TIME magazine 1974: "The God Network" and its government connections. Over 30 years ago.

[madfloridian]

I found this article fascinating in the light of what has been mentioned on Rachel Maddow's show this week. We have often talked here at DU about the secretive Fellowship, or The Family. Back when this was written in 1974, many of the major folks were Watergate players. Amazing how these folks in secret religious groups just keep getting in trouble of some kind.

Time Magazine: The God Network

Written about then, but still secretive after all these years. The article mentions VP Gerald Ford's prayer meetings with two other congressmen just before he took office after Nixon resigned.

The Ford group is only one of an intricate web of groups and individuals—almost an underground network—stretching well across religious and political boundaries, all of them part of a small but growing spiritual renaissance in Washington. It involves both those who have been hoisted to power through Watergate and those who were toppled by it. Quie, for instance, also prays with a Monday morning group that includes Senator Harold Hughes, occasionally Senator Mark Hatfield, and—from January to July—Charles Colson. When Colson went off to prison last month to begin serving a one-to-three-year sentence for obstruction of justice, he carried with him three Bibles and the promise that his prayer-group fellows would keep in touch.

The article then mentions Watergate "cast members" who are re-examining their faith.

James W. McCord Jr., 50, whose letter to Judge John Sirica burst the Watergate dam, has told friends that sermons in suburban Washington's Fourth Presbyterian Church had a powerful impact on his decisions that winter. On the first Sunday of January 1973, McCord, a Methodist who had started attending the church only weeks before, heard the Rev. Richard Halverson, Washington's best-known evangelical preacher, talk about the power of Satan that tempted leaders to play God. The next week, when approached by White House Aide John Caulfield, McCord refused to plead guilty and remain silent.

Jeb Stuart Magruder, 39, was accompanied by the Rev. Louis Evans Jr., of Washington's National Presbyterian Church, when he was sentenced in May for conspiring to obstruct justice. Last year after the Watergate affair had begun to unravel, Magruder joined one of the intimate "covenant" groups that Evans had started in order to feed the "spiritual hunger" in Washington. Jeb's wife Gail joined another (also attended by Mark Hatfield's wife Antoinette). The groups are small—typically only a dozen people who bind themselves to each other through eight principles or covenants. The principles include a broad sharing of time, ideas and possessions when another member needs them. His group is continuing Bible studies with Jeb by mail and visits while he is in prison.

Egil ("Bud") Krogh Jr., 35, recently released after serving 4½ months in prison for his part in the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, had a different kind of experience. Krogh is a Christian Scientist, but according to his wife Suzanne had become religiously inactive. The Krogh marriage was on the rocks before the Ellsberg breakin, she says, but after it, when Bud returned to the practice of his faith, the rift was healed. Just before going to prison in early February, Krogh visited Colson's new-found prayer group to talk about the spiritual reasons for his guilty plea last November.

The article talks more about Doug Coe, who is still apparently the leader of the secretive group called The Family or The Fellowship.

Coe has been the untitled head of the Vereide movement—now known as "the fellowship"—since the founder died in 1969. The prayer-breakfast idea had long since caught wide attention, spreading to some 1,800 U.S. cities and towns and at least 40 other countries. But the movement has also expanded to include many other, less formal encounters: groups that meet to pray together, to study the Bible or to discuss personal problems. The fellowship is in touch with more than 100 groups in Washington alone. Most are broadly ecumenical, and have included Jews as well as Protestants and Catholics. Coe himself—like Hatfield, Laird and Rhodes—attends Halverson's Fourth Presbyterian Church, where fellowship leaders meet weekly to set policy.

All these years and so little said about it out loud in public. Kudos to Rachel Maddow and Jeff Sharlet this week for their coverage of this issue. When they showed Doug Coe's speech, I thought about this article from Talk2Action which covered Coe's visit to Denmark by posting part of an article from Dagbladet.

Doug Coe: Dagbladet: He's a "Hitler Admirer"

Earlier this week, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, which has a circulation of roughly 140,000, ran a story, entitled (translated from the original Norwegian) "Hitler-admirer Received by King.", about "Family" head Doug Coe's visit to Norway, where Coe met with the Norwegian King. In the Dagbladet story, journalist Tore Gjerstad quoted Coe, from recordings of Coe's sermons, lauding the commitment of young Chinese Red Guard men, who decapitated their parents, and enthusing over the organizational methods and organizing prowess of Hitler, Lenin and Mao. Hillary Clinton, who denies having any links to Coe and his group, nonetheless has written of the "Fellowship" head as "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

By far the biggest break for this slowly emerging story on The Family/The Fellowship, almost certainly one of the most influential secret political networks on Earth, was in ABC's April 3, 2008 exclusive, Political ties to a secretive religious group.

