Sunday, August 11, 2019 8:23:36 PM
Secretive Christian group at heart of D.C. politics ready for its close-up in Netflix docuseries
"The Political Enclave That Dare Not Speak Its Name"
"The Family" puts the spotlight on the enigmatic Fellowship Foundation, the Christian group behind the National Prayer Breakfast.
Sen. James Lankford, President Donald Trump and Sen. Christopher Coons pray during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Feb. 7, 2019.Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images file
Aug. 9, 2019, 8:36 PM GMT+10 / Updated Aug. 10, 2019, 12:36 AM GMT+10
By Ethan Sacks
A secretive organization that has courted political leaders and built international influence while undermining the constitutional division of the church and the state in the process is at the center of a new five-episode documentary series called “The Family.”
Since 1953, the National Prayer Breakfast has remained a fixture in American politics that has boasted attendance by every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower on the first Thursday of every February. It has been hyped as an opportunity for the political elite of Washington, D.C., and visiting international dignitaries to put aside partisan differences and reflect on a higher purpose.
While the annual event is purportedly hosted by members of Congress, it is actually organized and run by an evangelical Christian organization called The Fellowship Foundation, or "The Family," as it is referred to internally by its members.
The series, which debuts on Netflix on Friday, takes a look at the group that operates with its own higher purpose — quietly building its influence on global politics "in the name of Jesus."
"The Fellowship isn't about faith and it spreads very little. It's about power," said Jeff Sharlet, whose books, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," and "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy," inspired the Netflix series.
"Internally, it is spoken of primarily as a 'recruiting device' with which to draw 'key men' into smaller prayer cells to 'meet Jesus man to man,'” according to Sharlet. "Practically, the Prayer Breakfast has functioned from the very beginning as an unregistered lobbying festival."
The Fellowship Foundation did not return an NBC News request for comment, and a publicist linked to the group previously also declined to respond
The Family leader Doug Coe meets with then-President Ronald Reagan
and First Lady Nancy Reagan.Courtesy of Netflix
Abraham Vereide started the first iteration of the Fellowship in Seattle in 1935 when he hosted 19 business leaders with the aim of crushing organized labor. However, using the Prayer Breakfast as a discreet Christian recruiting platform was perfected under longtime leader Doug Coe, who was considered one of the most powerful influencers in the Beltway before his death in 2017.
The Prayer Breakfast isn't the only way the Fellowship has infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Documents have also tied the group to a D.C. residence, dubbed “C Street” for the street on which it is located, which provided low-cost housing for prominent legislators before news stories spurred by Sharlet's book drew attention to its violation of congressional gift regulations.
"There is simply a great deal of hypocrisy, partiality, favoritism in D.C., (which are) all things Jesus' life and teachings directly oppose," Douglas Hampton, a former associate of the Fellowship, said by email.
"It's become about power and position, not (public service) and what's best for others,” he said.
Hampton came to the group in the mid-1990s as a staffer of then-Republican Congressman John Ensign from Nevada. He would leave both the Fellowship and his position with Ensign, after the then-senator was exposed for having an extramarital affair with Hampton's wife.
But despite all of that, Hampton, who was recruited into the group at a golf tournament, credits Coe with enriching his life spiritually.
"His teachings on Jesus compelled men to hear what was being shared, compelled me," Hampton said by email.
"One of Doug Coe's beliefs was that if you lifted up the name of Jesus, that God would draw people in, all sorts of people from all over the world — thus the National Prayer Breakfast — that people would have a desire to learn and embrace the teachings of Jesus and come to Washington to support the breakfast."
Unlike most traditional evangelical Christian groups, which prioritize mobilizing as large a base as possible, the "Family" strategically keeps its membership purposely exclusive.
"It’s so different than our popular impression of the Christian right, it's different than the image of the sweaty pulpit pounders," said "The Family" director Jesse Moss. "Those are mass movements, this is the opposite of that.
