ASK HER ABOUT DOUG COE, DAMNIT

[Stephanie]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html

Hillary's Prayer: Hillary Clinton's Religion and Politics
September 1, 2007

---snip---

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. "A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation," says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. "I don't....there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer."

***

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

***

Coe's friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe's guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protégé, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus' teachings.

[flor de jasmim]

1. instead we get "Does God want you to be Prez.? Sheesh!

It just goes to show that inane questions are EVERYWHERE.

[MonkeyFunk]

2. Why?

It would be a stupid question.

Only nutjobs on DU believe Hillary is actually part of a secret right-wing fundamentalist theocratic cult.

[PBS Poll-435]

3. I know, right?

[Stephanie]

4. Nothing to See Here! Move Along!

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich

At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.

Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's "most elite cell," the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is "a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.

What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including New Age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck.

Sharlet generously attributes Clinton's involvement to the under-appreciated depth of her religiosity, but he himself struggles to define The Family's theological underpinnings. The Family avoids the word Christian but worships Jesus, though not the Jesus who promised the earth to the "meek." They believe that, in mass societies, it's only the elites who matter, the political leaders who can build God's "dominion" on earth. Insofar as The Family has a consistent philosophy, it's all about power--cultivating it, building it and networking it together into ever-stronger units, or "cells." "We work with power where we can," Doug Coe has said, and "build new power where we can't."

[MonkeyFunk]

6. Yes

she belongs to the Senate Prayer Group. She prays with conservatives.

The notion that she's secretly a right-wing fundamentalist is just idiocy.

[Stephanie]

7. Pay No Attention to the Rightwing Nut Behind the Curtain!

http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/clinton-fellowship.php

Barack Obama isn't the only candidate with ties to a controversial religious group.


Since Hillary Clinton has launched a frontal attack on her opponent's church and pastor, it's worth noting that she has some odd religious ties of her own. When I was profiling her two years ago, I learned about her involvement with a secretive Christian organization called The Fellowship that has operated in the Washington shadows since the 1930s. I found the story of Clinton and The Fellowship so bizarre that I made it the lede to my piece. In light of recent events, it's worth revisiting.


If you've never heard of The Fellowship (also known as The Family), it will sound like some shadowy organization in a John Grisham novel. (Indeed, as a Google search will demonstrate, critics consider it a cult.) The group was formed in the 1930s to minister to political and business leaders throughout the world, modeling itself as a kind of Christian Trilateral Commission. Several members of Congress are affiliated with the group, mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too. To the extent The Fellowship is known beyond its members it is probably for founding the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

Like Jeremiah Wright's Trinity Baptist Church, The Fellowship is run by its own mysterious and controversial figure, Douglas Coe, although temperamentally Coe is Wright's opposite. He eschews the spotlight and has never made a controversial public utterance that I'm aware of -- mainly because he rarely speaks publicly at all. (You won't find him on YouTube.) But like Wright, Coe has ministered to a Democratic frontrunner. He personally leads a private Senate prayer group that Clinton has been a part of.

In my piece, I chose to focus on the Senate prayer group, but others have written extensively about the strangeness and secrecy of The Fellowship. As this Los Angeles Times story and this exquisitely reported Harper's piece make clear, there is something deeply strange about the group. They certainly do not like press coverage, so in that regard Clinton's attraction might make sense. Reporters hoping to look into the group might want to think again. A few years ago, The Fellowship’s archives, which are held at Wheaton College, the evangelical school in Illinos, were reclassified as “restricted” and placed under lock and key.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

19. It's secret if virtually no one knows about it.

Although not necessarily malevolent, lets put it out there for people to judge.

Just like Wright. Exactly the same scrutiny as Wright. Let the light shine in!

[Stephanie]

5. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

http://www.amazon.com/Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-Heart-American/dp/0060559799



The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Hardcover)
by Jeff Sharlet (Author)
This title will be released on May 20, 2008

Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch
"One of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you’ll ever read—just don’t read it alone at night!"

Thomas Frank, New York Times bestselling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?
"Of all the important studies of the American right, THE FAMILY is undoubtedly the most eloquent. It is also quite possibly the most terrifying."

[redqueen]

12. ...

...

[Stephanie]

8. .

[Stephanie]

9. Seriously, weeks and weeks on Rev. Wright

But there's no one at the religion forum who will question her about this???

[redqueen]

11. Telling, isn't it?

[Whisp]

15. we shouldn't be surprised - this is how presidents are chosen

by the big media who have interests in warmongering and keeping the rabble down.

but it's galling nonetheless
and therapeutic to be pissed off - never would have thought that ANYONE could piss me off more than bush did - surprise, surprise Hillary can.

[redqueen]

10. ...

:kick:

[MonkeyFunk]

13. Do you believe

she's a christian fundamentalist theocrat?

[redqueen]

14. No. (nt)

[MonkeyFunk]

16. Then why keep promoting

this smear? You don't see it as a sleazy way to attack her?

[redqueen]

17. I see it as analogous to Wright...

and I think we should wonder why the M$M isn't all over it like they were Wright.

[MonkeyFunk]

18. Because she doesn't have the relationship to Coe

that Obama had to wright. Coe is not her pastor, and never has been.

But more importantly, if you thought the Wright story was bogus, WHY on earth would you engage in the same behavior?

[redqueen]

20. How is this engaging in the same behavior?

I'm not saying she's unelectable because of it.

I'm not saying she shares the loathesome goals of this secretive group.

I'm wondering why it's studiously IGNORED.

I can look at the situation and understand why people wanted to harp on Wright, even if I disagreed with them for doing so.

How is it that you can't look at this situation and understand why we're curious at the way this is being swept under the rug?

[MonkeyFunk]

21. It's not swept under the rug

it's just not a story worthy of attention! She prays with some people who know a guy who ...

Surely you don't believe Clinton's getting a free ride in the press?

Nah, don't answer. I give up. You just want to smear Clinton, and you don't give a fuck how you do it. You're just like all the other idiots here who use this board to smear Democrats.

[redqueen]

22. "don't answer"? You boss me around and call me an idiot?

Nice, really nice.

So... did you think they both got grilled equally hard last night?