The NBC story featured a video in which "Fellowship" (or "Family") head Doug Coe celebrated the political conviction of Chinese communists willing to lop off their own parent's heads for the good of the state, but the ensuing minor hubbub didn't quite convince the rest of mainstream media that the story trumped the hullabullulaballoo over sermons given by Barack Obama's ex-pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Although, as detailed by NBC, there exist numerous ties between leading US politicians and Doug Coe, leader of the secretive, global fundamentalist religious group "The Fellowship", who celebrates parental decapitation and waxes enthusiastic over the power inherent in the bond and covenant shared among Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler.

That part of the video was shown on Rachel's show.

Barry Lynn of Americans United and Chuck Lewis of Center for Public Integrity had this to say about that secretive group....they were speaking to Lisa Getter.

Politics and religion, Barry Lynn and Chuck Lewis

"You’re combining, on some level, religion and politics," Chuck Lewis, director of Washington’s Center for Public Integrity, told the L. A. Times’ Lisa Getter, about the Fellowship.

A similar reaction to the group came from the Reverend Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, as expressed to the AP: " What concerns people is when you mix religion, political power, and secrecy. "

On the Fellowship Foundation’s annual Form 990 tax-exempt-organization report to the Internal Revenue Service, under " Relationship of Activities to Accomplishment of Exempt Purposes, " the foundation declares that its aim is " to identify laymen who have an understanding of what it means to work towards a leadership led by God and introduce them to others with similar goals and interests. " Theocracy literally means government by God, and it could be defined as " a leadership led by God.

Jeff Sharlet in Jesus Plus Nothing mentioned some of the dictators praised by this group and specifically by Coe. A couple were mentioned on Rachel's show.

The Fellowship's long-term goal is "a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." According to the Fellowship's archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship's God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton, says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.

Jeff Sharlet discusses the Prayer Breakfast.

I notice that religion and politics seem to mix fairly comfortably now even at supposedly liberal forums....but usually only when it comes to two subjects. Those subjects are the rights of women and the rights of gays. The religious right has made such inroads that even here one must stand up for those rights.

Too many in our party are comfortable going along with helping religion and politics mix.

[rwheeler31]

1. Thank you I want to learn more about this frightening group.

[madfloridian]

2. The more things change..

the more they don't.

The God Network is still getting in trouble...just different kinds of trouble now.

[WestSeattle2]

18. That saying came to my mind, too. Just the names of the

narcissists, egoists, and outright criminals, seem to change.

[madfloridian]

19. From Watergate to Affairgate...

okay, that was a terrible way to describe it...but it's apt anyway.

[tooeyeten]

51. They endanger our democracy.

[ohheckyeah]

3. Here's a link to the book that Maddow mentioned:

http://www.amazon.com/reader/0060560053?_encoding=UTF8&query=the%20family#reader

[starroute]

4. I posted this on another thread that seems to have died

I spent some time looking into the Fellowship in 2005 and still have a lot of my files from then. The most important point is that it is not just a religious group with political aspirations -- it's a political group with extensive influence, gained in part through assuming a religious facade.

For example, consider this quote from Jeffrey Sharlet's 2003 article on the Family:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can't.”

Basically, this thing has tentacles everywhere. It's like Danny Casolaro's Octopus, only it's doing it all single-handed.

There are any number of really wild theories out there -- from sources ranging from Wayne Madsen (http://www.insider-magazine.com/ChristianMafia.htm) to the LaRouchies -- which might be true or might be disinfo but either way tend to muddy the waters. However, I know of one article -- written from a rather alarmed Christian point of view -- which manages to pull together much of the more conspiratorial end of the story without ever quite straying over the line into unfounded speculation.

Basically, the Fellowship Foundation was formed prior to World War II by a group of conservative businessmen who'd decided that their best tool for fighting back against the unionists and communists they saw as threatening their profits would be a secretive organization which could wear an outward face of simple piety and patriotism while having an inner teaching that perverted Christianity into a corrupt and heretical message of elite power.

In other words, fascism posing as religion.

http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000057.htm

A review of the organization's archives at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College - which, together with Fuller Seminary on the west coast, has been at the very forefront of the development of a new and very militant eschatology (doctrine of "end times") known as "Warfare Theology" - reveals an association that, according to the Times, "HAS HAD EXTRAORDINARY ACCESS AND SIGNIFICANT INFLUENCE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS FOR THE LAST FIFTY YEARS." . . .