"Doug Coe very intentionally took the group underground. There was a recognition that they could do their best work anonymously."
Citing 2006 documents, Sharlet estimates the number of dedicated organizers who handle recruitment at just 350. Those organizers, however, have built a network of prayer cells that the late Christian Right leader Chuck Colson pegged at 20,000-strong, calling it, "a veritable underground of Christ's men all through government."
Sometimes that has meant aligning with politicians who stray from Jesus' example. In 2009, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford gave a press conference outside of C Street emphasizing his religious pedigree upon resurfacing after disappearing from his state for days to visit a mistress in Argentina.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford addresses the press outside the C
Street residence in Washington in 2009. Courtesy of Netflix
So, while President Donald Trump may not have the most pious of track records, Sharlet says the Family has embraced the unique opportunity provided by the most fundamentalist Cabinet in recent American history to advocate evangelical policy.
"The Fellowship believes God uses who He wants, and that power itself is an indicator of who He has chosen — it's a theology of more power for the powerful," Sharlet explained.
"The fact that Trump, with his "art of the deal," is especially well-prepared to embrace this transactional theology — Trump puts the Christian Right's people in power in return of their support — seals the deal."
Jeff Sharlet in a scene from 'The Family'Courtesy of Netflix
The reach of the Fellowship has extended well beyond the confines of Washington. Politicians and businessmen affiliated with the group have met to pray and parlay with the likes of the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, Indonesian despot Suharto and Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, Sharlet said.
Moss points to the episode of "The Family" that chronicles the more recent international trips made by politicians tied to the group to proselytize Christian policy, such as Rep. Robert Aderholt's on-the-ground campaigning for a strict anti-LGBTQ law in Romania.
"Everyone has an agenda, and not everyone is welcome — only the significant," Hampton said.
Ethan Sacks
Ethan Sacks writes for NBCNews.com.
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/secretive-christian-group-heart-d-c-politics-ready-its-close-n1040011
-
SEATTLE-KING COUNTY PRAYER BREAKFAST
https://centered.org/seattle-king-county-prayer-breakfast/
See also: These are mostly from the now 16 replies to F6's
post "The Political Enclave That Dare Not Speak Its Name"
Following up on “The Family”: Six Questions for Jeff Sharlet
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39979679
Stephanie -- took me long enough -- but here's my reply -- had started
it more than a month ago, and then there was the Holocaust Museum shooting
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39551176
Is Living in the C Street House An Ethics Violation?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=48537893
C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43666880
With more strips, https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=41143407
Like I was Jesus:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39665827
Jesus killed Mohammed:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39632707
Jesus Camp [the complete film]
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32564734
Torture Versus Freedom
[Remember Trump has said torture works]
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39471610
Hypocrisy in Red and Blue: How Republicans and Democrats Betray Their Principles Differently
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39273398
I don't see anything unusual about having a fellowship group and they really don't
have to share it with the public. You are into a conspiracy theory w/o much more.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=97916417
.. then 3 clicks down that string ..
pro_se -- well, almost totally -- and that's been cracked back open a bit with the recent passage and
signing of anti-gay bills in Uganda and Nigeria (I've got more on that, hopefully will get around to posting it)
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=97920713
Which, in conclusion, brings to mind ergo sum's earlier today, in full
By Jo Becker
• Aug. 10, 2019
•
o
o
o
o
o
o 315
RINKEBY, Sweden — Johnny Castillo, a Peruvian-born neighborhood watchman in this district of Stockholm, still puzzles over the strange events that two years ago turned the central square of this predominantly immigrant community into a symbol of multiculturalism run amok.
First came a now-infamous comment by President Trump, suggesting that Sweden’s history of welcoming refugees was at the root of a violent attack in Rinkeby the previous evening, even though nothing had actually happened.
“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden!” Mr. Trump told supporters at a rally on Feb. 18, 2017. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
The president’s source: Fox News, which had excerpted a short film promoting a dystopian view of Sweden as a victim of its asylum policies, with immigrant neighborhoods crime-ridden “no-go zones.”
