The Family (2019–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Submersion - full transcript
Guys, get off me!
Get off me!
Hey, get off me!
Jesus said, "You have
to put me before other people,
and you have to put me before yourself."
Hitler... That was a demand,
to be in the Nazi party.
They had to put the Nazi party
and its objectives
ahead of their father, mother,
brother, sister, and their own life.
That was a covenant. A pledge.
But the real work is invisible.
And it is invisibly spreading.
The more you can make
your organization invisible,
the more influence it'll have.
They will accuse me
of betraying their trust.
In a fundamental way, I did.
They want to be a secret,
invisible organization.
I wrote two books about them.
But the story is no longer
just about my experience.
It took a long time
before I realized just who the Family was,
and the influence they have had
in the leadership of our country.
This was a group
with tentacles around the world,
meeting with presidents,
foreign leaders,
to spread their view of Jesus
throughout the world.
The National Prayer Breakfast:
a Washington institution for Republican
and Democratic presidents
since Eisenhower.
I want to thank all those
inside and outside of Congress
who made this all possible.
They said he's
the most powerful man in Washington
you've never heard of.
He's like the Wizard of Oz.
I wish I could say more about it,
but it's working
precisely because it is private.
We need to reach leaders.
And then if you reach the leaders,
then the whole nation
will be influenced for Christ.
The notion was floated:
What if we lived together?
I was part of a group called C Street
when I was in Washington.
Governor Mark Sanford,
Senator John Ensign,
all embroiled in scandal...
Doing the Lord's work
in the devil's playground.
We meet with some really horrible people.
Dictators and murderers and thieves.
If I were a bad faith actor
from another country,
that is exactly the kind of meeting
that I would want to exploit.
Everybody in the room
had their hands on this President-elect.
This is what the Family's
been waiting for.
He's God's man.
And they say it's about faith,
but there's a shared understanding
that what we're really about here
is power.
I lived with those guys,
prayed with them at their headquarters
at the seat of their power.
There were congressmen, senators,
world leaders.
An invisible organization that had been
hiding in plain sight for over 80 years.
People think
that there's something sinister.
There has to be a conspiracy.
It's the furthest thing from the truth.
It's a breathtaking enmeshment
of Church and State.
A humble example of leadership
that the world has never seen.
- That's a corruption of democracy.
- It's the power of God.
This is something that the world
desperately needs.
Hark! All worry will be left behind.
All disappointment, too,
will be gone forever.
We adopted a program
for a worldwide spiritual offensive.
I know, as never before.
that we are all God's children.
There is only one thing
we can take with us through that door.
Those whom we have led to the Savior.
Fear him. Love him.
Submit yourself completely.
Then you will be His disciple.
What we have begun, we will finish.
One of the things I've always
found interesting, even as a boy,
is the idea that there are these battles
between good and evil;
that we are actively engaged in a war
with the forces of evil every day,
and that there are demonic influences
in our lives,
and that you have to be on guard.
So as a boy, this, on the one hand,
makes the world a much scarier place.
On the other hand, it makes the world
a more exciting place.
My mother died of breast cancer.
Um... She was young, and I was just a kid.
She grew up
in vaguely Pentecostal Christianity.
And as she lay dying,
she would invite members of various faiths
in to pray with her.
And I noticed some of them prayed
for her salvation,
that she would become a member
of their faith, even in death.
And some of them prayed
for her deliverance,
for a reprieve from her suffering,
so that she might live longer.
And that question
of deliverance versus salvation,
the world to come or freedom now,
really struck me,
and has lead me into all the stories
that I've been interested in ever since.
When I was in my early 20s,
I decided to write about religion.
And I was living in New York,
working on this book,
and I'd heard that an old friend of mine,
a man named Luke, was in town.
Luke was a very promising guy,
from a sort of an upper-class family,
and had a fine trajectory to his life.
Engaged to be married,
and building a financial career.
But then he left all that
and moved across the country to join,
um, what his family feared was a cult.
He seemed to just drop out,
just to disappear.
And so his family said,
because they knew I wrote about religion,
they said, "Would you meet with him
and sort of see what he's up to?"
This was very shortly after 9/11.
And one of the things he said
he was there for...
He wanted to survey
the ruins of secularism.
But he said, "Now we see clearly.
This is a battle between good and evil."
He seems to be a transformed person.
And he told me about this amorphous thing
that he had joined.
