What do you get when you cross the Masons, Promise Keepers, and Washington powerbrokers? Answer: ‘The Family.’
Previously known as National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, and the International Foundation (got all that?), the Family operates thousands of “cell groups” that it describes as “publicly invisible but privately identifiable group of companions.”
It’s mission? David Coe, son of current Family leader Doug Coe, described it thus to a group of young recruits:
“That’s the way everything in life happens. If you’re a person known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything. And that’s who you guys are. When you leave here, you’re not only going to know the value of Jesus, you’re going to know the people who rule the world. It’s about vision. ‘Get your vision straight, then relate.’ Talk to the people who rule the world, and help them obey. Obey Him. If I obey Him myself, I help others do the same. You know why? Because I become a warning. We become a warning. We warn everybody that the future king is coming. Not just of this country or that, but of the world.” Then he pointed at the map, toward [Genhis] Khan’s vast, reclaimable empire.
Yet another fundamentalist fringe group not worth worrying about? Current US Senate members include Don Nickles, Charles Grassley, Pete Domenici, John Ensign, Jim Inhofe, Bill Nelson and Conrad Burns. (Strom Thurmond also worked closely with the Family.) Current US House members include Jim DeMint, Frank Wolf, Joseph Pitts, Zach Wamp and Bart Stupak. Among recent “friend” of the Family” are Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, Indonesian dictator General Suharto, Salvadoran torturer Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, and Honduran death squad leader Gustavo Alvarez Martinez.
No different than the Christian Coalition or the Moral Majority? In conversation with Kansas congressman Todd Tiarhrt at a prayer breakfast hosted by former attorney general Ed Meese, leader Doug Coe described the Family’s methods:
Religion distracts people from Jesus, Doug said, and allows them to isolate Christ’s will from their work in the world.
“People separate it out,” he warned Tiahrt. “‘Oh, okay, I got religion, that’s private.’ As if Jesus doesn’t know anything about building highways, or Social Security. We gotta take Jesus out of the religious wrapping.”
“All right, how do we do that?” Tiahrt asked.
“A covenant,” Doug answered. The congressman half-smiled, as if caught between confessing his ignorance and pretending he knew what Doug was talking about. “Like the Mafia,” Doug clarified. “Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt’s face. Tiahrt nodded, squinting. “See, for them it’s honor,” Doug said. “For us, it’s Jesus.”
Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”: “Look at Hitler,” he said. “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.” The Family, of course, possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the “total Jesus” of a brotherhood in Christ.
“That’s what you get with a covenant,” said Coe. “Jesus plus nothing.”
Scared yet?
Jesus plus nothing.
Thanks, Chutney, for reminding me about The Family — the power-Christian fraternity in Washington, D.C., that includes U.S. senators and representatives — not to mention dictators from the Third World! I had mentioned Jeffrey Sharlet’s compel…
It is refreshing to see and be reaffirmed that the ideas and principles that Jesus talked about, and lived out are just as disturbing jand controversial today as they were 2000 years ago. So disturbing that people are making up conspiracy theories to raise suspicion of those who are trying to live out what Jesus taught. If an innocent man like Jesus was crucified for these ideas, could “the family” possibly be on the right track?
Who is saying that Jesus was innocent? The Bible might claim that he was, but thats a little biased, don’t you think.
Just ask John “I used to be the leader of this cult, The Baptist”….
“Don’t trust that guy, i mean christ, he cut my head off.”
but thats just some else’s view of the story.
Who is saying that Jesus was innocent? The Bible might claim that he was, but thats a little biased, don’t you think.
Just ask John “I used to be the leader of this cult, The Baptist”….
“Don’t trust that guy, i mean christ, he cut my head off.”
but thats just some else’s view of the story.
Meet ‘The Family’
The most concise paraphrase of the evidence that these people are scary
America the theocracy
A scary story in the local alternative weekly focuses on the “Reconstructionist Movement,” a polito-religious group committed to turning the US into a fundamentalist theocracy reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s political wing is the Constitution …
No, Jesus wasn’t innocent – he was radical. He went against everything the Jewish tradition stood for, except for the whole loving your neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and caring for the orphan, stranger, and widow as mandated by Jewish tradition. Jesus spoke with women and Samaritans, and he ate with tax collectors and prostitutes. He was not and never claimed to be an easy person to accept or love and the people closest to him, his disciples, spend more time in the Gospels misunderstanding than understanding his teachings, but he was working for a good purpose.
I have met many of these men in Washington and have heard them speak about things similar to those mentioned on this site and it’s funny to me how by placing their words here, out of context, and with a twist they do sound a bit “creepy” and conspiratorial. Of course, that can be done with anything from Webster’s Dictionary to the Bible. My suggestion to cynics is this – take a step back from what you presume to be an overt attack of Christianity in cult form coming to take over the world and think about the principles behind Christianity. If Christians didn’t get in the way of Christ so often, maybe you’d see some truth and hope in the fact that there are men and women in Washington who are more concerned with people than politics and with helping others than with fame. Keep in mind that you’ve never heard of Doug Coe outside of this website – he’s not in it for power or money or to be a celebrity, it’s just something he believes in.
Emmanuel Levinas survived the concentration camps and wrote that the essential thing in life is a face-to-face encounter with the other. Until you meet Doug Coe and the other people mentioned on this site, face to face, suspend your judgement about what is going on in Washington. I’m sure they’d show the same courtesy to you.
Find the money trail and you will find the truth. Houses, cars, vacations, clubs. Who’s paying?
I suggest you see two movies.
1. Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson
2. Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson
Although I am pretty sure you have already seen the second one…..