[A-List] The Fellowship: Little-known branch of the US Christian Right

[Erik Freye <efreye@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jesus Plus Nothing
Originally from Harper's Magazine, March 2003. By
Jeffrey Sharlet.
Sources

    And a man's foes shall be they of his own
household.

    ?Matthew 10:36

This is how they pray: a dozen clear-eyed,
smooth-skinned ?brothers? gathered together in a
huddle, arms crossing arms over shoulders like the
weave of a cable, leaning in on one another and
swaying like the long grass up the hill from the house
they share. The house is a handsome, gray, two-story
colonial that smells of new carpet and Pine-Sol and
aftershave; the men who live there call it Ivanwald.
At the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac, quiet but for
the buzz of lawn mowers and kids playing
foxes-and-hounds in the park across the road, Ivanwald
sits as one house among many, clustered together like
mushrooms, all devoted, like these men, to the service
of Jesus Christ. The men tend every tulip in the
cul-de-sac, trim every magnolia, seal every driveway
smooth and black as boot leather. And they pray,
assembled at the dining table or on their lawn or in
the hallway or in the bunk room or on the basketball
court, each man's head bowed in humility and swollen
with pride (secretly, he thinks) at being counted
among such a fine corps for Christ, among men to whom
he will open his heart and whom he will remember when
he returns to the world not born-again but remade, no
longer an individual but part of the Lord's
revolution, his will transformed into a weapon for
what the young men call ?spiritual war.?

?Jeff, will you lead us in prayer??

Surely, brother. It is April 2002, and I have lived
with these men for weeks now, not as a Christian?a
term they deride as too narrow for the world they are
building in Christ's honor?but as a ?believer.? I have
shared the brothers' meals and their work and their
games. I have been numbered among them and have been
given a part in their ministry. I have wrestled with
them and showered with them and listened to their
stories: I know which man resents his father's fortune
and which man succumbed to the flesh of a woman not
once but twice and which man dances so well he is
afraid of being taken for a fag. I know what it means
to be a ?brother,? which is to say that I know what it
means to be a soldier in the army of God.

?Heavenly Father,? I begin. Then, ?O Lord,? but I
worry that this doesn't sound intimate enough. I
settle on, ?Dear Jesus.? ?Dear Jesus, just, please,
Jesus, let us fight for Your name.?

* * *

Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth
Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to
its residents and to the members and friends of the
organization that sponsors it, a group of believers
who refer to themselves as ?the Family.? The Family
is, in its own words, an ?invisible? association,
though its membership has always consisted mostly of
public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles
Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John
Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill
Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are
referred to as ?members,? as are Representatives Jim
DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts
(R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D.,
Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon
and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has
traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in
the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains
a closely guarded database of its associates, but it
issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members
are asked not to speak about the group or its
activities.

The organization has operated under many guises, some
active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian
Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the
National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the
Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship
Council, the International Foundation. These groups
are intended to draw attention away from the Family,
and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one
of the Family's leaders, ?a target for
misunderstanding.? [1] The Family's only publicized
gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it
established in 1953 and which, with congressional
sponsorship, it continues to organize every February
in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries,
representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to
attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years
to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the
Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to
recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more
frequent prayer meetings, where they can ?meet Jesus
man to man.?

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus,
the Family has managed to effect a number of
behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it
secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a
worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar
Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together
the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a
clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides'
eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts
appear to be the exception to the rule. During the
1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S.
government and some of the most anti-Communist (and
dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial
leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e
Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular
fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while,
in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several
hundred thousand ?Communists? killed marks him as one
of the century's most murderous dictators) was
presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian
legislators. During the Reagan Administration the
Family helped build friendships between the U.S.
government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos
Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury
of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general
Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical
minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death
squads before his own demise. ?We work with power
where we can,? the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says,
?build new power where we can't.?

At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W.
Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as ?quiet
diplomacy, I wouldn't say secret diplomacy,? as an
?ambassador of faith.? Coe has visited nearly every
world capital, often with congressmen at his side,
?making friends? and inviting them back to the
Family's unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down
the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978
with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom
Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer
Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of
Digital Equipment Corporation. A waterfall has been
carved into the mansion's broad lawn, from which a
bronze bald eagle watches over the Potomac River. The
mansion is white and pillared and surrounded by
magnolias, and by red trees that do not so much tower
above it as whisper. The mansion is named for these
trees; it is called The Cedars, and Family members
speak of it as a person. ?The Cedars has a heart for
the poor,? they like to say. By ?poor? they mean not
the thousands of literal poor living barely a mile
away but rather the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
kingdom: the senators, generals, and prime ministers
who coast to the end of Twenty-fourth Street in
Arlington in black limousines and town cars and
hulking S.U.V.'s to meet one another, to meet Jesus,
to pay homage to the god of The Cedars.

There they forge ?relationships? beyond the din of vox
populi (the Family's leaders consider democracy a
manifestation of ungodly pride) and ?throw away
religion? in favor of the truths of the Family.
Declaring God's covenant with the Jews broken, the
group's core members call themselves ?the new chosen.?

The brothers of Ivanwald are the Family's next
generation, its high priests in training. I had been
recommended for membership by a banker acquaintance, a
recent Ivanwald alumnus, who had mistaken my interest
in Jesus for belief. Sometimes the brothers would ask
me why I was there. They knew that I was ?half
Jewish,? that I was a writer, and that I was from New
York City, which most of them considered to be only
slightly less wicked than Baghdad or Amsterdam. I told
my brothers that I was there to meet Jesus, and I was:
the new ruling Jesus, whose ways are secret.

