David Durenberger and the Family, 1993

Before there was John Ensign, there was David Durenberger. In 1990, the Senate unanimously denounced their Republican colleague from Minnesota for financial schemes sufficiently shady to merit a two year Justice Department investigation. He was also disbarred. At the time this article was written, he was in the thick of a paternity suit over a child that resulted, said the mother, from rape. That wasn't his last affair. One burst into public view when his secretary attacked him with her purse in an airport. He blamed much of his troubles on his wife. His chief regret, he told the St. Pioneer-Press, was that he got caught. But he kept on going until 1994--buoyed by faith and the Family.

It's all "ancient history" now, as my Family friends say of just about any past unpleasantness, but tonight I happened to stumble on a 1993 article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press in which Family leader Doug Coe, seeking to rehabilitate his brother's reputation, is unusually candid. Following are some excerpts.

THE SENATOR WHO SAYS HE IS SORRY//BESET BY SCANDAL, U.S. SENATOR DAVE DURENBERGER TURNS TO GOD - AND THE VOTERS - FOR FORGIVENESS.

--Bruce Orwall, Feb. 28, 1993

U.S. senators have a favorite biblical metaphor to describe the plight of their long-suffering colleague from Minnesota, Dave Durenberger.

``This is our version of Job,'' they say, as one Republican did last month when introducing Durenberger to a stranger.

The allusion seems apt - Job being history's most vivid symbol of steadfast faith. Despite being burdened with a lifetime of trial and despair, he never turned away from God.

Yet each time the comparison is made, Durenberger demurs. He chooses a different Biblical figure to symbolize his struggle.
``Not Job,'' he says. ``Joseph.''

In the Old Testament, Joseph was betrayed by those who were supposed to love him. But using his power as a visionary interpreter of dreams, he returned in triumph to lead his nation, forgiving those who had deserted him.

The ``new'' Dave Durenberger has risen again this winter.

The new Dave surfaces each time the Minnesota Republican finds himself neck-deep in controversy, which is often. This is how Durenberger fends off controversy: by unleashing a torrent of spiritual revelation, oozing New Male sensitivity and sincerity to assure voters that the old Dave - self-centered, egotistical, out of control - is dead and buried.

In his place, Durenberger says, is a man driven by self-improvement. He attends several prayer groups a week. He has a spiritual adviser and a new and improved relationship with God. He's not just a better senator; he's a better person.

Durenberger has turned to this explanation frequently over the years. In early 1986: ``I think in terms of just a `small p' person, I am so much better a person than I was a year ago.'' In 1988: ``My life continues to improve all the time. I couldn't say that four years ago.'' In 1990: ``I am looking forward to making amends the only way I know how: by being the most effective senator I can be, every day I serve in the U.S. Senate.''

Finally, in 1993: ``I spent a lot of time thinking about `The Senator.' Right now, I put a really high value on being `The Senator,' but I put a higher value on being me - whoever that is. And that's coming a long way for me. A long, long way.''

Who has helped him on this journey? Our man Coe, and some of his friends -- ranging from Mother Theresa to Tariq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister to Saddam Hussein currently serving 15 years for his role in the executions of 42 Iraqi businessmen.

Dave Durenberger and his inner circle are heavily invested in the power of faith. They say that a deepened spiritual conviction has carried Durenberger through his darkest days to make him a better, more effective public servant.

``It's his faith,'' says Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming and one of Durenberger's closest Senate friends. ``That's the anchor he has plunged into the sandy earth here. ... He found out where to turn when he didn't know where to turn.''
At the heart of Durenberger's spiritual journey is Doug Coe, operator of the International Foundation, a vaguely defined spiritual center in Arlington, Va.

Coe, 64, is not a minister. He won't say where he gets money for the foundation, which is not affiliated with any religion. He floated from job to job during the 1950s before devoting himself to the spiritual development of public officials through the foundation, which runs prayer groups for politicians and oversees a number of charity projects.

Coe calls the foundation a ``family of friends''' from around the world that gathers to explore the spirit and soul. A key member of that family is Dave Durenberger.

``They're sort of compatriots in a cause,'' says Holderness, the friend from Dorsey & Whitney. ``They're ministering to leaders around the world. I think Doug has been a good counselor and listener and in some ways a minister to Dave.''

The International Foundation also owns The Cedars, a retreat house in Arlington where Durenberger has lived on and off during turbulent personal times.

Described by some as a ``commune,'' The Cedars is nothing of the sort. It features a mansion with a swimming pool and tennis courts on a sprawling campus, where friends from around the world stay when visiting Washington. No one lives there full time; Durenberger was an exception.

``When he and Penny were having difficulties, he needed a place to stay,'' Coe says. ``He was very depressed and he needed some company.''

Together, Coe and Durenberger have traveled the world trying to forge spiritual bonds with world leaders. They have prayed in Jordan with King Hussein, dined at midnight with Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, and explored the power of Jesus Christ with Rajiv Ghandi in India.

It was during that visit to India several years ago that Durenberger met Mother Teresa, and was awed by her personal commitment to the poor. To explain her dedication, Mother Teresa took Durenberger's right hand in hers, counted his fingers and recited: ``I take my hand every night and I say: He-Did-This-For-Me.'' Then she grabbed Durenberger's left hand and counted: ``Then I say to myself: I-Did-What-For-Him.''

``Dave didn't wash his hand for two days,'' Coe says.

The two men have spent long hours together at The Cedars, on what they both describe as an earnest quest to change

Durenberger for the better. The Dave Durenberger that Doug Coe knows does not blame others for his downfall: ``He's saying, `Look, there's something must be wrong with me that I get myself into this sort of stuff.'''

The article continues with Durenberger's childhood as the son of a legendary Minnesota football coach. No special trauma, but Coe works what Durenberger has given him.

Coe, the spiritual adviser, explains the fallout of Durenberger's self-esteem problem with a long discourse on the importance of children being touched and loved. He likens Durenberger's upbringing to that of inner-city children from fractured homes who witness a world of violence and drugs.

``These little children are very emotionally scarred,'' Coe says. ``Now, you say that David didn't come from that. But I don't see any difference in my experience. ... He didn't ever learn about intimacy.''

The resulting scars left Durenberger unable to confront his problems directly, Coe says. And in the depths of a midlife crisis, Durenberger's actions often made him look like a hypocrite. Even as he told the public he was improving his life, he was having an affair and signing off on questionable business deals.

``He would tell you that he was not practicing, in a personal way, his Catholicism or his faith,'' Coe says. ``He would have a technical belief that (his actions were) wrong, just like Prince Charles has a technical belief that he appears and takes communion and does all the things right - but he has a regular bevy of women and so on. He was, I would think, very much like that, just like most of the ballplayers and the Redskins. That's kind of that Kennedy thing.''

Durenberger often avoids confronting people or problems directly - behavior that creates the impression he is dodging accountability. But Coe says it is a form of emotional denial, a trait that has allowed Durenberger to dodge deep pain.

``One of the reasons, in my view, that he's having trouble is that he doesn't want to be hurt anymore,'' Coe says, ``That's not excusing. That's just to say that that's what he has to battle within himself.''

