The Fellowship (Christian organization)
The Fellowship, also known as The Family, is an American-based nonprofit religious and political organization founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide. The stated purpose of The Fellowship is to provide a fellowship forum where decision makers can attend Bible studies, attend prayer meetings, worship God, experience spiritual affirmation and receive support.
The Fellowship has been described as one of the most politically well-connected and one of the most secretly funded ministries in the United States. It shuns publicity and its members share a vow of secrecy. The Fellowship's former leader, the late Douglas Coe, and others have justified the organization's desire for secrecy by citing biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting that they would not be able to tackle diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention.
Until 2023, The Fellowship held one regular public event each year, the National Prayer Breakfast, which is in Washington, D.C. Each sitting United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has participated in at least one National Prayer Breakfast during his term in office.
The group's known participants include ranking United States government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations, and ambassadors and high-ranking politicians from across the world. Many United States senators and congressmen have publicly acknowledged working with the Fellowship or are documented as having worked together to pass or influence legislation.
Doug Burleigh is a key figure in the organization and has taken over organizing the National Prayer Breakfast since the death of his father-in-law, Doug Coe. The current president of the organization is Katherine Crane.
In 2009, Lisa Miller wrote in Newsweek that rather than calling themselves "Christians", as they describe themselves, they are brought together by common love for the teachings of Jesus and that all approaches to "loving Jesus" are acceptable.
History
The Fellowship Foundation traces its roots to Abraham Vereide, a Methodist clergyman and social innovator, who organized a month of prayer meetings in 1934 in San Francisco. The Fellowship was founded in 1935 in opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. His work spread down the West Coast and eventually to Boston.The author Jeff Sharlet described the beginning of the Family as a reaction to union activities of Harry Bridges, "The Family really begins when the founder has this vision, which he thinks comes from God, that Harry Bridges, this Australian labour organiser who organised really the biggest strike in American history, a very successful strike, is a Satanic and Soviet agent."
In April 1935, Vereide and Major J.F. Douglas invited 19 business and civic leaders for a prayer breakfast meeting. By 1937, 209 prayer breakfast groups had been organized throughout Seattle. In 1940, 300 men from all over the state of Washington attended a prayer breakfast for the new governor, Arthur Langlie. Vereide traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest, and later around the country, to develop similar groups. The non-denominational groups were meant to informally bring together civic and business leaders to share vision, study the Bible and develop relationships of trust and support.
The Fellowship Foundation was incorporated by Abraham Vereide in Chicago in 1942 as Fellowship Foundation, Inc. It also acquired the names International Christian Leadership, Fellowship House, and International Foundation for venues as its global outreach ministry expanded. The Fellowship Foundation, Inc. does most of its business as the International Foundation.
By 1942 there were 60 breakfast groups in major cities around the US and Canada, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington and Vancouver. That same year, Vereide began to hold small prayer breakfasts for members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
The Fellowship in Chicago, Illinois was Vereide's center of national outreach to businessmen and civic and clergy leadership. Vereide had moved the group's offices from Seattle to the more centralized location of Chicago, headquarters of the businessmen's luncheon outreach "Christian Businessmen's Committee", which Vereide led with industrialist C.B. Hedstrom. That same year the Fellowship Foundation established a delegation ministry in Washington DC on Massachusetts Avenue at Sheridan Circle named "Fellowship House". Vereide later described it as the nerve center of the breakfast groups.
In 1944, Vereide held his first joint Senate–House prayer breakfast meeting. In 1946, he wrote a book with Reverend John G. Magee, chaplain to President Harry Truman, entitled Together. In the book, Vereide explained his philosophy of visionary discipleship and gathering together in what he termed spiritual cells:
In January 1947, a conference in Zurich led to the formation of the International Council for Christian Leadership, an umbrella group for the national fellowship groups in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Hungary, Egypt and China. ICCL, which on its website describes itself as "a relational network of leaders that came into existence through a sovereign act of God", was incorporated as a separate organization in 1953. ICL and ICCL were governed by different boards of directors, joined by a coordinating committee: four members of ICCL's board and four from the ICL's executive committee.
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended the Senate Prayer Breakfast Group. He was invited by fellow Kansan Frank Carlson. By that time, Vereide's congressional members also included senators Frank Carlson, Karl Mundt, Everett Dirksen and Strom Thurmond.
By 1957, ICL had established 125 groups in 100 cities, with 16 groups in Washington, D.C. alone. It had set up another 125 groups in other countries. During 1958, a mentor from The Navigators, Douglas Coe, joined Vereide as assistant executive director of ICL in Washington, D.C. After over 35 years of leading the Fellowship Foundation, Vereide died in 1969 and was succeeded by Richard C. Halverson as executive director. Halverson and Coe worked side by side until Halverson's death in 1995.
The organization was profiled in the 2019 Netflix documentary series The Family based on a book by Jeff Sharlet.
Influence
, a former Rice University sociologist who studies the evangelical movement, said "there is no other organization like the Fellowship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or clout among the country's leadership." He also reported that lawmakers mentioned the Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith. Lindsay interviewed 360 evangelical elites, among whom "One in three mentioned Coe or the Fellowship as an important influence." Lindsay reported that it "has relationships with pretty much every world leader—good and bad—and there are not many organizations in the world that can claim that."In 1977, four years after he became an evangelical Christian and later Fellowship member, Watergate conspirator Charles Colson described the group as a "veritable underground of Christ's men all through the U.S. government."
Former Kansas governor Sam Brownback, also a former member of the Senate Prayer Group, has described Fellowship members' method of operation: "Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action"—a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—"and the others pull in behind."
Rob Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation's Capital, described the Family's influence as "off the charts" in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship. Schenck also says that "the mystique of the Fellowship" has helped it "gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital."
"The Fellowship's reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp," said David Kuo, a former special assistant in George W. Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Beliefs and theology
The Fellowship Foundation's 501 mission statement is:Newsweek reported that the Fellowship has often been criticized by conservative and fundamentalist Christian groups for being too inclusive and not putting enough emphasis on doctrine or church attendance. NPR has reported that the evangelical group's views on religion and politics are so singular that some other Christian right organizations consider them heretical.
David Kuo, who has been affiliated with the Fellowship since college, said of it that:
Current Fellowship prayer group member and former U.S. Representative Tony P. Hall said, "If people in this country knew how many Democrats and Republicans pray together and actually like each other behind closed doors, they would be amazed." The Fellowship is simply "men and women who are trying to get right with God. Trying to follow God, learn how to love him, and learn how to love each other." When he lost his teenage son to leukemia, Hall says, "This family helped me. This family was there for me. That's what they do."
Hillary Clinton described meeting the leader of the Fellowship in 1993: "Doug Coe, the longtime National Prayer Breakfast organizer, is 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 to God."
Investigative reporter Jeff Sharlet wrote a book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, as well as an article in Harper's magazine, describing his experience while serving as an intern in the Fellowship. Sharlet did intensive research in the Fellowship's archives before they were closed to the public. He also spent a month in 2002 living in a Fellowship house near Washington, and wrote a magazine article describing his experiences. According to his 2008 book, their theology is an "elite fundamentalism" that fetishizes political power and wealth, consistently opposes labor movements in the US and abroad, and teaches that laissez-faire economic policy is "God's will." He opines that their theological teaching of instant forgiveness has been useful to powerful men, providing them a convenient excuse for misdeeds or crimes and allowing them to avoid accepting responsibility or accountability for their actions.