* * *

At Ivanwald, men learn to be leaders by loving their
leaders. ?They're so busy loving us,? a brother once
explained to me, ?but who's loving them?? We were. The
brothers each paid $400 per month for room and board,
but we were also the caretakers of The Cedars,
cleaning its gutters, mowing its lawns, whacking weeds
and blowing leaves and sanding. And we were called to
serve on Tuesday mornings, when The Cedars hosted a
regular prayer breakfast typically presided over by Ed
Meese, the former attorney general. Each week the
breakfast brought together a rotating group of
ambassadors, businessmen, and American politicians.
Three of Ivanwald's brothers also attended, wearing
crisp shirts starched just for the occasion; one would
sit at the table while the other two poured coffee.

The morning I attended, Charlene, the cook, scrambled
up eggs with blue tortillas, Italian sausage, red
pepper, and papaya. Three women from Potomac Point, an
?Ivanwald for girls? across the road from The Cedars,
came to help serve. They wore red lipstick and long
skirts (makeup and ?feminine? attire were required)
and had, after several months of cleaning and serving
in The Cedars while the brothers worked outside,
become quite unimpressed by the high-powered
clientele. ?Girls don't sit in on the breakfasts,? one
of them told me, though she said that none of them
minded because it was ?just politics.?

The breakfast began with a prayer and a sprinkle of
scripture from Meese, who sat at the head of the
table. Matthew 11:27: ?No one knows the Son except the
Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and
those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.? That
morning's chosen introduced themselves. They were
businessmen from Dallas and Oregon, a Chinese
Christian dissident, a man who ran an aid group for
Tibetan refugees (the Dalai Lama had been very
positive on Jesus at their last meeting, he reported).
Two ambassadors, from Benin and Rwanda, sat side by
side. Rwanda's representative, Dr. Richard Sezibera,
was an intense man who refused to eat his eggs or even
any melon. He drank cup after cup of coffee, and his
eyes were bloodshot. A man I didn't recognize, whom
Charlene identified as a former senator, suggested
that negotiators from Rwanda and Congo, trapped in a
war that has slain more than 2 million, should stop
worrying about who will get the diamonds and the oil
and instead focus on who will get Jesus. ?Power
sharing is not going to work unless we change their
hearts,? he said.

Sezibera stared, incredulous. Meese chuckled and
opened his mouth to speak, but Sezibera interrupted
him. ?It is not so simple,? the Rwandan said, his
voice flat and low. Meese smiled. Everyone in the
Family loves rebukes, and here was Rwanda rebuking
them. The former senator nodded. Meese murmured,
?Yes,? stroking his maroon leather Bible, and the
words ?Thank you, Jesus? rippled in whispers around
the table as I poured Sezibera another cup of coffee.

The brothers also served at the Family's four-story,
redbrick Washington town house, a former convent at
133 C Street S.E. complete with stained-glass windows.
Eight congressmen?including Senator Ensign and seven
representatives[2]?lived there, brothers in Christ
just like us, only more powerful. We scrubbed their
toilets, hoovered their carpets, polished their
silver. The day I worked at C Street I ran into Doug
Coe, who was tutoring Todd Tiahrt, a Republican
congressman from Kansas. A friendly, plainspoken man
with a bright, lazy smile, Coe has worked for the
Family since 1959, soon after he graduated from
college, and has led it since 1969.

Tiahrt was a short shot glass of a man, two parts
flawless hair and one part teeth. He wanted to know
the best way ?for the Christian to win the race with
the Muslim.? The Muslim, he said, has too many babies,
while Americans kill too many of theirs.

Doug agreed this could be a problem. But he was more
concerned that the focus on labels like ?Christian?
might get in the way of the congressman's prayers.
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.?



* * *

To the Family, Jesus is not just a name; he is also a
real man. ?An awesome guy,? a Family employee named
Terry told the brothers over breakfast one morning.
?He excelled in every activity. He was a great
teacher, sure, but he was also a real guy's guy. He
would have made an excellent athlete.?

On my first day at Ivanwald, on an uneven court behind
the house, I learned to play a two-ball variant of
basketball called ?bump? that was designed to sharpen
both body and soul. In bump, players compete at free
throws, each vying to sink his own before the man
behind him sinks his. If he hits first then you're
out, with one exception: the basket's net narrows at
the chute so that the ball sometimes sticks, at which
point another player can hurl his ball up from
beneath, knocking the first ball out. In this event
everyone cries ?Bu-u-ump,? with great joy.

Bengt began it. He was one of the house's leaders, a
twenty-four-year-old North Carolinian with sad eyes
and spiky eyebrows and a loud, disarming laugh that
made him sound like a donkey. From inside the house,
waiting for a phone call, he opened a second-floor
window and called to Gannon for a ball. Gannon, the
son of a Texas oilman, worked as a Senate aide[3]; he
had blond hair and a chin like a plow, and he sang in
a choir. He tossed one up, which Bengt caught and
dispatched toward the basket. ?Nice,? Gannon drawled
as the ball sank through.

As soon as the ball bounced off the rim, Beau was at
the free-throw line, taking his shot. Beau was a
good-natured Atlantan with the build of a wrestler; as
a bumper he was second only to Bengt.

?It's okay if you bump into the other guys, too,?
Gannon told me as my turn approached. ?The idea's
kinda to get that tension building.? Ahead of me Beau
bent his knees to take another shot. The moment the
ball rolled off his fingers, Wayne, also from Georgia,
jumped up and hurled his own ball over Beau's head. As
he returned to earth, his elbow descended on Beau's
shoulder like a hammer. ?Bump that,? he said.

Bump was designed to bring out your hostilities. The
Family believes that you can't grow in Jesus unless
you ?face your anger,? and then abandon it. When bump
worked right, each man was supposed to lose himself,
forgetting even the precepts of the game. Sometimes
you wanted to get the ball in, sometimes you wanted to
knock it out. In, out, it didn't matter. Your ball,
his, who cared? Bump wasn't horseplay, it was a
physicalized theology. It was to basketball what the
New Testament is to the Old: stripped down to one
simple story that always ends the same. Bump, Jesus.
Bump, Jesus.