The genesis of the Fellowship Foundation can be traced back to Seattle and the "Red Scare" (and resultant "Palmer Raids") of 1919-1921; specifically, to the fear that American businessmen had at the time for what was going on in the Soviet Union: that somehow or other the United States was in grave danger of being engulfed by a socialist revolution directed by the Soviet Union and "mainlined" into the country through sympathetic American trade unions. . . .

Historian Murray Levin writes that it didn't take the business community long to come up with the idea of enlisting members of the Christian community as "foot soldiers" and "grunts" in their war against trade-unionism and socialism - an effort which involved two strategies: (1) waving the "bloody shirt" of "atheistic socialism," and (2) contributing large sums of money to their churches and ministries. Big business would bludgeon organized labor into a bloody pulp using the "poor carpenter of Nazareth" as its cudgel. . . .

The person big business chose to carry its banner in Seattle was Abraham Vereide, the man who was the guiding light behind the establishment of the ICL (i.e., the "Fellowship Foundation"). . . . Not coincidentally, the men Vereide chose to "win Seattle to Christ" - even through the barrel of a gun, if necessary - were all fervent anti-unionists who had played prominent roles in mercilessly CRUSHING labor's General Strike in the city in the early 1920s.

Although this article implies that the Fellowship Foundation began in the early 1920s, the group's own records at http://www.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/GUIDES/459.htm date things somewhat later: "April 1935 - Vereide pulled together a group of local businessmen to pray about perceived IWW and Socialist subversion and corruption in Seattle, Washington's municipal government. Group began to meet regularly and expanded to include government officials, labor leaders, etc."

I'm not sure which is more accurate -- I didn't think the IWW was still around in the 30's -- but in either case, the real power of the group began when it set up shop in Washington, DC in 1944-45 and started tapping into postwar conservatism and anti-communism.

By now, this group has acquired considerable wealth and power, a great deal of influence over both politicians and military officers, a membership that overlaps with other elite groups such as the Council for National Policy, far more control over US foreign policy than any of us can be happy about, and a significant presence among the elites of other nations.

[madfloridian]

5. Thanks for the links.

I am reading the antipas one now.

Some of those I had not seen.

:hi:

[pat_k]

7. The 2002 Gettner (LA Times) article is worth a read

The Los Angeles Times, Sep 27, 2002
Showing Faith in Discretion
By Lisa Gettner

. . .

Pentagon officials secretly met at the group's Washington Fellowship House in 1955 to plan a worldwide anti-communism propaganda campaign endorsed by the CIA, documents from the Fellowship archives and the Eisenhower Presidential Library show. Then known as International Christian Leadership, the group financed a film called "Militant Liberty" that was used by the Pentagon abroad. . .

Coe described Cedars as a place open to anyone, including the poor, but acknowledged that the poor who most often use the estate are the young men and women from foreign countries who make the beds, tend the manicured gardens, serve gourmet meals and learn about the Fellowship. . . The women live in a separate house across the street. The men live in another house called Ivanwald down the block. Several years after purchasing Cedars, members of the Fellowship began buying up houses in this affluent neighborhood. . .

In January, Reps. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio) and Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.) traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan on a fact-finding congressional trip, meeting with the leaders of both Muslim countries. But the men, all members of the Fellowship, discussed more than U.S. policy.. . .

"There's nothing sinister here, no dark secrets," Hall said. "It's the exact opposite of what Washington is about."

Perhaps not surprising, but nevertheless a bit disturbing to see so many (D)'s. (Sen. Bill Nelson (D- Fla.), whose wife, Grace, is on the board of the Fellowship. . . "We sort of don't talk to the press about the house," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who lives there. . . at least one member of Congress who lives there, Rep. Michael F. Doyle (D-Pa.), said he didn't know the property was registered as a church. . . John Elias Baldacci (D-Maine). . . )

[Hannah Bell]

8. Abraham Vereide: "former associate general director of Goodwill Industries"

The movement was founded in Seattle in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant and traveling preacher who had been working with the city's poor. He opposed FDR's New Deal and was worried that socialist politicians were about to take over Seattle's municipal government.<1><3> Prominent members of Seattle's business community recognized his success with those who were "down and out" and asked him to give spiritual direction to their group who were "up and out." He organized prayer breakfasts for politicians and businessmen that included anti-Communism and anti-union discussions. He was subsequently invited to set up similar meetings among political and business leaders in San Francisco and Chicago.