But that was then. According to Coe and Durenberger himself, the new Dave Durenberger of 1993 has won his battle against low self-confidence. His strong spirituality now allows him to experience life in a way he has never known.

``This spiritual experience is giving him, for the first time, the capacity to be intimate,'' Coe says. ``He feels this is the first time he's ever had it, and he's very excited about it. He feels like he's getting a new lease on life in his relationship with God and people.''

...

Doug Coe has faith that his friend and spiritual confidant, Dave Durenberger, will be the Charles Colson of the 1990s.

Colson was the callous White House special counsel under Richard Nixon, best remembered for maintaining Nixon's ``enemies list.'' After serving a prison term for his role in the Watergate coverup, Colson accepted Jesus Christ and now runs a widely acclaimed prison ministry. Coe thinks that Durenberger, like Colson, will overcome the bad influences that have controlled him, and emerge a finer person.

``Everybody wrote every day about what a rat (Colson) was,'' Coe says. ``He was a rat, and he did all those things and a lot more things people don't know about. The thing is, some people are defeated by their errors. Other people grow.

``We're in a process where David is learning and growing. I don't think there's much more that can hurt him.''

A Family Adventure

Following is an account of the 2005 National Prayer Breakfast preserved in a screen save by Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. I'm reproducing it in near entirety, without commentary -- it's a fascinating document on its own. I will bold some passages, though, and some names, that give a sense of the author's experience of this ostensibly "ecumenical" event


NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST
WASHINGTON DC
February 1-4, 2005
 
We never even knew to put this on our wish list of things to do in our life of adventure…till Ike and Trisha Thomas asked us to go to the 53rd National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC.  The experience is beyond what we could hope or think or ask.  Thank you Lord and thank you Ike and Trisha....
 
Sister picked us up at 8:50 on Tuesday for our American Airlines 11:24 flight to Baltimore where our chauffeur awaited, sign in hand… “Ike Thomas”…that would be us.  Baggage collected, we stepped into a gorgeous DC day and into a realllly long black stretch limo.  Trisha had gotten their number from a friend and decided to upgrade at the last minute.  Now that girl knows how to travel!  Tom didn’t want me photograph the limo…might be too big-shotty, but I did get a couple of interior pics.  We traveled the hour and fifteen minute trip through snow covered landscapes and time as Ike told us stories of his brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Bill and Karyn Frist; how they met; of the Frist's family's medical heritage; Bill's double major in medicine and political science; Bill's establishment of a heart transplant unit at Vanderbilt University;  Bill's performing volunteer medical services in third world countries each summer; and Bill's venture into politics where he won his first Tennessee Senate race against a strong incumbent.  We would be having dinner with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and his wife Karyn later that night.
 
We arrived at the Washington Hilton Hotel around 4:00, freshened up and met downstairs to pick up our Prayer Breakfast packets.  Wow…the first thing we noticed inside our folders was the “Jesus Transcends All” card. “Jesus Christ transcends all religions! Judaism – Islam – Buddhism – Hinduism…He is greater than all these – including Christianity.  Religions are the inventions of men.  They may begin with a great leader in mind – Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha… But human traditions soon reduces the original to a mere set of ethical standards and a dead letter of the law which no one can follow.  The original sin was not murder, adultery or any other action we call sin.  The original sin was, and still is, the human choice to be one’s own god – to control one’s own life – to be in charge – to be religious.  Rising out of this choice evolved religion: mankind’s attempt to please God.   Jesus transcends religion because he is the incarnation of all that is true, good, loving, gently, tender, thoughtful, caring, courteous and selfless.  Jesus does not want you to become a Christian.  He wants you to become a new creation!  There is a great difference between the two.”  Dr. Richard C. Halverson.
 
Wow…so this is how they approach the multi-faiths attending the Prayer Breakfast.  There would be Muslims, Hindu, Jews, Christians…people from entirely different backgrounds and beliefs.  Some come for the experience and adventure of meeting people from around the world, praying the Holy Spirit will touch lives. Others come for the honor of being included in this event where heads of states and those of political and spiritual position will be attending…even knowing Jesus’ name will be lifted up, they come.  Wow.
 
Looking further in our packet… “The Strategy of Jesus”, “Remarks of President Ronald Reagan” and the Vision, Message, Purpose and Power of Agreement of “The National Prayer Breakfast Seminar”.  This pamphlet includes eight New Testament scriptures and one Old Testament.  We admired the subtle boldness and wondered if the foreign packets were the same as ours.
 
Time to depart for dinner at 6:00.  We caught a cab to the restaurant and were given a table upstairs overlooking the park.  We hadn’t eaten since our Friday’s carry-on box lunches on the plane and were ready for a quality meal.  Shortly after our arrival, two secret service men arrived and remained stationed at the top of the stairs facing our table.  Then Trisha’s sister, Karyn Frist, and her husband Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, arrived.  As we dined and conversed, Bill was staying in touch with the Senate via his Blackberry wireless.  “Sorry…just shutting down the Senate for the day.” What interesting folks.  We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and conversation.  They had just been to a wrestling match….wrestling match?  Both Tom and I pictured WWF or perhaps Suma.  But they had just come from one of their son’s wrestling matches.  In the midst of political life, the Frists take time for family.  Balance…one of the things we continue to pursue. Bill was kind enough to autograph a business card for our good friend Joe Mullens who is a big fan.  Joe will just die.  Following dessert we took a group picture and headed back to the hotel.  Tomorrow we’d meet up with Ike and Trisha at 10:00 A.M.
 
...
 
Our tour of the Capitol began and ended in the Senate Majority Leader's (Frist) suite.  When we first arrived, Speaker of the House Dennis Hasertt and Congressional Majority Leader Tom DeLay and several others came through  the office for a meeting in the Frist conference room. Brook Whitfield, Senator Frist’s assistant, gave us a VIP tour...
 
Returning to the Senator’s office to retrieve our purses and Tom’s hat, we took pictures in Senator Frist's private office which Karyn had decorated beautifully.  A treasure of art and furniture is available in the federal warehouses for use in the offices; Karyn had done a spectacular job of selecting pieces and arranging a perfect office environment for Bill and his guests.  Personal things made it his…a Covelle, a Granbury artist, sculpture of Travis …family photos in the book shelf… one of Ike and Trisha with Karyn and Bill and of course pictures of their three sons…and in the another book shelf, the books Bill had written.  The man is amazing.  In the course of conversation at the dinner Tuesday night, it was evident the Senator had no clue as to who Sharon Stone and other Hollywood personas are...because there is little time for T.V. and movies when time is so filled with other things.  We salute you, Bill…that says a lot about the man...
 
Ike and Trisha went back to the hotel to rest-up for their exciting evening (attending the State of the Union address) while Tom and I took advantage of our time to visit the Lincoln Memorial.  I love that man.  And the Vietnam Memorial, which brought me to tears.  I thought of the fun I was having while they paid with their lives serving our country. 
  