I stepped to the line and, after missing, moved in for
a layup. Wayne jumped to the line and shot. ?Dude!? he
shouted. I looked up. His ball, meant to hit mine,
slammed into my forehead. Bu-u-ump! the boys hollered.
They had bumped me with Christ.

Bengt bumped. Beau bumped. Gannon bumped. I was out of
contention. Gannon joined me, then Beau. The game was
down to Bengt and Wayne. When Wayne threw from behind
Bengt, he hurled the ball with such force that it sent
Bengt chasing his ball into the neighboring yard.
?Tenacious Wayne!? Gannon roared. Wayne scooped up his
own ball, leapt, and slam-dunked Bengt out. ?That's yo
motha!? he hollered.

Trotting back to the court, Bengt shook his head. ?You
the man, Wayne,? he said. ?Just keep it calm.? Wayne
was ready to burst.

?Huddle up guys,? said Bengt. We formed a circle, arms
wrapped around shoulders. ?Okay,? he said. ?We're
gonna pray now. Lord, I just want to thank you for
bringing us out here today to have fellowship in bump
and for blessing this fine day with a visit from our
new friend Jeff. Lord, we thank you for bringing this
brother to us from up north, because we know he can
learn to bump, and just?love you, and serve you and
Lord, let us all just?Lord, be together in your name.
Amen.?

* * *

The regimen was so precise it was relaxing: no
swearing, no drinking, no sex, no self. Watch out for
magazines and don't waste time on newspapers and never
watch TV. Eat meat, study the Gospels, play
basketball: God loves a man who can sink a
three-pointer. Pray to be broken. O Heavenly Father.
Dear Jesus. Help me be humble. Let me do Your will.
Every morning began with a prayer, some days with
outsiders?Wednesdays led by a former Ivanwald brother,
now a businessman; Thursdays led by another executive
who used tales of high finance to illuminate our
lessons from scripture, which he supplemented with
xeroxed midrash from Fortune or Fast Company; Fridays
with the women of Potomac Point. But most days it was
just us boys, bleary-eyed, gulping coffee and sugared
cereal as Bengt and Jeff Connolly, Bengt's childhood
friend and our other house leader, laid out lines of
Holy Word across the table like strategy.

The dining room had once been a deck, but the boys had
walled it in and roofed it over and unrolled a red
Persian carpet, transforming the room into a sort of
monastic meeting place, with two long tables end to
end, ringed by a dozen chairs and two benches. The
first day I visited Ivanwald, Bengt cleared a space
for me at the head of the table and sat to my right.
Beside him, Wayne slumped in his chair, his eyes
hidden by a cowboy hat. Across from him sat Beau,
still wearing the boxers and T-shirt he'd slept in.
Bengt alone looked sharp, his hair combed, golf shirt
tucked tightly into pleated chinos.

Bengt told Gannon to read our text for that morning,
Psalm 139: ?'O Lord, you have searched me and you know
me.'? The very first line made Bengt smile; this was,
in his view, an awesome thing for God to have done.
Bengt's manners and naive charm preceded him in every
encounter. When you told him a story he would respond,
?Goll-y!? just to be nice. When genuinely surprised he
would exclaim, ?Good ni-ight!? Sometimes it was hard
to remember that he was a self-professed
revolutionary.

He asked Gannon to keep reading, and then leaned back
and listened.

?'Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee
from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are
there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are
there.'?

Bengt raised a hand. ?That's great, dude. Let's talk
about that.? The room fell silent as Bengt stared into
his Bible, running his finger up and down the gilded
edge of the page. ?Guys,? he said. ?What?how does that
make you feel??

?Known,? said Gannon, almost in a whisper.

Bengt nodded. He was looking for something else, but
he didn't know where it was. ?What does it make you
think of??

?Jesus?? said Beau.

Bengt stroked his chin. ?Yeah . . . Let me read you a
little more.? He read in a monotone, accelerating as
he went, as if he could persuade us through a sheer
heap of words. ?'For you created my inmost being; you
knit me together in my mother's womb,'? he concluded.
His lips curled into a half smile. ?Man! I mean,
that's intense, right? 'In my mother's womb'?God's
right in there with you.? He grinned. ?It's like,? he
said, ?it's like, you can't run. Doesn't matter where
you turn, 'cause Jesus is gonna be there, just waiting
for you.?

Beau's eyes cleared and Gannon nodded. ?Yeah,
brother,? Bengt said, an eyebrow arched. ?Jesus is
smart. He's gonna get you.?

Gannon shook his head. ?Oh, he's already got me.?

?Me, too,? Beau chimed, and then each man clasped his
hands into one fist and pressed it against his
forehead or his chin and prayed, eyes closed and Jesus
all over his skin.

* * *

We prayed to be ?nothing.? We were there to ?soften
our hearts to authority.? We instituted a rule that
every man must wipe the toilet bowl after he pisses,
not for cleanliness but to crush his ?inner rebel.?
Jeff C. did so by abstaining from ?shady? R-rated
movies, lest they provoke dreams of women. He was
built like a leprechaun, with curly, dark blond hair
and freckles and a brilliant smile. The Potomac Point
girls brought him cookies; the wives of the Family's
older men asked him to visit. One night, when the guys
went on a swing-dancing date with the Potomac
Pointers, more worldly women flocked to Jeff C.,
begging to be dipped and twirled. The feeling was not
mutual. ?I just don't like girls as much as guys,? he
told me one day while we painted a new coat of
?Gettysburg Gray? onto Ivanwald. He was speaking not
of sex or of romance but of brotherhood. ?I like??he
paused, his brush suspended midstroke??competence.?

