At the 1985 National Prayer Breakfast, Ronald Reagan praised the organization that mounted the event, a religious group known as the Family or the Fellowship. “Fellowships have begun to spring up throughout the Capitol,” he said . “They exist now in all three branches of the government, and they have spread throughout the capitals of the world, to parliaments and congresses far away.”

“Since we met last year, members of the Fellowship throughout the world have begun meeting with each other,” he continued. “Members of our Congress have met with leaders and officials from other countries, approaching them and speaking to them, not on a political level, but a spiritual level. I wish I could say more about it, but it's working precisely because it is private.”

The group’s machinations aren’t quite as hidden these days, thanks in part to Netflix’s docuseries The Family . It tells a story spanning continents and decades, tracing the little-known but politically influential organization from its origins in the Depression-era anti-labor movement, through its associations with American presidents and global dictators . The group prizes secrecy, preaches a staunchly patriarchal, strongman-friendly variety of Christianity, and counts political figures like former Senators Tom Coburn and John Ensign , and former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford among its members. It’s been at the center of American scandals and implicated in stoking violent homophobia abroad . The same National Prayer Breakfast, still held annually, functions as a lobbying bonanza and in 2018 hosted accused Russian spy Maria Butina .

(In a statement responding to the docuseries , the Fellowship said that the program “mischaracterizes” the group’s work.)

Journalist Jeff Sharlet, author of two books about the organization, The Family and C Street, served as one of the series’ executive producers. Sharlet hasn’t just investigated the Fellowship— he lived with the group at its Arlington headquarters in 2002, working and studying the Gospels alongside other young male members of the organization. While there, he began to learn the Fellowship’s unusual take on Christian theology, which abandons ministering to the poor or downtrodden in favor of focusing on the rich and powerful. We talked to him about his time living with the group, the Fellowship’s influence on American politics, and just what the organization thinks of President Donald Trump.

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Esquire: The Fellowship is famously secretive, so why did they allow a writer to live at Ivanwald? Did they think that you would become a true believer by the end?

Sharlet: They never thought I'd become a true believer by the end. They thought after the first book that I was still going to come around! For an organization like this, made up of very privileged, very entitled people, operating at the center of power without much scrutiny for a long, long time—it didn't even really occur to them. They weren't so much hiding, because no one was looking. And it didn't occur to them that anyone would come asking tough questions.

And to be honest, I didn't go to ask tough questions. I wasn’t an investigative reporter, I was writing about the varieties of religious experience. I told them I was working on a book called Killing the Buddha, which is a Buddhist expression. They may have interpreted it otherwise. I can't account for that.

I took notes openly. And I wasn't undercover. I was there under my own name, introduced by a guy who'd known me for 12 years. They knew I was a Jew, they knew I was a writer, they knew the title of the book I was working on, and I took notes openly and asked questions.

It was only after the publication of C Street that I earned an incredibly special designation in this movement. And I looked through half a century of their archives, working with some of the most monstrous killers around the world, murderers, dictators, and thieves. I alone have been declared evil.

Does their willingness to forgive you even after the first book mean that you were considered to be among their elect?

That's a good question, and I've never gotten a clear answer on it. For a long time, yes, I was a brother, but I was a bad brother. I was chosen by God. That's why I was there.

Look, I've done two books about this, and now a series. You know, they've issued a statement in response to the series, and one thing that's clear is that in all this time, they've never disputed a fact. And in the series, they say that the mistake that I made, or the wrongdoing that I did, was to talk about the group. That's all. I wasn't supposed to talk about it. I was welcomed into this family, and then I spoke.

So I don't know if, after 2010, when I got declared evil, if now we have fully transcended the kind of bastardized Calvinism by which they determine these ideas of chosen-ness. It's important to distinguish those ideas of chosen-ness—that's not mainstream Evangelicalism.

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How is a group this conservative able to sell themselves as being at all bipartisan and have presidents from both parties speaking at National Prayer Breakfasts? I mean, Doug Coe presumably wasn't telling Hillary Clinton his organization’s ideas about male hegemony.

The turning point came in 1953, when they were able to launch the National Prayer Breakfast with [President Eisenhower]. Which they tried with FDR and Truman, and Truman showed them the door. He said, "Get the hell out of my office."

And to his credit, that was Eisenhower's first response, too. And so they used Billy Graham, with whom they had a pretty deep relationship. And Billy Graham had been instrumental in organizing a Southern vote for Eisenhower, which is the beginning of the Republican turn. It didn't really take off there, but it dented the solid Democratic hold on the South.

And he said, “Okay, I did something for you, Ike, and in return, I want you to go to the Prayer Breakfast.” And Ike said, "All right, I'll go, but I don't want any press there." He knew this was a First Amendment violation, because it will become a precedent. It did become a precedent. And once that happened, it sort of transcends partisanship, right?

And then comes Kennedy. And there was some consternation, and Jackie Kennedy actually refused to go. But Kennedy was already under suspicion as a Catholic, so he has to go. Well now you've got Ike and Kennedy. LBJ is the one who's going to turn on this? Not a chance. And it becomes an institution, and no president is not going to go.

I wrote a piece about [Hilary Clinton's] involvement with a reporter named Kathryn Joyce. And it is a little bit deeper than you would think, not because she's a member, but because this is sort of the channel through which you deal with conservative religious power in Washington. That was the irony, Hillary was actually the devout, pious candidate [in 2016]. And always has been—she's a conservative Methodist.

Former Fellowship leader Doug Coe, standing behind Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Netflix

You get Democrats who say, "Yeah, sure! I like prayer, and I'll go to a banal little Bible study with other congressmen every week. They're not going to get into any politics there." And then you've got their name on the letterhead. And you're able to maintain this veneer. One former member explained to me, he said, "Look. The reason that we never sort of organized around any legislation is because we felt we had more influence as long as we can keep a couple Democrats in the fold. And so we have access to everybody. And we have access internationally."

How does the Fellowship feel about Trump? His administration’s chaotic style feels like it could be at odds with their quiet, seamless style of wielding power.

They're going all in for Trump, with some dissenters within the organization. And there has been an embrace, and the embrace sort of pivots around Mike Pence. By putting Pence on the ticket, Trump signaled—not just to the Family, because Pence has many different Christian Right sort of currents running into him—he signaled to the whole Christian right he's willing to make a deal.

I don't make political predictions, I'm not a pundit, but the one time I got it right is in the book I wrote in 2010, C Street, which had a section about Sanford and Ensign. I said, “Okay, so Sanford and Ensign, these two once presidential contenders are obviously not going to make it .” And I looked at a couple of other figures who I could imagine. Senator John Thune from South Dakota, for instance, who's a member. I said, “Or maybe it will be a little-known congressman from Indiana named Mike Pence in The White House.” So I got it pretty close. Off by a seat, but pretty close.

When Senator Chuck Grassley, who is currently the senator from Iowa— it’s a story I tell in the book —was dealing with Somalia, the dictator there at the time was named Siad Barre. The United States became his backer, largely through the Family. That is a case where they played a pivotal role in the destruction of a country. He laid wreckage to his country. And that kind of relationship, I think, sort of gives you a sense of what they're working with, and who they're willing to make deals with. So then when people say, "How can they support Trump?" I mean, they've got to be looking at Trump and saying, "You kidding? He's a buttercup, compared to the guys we work with."

Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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