"C Street Center" Returns To Current Events

Christians who hate Jesus ("13 mainline Protestant ministers, many with the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ and all of them in Ohio") are afflicting the comfy once more, sending a letter to the I.R.S.

“We are concerned that an exclusive residential club for powerful officials may be masquerading as a church,” said the letter to the I.R.S.

“Any time an organization uses church status as part of a tax avoidance scheme, it poses a threat to the integrity of religious institutions everywhere.”

The town house, assessed at $1.8 million, is an affiliate of a secretive international Christian network known as the Fellowship, or the Family. The group also sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington and many state capitals each February.

Its purpose is to cultivate relationships with politicians, business people and military leaders, bringing them together for prayer and Bible study and sometimes getting involved in matters of diplomacy and foreign policy.

For fairness & balance:

Richard Carver, president of the Fellowship Foundation, the corporation that oversees the ministries of the Fellowship, said that he could not provide any information because the C Street Center was formally a separate legal entity. He said he had been there only once.

J. Robert Hunter, another member of the Fellowship, said that while there was a separate legal arrangement, there was a “very close working relationship” between the center and the Fellowship.

“There are religious services all the time in that building,” Mr. Hunter said, but they are not open to the public. He said the purpose of the residence was to encourage people to model their lives on Jesus, and added that although it might sound ironic, “one of the purposes is to give a safe place where politicians who are tempted by lust would hold each other accountable.”

Yes, we've heard how they hold their powerful brethren "accountable."

But David Coe, Doug Coe's son and heir apparent, calls himself simply a friend to men such as John Ensign, whom he guided through the coverup of his affair. I met the younger Coe when I lived for several weeks as a member of the Family. He's a surprising source of counsel, spiritual or otherwise. Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- he asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply.

That's some "religious service."