But two days later, as Swedish officials were heaping bemused derision on Mr. Trump, something did in fact happen in Rinkeby: Several dozen masked men attacked police officers making a drug arrest, throwing rocks and setting cars ablaze.
And it was right around that time, according to Mr. Castillo and four other witnesses, that Russian television crews showed up, offering to pay immigrant youths “to make trouble” in front of the cameras.
“They wanted to show that President Trump is right about Sweden,” Mr. Castillo said, “that people coming to Europe are terrorists and want to disturb society.”
hat nativist rhetoric — that immigrants are invading the homeland — has gained ever-greater traction, and political acceptance, across the West amid dislocations wrought by vast waves of migration from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In its most extreme form, it is echoed in the online manifesto of the man accused of gunning down 22 people last weekend in El Paso.
In the nationalists’ message-making, Sweden has become a prime cautionary tale, dripping with schadenfreude. What is even more striking is how many people in Sweden — progressive, egalitarian, welcoming Sweden — seem to be warming to the nationalists’ view: that immigration has brought crime, chaos and a fraying of the cherished social safety net, not to mention a withering away of national culture and tradition.
Fueled by an immigration backlash — Sweden has accepted more refugees per capita than any other European country — right-wing populism has taken hold, reflected most prominently in the steady ascent of a political party with neo-Nazi roots, the Sweden Democrats. In elections last year, they captured nearly 18 percent of the vote.
To dig beneath the surface of what is happening in Sweden, though, is to uncover the workings of an international disinformation machine, devoted to the cultivation, provocation and amplication of far-right, anti-immigrant passions and political forces. Indeed, that machine, most influentially rooted in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia and the American far right, underscores a fundamental irony of this political moment: the globalization of nationalism.
The central target of these manipulations from abroad — and the chief instrument of the Swedish nationalists’ success — is the country’s increasingly popular, and virulently anti-immigrant, digital echo chamber.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/world/europe/sweden-immigration-nationalism.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
.. here .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150449849
"The Political Enclave That Dare Not Speak Its Name"
"The Family" puts the spotlight on the enigmatic Fellowship Foundation, the Christian group behind the National Prayer Breakfast.
Sen. James Lankford, President Donald Trump and Sen. Christopher Coons pray during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Feb. 7, 2019.Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images file
Aug. 9, 2019, 8:36 PM GMT+10 / Updated Aug. 10, 2019, 12:36 AM GMT+10
By Ethan Sacks
A secretive organization that has courted political leaders and built international influence while undermining the constitutional division of the church and the state in the process is at the center of a new five-episode documentary series called “The Family.”
Since 1953, the National Prayer Breakfast has remained a fixture in American politics that has boasted attendance by every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower on the first Thursday of every February. It has been hyped as an opportunity for the political elite of Washington, D.C., and visiting international dignitaries to put aside partisan differences and reflect on a higher purpose.
While the annual event is purportedly hosted by members of Congress, it is actually organized and run by an evangelical Christian organization called The Fellowship Foundation, or "The Family," as it is referred to internally by its members.
The series, which debuts on Netflix on Friday, takes a look at the group that operates with its own higher purpose — quietly building its influence on global politics "in the name of Jesus."
"The Fellowship isn't about faith and it spreads very little. It's about power," said Jeff Sharlet, whose books, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," and "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy," inspired the Netflix series.
"Internally, it is spoken of primarily as a 'recruiting device' with which to draw 'key men' into smaller prayer cells to 'meet Jesus man to man,'” according to Sharlet. "Practically, the Prayer Breakfast has functioned from the very beginning as an unregistered lobbying festival."
