The Family / C Street (Fellowship Foundation)

The Fellowship Foundation — known publicly as 'The Family' and to insiders simply as 'The Fellowship' — is the oldest and most secretive Christian political organization in the United States. It was founded in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant Methodist minister in Seattle, who began organizing prayer breakfasts for business leaders with the explicit goal of countering labor organizing by building Christian relationships among employers. Vereide moved the organization to Washington, D.C. in 1942 and began building relationships with members of Congress. The National Prayer Breakfast — a Washington institution held annually since 1953, attended by every president since Eisenhower — is The Fellowship's creation and primary public event, though The Fellowship itself is deliberately invisible at it. Doug Coe led The Fellowship from 1969 until his death in 2017, building it into a global network of 'key men' — politicians, military leaders, and business executives — whom Coe believed God had selected to govern nations. Coe's theology was deliberately simple: Jesus chose his disciples not for their virtue but for their power potential. The implication was that powerful men selected by Jesus were accountable primarily to God, not to democratic processes, ethical norms, or public accountability. Coe was documented making favorable comparisons between the devotion of Hitler's inner circle, the Mafia, and the bond he sought among Fellowship members. These comparisons are documented on tape and described by journalist Jeff Sharlet, who lived in a Fellowship house and wrote the defining investigation. The Fellowship's operations: - C Street House: A Capitol Hill rowhouse at 133 C Street SE, designated by the IRS as a church, that has served as a subsidized residence for members of Congress including Sen. John Ensign, Sen. Tom Coburn, Rep. Zach Wamp, Rep. Mike Doyle, Rep. Bart Stupak, Rep. Jim DeMint, and others. Its below-market rent drew ethics complaints. - International prayer breakfast network: The Fellowship has organized prayer breakfasts in Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda, and dozens of other countries, serving as informal venues for American political networking. - Uganda connection: MP David Bahati, who introduced Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009 (which initially included the death penalty for homosexuality), was a Ugandan leader of the Fellowship, according to Jeff Sharlet; U.S. Fellowship figures later distanced themselves from the bill. Separately, American activist Scott Lively, not a Fellowship member, spoke at a March 2009 Kampala seminar and says he discussed the bill with lawmakers. This connection was documented by investigative reporters and in Sharlet's reporting. The Fellowship's ideology in the context of this network: its 'Jesus plus nothing' framework — in which conventional religious accountability structures, democratic processes, and public ethics are subordinated to the private relationship between powerful men and a God who has selected them — is, in Sharlet's account, the theological operating system for many of the political relationships documented in this graph. Jeff Sharlet argues that this theology encourages members of Congress who move through C Street, the National Prayer Breakfast, and Fellowship small groups to see their primary accountability as private and spiritual rather than public.

Themes this entry appears in

• Christian Nationalism
• Anti-Democratic
• Anti-LGBTQ
• Political Strategy

Connections from The Family / C Street (Fellowship Foundation)

• influenced → Chuck Colson / BreakPoint (1976) — After his 1973 conversion, Watergate figure Chuck Colson joined a prayer group led by Fellowship leader Doug Coe that included Democratic Senator Harold Hughes and Republican Congressman Al Quie. Coe remained a close adviser as Colson left prison and founded Prison Fellowship in 1976. Jeff Sharlet's 'The Family' treats Colson as one of the Fellowship's most consequential relationships.
• influenced → Hillary Clinton (1993) — In 'Living History' (2003), Hillary Clinton describes meeting Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship's Potomac estate, and calls Coe 'a unique presence in Washington.' As a senator she attended a congressional prayer group Coe led. During the 2008 campaign her associates said she was not a member of the Fellowship and had never given it money.
• promoted → Eric Metaxas (2012) — Eric Metaxas delivered the keynote at the 60th National Prayer Breakfast on February 2, 2012, with President Obama present. Christianity Today noted that the Fellowship puts on the breakfast while staying in the background. Metaxas used the address to press an anti-abortion argument framed through Bonhoeffer's Germany.

Connections to The Family / C Street (Fellowship Foundation)

• Christian Nationalism: Before 1940 influenced (1935) — Kevin Kruse argues that 'Christian America' was built in the 1930s and '40s by businessmen and ministers fighting the New Deal. In his account, the groundwork laid by James Fifield's Spiritual Mobilization (1935) prepared the way for Abraham Vereide's prayer breakfasts, which began in Seattle in 1935 and grew into the Fellowship and the National Prayer Breakfast.

Sources

• The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power — Jeff Sharlet (2008), pp. 1–380
• C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy — Jeff Sharlet (2010), pp. 1–280
• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism — Katherine Stewart (2020), pp. 180–200