Vereide's principal collaborator in France was Edmond Michelet, five-time minister under President Charles de Gaulle.

By 1942, the organization had moved headquarters to Washington, DC, where it helped create breakfast groups in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. In 1944, the organization's name was changed to International Christian Leadership, then in 1972, to The Fellowship Foundation. It was at this time that the group's leaders decided to lower the Fellowship's public profile by decentralizing its leadership.

The movement's members have been active in reconciliation efforts between the warring leaders of The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and many other similar conflicts around the world.

The movement has had some involvement with the New Age Movement also known as the "Cultural Creatives Movement" in the form of Paul N. Temple, a former Standard Oil executive who was also instrumental in founding the Institute of Noetic Sciences as well as the World Business Academy.<2> In 1987, The Family co-sponsored a conference, Bridging Through Christ, at the Goldlake New Age center near Boulder, Colorado. Barbara Marx Hubbard and Doug Coe co-chaired the event; David Spangler, Findhorn Community representatives, and Conservative Baptist Seminary representatives including Vernon Grounds and Gordon Lewis participated. The catalyst appears to have been Paul N. Temple, who co-founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences and is a major funder of both IONS and The Family through his "Three Swallows Foundation." The address of 133 C Street, SE, is the mailing address for Doug Coe,<4> and the address given on the 990 IRS form of the Three Swallows Foundation. Coe's son, David Coe(The Family), also works for the organization and is considered the presumptive heir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Christian_Leadership

Barbara Marx Hubbard?
Findhorn Community?

new agers too...

note: this says founder of Goodwill:

http://www.urbana.org/marketplace-bibliography/modern-viking-the-story-of-abraham-vereide-pioneer-in-christian-leadership


this says they worked with the cia on anti-communist film

http://books.google.com/books?id=ygM0kvQsvqoC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA199&ots=Pf1h5s6GA8&dq=Vereide+movement


Sarah Posner: Let's start by talking about how the whole project almost came about by accident when the brother of your ex-girlfriend invited you to come to a place called Ivanwald.

Jeff Sharlet: This friend said, "Can you meet with my brother? I'm afraid he's joined a cult; you write about religion and should check it out."

SP: Did he tell you that it was a seat of political power in Washington? Or did he just make it seem like it was an overgrown frat?

JS: It was an overgrown frat with all of these interesting political connections that he denied had any politics, any organization, anything. A group of men loving leaders. The whole thing is predicated on this idea that politicians are somehow the most vulnerable among us. And that they need special care, because they're so busy serving us, who's serving them?

SP: Only men, right?

JS: Women can be involved; I never met one, but I knew they were there. There was a house down the road for women who were being groomed for helpmates to leadership. These were wealthy young women who had grown up on ranches in Texas who were being made to put on skirts and lipstick and curtsy to Ed Meese.

SP: And this is in Arlington, right across the Potomac from Georgetown.

JS: Yes. Big old beautiful mansion where they host -- Ed Meese, for instance, continues to host a weekly meeting there; he'll invite a gathering of diplomats, a few businessmen, and a few politicians. They talk about how we can do conflict resolution, a couple of brothers in Christ can just get together and share their love for one another. If they're "top men." If they're chosen by God for this, if they're elites, if they're chosen by God according to Romans 13.

SP: Give me an example.

JS: The Family did negotiate some years back a peace deal between Paul Kagame and Joseph Kabila in Congo. And it was a terrible peace deal, and it went nowhere, and that war goes on and on because you had these top American politicians exerting their sentimental notions of religion that at the same time tend to line up with American political interests and American economic interests.

SP: What are those sentimental notions of religion?

JS: Are you willing to submit to this Christ, are you willing to say that you're obeying Christ before you obey the will of the people, what The Family calls "the din of the vox popula." They don't like that.

SP: So you're listening to this imaginary Christ instead of representing your constituents, because the will of the people is just the riff-raff?

JS: It's actually a little worse than that. What you're doing is getting a collection of elites who are submitting to the authority of an American-led fundamentalist network, not following their conscience but following Christ as he reveals himself secretly to the elite.

SP: So their Christ is not the social gospel Christ of the mainline denominations, and it's also not the Christ that evangelicals have their personal walk with either, because that Christ is a lot more egalitarian, and the social gospel Christ is more focused on justice issues.

JS: Right.

SP: So who invented this Christ that these guys connect with?

