Washington's most influential, and most secretive, religious organization, specializes in recruiting the powerful—whether members of Congress or foreign despots.
1935
Seattle preacher Abraham Vereide experiences a revelation: Christianity is about helping the strong, not the weak. He sets out to organize an anti-New Deal coalition of Christian businessmen.
1953
Eisenhower reluctantly agrees to come to first National Prayer Breakfast, envisioned by Vereide as annual ritual to consecrate the nation's political leadership for Jesus. Attended by every president since, the breakfast will become the movement's most potent recruiting tool, with foreign leaders invited for face time with US politicians and businessmen. Oil and defense especially well represented.
1959
Senator Frank Carlson (R-Kan.), a leader of the movement Vereide has incorporated under the umbrella of International Christian Leadership, takes a delegation of US businessmen to Haiti to meet a promising young leader. With their support, he'll become dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
1965
CIA-supported General Suharto takes power in Indonesia through what the spy agency will later admit is "one of the worst mass murders in the 20th century." Vereide and his understudy, Douglas Coe, consider it a "spiritual revolution" and organize junkets for congressmen and oilmen who will become Suharto's champions in Washington.
1969
Vereide "promoted" to heaven. Coe assumes leadership and takes Vereide's publicity-shy approach to new extremes, "submerging" the organization and instructing congressmen not to speak of what he begins calling "the Family."
1973
Coe introduces Watergate hatchet man Chuck Colson to what Colson will describe as a "veritable underground of Christ's men all through government"—men who'll vouch for Colson's early release from prison a year later and back him as he begins building his own conservative Christian ministry.
1998
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) begins his career as the Family's most active congressional missionary, promoting the "political philosophy of Jesus" to Africa's oil-rich strongmen.
June 16, 2009
C Streeter John Ensign, fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate and a presidential hopeful, confesses to an affair with the wife of his best friend, senior aide, and fellow Family member. It soon emerges that C Street helped him cover it up, even allegedly orchestrating payments to the cuckolded friend's family.
June 24, 2009
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford calls a press conference to reveal longstanding "impossible love" for Argentine mistress; says C Street is helping him save his marriage. Sanford's wife, Jenny, will later reveal that husband's C Street brothers counseled her not to express anger or withhold sex.
October 14, 2009
Ugandan legislator David Bahati, a Family leader in the Ugandan Parliament, introduces Anti-Homosexuality Bill (PDF), which he describes as the direct fruit of his involvement in the Family. It dramatically expands punishment for homosexuality (already illegal in Uganda) and calls for the death penalty for "serial offenders" and imprisonment for failing to report gays to authorities.
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