A quarter to four we took a taxi to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s office where we met up with Ike. (Trisha went to the Ladies venue that included her sister, Karyn, as one of the speakers…we wanted to do both, but they were scheduled at the same time.)  Her office had extended invitations to the Texas guests of the Prayer Breakfast.  We found Kay to be diminutive and delightful.  As some asked politically based questions, I asked how much the cleaning bill was on the suit she wore in the christening picture above her fireplace.  She laughed and related she had tried three times to break the bottle whose contents burst into activity with every swing and upon the successful contact, filled the air and the Senator’s hair and suit with its bounty.  The papers the next day said she had christened herself.  Cal Thomas, America’s leading political columnist also spoke.  Both told of their belief in Christ and their participation in spiritual things in DC….the Senators have a weekly prayer breakfast and Cal has prayer lunches and invites both Christians and heathens of the media.  We had our picture made with the Senator in front of the United States and Texas flags by a professional photographer.  The pictures are being mailed. 
 
Back to the Hilton where small dinners were being held.  We joined about a hundred and fifty new friends from Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas in the Jefferson East Room.  Eighty percent of the room were Texans.  Great Racer Denny Pearce gave us a great big welcome hug.  He emceed the dinner and also hosted Texas Suite.  We sat by new friends on our left Debbie and George Lee, a banker from Houston, and on our right Mark and Debbie Littlestar from Boerne, friends of our good friends Mike and Tracy Kinchin of Fredricksburg.  Next to them were new friends Tom and Linda Wilson of Ft. Worth.  They’ve been with Young Life for thirty years.  Across from us sat Boone and Peggy Powell.  I knew Peggy from Bible Study at Anne Miller’s some fifteen years ago.  Then Kurt, the youth minister from our Dallas church, Northwest Bible, came in.  What a small world we live in. 
 
There was a table of guests from Argentina, one spoke….and the keynote speaker was Jock, a handsome young dynamic man from Australia, whose father had attended the National Prayer Breakfast years ago and returned a new Christian.  Since that time the son and speaker became a Christian and has traveled throughout the world encouraging other countries to take up the torch of Prayer Breakfasts in their countries.  Jock's home in Australia is always full of guests he’s met on his journeys.
 
After a delicious dinner of chicken on rice and a yummy ice cream cake dessert, the Texans retired to the Texas Suite on the seventh floor to watch the State of the Union Address.  We kept watching for Ike’s big smile and shiny head.  Later we learned he and Trisha had sat about 10 seats behind the First Lady.  We were all so proud of our President.
 
Thursday morning we dressed for the National Prayer Breakfast.  No purse, no cameras… long lines to go through security.  We arrived at 6:45 for a 7:30 breakfast.  Even-numbered tickets sat in the International Ballroom, the largest in DC, and odd numbers sat in the overflow ballroom downstairs and watched via multi-media.
 We were table number two-sixty-eight…Ike and Trisha, number one-thirty-nine.  The tables were set beautifully with perfectly ripened fruits, granola, bagels and sweet rolls, and beverages.  I had two large strawberries.  We sat by new (and really cool) friends Richard and Susan Davis who have a church in Zurich Switzerland.  He sold his Harley just before they moved there seven years ago.  It would be fun to rent a motorcycle in Europe and visit them.  They are central to so many day trips into the Alps and other countries.
 
The Prayer Breakfast began with black singer Wintley Phipps (amazing).  The pre-breakfast prayer was given by  Emanuel Cleaver, House of Representatives, Missouri; opening remarks by Jo Ann Emerson, House of Representatives, Missouri; the opening prayer was given by Tom Osborne, House of Representatives, Nebraska; opening remarks – Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota; Senator Dianne Feinstein gave a reading from  Jewish spiritual literature; Wintley Phipps sang again; Army Sergeant Douglas Norman read from the Bible; Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, a Christian, prayed for our national leaders; Tony Hall, Ambassador, United States Mission to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agencies gave the main message.  He was awesome.  Tom told me while Tony was serving in the House of Representatives he had gone on a hunger strike until  legislation was passed to help starving children in Ethopia who were literally dying by the thousands daily.  He didn't eat for thirty days; then our President, George W. Bush spoke to our hearts.  His message is included in another section of this book; Wintley Phipps then sang the most amazing Amazing Grace.  Wintley pointed out it was written by the Captain of a slave ship and many think the melody is an African chant.  He began the song with a chant of sorts in his deep rich baritone…sang the hymn as a Negro Spiritual….it was awesome.  Lincoln Davis, House of Representatives, Tennessee closed in prayer.  Most Impressive...Each prayer lifted Jesus name and was given in His name.  No "side-steps" were made in deference to our guests from other nations and faiths.  To You be the glory, Lord.
 
I whispered in Tom’s ear I was going to make a quick trip to the Ladies Room before we were served, to which is response was, “We’ve eaten.”  I later learned those in the downstairs ballroom viewing by screens were served a full breakfast to my two strawberries.  Ike and Trisha said they should have warned us.  We met them up near the stage and as we exited I got to speak to Chuck Colson, telling him we still use his taped talk comparing the Watergate 12 to the disciples.  We had seen him at the Interstate Batteries Convention in Orlando.  What an incredible ministry he has.
 
The Texas Suite was next on our personal agenda.  We met fascinating folks from Houston, Louise, daughter Vicki and her aunt Carolyn, who kept us entertained for the next hour and a half.  Ike and Trisha joined us briefly, then took off for a meeting with retiring Attorney General John Ashcroft, who spoke to an intimate group of about thirty.  Between meals various small groups of spiritual leaders met in the mini-meeting rooms.
 
Lunch was back in the International Ballroom.  It was by far our best meal of the trip…main course – salmon…my favorite.  Amazing that a wait staff of two hundred served three thousand a hot meal so efficiently.  Rick Warren, who wrote Purpose Driven Live and Purpose Driven Church, spoke followed by the keynote speaker, the President of Honduras, Ricardo Maduro Joest of the National Party  – a Christian. 
 
We anticipated a late night so we all took long naps after lunch, and met up for dinner back in the International Ballroom.  Tom and I met the most interesting lady, Pauletta from DC, who teaches defense in the Department of Defense and who travels to many foreign nations in upheaval.  I asked if she was a Black Belt, to which she answered, “Surrounding yourself with men with guns is the best protection.”  To my left was new friend Lynda Keese who lives in DC …and next to her was her new friend Carol from Oklahoma.  We had steak, mashed potatoes and green beans and the best dessert – my favorite – chocolate mousse cake.  Ike and Trisha were at the table next to us and when they rose at 7:30, so did we.  A seven-time dove winner was performing and we missed the speaker, now Chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black, but we had a dessert date at the Frists.
 
Ike and Trisha’s friends Warren and Lenore Carter, who provided our four invitations this year, picked us up at the front door.  We drove past the National Cathedral, where Ronald Reagan’s funeral had been held, and arrived at the Frist’s right on time – 8:00.... 
 
Bill gathered us all in the dessert room to welcome us and thank us for coming to a no-agenda gathering of Christians (most of whom were spiritual leaders) from various parts of the United States.  After his talk, Franklin Graham led us in prayer for the future of Bill and Karyn…and for each guest present and for their ministries.  Tom and I made note to add Bill and Karyn to our daily prayer list right behind the President.  It would be so awesome if the office of the President continued to be filled with God fearing committed Christians who consult our Father for direction and wisdom and who will run the country on Christian principles.  At dinner on Tuesday night we had repeated the words of one of Bill’s fans who had said… “You go for it!”
 