JS: It was invented in 1945, in direct response to the social gospel Christ, by Abraham Vereide . He was a Norwegian immigrant to America, and had risen pretty high in social gospel circles, working with Goodwill. He had come to the conclusion that this was going nowhere, because of the Great Depression, which in his mind was clearly a punishment from God, for disobedience. The greatest form of disobedience was labor organizations.

SP: So God was going to punish America for labor unions?

JS: Because we were not a religious enough nation. We needed another great awakening.

SP: How were unions indicative that we weren't spiritual enough?

JS: If you try and regulate economics, well then you're interfering with God's free will. This is of course an idea that's very attractive to the wealthy elites he starts ministering to.

SP: Vereide was the original source of the anti-union ideas?

JS: He's given a vision. He's obsessed with Harry Bridges, the great union organizer. One night in 1935, after the great strike of 1934, Vereide says God gave him a vision that Christianity has spent 2,000 years looking in the wrong direction.

SP: Helping the poor, you mean?

JS: Yes. The down and out, the suffering, the weak, and the poor. God doesn't want to have soup kitchens or social welfare programs, God doesn't like what FDR is doing. What about the up-and-out? Don't they deserve love as well? Doesn't Henry Ford need somebody to love him?

SP: Tell me about how Doug Coe admires Hitler.

JS: Vereide did too. In 1948, The Family is feeling good about themselves; Taft-Hartley was passed in 1947, which was part of their original goal. And Abram publishes a pamphlet for congressmen, for private distribution, called "A Better Way." He writes, "We have entered an area where the masses of people are dependent on a rapidly diminishing number of leaders for the determination of their pattern of life and the definition of their ultimate goals. It is the age of minority control." "The age of minority control" is something they believe in deeply. They do talk about what could go wrong if minority control got into the wrong hands. As Doug Coe would say, Hitler and Lenin and Mao and these strong men of history understood the New Testament better than any other leader of the 20th century; they applied it to evil ends, but they behaved as God wanted. God wants a strong man to exert leadership in this age of minority control.

SP: Was Jesus a strong man?

JS: Oh, yes, Jesus was the strongest man of all, and if he was alive today, he'd be the greatest quarterback, he'd be the number one CEO, he'd be the head of General Electric. When you live in The Family, they sit around and wonder how awesome Jesus would be if he raced NASCAR.

SP: You were talking about how they don't like violence, but about the tendency of The Family to lend its hand to brutal dictators; this quote from Coe really stood out to me, "the Bible is full of mass murderers." So you're saying that they don't really advocate violence, but they acquiesce to violence.

JS: Yes. That's a nice example. Ted Haggard, later in the book says, you know, the Bible is a really bloody book.

SP: What do you think Barack Obama's relationship with The Family would be if he's elected?

JS: Obama's going to make peace with The Family -- you have to. He's going to go to the National Prayer Breakfast; he has to. How can you say, I'm opposed to prayer? They've set the terms up so you can't really go against it.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=focusing_on_the_family

[Hannah Bell]

9. "secret cells such as the American Embassy & the Standard Oil office to move practically anywhere"

Vereide arrived in Washington, D.C., on September 6, 1941, as the guest of a man referred to only as 'Colonel Brindley.' 'Here I am finally,' he wrote to his wife, Mattie, who remained in Seattle. 'In a day or two,many will know that I am in town and by God's grace it will hum.' Within weeks he had held his first D.C. prayer meeting, attended by more than a hundred congressmen.By 1943, now living in a suite at Colonel Brindley's University Club, Vereide was an insider. 'My what a full and busy day!' he wrote to Mattie on January 22.
...
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.
...
Back home, Senator Strom Thurmond prepared several reports for Vereide concerning the Senate's deliberations.
...
Even in Franco's Spain, Vereide once boasted at a prayer breakfast in 1965, 'there are secret cells such as the American Embassy the Standard Oil office to move practically anywhere.'

By the late sixties, Vereide's speeches to local prayer breakfast groups had become minor news events, and Family members' travels on behalf of Christ had attracted growing press attention.Vereide began to worry that the movement he had spent his life building might become just another political party.In 1966, a few years before he was 'promoted' to heaven at age eighty-four, Vereide wrote a letter declaring it time to 'submerge the institutional image of .' No longer would the Family recruit its powerful members in public, nor recruit so many. 'There has always been one man,' wrote Vereide, 'or a small core who have caught the vision for their country and become aware of what a 'leadership led by God' could mean spiritually to the nation and to the world. . . . It is these men, banded together, who can accomplish the vision God gave me years ago.'
...
And what the Family desired, from Abraham Vereide to Doug Coe to Bengt, was power, worldly power, with which Christ's kingdom can be built, cell by cell.

www.inthesetimes.com/article/3847/unholy_allies/ -

[madfloridian]

21. House where women were "being groomed" to be "helpmates to leadership"

JS: Women can be involved; I never met one, but I knew they were there. There was a house down the road for women who were being groomed for helpmates to leadership. These were wealthy young women who had grown up on ranches in Texas who were being made to put on skirts and lipstick and curtsy to Ed Meese.

