What is 'The Family' aka 'The Fellowship' or 'The C-Street Family'?
The mainstream media avoids referring to the Family as a cult, but check out this description of the group’s belief system from Jeff Sharlet and decide for yourself:
In other words, only they, the members of the Family, truly know what is best for the rest of us.They have a very unusual theology in the sense that they think that Christ had one message for an inner circle and then a kind of different message for a sort of slightly more outer circle. And then the rest of us, Christ told us little stories because, frankly, we couldn’t handle the truth. And the core members are those they think are getting the real deal.
If it walks like a cult and talks like a cult… SOURCE
See: Sex and power inside “the C Street House”
From: Salon
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. SOURCE
Jeff Sharlet is the author of, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power"; Associate Research Scholar, Center for Religion and Media, New York University
Jeff Sharlet is the author, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power"; Associate Research Scholar, Center for Religion and Media, New York University. He was a guest on NPR's Fresh Air in November 2005. Listen to the interview below:
January 10, 2011 By Andrew Belonsky
The following comes from: AlterNet
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| Photo: CNN |
Nowhere has the alignment of American exceptionalism and right-wing Christian theology been more dangerous than in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Since the free market includes the entire globe, conservatives claim, our biblically inspired, capitalism-driven democratic values must be exported, an idea that threatens our international standing.
It’s this theology that drives the international exploits of a secretive group of Capitol Hill elites -- including Jim DeMint and Mike Pence -- known alternately as the Fellowship or the Family. The Family made rare headlines last year, when it was revealed the group had supported the Ugandan lawmakers who proposed an anti-LGBT bill that would make certain practices punishable by death.
The organization also operates the C Street House in Washington, where, according to Jeff Sharlet, author of C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, DeMint is "ideologically influential." And that ideology, as the senator told the right-wing magazine, World, in August 2009, includes the belief that "[t]he decline of America's power and prestige has been directly related to the secularization of our country."
But the Family’s influence on U.S foreign policy doesn’t begin or end in Uganda, or on the subject of LGBT rights. The group has also helped former Somali dictator Siad Barre buy arms, and facilitated U.S. support for various other despots, including Indonesia’s Haji Muhammad Suharto and Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti. And now the Family’s congressional members are ascendant in the U.S. Capitol; most of them are allied with the Tea Party movement, and in an unprecedented position to shape our nation’s policy. SOURCE Photo: CNN
The Family: DC’s C Street Group Tied To Proposed Death Penalty for Gays in Uganda
SHARLET: [The] new legislation adds to this something called aggravated homosexuality. And this can include, for instance, if a gay man has sex with another man who is disabled, that’s aggravated homosexuality, and that man can be – I suppose both, actually, could be put to death for this. The use of any drugs or any intoxicants in seeking gay sex – in other words, you go to a bar and you buy a guy a drink, you’re subject to the death penalty if you go home and sleep together after that. What it also does is it extends this outward, so that if you know a gay person and you don’t report it, that could mean – you don’t report your son or daughter, you can go to prison.And it goes further, to say that any kind of promotion of these ideas of homosexuality, including by foreigners, can result in prison terms. Talking about same sex-marriage positively can lead you to imprisonment for life. And it’s really kind of a perfect case study and the export of a lot of American largely evangelical ideas about homosexuality exported to Uganda, which then takes them to their logical end.
And who is David Bahati?
SHARLET: [The] legislator that introduces the bill, a guy named David Bahati, is a member of the Family. He appears to be a core member of the Family. He works, he organizes their Uganda National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which the Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda…Looking at the the Family’s 990s [IRS records], where they’re moving their money to – into this African leadership academy called Cornerstone, which runs two programs: Youth Corps, which [it] has described in the past as an international “invisible family binding together world leaders” and also, an alumni organization designed to place Cornerstone grads – graduates of this sort of very elite educational program and politics and NGO’s through something called the African Youth Leadership Forum, which is run by – according to Ugandan media – which is run by David Bahat…
See: Gearing Up To Stop Genocide In Uganda and Spotlighting The Family
The following lists come from: Truth Wins Out
Posted January 11th, 2011 by Wayne Besen
Family Quotes
The following lists come from: Truth Wins Out
Posted January 11th, 2011 by Wayne Besen
Family Quotes
- “The more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence you will have,” (Doug Coe, the leader of The Family)
- “You say, hey, 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.” (Doug Coe)
- “We elect our leaders, Jesus elects his.” (Doug Coe)
- “[The Family is] A veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government.” (Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship)
- “I’m guilty of two things. I’m a Jesus guy and I have a heart for Africa.” (Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK)
- Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN)
- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)
- Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
- Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)
- Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY)
- Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
- Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL)
- Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR)
- Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
- Sen. John Thune (R-SD)
- Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)
- Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL)
- Rep. John Carter (R-TX)
- Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)
- Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA)
- Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
- Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Rep. Tom Osborne (R-NE)
- Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)
- Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA)
- Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC)
- Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)
- Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN)
- Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA)
Mike Pence on LGTB Rights in the Work Place:
Apparently he things religious rights trump all others.
Apparently he things religious rights trump all others.
By Paul Singer Roll Call Staff Oct. 14, 2010,
The faith-based organization behind the National Prayer Breakfast is vigorously denying new allegations from an Ohio clergy group that foreign trips and other activities with Members of Congress may have been funded with money from a terrorist organization.
The allegation grows out of a guilty plea lodged in July by former Rep. Mark Siljander (R-Mich.), who was charged with concealing that he had been hired by the Sudan-based Islamic American Relief Agency to convince the Senate Finance Committee to remove the group from a list of organizations suspected of funding terrorist activities.
The indictment and guilty plea explain that the IARA wrote two $25,000 checks to cover Siljander’s costs but that in order to cloak the payments, the checks were made out to the International Foundation, which cashed the checks and then paid the money to Siljander.
The International Foundation, also known as the Fellowship Foundation, has extensive ties to Capitol Hill. The group is affiliated with a house on C Street where several Members of Congress have lived. It organizes regular prayer meetings for Members and other influential government figures, and — as Roll Call reported in June — it has provided Members with just over $100,000 worth of foreign travel since 2000.
The foundation has little formal structure and only in the past few weeks launched a website making a public declaration of its purpose and mission. SOURCE