C Street and the Family

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

Officially registered as a church, the building serves as a meeting place and residence for conservative politicians. S. C. Gov.Mark Sandford and
Senator John Ensign R-NV are two familiar names in recent news coverage who resided at C Street and received "coaching" about their extra marital affairs from other prominent residents.

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

Tenants dine together once a week to talk about religion in their daily lives. Richard Carver, a member of the Fellowship's board of directors who served as assistant secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan administration, says "Our goal is singular -- and that is to hope that we can assist them in better understandings of the teachings of Christ, and applying it to their jobs." Senator DeMint, a Presbyterian who moved into C Street less than a year ago, says that members are wont to share a verse or a thought in Bible Study "but mostly it's more of an accountability group to talk about things that are going on in our lives, and how we're dealing with them."

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


When they're not philandering and violating their own professed Christian morality, C Street members push for the projection of U.S. power abroad. As Obama went to Port of Spain, Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas in April, Ensign who criticized the president for shaking Hugo Chávez's hand. "I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chávez," he said. Ensign, a big booster of corporate-style free trade, voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005. He also supports the coup government in Honduras and signed a letter to Secretary of State Clinton calling on the Obama Administration to revoke its support for deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.

C Street's real free trade messiah is South Carolina native son Jim DeMint, who just chastised the White House for supporting Zelaya, thereby carrying out what he called "a slap in the face to the people" of Honduras. Hondurans "have struggled too long to have their hard-won democracy stolen from them by a Chávez-style dictator," he remarked. The South Carolinian, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, went even further and attacked the Organization of American States for "trampling" over the hopes and dreams of a "free and democratic people." It's hardly surprising that DeMint would come out for the military takeover in Honduras given that he's been a long time booster of Central American free trade. In this sense, he shares the ideological views of newly installed Honduran President Roberto Micheletti, a former businessman and conservative politician who has supported CAFTA. DeMint has long been on the other side of the fence from the likes of Zelaya and Chávez. First elected to the House in 1998, he has been an eager promoter of far right-wing economic orthodoxy such as privatizing Social Security and abolishing the federal minimum wage.

In their own personal lives, C Street members have made a mockery of the group's Christian teachings. Yet when it comes to the far more important and consequential issue of foreign policy, these Republicans have stuck to their guns. From Chávez to Zelaya to free trade in Central America, they have been consistent in seeking to overturn progressive reform and in working to maintain U.S. imperial hegemony.