Author to speak of 'The Family'

Author John Sharlet is not concerned about the Christian right he can see and hear. What concerns him are the self-proclaimed elite core members of The Fellowship, a group of powerful hard-right extremists who he says work covertly to manipulate U.S. and foreign business and political leaders toward a united world based on Christian values.

Sharlet wrote “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” which came out in hardback last year and now is in paperback. He will be the featured speaker of the Mainstream Coalition’s kickoff for the 2010 election season at 7 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Congregation Beth Torah, 6100 W. 127th St., Overland Park. There will be a book signing after his presentation about the secretive Christian right world of The Fellowship and what takes place in a house on C Street in Washington, D.C. Cost of the event is $30 for the general public and $10 for Mainstream members. For more information, go to www.mainstreamcoalition.org.

Sharlet said The Fellowship’s core belief is they have been chosen for power by God and that it is their mission to seek out others, both domestic and foreign, including dictators, and groom them for leadership in business, in politics and in the leadership of foreign countries.

The group, Sharlet said, believes and promotes the theory that Jesus came only to talk to a select few.

“They are not interested in the masses,” Sharlet said during a recent telephone interview. “It’s their belief that Christianity has been misunderstood and that Jesus only wanted to select a few key people to work with. They believe that genuine believers work in concentric rings, that Jesus’ teachings were not meant for everybody, that Jesus came to speak to an elite few and that is, according to them, a populist misunderstanding.

“Jesus would use these stories and parables for the masses because the masses can’t handle the truth and then there were a separate set of teachings for another inner circle, and then yet another inner circle and then a core; James and Peter were part of the core.”

Abraham Vereide, a Methodist evangelist, founded The Fellowship in 1935. Since 1969, it has been under the leadership of Douglas Coe, described in the conservative magazine World as “stealthy” because he says good deeds should not be done in the public eye. Since 1953, the group has organized prayer groups throughout the country including the National Prayer Breakfast, which has been attended by every sitting president.

Sharlet said he lived with the group for more than a month. The main headquarters, he said, is a $5 million mansion overlooking the Potomac River in Arlington, Va., called the Cedars. Around the main house are other houses where men in their 20s are being groomed for leadership and it was in one of those houses where Sharlet stayed.

The Fellowship also maintains the C Street house that was in the news media earlier this year in connection with the sex scandals involving Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada who were said to be part of secret Bible studies in the C Street house.

Sharlet said he went to the C Street house twice, which for tax purposes is listed as a church where chosen members of Congress are able to live for what Sharlet said is substantially below market rent. The house is owned by the Youth With a Mission Washington, D.C. (YWAM) and, according to World Magazine, is valued at $1.8 million. In a public video, YWAM founder Loren Cunningham outlined a vision for Christian world control.

Sharlet said The Fellowship’s secrecy concerns him.

“It’s a transparency issue,” he said. “If these guys want to do this, they should be doing it in the public. It’s a deliberately decentralized group and that’s why they call themselves the Christian Mafia. It’s kind of a joke, but it’s also a statement of how they think a structure should work, that it should be simultaneously a higher archival, but also decentralized.

“What they’re striving for is 200 world leaders bound together by their ties to The Family and their idea is that will bring peace and reconciliation because everybody will be on the same team – their team.”

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Write comment