Among the guests were Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s son); Luis Palau (Evangelistic Association); Chuck Colson (Prison Fellowship Ministry); David Barton (Wall-Builders); Rick Warren (Purpose Driven Life); Lloyd John Ogilvie (Author and past Chaplain of the Senate); Ted Haggard (President of the National Association) and Richard Land (President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention).  All of these men would be among the list of twenty-five most influential evangelicals in the February seventh issue of Time Magazine currently on stands…five of them are on the cover.  May the Lord continue to empower them for reaching the world for Christ through their various ministries.   We also met other pastors we just fell in love with…especially the black ministers.  Their hearts and love for Christ literally beamed on their faces.  What an open book and joy filled soul they each had. 
 
One of our favorites was Wellington Boone, a pastor from Norcross, Georgia.  He has written a book published by Doubleday called “Your Wife Ain’t Your Mama” and promised to send us a copy.  His new book on shelves soon is titled “Woman – The King Maker”.
 
We missed David Barton…Ike saw him leaving before we got into the other room to even know he was there.  What a shame as he lives just down the road from us in Aledo, and we’ve used his video transcripts on America’s Godly Heritage in our Bible Study at the UpTop.  Now there’s a man everyone needs to listen to.  Our government has gotten our heritage so mixed up, and he reminds us of the documents, actions and beliefs of our founders and fore-fathers.
 
I visited with Franklin Graham.  “Franklin, I had the honor of hearing your Daddy at the Lobo Stadium in Longview, Texas, circa 1958, and they were coming forward by the hundreds even back then.”  He responded with enthusiasm… “You’re from Longview?  I went to Le Tourneau Tech for two years and still fly back in and get some Bodacious BBQ to go.”  I told him I had lived in the Le Tourneau barracks when my daddy was going to school there.  And how was his Daddy?  He had missed his first Prayer Breakfast this year.  He said he was doing OK.  I thanked him for all he does in the name of Christ.
 
We talked to Chuck Colson.  Tom asked Chuck for advice on how to begin a ministry in the Granbury jail as our new Christian sheriff, Gene Mayo is wide open for Jesus. Chuck referred us to the Prison Fellowship office in Dallas for assistance.
 
Our visit with Rick Warren was one of our favorites.  Rick is an "old rocker", and he is a hoot.  Turns out he plays the guitar and when we told him about Granbury Live, Rick  said he would come to Granbury if he could play onstage.  Tom told him, "Consider it done, you'll be perfect with Mo and Bro, the Blue Suede Brothers."
 
We finished our evening with a few pictures with new friends and a thank you to our hosts for an incredible evening in their beautiful home Karyn had decorated perfectly.  To the hotel and in bed by midnight.
 
Friday as Ike and Trisha were in route to Cancun to receive a Turf Grass award for Ike and as Karyn was on her way to New York to a red dress fashion show with the First Lady, and as the Senate Majority Leader attended to the business of the day, Tom and I ate breakfast at Union Station and boarded first class Amtrak for our twenty-seven minute trip to Baltimore.  Tom carried the luggage on and stepped back off the train to proclaim… “The first face you’ll see is ‘My Kinda Woman’”…a line from Granbury Live’s “God Bless Texas”:  “One thing you’ll never hear in Texas… The tires on that truck are too big, That song needs a little more French horn, That Hillary is my kinda woman.”  Sure nuff….there sat Hillary with her perhaps secretary and the secret service.  We had the option of sitting facing her or going on back to a private table.  We chose privacy, were served cranapple juice, diet Pepsi and the New York Times before we disembarked at BWI Baltimore where a too chatty lady cabby took us to the airport for a full flight home.
 
Sister picked us up, and we stopped for the much missed Mexican food of Abuelo’s and then home to the more than missed Granbury Live Family…where we played “God Bless Texas” and the lines “what you’ll never hear in Texas.”
 
Thank you Lord for a blessed adventure with Ike and Trisha, and thank you Ike and Trisha for choosing us to share your adventure, making it ours.  It was a blast!
 
                                              Tom and Sandi
                                            
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lost, X-Men, Narnia, Agee

As a child, I knew I wanted to be a writer: I wanted to write X-Men. A few years on, I still wanted to write X-Men, but I also wanted to write The Chronicles of Narnia. I worried about how I'd get the books I loved -- The Great Brain series, Susan Cooper's eerie folk nightmares, The House With the Clock in its Walls -- once I was too old for them. I imagined standing at the counter of the Open Door, the bookstore in which my mother and I spent hours, as a grown-up, with a stack of children's novels: "For my nephew," I'd lie.

What I liked most about many of these stories -- X-Men, The Dark is Rising, The Chronicles -- is that they didn't seem to end. The X-Men, never. The Dark is Rising, not really. The Chronicles, yes; but it was so dull compared to the rest of the story that one could imagine the last book as nothing more than a giant typo.

I drifted away from writing in high school, and went off to college determined to be an actor or a biologist, maybe a forest ranger. (I would have made a great ent.) Instead, I read James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and I was back to writing. What was remarkable to me wasn't that the book didn't end; it was that it never really began. Or rather, it began over and over, each start a crescendo and a failure, proof of Agee's contention that language was a lie, forever inadequate to the "cruel, radiant symphony of what is."

I still like X-Men -- at least, when Joss Whedon was writing a series -- and I return now and then to Agee. But I no longer need endless stories to make me feel safe -- children fear endings -- nor Agee's angst-filled failures to make me feel honest. Writing is mediation; a negotiation.

But television? Its adolescent stories keep hope and nihilism alive. That is, most series are conceived with no clear end in sight. That's the hope. And most are built around a repetition of crescendoes -- none moreso than Lost, the series that has lost hope (the end is in sight). Each new season, almost every new episode, implied a new beginning, as the story returned us to the events that had set the story in motion, each time flogging us for failing to understand what had been right before our eyes and promising us that this time it would be different, this time we would proceed with the necessary information, this time the story would have meaning. And, of course, that was a playful deception, too, because the story always had meaning; it just kept changing. Every episode was an illustration of Faulkner's chestnut: "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

But maybe, sometimes, it should come to an end -- so that it can avoid ending. So argues Graham Hilliard on KillingTheBuddha.com.

There’s a moment in the third season of Lost, ABC’s soon-to-conclude serial drama of time travel and philosophy, that might have made a perfect ending to the series. Jack, the surgeon-cum-tribal chieftain whose impetuousness drives much of the show’s conflict, has delivered himself into the hands of his enemies, “The Others.” A rescue party of his friends has arrived at a gated camp to find Jack sprinting toward them, eyes ablaze. Before they can react—before they can move toward him or aid his escape—Jack looks over his shoulder, raises his hands, and catches a football. He grins at the captor with whom he’s been playing, and he spikes the ball. Cue credits.

It’s a devastating scene—one of the finest in the show’s history—and a stunning conclusion, had it been allowed to serve as one, to a narrative whose success was built not on revelation but mystery. Though Jack has long been established as the series’ central protagonist, the notion that he has switched sides is just possible. We’ve seen the creeping petulance that has marked his behavior since midway through the first season, and we’ve begun to question our own loyalties. Jack has been alone with the Others for days, furthermore, and their motives and practices are unknown to us. That Jack may have turned is both shocking and quietly plausible. In its mastery of timing, characterization, and narrative momentum—the very ingredients that made the show successful in the first place—the moment is a tour de force. It’s an exclamation point. A bang of an ending rather than a whimper.