He ran nearly every day, often alone, down by the
Potomac. On the basketball court anger sometimes
overcame him: ?Shoot the ball!? he would snap at
Rogelio, a shy eighteen-year-old from Paraguay, one of
several international brothers. But later Jeff C.
would turn his lapse into a lesson, citing scripture,
a verse we were to memorize or else be banished, by
Jeff C. himself, to a night in the basement.
Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 26?27: ?'In your anger do
not sin': Do not let the sun go down while you are
still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.?

Jeff C.'s pride surfaced in unexpected ways. Once,
together in the kitchen after lunch, I mentioned that
I'd seen the soul singer Al Green live. Jeff C. didn't
answer. Instead he disappeared, reemerged with a Green
CD, and set it in the boom box. He pressed play, and
cracked his knuckles and his neck bones. His hands
balled into fists, his eyes widened, and his torso
became a jumping bean as his chest popped out on the
downbeat. He heard me laughing, applauding, but he
didn't stop. He started singing along with the
Reverend. He grabbed his crotch and wrenched his shirt
up and ran his hand over his stomach. Then he froze
and dropped back to his ordinary voice as if
narrating.

?I used to work in this pizza parlor,? he said. ?It
was, like, a buncha . . . I dunno, junkies. Heroin.?
He grinned. ?But man, they loved Al Green. We had a
poster of him. He was, he was . . . man! Shirtless,
leather pants. Low leather pants.? Jeff C. tugged his
waistband down. ?Hips cocked.? He shook his head and
howled. Moonwalking away, he snapped his knees
together, his feet spread wide, his hands in the air,
testifying.

Jeff C. figured I had a thing against Southerners.
Once, he asked if I thought the South was ?racist.? I
got it, I tried to tell him, I knew the North was just
as bad, but he wouldn't listen. He told me I could
call him a redneck or a hillbilly (I never called him
either), but the truth was that he was ?blacker? than
me. He told me of his deep love for black gospel
churches. Loving black people, he told me, made him a
better follower of Christ. ?Remember that story Cal
Thomas told?? he asked. Thomas, a syndicated
columnist, had recently stopped by Ivanwald for a
mixer with young congressional staffers. He had
regaled his audience with stories about tweaking his
liberal colleagues, in particular about when he had
addressed a conference of nonbelievers by asking if
anyone knew where to buy a good ?negro.? Jeff C.
thought it was hilarious but also profound. What
Thomas had meant, he told me, was that absent the
teachings of Jesus there was no reason for the strong
not to enslave the weak.

* * *

Two weeks into my stay, David Coe, Doug's son and the
presumptive heir to leadership of the Family, dropped
by the house. My brothers and I assembled in the
living room, where David had draped his tall frame
over a burgundy leather recliner like a frat boy, one
leg hanging over a padded arm.

?You guys,? David said, ?are here to learn how to rule
the world.? He was in his late forties, with dark,
gray-flecked hair, an olive complexion, and teeth like
a slab of white marble. We sat around him in a rough
circle, on couches and chairs, as the afternoon light
slanted through the wooden blinds onto walls adorned
with foxhunting lithographs and a giant tapestry of
the Last Supper. Rafael, a wealthy Ecuadoran who'd
been a college soccer star before coming to Ivanwald,
had a hard time with English, and he didn't understand
what David had said. So he stared, lips parted in
puzzlement. David seemed to like that. He stared back,
holding Raf's gaze like it was a pretty thing he'd
found on the ground. ?You have very intense eyes,?
David said.

?Thank you,? Raf mumbled.

?Hey,? David said, ?let's talk about the Old
Testament. Who would you say are its good guys??

?David,? Beau volunteered.

?King David,? David Coe said. ?That's a good one.
David. Hey. What would you say made King David a good
guy?? He was giggling, not from nervousness but from
barely containable delight.

?Faith?? Beau said. ?His faith was so strong??

?Yeah.? David nodded as if he hadn't heard that
before. ?Hey, you know what's interesting about King
David?? From the blank stares of the others I could
see that they did not. Many didn't even carry a Hebrew
Bible, preferring a slim volume of just the New
Testament Gospels and Epistles and, from the Old,
Psalms. Others had the whole book, but the gold gilt
on the pages of the first two thirds remained
undisturbed. ?King David,? David Coe went on, ?liked
to do really, really bad things.? He chuckled. ?Here's
this guy who slept with another man's wife?Bathsheba,
right??and then basically murders her husband. And
this guy is one of our heroes.? David shook his head.
?I mean, Jiminy Christmas, God likes this guy! What,?
he said, ?is that all about??

The answer, we discovered, was that King David had
been ?chosen.? To illustrate this point David Coe
turned to Beau. ?Beau, let's say I hear you raped
three little girls. And now here you are at Ivanwald.
What would I think of you, Beau??

Beau shrank into the cushions. ?Probably that I'm
pretty bad??

?No, Beau. I wouldn't. Because I'm not here to judge
you. That's not my job. I'm here for only one thing.?

?Jesus?? Beau said. David smiled and winked.

He walked to the National Geographic map of the world
mounted on the wall. ?You guys know about Genghis
Khan?? he asked. ?Genghis was a man with a vision. He
conquered??David stood on the couch under the map,
tracing, with his hand, half the northern
hemisphere??nearly everything. He devastated nearly
everything. His enemies? He beheaded them.? David
swiped a finger across his throat. ?Dop, dop, dop,
dop.?

David explained that when Genghis entered a defeated
city he would call in the local headman and have him
stuffed into a crate. Over the crate would be spread a
tablecloth, and on the tablecloth would be spread a
wonderful meal. ?And then, while the man suffocated,
Genghis ate, and he didn't even hear the man's
screams.? David still stood on the couch, a finger in
the air. ?Do you know what that means?? He was
thinking of Christ's parable of the wineskins. ?You
can't pour new into old,? David said, returning to his
chair. ?We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his.?