The Fellowship Foundation did not return an NBC News request for comment, and a publicist linked to the group previously also declined to respond
The Family leader Doug Coe meets with then-President Ronald Reagan
and First Lady Nancy Reagan.Courtesy of Netflix
Abraham Vereide started the first iteration of the Fellowship in Seattle in 1935 when he hosted 19 business leaders with the aim of crushing organized labor. However, using the Prayer Breakfast as a discreet Christian recruiting platform was perfected under longtime leader Doug Coe, who was considered one of the most powerful influencers in the Beltway before his death in 2017.
The Prayer Breakfast isn't the only way the Fellowship has infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Documents have also tied the group to a D.C. residence, dubbed “C Street” for the street on which it is located, which provided low-cost housing for prominent legislators before news stories spurred by Sharlet's book drew attention to its violation of congressional gift regulations.
"There is simply a great deal of hypocrisy, partiality, favoritism in D.C., (which are) all things Jesus' life and teachings directly oppose," Douglas Hampton, a former associate of the Fellowship, said by email.
"It's become about power and position, not (public service) and what's best for others,” he said.
Hampton came to the group in the mid-1990s as a staffer of then-Republican Congressman John Ensign from Nevada. He would leave both the Fellowship and his position with Ensign, after the then-senator was exposed for having an extramarital affair with Hampton's wife.
But despite all of that, Hampton, who was recruited into the group at a golf tournament, credits Coe with enriching his life spiritually.
"His teachings on Jesus compelled men to hear what was being shared, compelled me," Hampton said by email.
"One of Doug Coe's beliefs was that if you lifted up the name of Jesus, that God would draw people in, all sorts of people from all over the world — thus the National Prayer Breakfast — that people would have a desire to learn and embrace the teachings of Jesus and come to Washington to support the breakfast."
Unlike most traditional evangelical Christian groups, which prioritize mobilizing as large a base as possible, the "Family" strategically keeps its membership purposely exclusive.
"It’s so different than our popular impression of the Christian right, it's different than the image of the sweaty pulpit pounders," said "The Family" director Jesse Moss. "Those are mass movements, this is the opposite of that.
"Doug Coe very intentionally took the group underground. There was a recognition that they could do their best work anonymously."
Citing 2006 documents, Sharlet estimates the number of dedicated organizers who handle recruitment at just 350. Those organizers, however, have built a network of prayer cells that the late Christian Right leader Chuck Colson pegged at 20,000-strong, calling it, "a veritable underground of Christ's men all through government."
Sometimes that has meant aligning with politicians who stray from Jesus' example. In 2009, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford gave a press conference outside of C Street emphasizing his religious pedigree upon resurfacing after disappearing from his state for days to visit a mistress in Argentina.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford addresses the press outside the C
Street residence in Washington in 2009. Courtesy of Netflix
So, while President Donald Trump may not have the most pious of track records, Sharlet says the Family has embraced the unique opportunity provided by the most fundamentalist Cabinet in recent American history to advocate evangelical policy.
"The Fellowship believes God uses who He wants, and that power itself is an indicator of who He has chosen — it's a theology of more power for the powerful," Sharlet explained.
"The fact that Trump, with his "art of the deal," is especially well-prepared to embrace this transactional theology — Trump puts the Christian Right's people in power in return of their support — seals the deal."
Jeff Sharlet in a scene from 'The Family'Courtesy of Netflix
The reach of the Fellowship has extended well beyond the confines of Washington. Politicians and businessmen affiliated with the group have met to pray and parlay with the likes of the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, Indonesian despot Suharto and Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, Sharlet said.
Moss points to the episode of "The Family" that chronicles the more recent international trips made by politicians tied to the group to proselytize Christian policy, such as Rep. Robert Aderholt's on-the-ground campaigning for a strict anti-LGBTQ law in Romania.
"Everyone has an agenda, and not everyone is welcome — only the significant," Hampton said.
Ethan Sacks
Ethan Sacks writes for NBCNews.com.