Read the whole essay at this blog's big sister site, KillingTheBuddha.com

Hometown Paper

There's nothing quite so rewarding to a small town brain like mine as making it into the hometown rag, which in my case is the Schenectady Daily Gazette, my first employer. (I was a paperboy.) Features writer Sara Foss contacted me and asked some of the most challenging and engaging questions I've encountered in years of doing media. Here's the story, which ran on page 1 of the January 24, 2010 edition.

Jeff Sharlet credits a trio of Republican sex scandals with the success of his 2008 book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power."

"The book didn't quite catch when it came out," recalled Sharlet, 37, a 1990 graduate of Scotia-Glenville High School, during a phone interview.

Then South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering each admitted to extramarital affairs.

All three had connections to the Family, a little-known but politically powerful network of fundamentalist Christians, and Sharlet soon found himself talking about the Family on TV -- on the network news, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "The Rachel Maddow Show," "Real Time with Bill Maher" and "Hardball." His book, an exhaustively researched look at the secretive group's influence on policy and world events, landed on the New York Times best-seller list, where it spent 14 weeks in the top 10 and has remained ever since.

Sharlet serves as a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine and Rolling Stone and also writes about music for the Oxford American and politics and religion for The Nation, Mother Jones and Salon. Since 2003, he has served as an associate research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media, where he edits The Revealer, a daily online review of religion in the news and news about religion.

Many of the publications Sharlet writes for have liberal views; his Web site proudly proclaims that right-wing pundit Ann Coulter has called him one of the "stupidest" journalists in America, while left-leaning writers and thinkers such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Thomas Franks have sung the praises of "The Family."

Diverse background

Sharlet has a pretty prominent platform for his work these days.

But when Phyllis Kulmatiski, the mother of one of Sharlet's boyhood friends and a! retired Scotia-Glenville studio art teacher, sees Sharlet on television, she's reminded of how he used to talk about the issues of the day when he was in high school.
"We see him on TV and say, 'Oh, God, he looks like his father,' " she said. "And then we remember him doing that around the dinner table."

Sharlet's interest in religion developed during childhood.

The son of a secular Jew and a "Christian eclectic," he was neither bar mitzvahed nor raised in a single church. But his mother would often take him to different churches and congregations. They visited a Dutch Reformed church, he said, because they liked the bell ringers, and they attended midnight Mass as well as a Hindu ashram.

"My mother was not a seeker in the hippie way of looking for a true path," Sharlet said. "She was interested in the crazy quilt of it all."

In a 2004 interview in Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Sharlet talked about his unusual background.

"I grew up in what seemed like a mostly Catholic ! town in upstate New York," he said. "My father is Jewish, and my mother, with whom I lived, had been raised in a very unusual Pentecostal home. Her mother, a very poor Tennessean without a whole lot of education, had at an early age discovered a box of discarded books -- Dostoyevsky and Balzac and Tolstoy and books of Eastern religion. That was in rural Tennessee in the 1930s. So she raised my mother to be interested in everything, and my mother did the same for me. Going to other people's churches and temples, gathering stories -- in my family, that was just how you did religion. I didn't even know that it was religion, in fact, which probably helped me become the kind of religion writer I have. I gravitate to stories about what people believe and don't believe and how that affects their lives, because that seems the most natural way to engage the world around me."

When Sharlet was 16, his mother, Nancy Goodlin Sharlet, died from cancer.

Shortly before ! she died, she invited people of different faiths -- Buddhism, Evangelical Christianity, Catholicism -- to pray with her at the house. These people spoke of salvation -- of preparing for the next world, for life after death. But his mother, Sharlet said, wanted to pray for deliverance.

"She would say, 'I want to be delivered from my death.' ... That always stayed with me. That whole idea of deliverance versus salvation -- it's the most interesting dilemma you could have."

Academic childhood


People who knew Sharlet when he was growing up remember him as a bright, inquisitive boy who came from an academic family. His father, Robert Sharlet of Niskayuna, is a retired Union College professor of political science who specialized in Russian and post-Soviet law and politics. Sharlet's mother was a writer and editor who worked for SUNY Press. After she died, Sharlet spent the summer going through her papers, "discovering her as a writer," he said.

"Jeff was always a reader of books," said Kulmatiski, who has known Sharlet since he was in kindergarten. "He was very verbal."
Sharlet and her son, Andy, would play "Bridge to Terabithia" in the yard, a game based on the famous children's book by Katherine Paterson.

"In high school, Jeff started writing more," she said. "He was also interested in political issues and social justice." Sharlet and his friends "were great arguers," Kulmatiski said. "They were like lawyers. They were always challenging each other. They were very liberal and full of themselves. They were kind of pain-in-the-neck kids. They weren't the kids who were kissing up to teachers. They were outspoken."

Sharlet said he wasn't a particularly distinguished student in high school. He described himself as a screw-up, a straight-A student whose grades fell off when his mother got sick; he and his friends, he said, "were smart-alecky jerks."

After high school, Sharlet attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., where he studied literary journalism.

"Like many people, I discovered writing by going off to college and having a really great writing teacher," he said.

Taking up the pen


He began his career at an alternative weekly newspaper in San Diego and then moved on to the National Yiddish Book Center, where he founded Pakn Treger, an award-winning magazine of Jewish history and literature. He didn't speak Yiddish or even Hebrew, but it didn't matter: the National Yiddish Book Center wanted to create a magazine that would "deal with the Jewish world, that was not about this faction or that faction."

Sharlet had a large budget and was able to do things like travel to Spain with Jewish veterans of the Spanish Civil War. But the job gradually became more restrictive, and when the National Yiddish Book Center decided it no longer wanted Sharlet to write about sex, politics or religion, he took a job with the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In 2000, Sharlet and his friend Peter Manseau founded an online religion magazine called Killing the Buddha, which describes itself as "a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the 'spirituality' section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse, it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be. Killing the Buddha is it."

The magazine was successful, and Sharlet and Manseau received a contract to write a book about religious subcultures. The two spent a year traveling throughout America, visiting unusual churches and religious gatherings and exploring some of the country's stranger religious subcultures: a Pentecostal ! exorcism in North Carolina, a military pagan coven in Kansas, ! a storm- chaser who looks for the divine in tornadoes. The book, titled "Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible," came out in 2004.
"I was interested in the margins," Sharlet said. "I was interested in unusual things."

Mixing god, government


Sharlet's next book, "The Family," was a much different project, one that took him to the halls of Congress, to megachurches in Colorado and deep into the Family's archives at the Billy Graham Center at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois. And although Sharlet is now a leading expert on the Family, he learned about the group almost by accident.