SP: And this is in Arlington, right across the Potomac from Georgetown.

Wow.

[starroute]

6. Here are some more links

All the articles seem to keep recycling the same limited set of facts on the Fellowship, but each one may have a few snippets the others don't.

http://www.toobeautiful.org/lat_020927.html

http://www.portlandphoenix.com/features/top/ts_multi/documents/02877355.asp

The first of those links also indicates a long-standing relationship between the Fellowship and Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition. Among other escapades, Sheldon was involved with Jack Abramoff's attempts to prevent other Indian tribes from opening casinos that might compete with the tribes which were his clients.

For that matter, a number of the senators who got money from Abramoff also have Fellowship connections -- including John Ensign. This was one of the things that got me interested in the Fellowship in the first place, but I've never been able to find out of there's anything to it.

[madfloridian]

23. Plus this from Ben Daniel with more on this group. Preacher and journalist

http://www.scribd.com/doc/11815661/The-Fellowship-Foundation

"In addition, some Christian leaders are beginning to raise cautious and thoughtful questions about the Fellowship’s attitude toward women. An Evangelical scholar told me of being troubled after a chapel service at the college where she works. Doug Coe’s sister, a Fellowship adherent, had delivered a message promoting a spirituality that the scholar described as being
“overly prescriptive of men’s and women’s roles and differences in function.”

Such attitudes toward women often are lived out in the Fellowship with painful consequences. Despite the spoken promise that they are to be considered equal partners in the Fellowship's ministry and honored sisters in the Fellowship family, the women of Potomac Point are treated as servants and are reminded that their role, both in life and in the work of the Fellowship, is one of quiet, strong support for the work of the men. One gets the sense that in the Fellowship’s spiritual geography women are seen as roadblocks on the path to male spiritual enlightenment. One woman told me of her experience dating a man who was part of a Fellowship cell in Southern California. As her boyfriend’s involvement grew, he pushed her to the margins of his life. “In my life,” he told her “the guys from the Fellowship are at the center, and my wife, whoever that will be, will be somewhere off to the side.” In the waning days of the relationship she was approached by the wives of older Fellowship members. “Get out while you still can,” one warned. Another described her life as a Fellowship wife: “I’m always third. The Fellowship comes first in my husband’s life. Then our children. Then me.”

[AntiFascist]

31. Some interesting research in this article...

http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=429&Itemid=62

...

We saw in a recent Sanders Research article, “ Killer Political Instincts ,” that while Karl Rove was in high school in Utah he was working on the campaign of Republican Senator Wallace Bennett, whose son controlled a public relations firm that employed career intelligence operatives who were hired to re-elect Richard Nixon. The article also mentioned that Rove’s recruiters, the College Republican National Committee, also trained Ralph Reed, Terry Dolan, Roger Stone, Grover Norquist, Lee Atwater, and Jack Abramoff (Tom Delay’s fund-raiser recently indicted for dirty tricks)—indoctrinating them into their future roles in political consulting and mail-order to elect extreme right wing candidates.

...

[madfloridian]

33. Thanks, I missed that.

:hi:

[AntiFascist]

26. I think you've summed up the conspiracy quite well...

the roots of all of these groups, which have also overlapped with Sun Myung Moon, are anti-communism. Since WWII, fascism has always been used to counter communism and this is why there has always been such a strong alliance with 'fascists', including the recruitment of former Nazis in Project Paperclip. There has also been a strong alliance with underworld (mafia) figures, but this is covered up by the superficial repentence of former mob figures (such as those involved with Watergate) when they join forces with The Fellowship or the (right-wing) Catholics.

[defendandprotect]

52. Misplaced

[Blue_In_AK]

10. Thank you, MadFloridian.

I wonder if Sarah Palin is involved with these people. "Religion, political power and secrecy" seem to define her to a T. This language, too, "an understanding of what it means to work towards a leadership led by God and introduce them to others with similar goals and interests" sounds Palinesque. Is that awful Fred Malek involved with these people?

[EvolveOrConvolve]

16. I think Palin's still an outsider

But I do know that Hillary Clinton is a member of The Fellowship. This thing truly crosses political and religious lines, and sounds like one of those crazy conspiracy theories but isn't.