He reached over and squeezed the arm of a brother.
?Isn't that great?? David said. ?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 the
Khan's vast, reclaimable empire.

* * *

One night I asked Josh, a brother from Atlanta who was
hoping to do mission work overseas, if I could look at
some materials the Family had given him. ?Man, I'd
love to share them with you,? he said, and retrieved
from his bureau drawer two folders full of documents.
While my brothers slept, I sat at the end of our long,
oak dining table and copied them into my notebook.

In a document entitled ?Our Common Agreement as a Core
Group,? members of the Family are instructed to form a
?core group,? or a ?cell,? which is defined as ?a
publicly invisible but privately identifiable group of
companions.? A document called ?Thoughts on a Core
Group? explains that ?Communists use cells as their
basic structure. The mafia operates like this, and the
basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four man squad.
Hitler, Lenin, and many others understood the power of
a small core of people.?

Another document, ?Thoughts and Principles of the
Family,? sets forth political guidelines, such as

    21. We recognize the place and responsibility of
national secular leaders in the work of advancing His
kingdom.

    23. To the world in general we will say that we
are ?in Christ? rather than ?Christian???Christian?
having become a political term in most of the world
and in the United States a meaningless term.

    24. We desire to see a leadership led by
God?leaders of all levels of society who direct
projects as they are led by the spirit.

and self-examination questions:

    4. Do I give only verbal assent to the policies of
the family or am I a partner in seeking the mind of
the Lord?

    7. Do I agree with and practice the financial
precepts of the family?[4]

    13. Am I willing to work without human
recognition?

When the group is ready, ?Thoughts on a Core Group?
explains, it can set to work:

    After being together for a while, in this closer
relationship, God will give you more insight into your
own geographical area and your sphere of
influence?make your opportunities a matter of prayer.
    . . . The primary purpose of a core group is not
to become an ?action group,? but an invisible
?believing group.? However, activity normally grows
out of agreements reached in faith and in prayer
around the person of Jesus Christ.

Long-term goals were best summarized in a document
called ?Youth Corps Vision.? Another Family project,
Youth Corps distributes pleasant brochures featuring
endorsements from political leaders?among them Tsutomu
Hata, a former prime minister of Japan, former
secretary of state James Baker, and Yoweri Museveni,
president of Uganda?and full of enthusiastic rhetoric
about helping young people to learn the principles of
leadership. The word ?Jesus? is unmentioned in the
brochure.

But ?Youth Corps Vision,? which is intended only for
members of the Family (?it's kinda secret,? Josh
cautioned me), is more direct.

    The Vision is to mobilize thousands of young
people world wide?committed to principle precepts, and
person of Jesus Christ. . . .
    A group of highly dedicated individuals who are
united together having a total commitment to use their
lives to daily seek to mature into people who talk
like Jesus, act like Jesus, think like Jesus. This
group will have the responsibility to:
    ?see that the commitment and action is maintained
to the overall vision;
    ?see that the finest and best invisible
organization is developed and maintained at all levels
of the work;
    ?even though the structure is hidden, see that the
family atmosphere is maintained, so that all people
can feel a part of the family.

Another document??Regional Reports, January 3,
2002??lists some of the nations where Youth Corps
programs are already in operation: Russia, Ukraine,
Romania, India, Pakistan, Uganda, Nepal, Bhutan,
Ecuador, Honduras, Peru. Youth Corps is, in many
respects, a more aggressive version of Young Life, a
better-known network of Christian youth groups that
entice teenagers with parties and sports, and only
later work Jesus into the equation. Most of my
American brothers at Ivanwald had been among Young
Life's elite, and many had returned to Young Life
during their college summers to work as counselors.
Youth Corps, whose programs are often centered around
Ivanwald-style houses, prepares the best of its
recruits for positions of power in business and
government abroad. The goal: ?Two hundred national and
international world leaders bound together
relationally by a mutual love for God and the family.?

* * *

Between 1984 and 1992 the Fellowship Foundation
consigned 592 boxes?decades of the Family's letters,
sermons, minutes, Christmas cards, travel itineraries,
and lists of members?to an archive at the Billy Graham
Center of Wheaton College in Illinois. Until I visited
last fall, the archive had gone largely unexamined.

The Family was founded in April 1935 by Abraham
Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant who made his living as
a traveling preacher. One night, while lying in bed
fretting about socialists, Wobblies, and a Swedish
Communist who, he was sure, planned to bring Seattle
under the control of Moscow, Vereide received a
visitation: a voice, and a light in the dark, bright
and blinding. The next day he met a friend, a wealthy
businessman and former major, and the two men agreed
upon a spiritual plan. They enlisted nineteen business
executives in a weekly breakfast meeting and together
they prayed, convinced that Jesus alone could redeem
Seattle and crush the radical unions. They wanted to
give Jesus a vessel, and so they asked God to raise up
a leader. One of their number, a city councilman named
Arthur Langlie, stood and said, ?I am ready to let God
use me.? Langlie was made first mayor and later
governor, backed in both campaigns by money and muscle
from his prayer-breakfast friends, whose number had
rapidly multiplied.[5] Vereide and his new brothers
spread out across the Northwest in chauffeured
vehicles (a $20,000 Dusenburg carried brothers on one
mission, he boasted). ?Men,? wrote Vereide, ?thus
quickened.? Prayer breakfast groups were formed in
dozens of cities, from San Francisco to Philadelphia.
There were already enough men ministering to the
down-and-out, Vereide had decided; his mission field
would be men with the means to seize the world for
God. Vereide called his potential flock of the rich
and powerful, those in need only of the ?real? Jesus,
the ?up-and-out.?