In 2002, a woman he had dated in college contacted him. She said she was worried about her brother --she thought he had joined a cult. Sharlet met the brother -- called Zeke in "The Family," although that's not his real name -- for dinner and learned that he'd had a born-again experience while staying at Ivanwald, a home for young Christian men in Arlington, Va. T! he young men at Ivanwald, Zeke told Sharlet, worked at The Cedars, a spiritual retreat for politicians. Sharlet asked Zeke how one went about joining Ivanwald.

"You don't," Zeke told him, in a conversation recounted in "The Family." "You're recommended."

Zeke recommended Sharlet to Ivanwald, and he lived there for a month, praying, working and studying the Bible with other young men. Initially, he thought the experience might merit a chapter in "Killing the Buddha."

"I thought it would be a monastic group of frat boys," he recalled. (In "The Family," he writes, "I thought Ivanwald would simply be one more bead on my agnostic rosary.") Instead, Sharlet discovered a topic that deserved its own book: the Family.
Founded in 1935, the Family's members include high-ranking government officials in both the U.S. and abroad, business leaders and military officers; the group's goal, Sharlet writes, is to minister to the powerful, with the objective of creating "god-led" governments centered around the person of Christ.

During his stay at Ivanwald, Sharlet visited a Washington townhouse run by a Family affiliate called the C Street Foundation; eight congressmen live there. He also visited The Cedars, where Ed Meese, who served as attorney general for former President Ronald Reagan, presides over a regular prayer breakfast.

powerful actors


In "The Family," Sharlet explains that these connections give the Family surprising power.

"In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy," Sharlet writes. "In 1978, it helped the Carter administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. At the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, Family leaders persuaded their South African client, the Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to stand down from the possibility of civil war with Nelson Mandela. But 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 oppressive regimes in the world, arranging prayer networks in the U.S. Congress for the likes of General Costa e Silva, dictator of Brazil, General Suharto, dictator of Indonesia, and General Park Chung Hee, dictator of South Korea."

Sharlet wrote an article about Ivanwald and the Family for Harper's in 2003; with his editor's encouragement, he spent the next five years turning the piece into a book.

"The Family" is a mix of first-person accounts, narrative history and essays with numerous footnotes.

"People had to push me into writing about it," Sharlet said. "It wasn't what I wanted to do, but it was a story that landed on my lap. I thought it might be an important book."

Objective approach


Sharlet said religion is a fascinating topic to write about.

When people ask why he writes about religion, he said he ofte! n gives them what he calls his "glib answer -- because it's there." Mo st of the people who write about religion, he said, have a religious agenda. He said he isn't interested in exploring the question of whether religion is good or bad or whether God exists but understanding character and motive.

"I'm interested in what people who believe in God or don't believe in God do about it," he said.

Friend Manseau said Sharlet spends time getting to know his subjects, which is why he's such a good religion reporter.
"He's able to understand the beliefs of others and empathize with them without sharing their beliefs," he said. And he's bold: "The key to his success is that he presents himself to [his subjects] with no agenda," he said. "He doesn't have a list of gotcha questions. He's there to learn about the people he's writing about. That's attractive to his subjects --here's this smart guy who wants to learn about them."

Manseau, who met and worked with Sharlet at Pakn Treger, said Sharlet taught him a lot about writing.

"I started off wanting to be a fiction writer," he said. "Jeff taught me the necessity of being out in the world, of going out into the world and meeting people. He taught me that a reported story doesn't have to be a boring story."

Future projects


Sharlet now lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife, Julie Rabig, and nine-month-old daughter.

He has several other projects in the pipeline.

One is a book he plans to write with his father about his father and uncle's experiences during the Cold War. While his father, Robert Sharlet, became a leading authority on the Soviet Union -- Sharlet described him as a "Cold Warrior" -- his uncle, also named Jeff Sharlet, served as a translator during the Vietnam War and became a leader of the GI resistance movement; the 2005 documentary "Sir! No Sir!" about the anti-war activities of American GIs during the Vietnam War is dedicated to him. (Sharlet died in 1969, of exposure to Agent Purple, a precursor to the dangerous herbicide Agent Orange.)

Sharlet also plans a follow-up to "The Family" that will look at... the scope of Christian fundamentalism in other areas of American life, such as the military.

A third book, "The Hammer Song," will explore the history of the folk song "If I Had a Hammer."

Sharlet said he's now in regular communication with some members of the Family, which he said has a "small liberal wing" that believes the group should be less secretive. He recently arranged for Bob Hunter, a Family associate who built the group's relationship with the country of Uganda, to appear on "The Rachel Maddow Show" to talk about a Ugandan bill that calls for life imprisonment for gays; the legislator who introduced the Ugandan bill is a member of the Family.

Sharlet applauds Family members who support greater transparency but said the group and its members do not take responsibility for their actions and the way their ministry impacts the world.

"They're blinded by their good intentions," he said. "I keep getting drawn back to the brutality of the cold, hard facts."

The Family: Reader Mail

Mr. Sharlet,

I am in the midst of reading "The Family" and finding it a fascinating read. I commend you for the obvious thorough and painstaking research, but also for the very enjoyable style in which it is written.

Having spent several of my younger years as an evangelical preacher I was intrigued by what I knew of the subject matter of the book prior to actually reading any of it. In that I was "grafted in" to fundamentalism so to speak, I was always viewed by colleagues with a certain degree of suspicion. I was continually confronted with the difficulty of trying to keep my left-leaning political points of view separate and distinct from anything related to my personal spirituality. Unfortunately, any and all of the religious institutions to which I was formally or casually associated with would have none of it and was often pressed to justify my political ideology with what was assumed to be the more Godly right winged approach. Ultimately this and several other issues caused a slow but continual erosion of my desire to serve God as a fundamentalist.

That being said, I was amazed, while reading your book to happen upon a reference to an old acquaintence of mine, Mrs. Marian Aymar Johnson.* In the early seventies I was newly "born again" and with two years of bible school under my belt I returned to my hometown of East Islip, Long Island and began street preaching. It wasn't terribly long before I had amassed a following of well over one hundred converts, mostly teens and young adults.

I soon became the darling of the established ministers in the area. They saw me as someone who had a way with young people and could reach them with the gospel message in a way they couldn't. It was at just such a place, Sayville Community Church, that I met Marian Johnson for the first time. Being somewhat itinerant and in obvious need of financial support I soon found myself on the receiving end of her generosity. In addition to straight cash gifts, she bought me a watch and gave me a car. Though not a new car, it was a late model in fine condition and I drove it for several years.

After I moved on to take an associate pastorate position in New York City I lost contact with Mrs. Johnson and had not so much as heard her name until reading it in your book a few nights ago.