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/secretive-christian-group-heart-d-c-politics-ready-its-close-n1040011
-
SEATTLE-KING COUNTY PRAYER BREAKFAST
https://centered.org/seattle-king-county-prayer-breakfast/
See also: These are mostly from the now 16 replies to F6's
post "The Political Enclave That Dare Not Speak Its Name"
Following up on “The Family”: Six Questions for Jeff Sharlet
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39979679
Stephanie -- took me long enough -- but here's my reply -- had started
it more than a month ago, and then there was the Holocaust Museum shooting
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39551176
Is Living in the C Street House An Ethics Violation?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=48537893
C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43666880
With more strips, https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=41143407
Like I was Jesus:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39665827
Jesus killed Mohammed:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39632707
Jesus Camp [the complete film]
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32564734
Torture Versus Freedom
[Remember Trump has said torture works]
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39471610
Hypocrisy in Red and Blue: How Republicans and Democrats Betray Their Principles Differently
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=39273398
I don't see anything unusual about having a fellowship group and they really don't
have to share it with the public. You are into a conspiracy theory w/o much more.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=97916417
.. then 3 clicks down that string ..
pro_se -- well, almost totally -- and that's been cracked back open a bit with the recent passage and
signing of anti-gay bills in Uganda and Nigeria (I've got more on that, hopefully will get around to posting it)
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=97920713
Which, in conclusion, brings to mind ergo sum's earlier today, in full
By Jo Becker
• Aug. 10, 2019
•
o
o
o
o
o
o 315
RINKEBY, Sweden — Johnny Castillo, a Peruvian-born neighborhood watchman in this district of Stockholm, still puzzles over the strange events that two years ago turned the central square of this predominantly immigrant community into a symbol of multiculturalism run amok.
First came a now-infamous comment by President Trump, suggesting that Sweden’s history of welcoming refugees was at the root of a violent attack in Rinkeby the previous evening, even though nothing had actually happened.
“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden!” Mr. Trump told supporters at a rally on Feb. 18, 2017. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
The president’s source: Fox News, which had excerpted a short film promoting a dystopian view of Sweden as a victim of its asylum policies, with immigrant neighborhoods crime-ridden “no-go zones.”
But two days later, as Swedish officials were heaping bemused derision on Mr. Trump, something did in fact happen in Rinkeby: Several dozen masked men attacked police officers making a drug arrest, throwing rocks and setting cars ablaze.
And it was right around that time, according to Mr. Castillo and four other witnesses, that Russian television crews showed up, offering to pay immigrant youths “to make trouble” in front of the cameras.
“They wanted to show that President Trump is right about Sweden,” Mr. Castillo said, “that people coming to Europe are terrorists and want to disturb society.”
hat nativist rhetoric — that immigrants are invading the homeland — has gained ever-greater traction, and political acceptance, across the West amid dislocations wrought by vast waves of migration from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In its most extreme form, it is echoed in the online manifesto of the man accused of gunning down 22 people last weekend in El Paso.
In the nationalists’ message-making, Sweden has become a prime cautionary tale, dripping with schadenfreude. What is even more striking is how many people in Sweden — progressive, egalitarian, welcoming Sweden — seem to be warming to the nationalists’ view: that immigration has brought crime, chaos and a fraying of the cherished social safety net, not to mention a withering away of national culture and tradition.
Fueled by an immigration backlash — Sweden has accepted more refugees per capita than any other European country — right-wing populism has taken hold, reflected most prominently in the steady ascent of a political party with neo-Nazi roots, the Sweden Democrats. In elections last year, they captured nearly 18 percent of the vote.
To dig beneath the surface of what is happening in Sweden, though, is to uncover the workings of an international disinformation machine, devoted to the cultivation, provocation and amplication of far-right, anti-immigrant passions and political forces. Indeed, that machine, most influentially rooted in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia and the American far right, underscores a fundamental irony of this political moment: the globalization of nationalism.
The central target of these manipulations from abroad — and the chief instrument of the Swedish nationalists’ success — is the country’s increasingly popular, and virulently anti-immigrant, digital echo chamber.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/world/europe/sweden-immigration-nationalism.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
.. here .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150449849
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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