Vereide arrived in Washington, D.C., on September 6,
1941, as the guest of a man referred to only as
?Colonel Brindley.? ?Here I am finally,? he wrote to
his wife, Mattie, who remained in Seattle. ?In a day
or two?many will know that I am in town and by God's
grace it will hum.? Within weeks he had held his first
D.C. prayer meeting, attended by more than a hundred
congressmen. By 1943, now living in a suite at Colonel
Brindley's University Club, Vereide was an insider.
?My what a full and busy day!? he wrote to Mattie on
January 22.

    The Vice President brought me to the Capitol and
counseled with me regarding the programs and plans,
and then introduced me to Senator [Ralph Owen]
Brewster, who in turn to Senator [Harold Hitz]
Burton?then planned further the program [of a prayer
breakfast] and enlisted their cooperation. Then to the
Supreme Court for visits with some of them . . . then
back to the Senate, House. . . . The hand of the Lord
is upon me. He is leading.

By the end of the war, nearly a third of U.S. senators
attended one of his weekly prayer meetings.

In 1944, Vereide had foreseen what he called ?the new
world order.? ?Upon the termination of the war there
will be many men available to carry on,? Vereide wrote
in a letter to his wife. ?Now the ground-work must be
laid and our leadership brought to face God in
humility, prayer and obedience.? He began organizing
prayer meetings for delegates to the United Nations,
at which he would instruct them in God's plan for
rebuilding from the wreckage of the war. Donald Stone,
a high-ranking administrator of the Marshall Plan,
joined the directorship of Vereide's organization. In
an undated letter, he wrote Vereide that he would
?soon begin a tour around the world for the [Marshall
Plan], combining with this a spiritual mission.? In
1946, Vereide, too, toured the world, traveling with
letters of introduction from a half dozen senators and
representatives, and from Paul G. Hoffman, the
director of the Marshall Plan. He traveled also with a
mandate from General John Hildring, assistant
secretary of state, to oversee the creation of a list
of good Germans of ?the predictable type? (many of
whom, Vereide believed, were being held for having
?the faintest connection? with the Nazi regime), who
could be released from prison ?to be used, according
to their ability in the tremendous task of
reconstruction.? Vereide met with Jewish survivors and
listened to their stories, but he nevertheless
considered ex-Nazis well suited for the demands of
?strong? government, so long as they were willing to
worship Christ as they had Hitler.

In 1955, Senator Frank Carlson, a close adviser to
Eisenhower and an even closer associate of Vereide's,
convened a meeting at which he declared the Family's
mission to be a ?worldwide spiritual offensive,? in
which common cause would be made with anyone opposed
to the Soviet Union. That same year, the Family
financed an anti-Communist propaganda film, Militant
Liberty, for use by the Defense Department in
influencing opinion abroad. By the Kennedy era, the
spiritual offensive had fronts on every continent but
Antarctica (which Family missionaries would not visit
until the 1980s). In 1961, Emperor Haile Selassie of
Ethiopia deeded the Family a prime parcel in downtown
Addis Ababa to serve as an African headquarters, and
by then the Family also had powerful friends in South
Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya. Back home, Senator Strom
Thurmond prepared several reports for Vereide
concerning the Senate's deliberations. Former
president Eisenhower, Doug Coe would later claim at a
private meeting of politicians, once pledged secret
operatives to aid the Family's operations. Even in
Franco's Spain, Vereide once boasted at a prayer
breakfast in 1965, ?there are secret cells such as the
American Embassy [and] the Standard Oil office [that
allow us] to move practically anywhere.?

By the late sixties, Vereide's speeches to local
prayer breakfast groups had become minor news events,
and Family members' travels on behalf of Christ had
attracted growing press attention. Vereide began to
worry that the movement he had spent his life building
might become just another political party. In 1966, a
few years before he was ?promoted? to heaven at age
eighty-four, Vereide wrote a letter declaring it time
to ?submerge the institutional image of [the Family].?
No longer would the Family recruit its powerful
members in public, nor recruit so many. ?There has
always been one man,? wrote Vereide, ?or a small core
who have caught the vision for their country and
become aware of what a 'leadership led by God' could
mean spiritually to the nation and to the world. . . .
It is these men, banded together, who can accomplish
the vision God gave me years ago.?

* * *

Two weeks into my stay, Bengt announced to the
brothers that he was applying to graduate school. He
had chosen a university close enough to commute from
the house, with a classics program he hoped would
complement (maybe even renew, he told me privately)
his relationship with Christ. After dinner every night
he would disappear into the little office beside his
upstairs bunk room to compose his statement of purpose
on the house's one working computer.

Knowing I was a writer, he eventually gave me the
essay to read. We sat down in Ivanwald's ?office,? a
room barely big enough for the two of us. We crossed
our legs in opposite directions so as not to knock
knees.

My formal education has been a progression from
confusion and despair to hope, the essay began. Its
story hewed to the familiar fundamentalist routine of
lost and found: every man and woman a sinner, fallen
but nonetheless redeemed. And yet Bengt's sins were
not of the flesh but of the mind. In college he had
abandoned his boyhood ambition of becoming a doctor to
study philosophy: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Hegel.
Raised in the faith, his ideas about God crumbled
before the disciplined rage of the philosophers. ?I
cut and ran,? he told me. To Africa, where by day he
worked on ships and in clinics, and by night read
Dostoevsky and the Bible, its darkest and most
seductive passages: Lamentations, Job, the Song of
Songs. These authors were alike, his essay observed:
They wrote about [suffering] like a companion.

I looked up. ?A double,? I said, remembering
Dostoevsky's alter egos.