Chappy Valente

* From The Family:

During the war years, [Family founder] Abram had acquired a new patron, a youngish widow named Marian Aymar Johnson, heiress to the fortunes of both her late stockbroker husband and of her old, Hudson River family.
A lovely if empty-headed beauty raised between Newport, London, and Manhattan, she was a second cousin to FDR, but her isolationist politics were far to his right. Before the war, she’d been fond of Buchmanite ["Moral Re-Armament, fascist-friendly until the outbreak of the war] house parties, hosting one herself at her Long Island estate—an event of sufficient gossip value to rate an article in Time. Tall and blue- eyed with a broad, open smile, after her husband died she resolved to develop greater gravitas. She gave up the life of a social butterfly for what she called Abram’s “total Christianity.” Her goal was the establishment of “spiritual beach heads” from which to evangelize leaders. Only by accepting the same Christ, the “Supreme Leader” she had come to serve, could they save America from communism.18 With her help, Abram bought a four-story mansion on Embassy Row in Washington at 2324 Massachusetts Avenue. He hoped it would be a headquarters for politicians and diplomats of all denominations, a place for businessmen visiting Washington (by this point, Abram’s inner circle
included the president of the National Association of Manufacturers) to share their concerns with brothers- in-Christ in spiritual, not material, terms. A “Christian Embassy.”19

18. Harriet French, “To Make Christians Leaders, and Leaders Christians,” in unidentified newspaper, box 411, folder 4, collection 459, BGCA.

19. An undated brochure produced by the Fellowship shows on its front page just such a conversation between two men walking down the stone steps of the mansion. The man on the right, dressed in light gray and a dark tie, seems to be trying to persuade his companion, an older fellow with gray hair and black brows and an impatient air. The persuader, we learn in the
caption, is Commissioner Sigurd Anderson of the Federal Trade Commission; the skeptic, Howard Blanchard of Union Pacific Railroad—two men with more than Christ in common. “The Bible,” declares the brochure, “contains inexhaustible resources for the businessman fighting the economic battle in a two-fisted business world,” like a vein of coal or a pool of oil “deposited” by God, awaiting refinement into a spiritual offensive against “materialism.”

Some additional documents referencing Marian Aymar Johnson:

1. In the 1948 August-September edition of the National Committee for Christian Leadership's internal newsletter. Aymar Johnson writes of “Our Supreme Leader and Living Contemporary.... If we link up with this Power we project it. Results will be had just as fast as we are willing to invest and hurl our lives and resources back of our convictions. World economies will follow…. infect the rest of the world… We must have a clear, committed, self-sacrificing minority in every strategic situation." This same issue features an essay arguing that the "The totalitarianism of God is the only answer."

2. An August 2, 1949 letter from a German industrialist associated with the Family (then known as International Christian Leadership -- ICL) to Aymar Johnson begged for her help in preventing the Allied dismantling of a German factory linked to Germany's war machine. Aymar Johnson was evidently moved to help, as indicated by an August 31, 1949 letter to Aymar Johnson from Donald Stone, a Marshall Plan administrator who, through his connection to ICL, had concluded that American foreign aid should promote evangelical Christianity. But Stone drew the line when it came to the particular factory Aymar Johnson had attempted to preserve for their German Christian friends, noting that its dismantling had been agreed upon as "a result of international action and formal international agreements," related to "the effort of the Nazis to dominate the world and to perpetuate heinous crimes." (Folder 21, Box 474, Collection 459, BGCA)

3. Aymar Johnson's efforts on behalf of Nazi sympathizers were not limited to economic concerns. In an October 10, 1951 letter to German ICL leader Gustav Adolf Gedat -- a minister who'd been an early Hitler supporter but who'd turned against the Nazis by war's end -- Aymar Johnson notes that along with the men traveling on ICL's behalf there would be a Mrs. Perle, evidently available for romantic consideration: "Auntie and I do not feel that she would be the right type for Prince Hohenlohe... be sure to include my delightful cousin, Colonel Hoffman, who is her right hand there."

4. A December 27, 1967 letter from Family leader Doug Coe to Aymar Johnson and another associate illustrates the Family's longstanding relationship with the oil industry: "perhaps the most tremendous thing that has happened this year is indicated in a copy of the letter from the Executive VP of Continental Oil. They are leaving Ken White on staff but making available to the nation as a public service his time to work with us in the work." (Folder 4, Box 204, Collection 459, BGCA)

What I Learned

My publisher asked me to fill out a questionnaire to help their publicists promote my next book. This was the only question I had fun answering:

Q. PLEASE DISCUSS SEVERAL ARTISTS (NON-WRITERS) WHO YOU FEEL HAVE INFLUENCED YOUR OWN WORK, AND HOW THEY HAVE DONE SO.

A.

From photographer Walker Evans I learned about framing.

From punk poet Patti Smith I learned the importance of being earnest.

From Marvin Gaye I learned that anger can be beautiful.

From composer Tarik O’Regan I learned the shape of grace.

From photographer Roy Decarava I learned the elegance of contrast.

From jazz singer Patty Waters I learned the power of phrasing.

From basketball player Allen Iverson I learned how to weave.

From photographer Dorothea Lange I learned the angles.

From photographer Sally Mann I learned about the roots.

From singer Paul Robeson I learned the depths.

From comic book artist Alex Maleev I learned that texture can be tragic.

From photographer William Eggleston I learned that color bleeds.

From Tina Turner I learned what's shaking.

From TV creator Joss Whedon I learned that art is pulp.

From actress Emily Watson I learned that innocence is death.

From photographer Helen Levitt I learned that everything is code.

From country duo the Louvin Brothers I learned that Satan is real.

From Bruce Springsteen I learned that everything that dies someday comes back.

Bob Hunter, Uganda, and Rachel Maddow

Bob Hunter, the Family/Fellowship associate who built the group's relationship with Uganda, appeared on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" tonight. I helped arrange it. That may surprise some readers of my book, The Family, but it shouldn't: transparency is the foundation of the democratic process the Family has so long sidestepped. Bob, who by his own admission is part of the group's small, relatively liberal faction, believes the time has come for greater transparency. I think he's about 75 years late -- the group should have been transparent from the beginning, in 1935 -- but better late than never.

Unfortunately, tonight was only a step in the right direction. Bob said he wanted to go public to set the record straight on the Family's relationship with Uganda. Instead, he opened by attacking me on trivial matter, arguing that my dislike for the cover my publisher chose for my book somehow invalidates everything in it. He continued by misrepresenting my views. In fact, I haven't acknowledged that the Family isn't political; just the opposite. Bob and I argued about it for awhile.

In the interest of transparency, I should add that I called him up after the show. He said he'd planned to talk about Senator Jim Inhofe, the fiercely anti-gay politician who is listed in Family documents as the "U.S. leader" responsible for working with Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni. Bob said he wants to see Inhofe take a bolder stand against this awful bill. But he got sidetracked.

So here's hoping we can all stay on message. I'll do my best when I get a chance to review clips from the show.

The Family, College Style; and Some Hope for Tiger Woods

Since I published The Family, I've received hundreds of emails from readers, including a number who report personal experience with the Family/Fellowship. Here's a fairly straightforward one from a Christian who took a look at the Family's theology and kept on going.

Mr. Sharlet:

I read The Family in 2008 with great interest and listened to all your interviews on Fresh Air. I was part of an Intervarsity Fellowship at Emory University from 1987-1991. After graduation one of my friends lived in a mens house in the Arlington area. I enrolled in graduate school in Philly and stopped there a couple of times to spend the night. I even went to an evening worship service I think at the home of the Senate chaplain, Halverson,* I think was his name. He gave a short message which I thought was theologically light. The "let go, and let God" message.

