The Family

Origins

In April 1935 Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant and Methodist minister living in Seattle, claimed to have had a vision in which he was instructed by God to redirect his Christian ministry away from the “down and out” and toward the “up and out.” He subsequently evangelized among wealthy and politically powerful individuals who shared his concerns about socialism and other “subversive” forces. Strongly opposed to the New Deal policies of Democratic U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vereide favoured an unregulated economy in which the less fortunate would depend on the religiously motivated charity of those in whom God had vested power and wealth. As Vereide’s movement grew, its “God-led” members, including local business leaders and members of the Republican Party and the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, were organized into “prayer cells” and “breakfast groups,” through which they could seek divine counsel in both personal and political matters.

One of the movement’s early successes was the election of one of its members, the Seattle lawyer Arthur Langlie, as mayor of the city in 1938 and as governor of Washington state in 1940. Langlie, who declared at a movement retreat that he had been called by God to political office, was described by Vereide as “the spearhead of a return to an American way of life.”

Move to Washington

Seeking greater impact for his ideas, Vereide moved to Washington, D.C., and in 1942 organized a prayer cell of congressmen. By this time he had already established groups of local leaders in most major U.S. cities, including Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Vereide incorporated his movement as the National Committee for Christian Leadership in 1943 and changed its name to International Christian Leadership the next year. By the mid-1940s it was firmly established in Washington, D.C., with a board composed largely of senators and representatives from both parties.

In 1948 Republican Rep. Paul B. Dague defined the movement’s guiding principle as the “conviction that more of God’s mandates and the teachings of [Jesus] must be written into current legislation.” Most members believed that this principle justified their support of antilabour initiatives and increased military spending, among other conservative policies. The movement extended its influence in the executive branch of the federal government by founding the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast in 1953 with the help of the Baptist evangelist Billy Graham. Known since 1970 as the National Prayer Breakfast, it is regularly addressed by the president of the United States and is conceived of by the movement as a consecration of the governing class to the service of Jesus.

Vereide’s movement differed from most Christian political organizations in its emphasis on economics and foreign affairs. Influenced by Christian fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and laissez-faire economic theory, Vereide dedicated the movement in 1950 to a “worldwide spiritual offensive,” which would be waged through the cultivation of relationships with authoritarian political leaders whom Vereide believed had been chosen by God for this struggle. They included François (“Papa Doc”) Duvalier of Haiti, Suharto of Indonesia, Park Chung-Hee of South Korea, and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. Vereide’s congressional and business associates became de facto champions of these regimes.

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Reorganization

Vereide died in 1969 and was succeeded by Douglas Coe (died 2017). Believing that publicity had undermined the movement’s effectiveness, Coe converted it into what he called an “invisible” organization. He instructed members to avoid publicly acknowledging the organization, to use their own letterhead when conducting its business, and to cultivate the appearance of government sponsorship of the National Prayer Breakfast, its only public event. Coe also moved The Family, as he and other leaders began referring to the movement in 1970, farther from mainstream evangelicalism, discarding the term Christian, cultivating Jewish and Muslim “followers of Christ,” and emphasizing a model of power taken from the New Testament and understood through the study of such 20th-century dictators as Vladimir I. Lenin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong. Coe admired those leaders’ emphasis on total commitment to a cause and their ability to effect change through the use of political cells.

The Family continues to work with numerous politicians in the United States and abroad, who claim that the organization’s private meetings enable them to hold each other accountable for their actions. From the first decade of the 21st century, however, the movement faced growing media scrutiny of its secretive mixture of politics and religion. In 2009 allegations that some politicians linked to the “C Street House,” a Family-subsidized dormitory for affiliated congressmen, had engaged in extramarital affairs led to calls from across the religious and political spectrum for greater transparency in the organization.

Later in 2009 a Ugandan politician with ties to The Family and to other U.S.-based religious organizations introduced in the Ugandan parliament a bill that greatly strengthened criminal penalties for homosexual acts and required Ugandans to report homosexuals to authorities.