Just when we thought “Good old boy” clubs had become passé, just when we thought we’d seen the last of former Skull and Bones members holding positions of power and influence, here comes “The Family”.

As the Republican Party implodes, the public is becoming aware of a secretive Christian society known as the Family or the Fellowship. The group was founded in 1935 in opposition to FDR’s New Deal and its adherents subscribe to a far right Christian fundamentalist and free market ideology. A minister named Abraham Vereide founded the Family after having a vision in which God visited him in the person of the head of the United States Steel Corporation (no, I’m not making this up). The Family has a connection to house on C Street in Washington, D.C., known simply as C Street. Officially registered as a church, the building serves as a meeting place and residence for conservative politicians.

Few members of the fellowship talk about the group’s mission. The organization organizes the annual National Prayer Breakfast that is attended by the president, members of Congress, and diplomats from around the world. Earlier this year, Obama presented his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the event. According to Jeff Sharlet who wrote a book about the group, the Family’s philosophy is based on “a sort of trickle-down fundamentalism,” that believes that the wealthy and powerful, if they “can get their hearts right with God … will dispense blessings to those underneath them.” True believers in market orthodoxy, Family members think that God’s will operates directly through Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.”

The Family’s current leader Doug Coe is secretive but enjoys considerable political influence as a spiritual adviser. When South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, himself a visitor and a kind of honorary alumni at C Street, compared his political difficulties involving his affair with an Argentine woman to those of biblical King David, the South Carolina politician was falling back on a central figure in Family theology. You could “almost hear Doug Coe’s voice” coming out of Sanford, Sharlet remarks.

C Street’s stately red brick, $1.1 million building is subsidized by secretive religious organizations and is located a mere stone’s throw away from the Capitol. Lawmakers who live there include Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN); Bart Stupak (D-MI);Jim DeMint (R-SC); Mike Doyle (D-PA); and Sens. John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Sam Brownback (R-KS). The lawmakers, all Christians, live in private rooms upstairs and pay an incredibly low rent — a paltry $600 — to live at C Street.

When they’re not philandering and violating their own professed Christian morality, C Street members push for the projection of U.S. power abroad. As Obama went to Port of Spain, Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas in April, Ensign who criticized the president for shaking Hugo Chávez’s hand. (Source-http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2016)

According to the Washington Post the house is owned by Youth With a Mission D.C. Youth With a Mission is one of the most extensive Christian fundamentalist para-church organizations on Earth, and YWAM founder leader Loren Cunningham has publicly outlined a vision for Christian world-control.

In a 2008 promotional video, “Reclaiming 7 Mountains of Culture”, Loren Cunningham describes a vision he shared along with the late Campus Crusade For Christ founder Bill Bright and late Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer, in which Christian fundamentalists could achieve world domination by taking over key sectors of society such as business, government, media, and education.

Francis Schaeffer is widely credited as one of the most influential theologians of the 20th Century Christian right. Among the myriad ministries of Bill Bright’s behemoth Campus Crusade For Christ is the Washington D.C. ministry Christian Embassy that targets Pentagon leaders for evangelizing.

The C Street House is run by a secretive Washington ministry known as The Family, or The Fellowship. Over the past year and a half, The Family has gradually come to public attention, mainly due to journalist and Harpers editor Jeff Sharlet’s ground breaking book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. The Family runs the yearly National Prayer Breakfast and maintains a network of Capital Hill prayer groups which have enjoyed the participation of both top GOP but also top Democratic Party Congress and Senate members.
As Cunningham introduces Reclaim 7 Mountains of Culture, “It was August, 1975… and the Lord had given me, that day a list of things that I had never thought about before. He said, ‘This is the way to reach America, and nations, for God.’ ”

The video continues with a narrator who declares, “In every city of the world, an unseen battle rages for dominion over God’s creation and the souls of people. This battle is fought on seven strategic fronts, looming like mountains over the culture, that shape and influence its destiny. Over the years, the church slowly retreated from its place of influence on these mountains, leaving a void now filled with darkness. When we lose our influence, we lose the culture and when we lose the culture we fail to advance the kingdom of God. And now, a generation stands in desperate need. It’s time to fight for them and take back these mountains of influence.” (Source-http://www.open.salon.com/blog/tre_gibbs/2009/07/11/c-street_house_and_the_family_-_america_needs_to_see_this)

…what makes it a little bit different than other Christian conservative organizations, two things, you said that it’s secretive. Indeed the leader of the group describes, he says, the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have. And the other things is the nature of the influence they want to have.

The family began, it’s the oldest Christian conservative organization in Washington and it goes back seventy years. And the founder believed that god gave him a new revelation saying that Christianity had gotten it wrong for two thousand years and that what most people think of as Christianity, as being about, you know, helping the weak and the poor and the meek and the down and out, he believes god came to him one night in April in 1935 and said what Christianity should really be about is building more power for the already powerful. And that these powerful men who were chosen by god can then if they want to dispense blessings to the rest of us, through a kind of trickle-down fundamentalism. (Source-http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-christian-conservatisms)

Think of C-Street as a TWO-WAY half-way house — except all of the house residents and visitors hold positions of tremendous elected power.
Some of the residents and visitors are RECEOVERING addicts, like former long-time cocaine addict Zach Wamp.
Others are heading into or dealing with CURRENT addictions, like sex addicts John Ensign and Mark Sanford.
And either way, the ultra-secretive house sponsor (who praises Hitler, Mao, and Stalin as role models) get free access with, and leverage over, these former and new addicts.
Nice set-up — that is, if you are a powerful politician who needs a place to live, who is willing to swear to secrecy, and who is willing to pretend not to see evil. (Source-http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2009/07/wamp_defends_c_street_house_as.php)

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• God’s Senators (firedoglake.com)
• Sanford Cites Secretive Christian Group’s Role in Helping Confront Affair (usnews.com)
• Frank Schaeffer: Big Time Evangelical Religion: Consumerist Individualism (huffingtonpost.com)

While I tend to agree with many of your opinions, you come off as mean spirited, as if your desire was to become the Limbaugh of the left. I don’t respect Rush’s rudeness and egotism, his shallow intelligence and tendency to foam at the mouth while pontificating. I dislike his style, and because of that I spare myself the agony of listening to him any more often than absolutely necessary.

Speaking of Limbaugh, Keith, may I add that I see far too much of him watching your show. If the man is as easily dismissed as intelligent opposition as you almost nightly contend, and I agree his can be, why continue to give him additional exposure on your program? The less exposure he gets the better. Let him talk, but don’t make those of us who tune in to hear you have to listen to so much of him.

OK, enough about him.

Keith, I feel your frustration. I share it. But I try not to feed it.

No matter how well you can defend your opinions, when you show more interest in humiliating the opposition than informing me of the facts I get uncomfortable. I’ve never liked bullies, even after I reached an age where they no longer bothered me personally (30-something). I don’t like smart bullies. I don’t like bullies of any stripe. And you, sir, are a bully.

Maddow and Stewart seem to be able to bring me the same information you do without the uncomfortableness. They use satire and humor to expose the same silliness that appears to giving you a near heart attack. They make me think about issues, you want an emotional reaction. That’s one of the many things I dislike about religion, it thrives on emotion. I’m not unemotional, but I certainly try to balance my emotions with thoughtful consideration.

By the way, none of you conduct an interview as well as Charlie Rose or James Lipton.