The weird religious facade is put up to add a layer of legitimacy to the whole thing. I don't it counts all that much other than being a distraction for its detractors. Sarah Palin is an actual religious nut, so I don't thing she'd fit in with The Fellowship crowd very well.

[opihimoimoi]

11. I Rec HOLY TERROR Jim Seigleman/Flo Conway 1980 Describes the movement

Scary then...scarier now

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Then it wasn't a far leap for Charles Colson to "convert" and become "born again"

while in prison. It was his Fellowship culture in a new venue.

[madfloridian]

50. I was thinking that same thing.

In our county there are God Pod living quarters in jails for those who accept Christ. There are baptisms in the jails. Wonder if they are connected to Colson's fellowship culture.

[malaise]

13. I'm very glad that Obama did not attend

their prayer breakfast earlier this year.

[madfloridian]

22. I was also very glad.

And impressed by that fact.

[Karenina]

14. bttt!

[Solly Mack]

15. K&R

[Tan Gent]

17. Why they are so pernicious is that while their numbers are small, they control

a very significant part of the economy. They "get things done" by stealth and most of us don't even notice
until it's already done. Just another example of how religion and civil liberties are anathematic.

[madfloridian]

20. Good point. The power often lies behind the facade we voters see.

Sadly.

[madfloridian]

24. So now the unrecommends are starting. Guess the topic is too controversial

[madfloridian]

25. "some of the fellowship people are the same generals who carry out martial law."

"One thoughtful supporter of the fellowship wonders whether it is too neutral on political questions. "Doug never raises issues," observes Wesley Michaelson, Hatfield's legislative assistant. "The latent assumption is that the solution to political problems is to get people converted and committed to each other. But overseas some of the fellowship people are the same generals who carry out martial law." Still, Michaelson concedes that Coe's personal, uncritical ministry has made him "the real chaplain of the House and Senate." It has also forged ties of concern. When an assailant shot Mississippi's Senator John Stennis, a fellowship member, it was Hatfield—one of his foremost foes in the Senate—who spent the night at the hospital fielding phone calls."

Coe, the real chaplain of Congress even way back in 1974?

[Initech]

27. I remember first hearing about this after Ted Haggard

There was stuff coming out about how he and a group of conservative fundie leaders (including Falwell, Robertson, John Hagee, Haggard, and a bunch of others) sat in on a White House conference call with Bush every motherfucking week. That is some scary shit.

[valerief]

32. I remember that, too! Fascism in the name of Jesus. Jesusism, I guess. nt

[Initech]

35. George Carlin had a great bit about religious fascism.

"My god has a bigger dick than your god!!!!". :rofl:

[Octafish]

28. DU's been on to their gangster fascist backsides for a while...

... as evidenced above and below.

Know your BFEE: The Fellowship ‘Preys’ for America

NAZIs aren't dumb. "Got mit Uns." They aren't smart, either. God's with everyone. Some just don't know it.

[mod mom]

29. Thanks Octafish. I just posted a link to your thread last night:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6037432&mesg_id=6037833

YOu always provide the best information. Your posts should be mandatory reading to all you care a "damn " about this country!

I just wrote to AG Holder ( for the umteenth time) on the need to prosecute the Bush Administration for their crimes against humanity after reading he is considering probing torture. I hope other will join me en masse to show him there are many out here who care!

[madfloridian]

30. Octafish has been on their fascist gangster backsides for a very long time.

And doing a magnificent job of it.

Love that Octafish research.

So glad to see it mentioned on real TV.

:hi:

[emcguffie]

34. Vanity Fair article re: 'The Family"

I do apologize if this has already been posted.

There was an excellent article in Harpers some years ago. I still have that magazine at work, but I have been sent home on disability.

I think I may be able to find it again.

Yes. Searching for "National Prayer Breakfast" and "The Family" did it.

Here's the article:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525

That's the URL. Sorry, I do not remember the correct protocol. Here is a snippet of the article:

March 2003 · Previous · Next PDF

www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525

Jesus plus nothing:
Undercover among America's secret theocrats

By Jeffrey Sharlet

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

—Matthew 10:36

This is how they pray: a dozen clear-eyed, smooth-skinned “brothers” gathered together in a huddle, arms crossing arms over shoulders like the weave of a cable, leaning in on one another and swaying like the long grass up the hill from the house they share. The house is a handsome, gray, two-story colonial that smells of new carpet and Pine-Sol and aftershave; the men who live there call it Ivanwald. At the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac, quiet but for the buzz of lawn mowers and kids playing foxes-and-hounds in the park across the road, Ivanwald sits as one house among many, clustered together like mushrooms, all devoted, like these men, to the service of Jesus Christ.

