42. The Family- Christian Nationalist Power

Flipping Tables

Monte Mader

Society & Culture

5.0 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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This episode uncovers the hidden history and modern influence of The Family. A secretive religious–political network that has shaped American power since the 1930s. Founded by Abraham Vereide and built on the belief that God works through “key men,” The Family cultivated presidents, senators, foreign leaders, and global elites through private prayer circles, back-channel diplomacy, and the National Prayer Breakfast. We trace their role in anti-labor politics, Cold War foreign policy, international human-rights abuses, scandal cover-ups, and their deep connections to the Trump era, where “Jesus plus nothing” theology helped justify Christian nationalism and the erosion of church–state separation. Drawing from documented scholarship and investigative reporting, this episode reveals a movement that has remained influential precisely because it operates in the shadows.

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Sources

Sharlet, Jeff. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. HarperCollins, 2008.
Sharlet, Jeff. C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. Little, Brown and Company, 2010.
Kruse, Kevin M. One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. Basic Books, 2015.
Williams, Daniel K. God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Dochuk, Darren. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. W.W. Norton, 2011.
Gage, Beverly. The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Martin, William. With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America. Broadway Books, 1996.
Callahan, Richard J. Jr. “The Invention of Corporate America’s Invention of Christian America.” The Marginalia Review of Books, 2020.
Balmer, Randall. “The Religious Right and the Family Values Crusade.” Journal of Church and State, vol. 52, no. 3, 2010, pp. 370–394.
Butler, Anthea. “Race, Religion, and the American Presidency: The Faith Factor.” Journal of American History, vol. 99, no. 1, 2012.
Clark, Elizabeth A. “Invisible Hands and Divine Order: Theology and the Political Economy of American Fundamentalism.” Religion and American Culture, vol. 18, no. 2, 2008.
The Washington Post archives on the National Prayer Breakfast (1953-present).
The New York Times coverage of Doug Coe and Fellowship Foundation operations.
Religion Dispatches (University of Southern California Annenberg) – multiple investigations into The Family’s political network.
Guernica Magazine: “Christ Über Alles” interview with Jeff Sharlet.
The Humanist: “The Family: More Gilead than Godly.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica: “The Family (international religious movement).”
Library of Congress Congressional Records on the National Prayer Breakfast (1953-1970s).
Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College – correspondence and records on Vereide and early ICL initiatives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the shadow of the Great Depression, while millions of Americans stood in breadlines and begged for work,
0:04.7	one man looked up, not to the heavens, but to the high rises. His name was Abraham Verity,
0:10.2	a Norwegian immigrant-turned Methodist minister who decided that the way to save America wasn't by
0:15.5	feeding the poor, but by converting the powerful. Verity believed that God's hand rested not upon the
0:20.6	downtrodden, but upon the
0:21.8	chosen few, the rich, the connected, the people that he called the key men. Of course, it's only men.
0:28.5	He called them instruments of divine purpose, the God appointed rich. In 1935, in a hotel room in Seattle,
0:35.2	he gathered the first of these men, businessmen,
0:41.6	politicians, and civic leaders for what he called a prayer breakfast, a small meeting that would become the seed of something vast, secretive, and deeply influential.
0:45.7	The family.
0:46.7	Over the next few decades, the family would quietly embed itself in the highest levels of
0:50.4	American power, behind closed doors, beyond oversight, and beneath the banner of
0:54.7	Christian fellowship. Their mission sounded harmless to bring Jesus into leadership, but their
0:59.6	theology was built on a chilling foundation, a belief that some are chosen to rule and others are
1:05.0	chosen to serve, and hatred and direct opposition to organized labor unions. More on that later.
1:11.8	They transformed the gospel of Christ, which was to sell your possessions and give to the poor and help the needy,
1:16.3	into more money to the charitable rich and more service from the undeserving poor. How convenient.
1:23.2	The family will use their gospel of prosperity to control congressional housing on C Street
1:28.2	that's registered as a church to avoid paying taxes and is used for secretive meetings with congressional figures.
1:33.9	They are responsible for the annual national prayer breakfast.
1:37.7	Verity despised Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the social programs that lifted millions out of poverty.
1:42.4	He saw them as a godless attack on free enterprise
	...

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