Bengt nodded. ?You know how you can stare at something
for a long time and not see it the way it really is?
That's what scripture had been to me.? Through
Dostoevsky he began to see the Old Testament for what
it is: relentless in its horror, its God a fire, a
whirlwind, a ?bear, lying in wait,? ?a lion in secret
places.? Even worse is its Man: a rapist, a murderer,
a wretched thief, a fool.

?But,? said Bengt, ?that's not how it ends.?

Bengt meant Jesus. I thought of the end of The
Brothers Karamazov: the saintly Alyosha, leading a
pack of boys away from a funeral to feast on pancakes,
everyone clapping hands and proclaiming eternal
brotherhood. In Africa, Bengt had seen people who were
diseased, starving, trapped by war, but who seemed
nonetheless to experience joy. Bengt recalled
listening to a group of starving men play the drums.
?Doubt,? he said, ?is just a prelude to joy.?

I had heard this before from mainstream Christians,
but I suspected Bengt meant it differently. A line in
Dostoevsky's The Possessed reminded me of him: when
the conservative nationalist Shatov asks Stavrogin,
the cold-hearted radical, ?Wasn't it you who said that
even if it was proved to you mathematically that the
Truth was outside Christ, you would prefer to remain
with Christ outside the Truth?? Stavrogin, who refuses
to be cornered, denies it.

?Exactly,? Bengt said. In Africa he had seen the
trappings of Christianity fall away. All that remained
was Christ. ?You can't argue with absolute power.?

I put the essay down. Bengt nudged it back into my
hands. ?I want to know what you think of my ending.?

As I have read more about Jesus, it ran, I have also
been intrigued by his style of interaction with other
people. He was fascinated in particular by an
encounter in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse
35?39, in which Jesus asks two men why they are
following him. In turn, the men ask where Jesus is
staying, to which he replies, ?Come and see.? I am not
sure how Jesus asks the question, Bengt had concluded,
but from the response, it seems like he is asking,
?What do you desire??

?That's what it's about,? Bengt said. ?Desire.? He
shifted in his chair. ?Think about it: 'What do you
desire?'?

?God??

?Yes.?

?That's the answer?? I asked.

?He's the question,? Bengt retorted, half-smiling,
satisfied with his inversion by which doubt became the
essence of a dogma. God was just what Bengt desired
Him to be, even as Bengt was, in the face of God,
?nothing.? Not for aesthetics alone, I realized, did
Bengt and the Family reject the label ?Christian.?
Their faith and their practice seemed closer to a
perverted sort of Buddhism, their God outside ?the
truth,? their Christ everywhere and nowhere at once,
His commands phrased as questions, His will as simple
to divine as one's own desires. And what the Family
desired, from Abraham Vereide to Doug Coe to Bengt,
was power, worldly power, with which Christ's kingdom
can be built, cell by cell.

* * *

Not long after our conversation, Bengt put a bucket
beside the toilet in the downstairs bunk room. From
now on, he announced, all personal items left in the
living room would go into the bucket. ?If you're
missing anything, guys,? Bengt said over dinner, ?look
in the bucket.?

I looked in the bucket. Here's what I found: One pair
of flip-flops. One pocket-sized edition of the sayings
of Jesus. One Frisbee. One copy of Executive Orders,
by Tom Clancy, hardcover. One brown-leather Bible,
well worn, beautifully printed on onion skin, given to
Bengt Carlson by Palmer Carlson. One pair of dirty
underwear.

When I picked up the Bible the pages flipped open to
the Gospel of John, and my eyes fell on a single
underlined phrase, chapter 15, verse 3: ?You are
already clean.?

* * *

Whenever a sufficiently large crop of God's soldiers
was bunked up at Ivanwald, Doug Coe made a point of
stopping by for dinner. Doug was, in spirit, Christ's
closest disciple, the master bumper; the brothers
viewed his visit as far more important than that of
any senator or prime minister. The night he joined us
he wore a crisply pressed golf shirt and dark slacks,
and his skin was well tanned. He brought a guest with
him, an Albanian politician whose pale face and
ill-fitting gray suit made Doug seem all the more
radiant. In his early seventies, Doug could have
passed for fifty: his hair was dark, his cheeks taut.
His smile was like a lantern.

?Where,? Doug asked Rogelio, ?are you from, in
Paraguay??

?Asunción,? he said.

Doug smiled. ?I've visited there many times.? He
chewed for a while. ?Asunción. A Latin leader was
assassinated there twenty years ago. A Nicaraguan.
Does anybody know who it was??

I waited for someone to speak, but no one did.
?Somoza,? I said. The dictator overthrown by the
Sandinistas.

?Somoza,? Doug said, his eyes sweeping back to me. ?An
interesting man.?

Doug stared. I stared back. ?I liked to visit him,?
Doug said. ?A very bad man, behind his machine guns.?
He smiled like he was going to laugh, but instead he
moved his fork to his mouth. ?And yet,? he said, a
bite poised at the tip of his tongue, ?he had a heart
for the poor.? Doug stared. I stared back.

?Do you ever think about prayer?? he asked. But the
question wasn't for me. It wasn't for anyone. Doug was
preparing a parable.

There was a man he knew, he said, who didn't really
believe in prayer. So Doug made him a bet. If this man
would choose something and pray for it for forty-five
days, every day, he wagered God would make it so. It
didn't matter whether the man believed. It wouldn't
have mattered whether he was a Christian. All that
mattered was the fact of prayer. Every day. Forty-five
days. He couldn't lose, Doug told the man. If Jesus
didn't answer his prayers, Doug would pay him $500.

?What should I pray for?? the man asked.

?What do you think God would like you to pray for??
Doug asked him.

?I don't know,? said the man. ?How about Africa??

?Good,? said Doug. ?Pick a country.?

?Uganda,? the man said, because it was the only one he
could remember.