(snip)...

And they pray...at being counted among such a fine corps for Christ, among men to whom he will open his heart and whom he will remember when he returns to the world not born-again but remade, no longer an individual but part of the Lord's revolution, his will transformed into a weapon for what the young men call “spiritual war.”

“Jeff, will you lead us in prayer?”

Surely, brother. It is April 2002, and I have lived with these men for weeks now...

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525

Apologies again if this is a dupe.

[troubledamerican]

37. Good link

[madfloridian]

36. Colson of the God Network says Rumsfeld sought advice from Christian leaders

before Afghanistan. Sounds like old Chuck Colson was among them...and we just know what advice he would give. From 2002 at Christianity Today:

Sometimes going to war is the charitable thing to do

When the war began in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked a handful of religious leaders to brief him on just-war doctrine. Most of us gave high marks to the administration's efforts to meet just-war standards. I asked, however, the one discordant question: "How would the administration justify a preemptive strike on Iraq?" Without hesitation, Rumsfeld cited the precedent of Israel's attack on an Iraqi nuclear plant in 1981.

One year later, the question is no longer hypothetical. As I write, U.S. forces are massing for war with Iraq. By the time you read this, troops may be in Baghdad. But whatever happens, the morality of a preemptive strike will continue as a hot debate. Last September, the President drew the battle line, boldly declaring preemption as a national policy.

This issue is of particular concern to Christians since we are the heirs of the just-war tradition formulated by Augustine 1,600 years ago. Historically, the doctrine's requirement of just cause has been defined as responding to an attack.

..."Christians should remember that the just-war doctrine is not grounded in revenge, punishment, or even justice. Thomas Aquinas discussed it in Summa Theologica—not in the section on justice but in the section on charity (that is, the love of God). As Christian scholar Darrell Cole writes, "The Christian who fails to use force to aid his neighbor when prudence dictates that force is the best way to render that aid is an uncharitable Christian. Hence Christians who willingly and knowingly refuse to engage in a just war … fail to show love towards their neighbor as well as towards God."

Out of love of neighbor, then, Christians can and should support a preemptive strike, if ordered by the appropriate magistrate to prevent an imminent attack.

Chuck Colson, Watergate player, and giver of Chrstian advice to US leaders.

That just makes me feel so doggone good inside.

[mod mom]

49. this needs to be fully exposed. We need info as who is involved in the media world!

Whose protecting them and who is supporting their dangerous agenda!

[varelse]

38. bookmarked, recommended, and will be sharing this one

although I suspect it is no surprise to my parents who were well aware of this in the 70's.

[madfloridian]

39. I notice the unrecs are moving it down.

Guess it is too controversial.

I have been keeping track to see which posts draw the most unrecs. Answer...doesn't matter.

Even a cute video will do it.

[PassingFair]

40. You're probably a target for the "un-wreckers", Mad!

They only expose themselves for the
NEOCON abetting trash that they are
when they try to argue with
Progressive politics. "UnWrecking"
is a much easier way of influencing
without having to show their flanks.

:hi:

[madfloridian]

41. "un-wreckers" Ha Ha.

They can do it in private with no count showing.

They can influence on the sly with no one knowing.

:hi:

[varelse]

42. I suspect the "unrecommend" feature is being aimed at people

not at ideas. Unfortunately, this means that the more you do to draw attention, the more likely you are to become a target.

[madfloridian]

44. I am thinking you may be right.

I know it really has brought out the worst in some people. That's a shame.

[underpants]

43. Marking for later read. Maddow covered "The Family" a few days ago

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-christian-conservatisms

[Demeter]

45. When It Comes to Cults, the US Can't Be Beat

At least we know where to find the crazies in this country. They form herds.

It is a good measure of the mental and emotional health, knowing how such groups grow or shrink. The grandiosity of these sick souls cannot be underestimated.

[LiberalFighter]

46. Do any judges participate?

[TommyPaine]

47. Quite obvious these people think they're god. (nt)

[madfloridian]

48. It's about total power, not real Christianity based on love and honor and caring

for fellow human beings. It's a sad misuse of what religion should be.

[defendandprotect]

53. Patriarchal religion is a patriarchal invention . . . behind which they do

as much harm as possible -- to women, children, nature --

Patriarchy, itself, is a sickness.