Sometimes, the most powerful people have the softest voices.
When you think of some of the most politically connected preachers in the last 50 years, it's easy to think of Billy Graham, Jesse Jackson or Jerry Falwell, who all delivered loud, fiery sermons. Jackson also led Operation PUSH, and Falwell was the face of the Moral Majority.
When Doug Coe died in 2017 at the age of 89, neither he nor the Christian organizations he led (The Family, The Fellowship Foundation, International Christian Leadership or the Wilberforce Foundation) were as famous as Jackson, Graham or Falwell. Nonetheless, Coe and the Family have made a lasting impact on politics in the United States and the rest of the world.
The Family started the National Prayer Breakfast in 1953, and every president since Dwight Eisenhower has attended. They've also had backroom negotiations with people like Indonesian dictator Suharto and Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
In the new five-part Netflix documentary series The Family from director Jesse Moss, which debuted last week, Coe appears in a long series of pictures with world leaders. He had an omnipresence that rivaled Forrest Gump.
If Coe or the ministry he took over from Norwegian-born Methodist pastor Abraham Vereide are unfamiliar, it's by design.
According to Jeff Sharlet, who has written two books about Coe's organizations (The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy) and who serves as an executive producer on the new series, "The Fellowship is a different approach to Christian Conservative politics. (Coe's) style is so unlike Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or any one of those pulpit pounders."
During a conference call, he adds: "His charisma is a soft charisma. He was remarkable in the world of power in not needing public attention. It's what made him so effective when dealing with the so-called 'up-and-out' because he was fine with those people being the big man in the room. He was a true believer in a way that a lot of Christian Right leaders, who are as driven as much by ego as by faith, are not. I've been looking at some of that footage that Jesse found, and I've been looking at some of that footage for years. I remember talking to the publishers (of my books) wanting them to put it on a website because you've got to see it."
"I wanted to get at that mystery that Jeff talked about," Moss replies. "How did he build such a network of influence. There were people who were inspired by their contact with him."
Twist of Faith
If the impact of The Family is undeniable, it's also up for scrutiny.
A decade ago, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, Nev. Sen. John Ensign and Miss. Congressman Chip Pickering got caught in extramarital affairs that involved the ministry at the Family's building at C Street in Washington. In the acknowledgments for C Street, Sharlet jokingly thanks the three politicians for propelling the sales of The Family, which debuted in paperback when the scandals briefly shone an unwanted spotlight on The Family.
"The scandals are not the story," Sharlet explains. "The scandals are the way the long term, sort of systemic distortion of status and power become visible and legible in the media landscape that really can't usually comprehend that kind of power. Let's think more about the system that makes these scandals possible."
One aspect of The Family's ministry is that Vereide and Coe understood Jesus differently from how he's presented in the Gospels. In Matthew 25:40, Jesus says, "I tell you this: Anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me." He also warns in Mark 10:25, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."
In remarks included in Sharlet's books and Moss' film, Coe and his associates offer a different view of who Christians are supposed to minister to and who embodies Christ's purpose on earth. Coe cited the leadership examples of Hitler and Mao and believed the Church should minister to the powerful instead of the powerless.
The Family cites incidents where the organization's back channels did some good. For example, they facilitated the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Sharlet adds, "We don't get into this in the film, but when (Nelson) Mandela became president (of South Africa), they did not have their money on Mandela. They were interested in Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the leader of the Zulus (or the Inkatha Freedom Party), a very far-right and authoritarian leader, who they quite liked. He didn't win, and Buthelezi was threatening civil war, and they did convince him to stand down, but that's within their philosophy where you work with power when you can."
In Sri Lanka, the Family worked with Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rep. Bob Aderholt (R-AL) to secure military aid.
"(The Sri Lankan government) used that aid to kill tens of thousands of Tamil citizens," Sharlet says.
"It's incredible to think of the incredible good that the Fellowship could do if they wanted to. With this political capital that they've accumulated, they have access to leaders all over the world," he laments.
The National Prayer Breakfast itself has had some problems of its own. Often the event itself seems to be more about political deal-making than spiritual renewal or nourishment. The invitation-only event might have been a national security threat. Maria Butina, who was convicted as an unregistered foreign agent for the Russians, was a recent participant.
Moss explains, "I think that Jeff says that at the end of the episode where we explore that story there's this naïveté or cynicism. It's an achievement of the Fellowship that it manages to be both. Is it that they set up this event to broker power and relationships, or is it that it's prone to abuse? And it's both. We can't know what was in Maria Butina's heart, but we can guess, based on the evidence."
The Everything Bagel
Vereide founded The Family in 1935 in response to the rise of unions (he thought they were the work of Satan). Coe took over the organizations before Vereide died in 1969. Because the organization has had influence for so long, the standard two-hour running time of Moss' previous films might not do it justice. The episodes vary in structure and content, and people like Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn,), who wouldn't speak to Sharlet for either of his books, talks extensively during the series.
"I think also it's worth noting that Doug (Coe) had died. We'll never know. Doug was the guy who you know half a century ago said it's time to submerge the institutional image of the Fellowship. He's the one who decided it was time to become in his words 'invisible,' and I think there was within that movement fixtures like Zach Wamp, who are more used to being public and they like being public, and they like attention. And I think that was always a tension within the organization. I think that after Doug's death, I think it's something the organization is still figuring out what is it in the post-Coe years. And so you see some of that I think implicitly playing how right there on the screen," Sharlet says.
That said, a conventional talking head or fly-on-the-wall documentary might not work for The Family.
Much of the expertise that Sharlet has acquired on the group comes not just from having examined nearly 600 boxes of archival information at Wheaton University but having lived and worked at a Family facility in Virginia called Ivanwald. Sharlet would serve cocoa to powerful visitors there.
In addition, Moss also became involved with the Family when a prayer group in Portland, Ore., wouldn't let him film unless he participated. Because he did, viewers get a better understanding of how and why people are drawn to the group. Moss also spends most of the first episode dramatically re-enacting Sharlet's time at Ivanwald.
Asked about what it was like to see his life replicated on-screen, Sharlet hedges: "I kind of want to say, 'no comment.' I want to say it's a strange experience," he says. "I say this because it's one of the most painful moments of my life."
Moss says that the length initially intimidated him, but his previous film The Overnighters involved North Dakota Lutheran pastor Jay Reinke who ministers to people who've left their homes from across the nation to work in the oil fields. Many of the people who come to him have nowhere else to go, but some are also registered sex offenders, and neither The Overnighters nor The Family have simple answers for the dilemmas they explore.
"I wanted to respect and do want to respect the different points of view and nuances of faith. In The Overnighters, it was Jay fighting his congregation over what was the right way to lead a Christian life, whether to open your doors and let those people in or not. It's been very important for me that we've heard from people in the series, whether they defected out of the Fellowship in some way like (former Sen. Ensign aide) Doug Hampton, who has a lot of reverence for Doug Coe but condemns the Fellowship and its fetishization of Capitol Hill and politicians. I tried to be open to the shades of gray," Moss says.
"There was a freedom to the narrative strategy that we might adopt to get at the story and this set of truths. With Jeff's very personal, subjective experience, there was really no other way to understand what that was like, for him to be a young man with these other young men with this powerful conviction or set of beliefs. I was excited about stumbling into this Bible study in Portland, that a film could be what Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line) called the 'everything bagel.' It was about getting past the stack of facts and talking about faith."
MovieStyle on 08/16/2019