?Fine,? Doug told him. ?Every day, for forty-five
days, pray for Uganda. God please help Uganda. God
please help Uganda.?

On the thirty-second day, Doug told us, this man met a
woman from Uganda. She worked with orphans. Come
visit, she told the man, and so he did, that very
weekend. And when he came home, he raised a million
dollars in donated medicine for the orphans. ?So you
see,? Doug told him, ?God answered your prayers. You
owe me $500.?

There was more. After the man had returned to the
United States, the president of Uganda called the man
at his home and said, ?I am making a new government.
Will you help me make some decisions??

?So,? Doug told us, ?my friend said to the president,
'Why don't you come and pray with me in America? I
have a good group of friends?senators, congressmen?who
I like to pray with, and they'd like to pray with
you.' And that president came to The Cedars, and he
met Jesus. And his name is Yoweri Museveni, and he is
now the president of all the presidents in Africa. And
he is a good friend of the Family.?

?That's awesome,? Beau said.

?Yes,? Doug said, ?it's good to have friends. Do you
know what a difference a friend can make? A friend you
can agree with?? He smiled. ?Two or three agree, and
they pray? They can do anything. Agree. Agreement.
What's that mean?? Doug looked at me. ?You're a
writer. What does that mean??

I remembered Paul's letter to the Philippians, which
we had begun to memorize. Fulfill ye my joy, that ye
be likeminded.

?Unity,? I said. ?Agreement means unity.?

Doug didn't smile. ?Yes,? he said. ?Total unity. Two,
or three, become one. Do you know,? he asked, ?that
there's another word for that??

No one spoke.

?It's called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They
can do anything. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you
think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends??

We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name
invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from
Australia, sitting beside Doug, cleared his throat:
?Hitler.?

?Yes,? Doug said. ?Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The
Mafia makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful
thing. Two, or three, agree.? He took another bite
from his plate, planted his fork on its tines. ?Well,
guys,? he said, ?I gotta go.?

As Doug Coe left, my brothers' hearts were beating
hard: for the poor, for a covenant. ?Awesome,? Bengt
said. We stood to clear our dishes.

* * *

On one of my last nights at Ivanwald, the neighborhood
boys asked my brothers and me to play. There were
roughly six boys, ranging in age from maybe seven to
eleven, all junior members of the Family. They wanted
to play flashlight tag. It was balmy, and the
streetlight glittered against the blacktop, and hiding
places beckoned from behind trees and in bushes. One
of the boys began counting, and my brothers, big and
small, scattered. I lay flat on a hillside. From there
I could track movement in the shadows and smell the
mint leaves planted in the garden. A figure approached
and I sprang up and ran, down the sidewalk and up
through the garden, over a wall that my pursuer, a
small boy, had trouble climbing. But once he was over
he kept charging, and just as I was about to vanish
into the trees his flashlight caught me. ?Jeff I see
you you're It!? the boy cried. I stopped and turned,
and he kept the beam on me. Blinded, I could hear only
the slap of his sneakers as he ran across the driveway
toward me. ?Okay, dude,? he whispered, and turned off
the flashlight. I recognized him as little Stevie,
whose drawing of a machine gun we had posted in our
bunk room. He handed the flashlight to me, spun
around, started to run, then stopped and looked over
his shoulder. ?You're It now,? he whispered, and
disappeared into the dark.
About the Author

Jeffrey Sharlet is an editor of the online magazine
KillingtheBuddha.com and a co-author of the
forthcoming book Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible
(The Free Press).
Notes

1. The Los Angeles Times reported in September that
the Fellowship Foundation alone has an annual budget
of $10 million, but that represents only a fraction of
the Family's finances. Each of the Family's
organizations raises funds independently. Ivanwald,
for example, is financed at least in part by an entity
called the Wilberforce Foundation. Other projects are
financed by individual ?friends?: wealthy businessmen,
foreign governments, church congregations, or
mainstream foundations that may be unaware of the
scope of the Family's activities. At Ivanwald, when I
asked to what organization a donation check might be
made, I was told there was none; money was raised on a
?man-to-man? basis. Major Family donors named by the
Times include Michael Timmis, a Detroit lawyer and
Republican fund-raiser; Paul Temple, a private
investor from Maryland; and Jerome A. Lewis, former
CEO of the Petro-Lewis Corporation. [Back]

2. According to the Los Angeles Times, congressmen who
have lived there include Rep. Mike Doyle (D., Pa.),
former Rep. Ed Bryant (R., Tenn.), and former Rep.
John Elias Baldacci (D., Maine). The house's eight
congressman-tenants each pay $600 per month in rent
for use of a town house that includes nine bathrooms
and five living rooms. When the Times asked
then-resident Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) about the
property, he replied, ?We sort of don't talk to the
press about the house.? [Back]

3. Gannon worked for Senator Don Nickles, then the
second-ranking Republican. The man who oversaw
Ivanwald and interviewed us for admission was a lawyer
named Steve South, who formerly had been Senator
Nickles's chief counsel and was still a close
associate. [Back]

4. The Family's ?financial precepts? apparently amount
to the practice of soliciting funds only privately,
and often indirectly. This may also refer to what some
members call ?biblical capitalism,? the belief that
God's economics are laissez-faire. [Back]

5. As Vereide recounted in a 1961 biography, Modern
Viking, one union boss joined the group, proclaiming
that the prayer movement would make unions obsolete.
He said, ?'I got down on my knees and asked God to
forgive me . . . for I have been a disturbing factor
and a thorn in Your flesh.'? A ?rugged capitalist who
had been the chairman of the employers' committee in
the big strike? put his left hand on the labor
leader's shoulder and said, ?'Jimmy, on this basis we
go on together.'? [Back]
This is Jesus Plus Nothing, a feature, originally from
March 2003. It is part of Features, which is part of
Harpers.org.

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