorance about the strongmen with whom they build bonds of prayer and foreign aid. They admire them. Counseling Rep. Tiahrt, Doug Coe offered Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden as men whose commitment to their causes is to be emulated. Preaching on the meaning of Christ’s words, he says, “You know Jesus said ‘You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that’s what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn’t murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom.”