In the fall of 1992 one guy from the Fellowship enrolled in my graduate program at Eastern College. This guy started bible studies and recruiting folks to go down to DC on ocassion. It all had the feel of a fraternity and less of a BIble study. Several guys went, but I always had this feeling of doubt. I asked a couple of professors and faculty about the group including a older woman who had lived in women's house around the time Chuck Colson was released from prison. She told me she was a yellow dog Democrat and she refused to serve breakfast to man who had so violated the Constitution.

They told me it's a strange thing and not to get to mixed up in it. Their theology is very nebulous. I had a classmate from Kenya who knew some fellowship members and he said it's a club for very wealthy Christian people. There a very few Democrats and they are very anti-church, but they project an aura of elite evangelicals. Definitely not for me.

I was told in the early 90s they lead Bible studies on the PGA tour and provide spiritual counsel perhaps through Payne Stewart. I would not be surprised if they reach out to Tiger Woods.**

Keep up the good work.

[Name withheld at request]

*Richard Halverson was indeed chaplain of the U.S. Senate, a beloved figure who blended bonhomie and hard right sophistication in the person of a pastor for the Presbyterian Church of the USA, the more liberal of the two major Presbyterian denominations in the U.S. Halverson believed in a complete transformation of U.S. government, but he took the soft sell approach. “A revolution can be anarchy," he wrote a rival within the Fellowship who favored a more public style, "or it can be tyranny. It can be noisy and rambunctious and spectacular like a Fourth of July fire-works celebration, or it can be quiet and penetrating and thorough like salt, like benevolent subversion." (Emphasis mine; Halverson to Clif Robinson, May 22, 1963, folder 2, box 232, collection 459, Billy Graham Center Archives.)

**Here's an ironic little excerpt from a conversation I had recently with Bob Hunter, the Fellowship associate who's been in the news lately for his involvement with Uganda. Bob and I both recorded our conversation, and Bob was kind enough to share with me the transcript he had professionally prepared. In this excerpt, Bob is referring to a personal crisis that led him to his faith and his long work with the Fellowship:

Bob Hunter: I went through a crisis, and I felt like I -- you know, I felt like I got blessed out of the crisis, kept my family together. And then, you know, maybe a Tiger Woods type of moment. I don’t think I have to give you all the details, but --

Jeff Sharlet:
Now, there’s a story. Tell me that Tiger Woods is over at the Cedars right now. We’d get front page in a hoot.

Bob Hunter:
I wouldn’t be surprised by that, actually. They do tend to do that.

The Family and Lebanon, 2009, unverified

Here's a fascinating comment posted below. The poster was anonymous -- apparently inadvertently. If he reads this, I hope he'll contact me. What he describes, however, sounds like it could be believable -- while Tom Coburn is a relatively high profile associate, Mike Doyle is less well-known and Tim Coe, one of Doug Coe's sons, is generally known only to Family members.

I started searching for information concerning Doug Coe and his Fellowship Foundation about a year ago. I also obtained your book "the Family". I must say that all the allegations that I came across in my research, including those adduced in the book "the Family" fit like a glove.

I happened to be in the thick of things when Douglas Coe dispatched a delegation to travel to Israel, Lebanon and Jordan in April 2009. The mission to Lebanon was, among other things, to provide support to the so called "charitable youths learning centers" in Jordan and Lebanon. The visit was not official and did not take place under the auspices of the US government.

I find it amazing that Senator Tom Coburn along with Rep. Mike Doyle, Tim Coe and other distinguished Americans, appear unannounced in a remote Sunni village in Northern Lebanon to tour a small youths training center called DCL established on the behest and under the guidance of Douglas Coe. The overt purpose of the youths center is to provide English language training to the youths of the little village. The covert purpose is to introduce the principle of Jesus to the youths and thus expand the circle of influence of "the Family". However, the underlying purpose has been uncovered due to a chain of local events in the village. The two local lieutenants of Doug Coe denied insisted that their purpose is merely charitable. The statuesque in the village is a divided community and a brewing problem with unpredictable consequences.

My question is this: How could elected officials be involved in such counterproductive activities on the world stage? I was present in the little village when the US delegation arrived without prior notice in an unofficial visit to a remote village in north Lebanon. I have a number of photos taken with members of the delegation. Later on I was sick to my stomach when the two local Lebanese "lieutenants" of Douglas Coe falsely stated before the US delegation that the center caters mainly to sunni orphans. It became apparent to me later on that the false statement was made in a pitch to raise funds from wealthy "men of Jesus" dispatched to observe the wonderful work of the foundation all over the world to prepare a new generation able to govern the world in accordance with the principles of Jesus. There were a number of US wealthy visitors to this small village in North Lebanon. The sad thing is that only the two local Lebanese front persons have been prospering! They managed to establish a meager center and recruit a few trainees. US wealthy "men of Jesus" donate hefty amounts for land acquisition and building a center in this Sunni remote Lebanese village. What does Douglas Coe want with this tiny village is truly mind boggling.

We would like to see a more productive relationship with the US people. We would like the US people to reach out to us and help our communities and children to be more productive participants within the international community. We don't want people to come and take advantage of our deprived communities.

The Family and Uganda's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill," part 2.

Not long ago, I spoke about the Family's connection to Uganda's proposed gay death penalty bill with Terry Gross of NPR's "Fresh Air." To my surprise, the Family man who'd established the Family's relationship with Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni demanded the right to respond. I supported him; if the Family wants to go public, I'm all for it.

I went down to Hunter's house, across the street from the Cedars, and spent an afternoon talking with him. Hunter's part of a small liberal faction within the Family. More importantly, he's part of a faction that would like to move toward greater transparency. Most important, he's opposed to the gay death penalty bill, and was willing to break with the Family custom of secrecy to make that known. Below is a link to the entire transcript of "Fresh Air"'s interview with Hunter. But first, I want to highlight what I think are some important points:

1. Hunter acknowledges the Family's secrecy: "We are little too secretive. There are some things have to be secret, you know.

2. He thinks the secrecy should end and reports that there was recently a meeting about doing so (the verdict, for now, is that the secrecy will continue; but Hunter is clearly going in a different direction):

"GROSS: Why now? What was that meeting the reaction to?

Mr. HUNTER: Well, it was part reaction to Sharlet's book and this history, you know, troubles and the inability for anyone to be able to respond because they just don't have a mechanism for responding. And so the media looks for a Web site, I would too. And there is nothing there and so the media goes, well, it must be a secret organization even though Jeff Sharlet found 273 footnotes in his book. So, it isn't totally secret. And so, it's - I think the secrecy will end.

3. Hunter says I acknowledge that nobody in the Family is involved in the bill. In fact, in the short article I wrote about my conversation with Hunter -- which I cleared with Hunter before publishing -- I noted that the three Ugandans most discussed in relation to the bill, MP David Bahati, Ethics Minister Nsaba Buturo, and President Musveni, are all linked to the Family.

4. I did acknowledge that none of the Americans involved with the Family seems to support the bill. But it's just as important to acknowledge that men such as Senator James Inhofe, Senator Chuck Grassley, Rep. Joe Pitts, and Senator Tom Coburn condemned the bill only after a concerted campaign of public and private pressure. None of these men presented any kind of profile in courage. But I'll give Hunter credit: He's gone public in a much more effective way than his better-known brothers in Christ.

Here's the whole transcript.