- He says...
- "They're not Christians."
We're followers of Jesus,
and we just serve.
Who do you serve?
Men who are chosen by God for leadership.
Politicians.
- Is there an organization?
- No.
No church, no ministers,
no rules and rituals.
You read the Bible, though, right?
Sure, sure, but mostly, we work.
We...
rake leaves, play basketball,
clean toilets.
Wait, you clean toilets...
for politicians?
I know it sounds weird...
- Yeah.
- ...but it's not.
It's just a bunch of guys living together.
It's great.
It seemed so simple.
And then he invited me
to come see it for myself.
And knowing almost nothing of it, I did.
Do you take drugs, alcohol,
or prescription medication?
You only got in
by being recommended.
And had to go through a little interview
at this office on Capitol Hill,
with a senior aide to a Republican senator
from Oklahoma at the time.
And do you have a girlfriend?
He asked me about
my relationship with my girlfriend...
- Is she Christian?
- Yeah.
...and about my parents.
Questions that I would later
come to understand
were sort of testing
how much was I willing to renounce.
And I answered them very honestly.
Because you have to understand,
I was in no way
an investigative journalist at this time.
- Were you close with your mom?
- I was, yeah.
There was no stealth, no cleverness.
I told them I was a writer,
and I'd been traveling
around the country,
trying to understand
all the different ideas of Jesus,
and I was interested
in getting to know theirs.
Rent is $400.
That's with room and board.
I think it was about a week later.
I passed the test. I was welcome
to come and just live with them
and be a brother, as they put it.
A group of the brothers
had come to pick me up,
and they drove me across the river
to Arlington, Virginia,
a suburb of Washington
where a lot of
intelligence community folks live.
And we went down into this cul-de-sac
and past this big, beautiful
Georgian mansion.
- Nice house, huh?
- Yeah.
Wow.
Look, I didn't know
how to explain you to the guys,
so I just said that we're getting
a new dude. He's from New York.
- He's a writer. He's Jewish.
- Half-Jewish, actually.
And he wants to know Jesus.
Know what they said?
No.
"Bring him on."
Let's go.
♪ Everything to God in prayer ♪
♪ Are there trials and temptations? ♪
So, I move to this house called Ivanwald.
Guys? This is, uh, Jeff.
It was buzzing
with all these guys.
Sort of a frat house kind of feel.
But no beer, no...
Nothing else, you know, very...
A pious frat house for God.
♪ The Lord in prayer... ♪
And pretty quickly,
I realized this is not what I thought
it was going to be.
- Jeff.
- Hey, Jeff, welcome to Ivanwald.
- Thanks for having me.
- Yeah.
I think you're gonna enjoy staying here.
- Let's get you settled in.
- Yeah.
If you hang out
in certain sectors around Washington,
you've heard about it.
There was a guy's house
and a girl's house down the street,
and it was this little enclave,
sort of a sabbatical from regular life.
There were guys from all over the world,
all walks of life.
Religious, non-religious,
questioning, skeptical.
It was raw. It was real.
Little more like the 12 guys
you read about in this... this book, right?
And as a young Christian
working in politics,
it was exactly what I needed.
Yeah.
The regiment at Ivanwald
was so precise it was relaxing.
No swearing, no drinking.
No sex, no self.
You don't waste time on newspapers.
Never watch TV.
...steadfastly into heaven.
You eat meat. You study the gospels.
You play basketball.
- Yeah, here we go.
- I got outside.
God loves a man
who can sink a three-pointer.
Hey, Jeff.
Will you lead us in prayer?
Sure.
Lord, uh, Lord God,
uh, Heavenly Father.
Jesus, thank you so much for...
the guys here, and...
um, the chance
to play basketball, and to...
to learn teamwork, and, um...
And learn how to fight for you.
We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.
- Amen.
- Amen.
Yeah.
- Bravo.
- There he is.
The kind of storytelling
that I've always found interesting
is submerging of yourself
in the lives of others.
Crossing into that world of belief
until you're a little bit lost.
It's spiritually dangerous,
in the sense that you could be converted.
And at Ivanwald, it meant seeing
what happens if, for a time at least,
I accepted their ideas.
"Where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths,
you are there."
It's intense, right?
It's like, you can't run.
Doesn't matter where you turn,
'cause Jesus is going to be right there,
waiting for you.
Jesus is smart.
He's going to get you.
Let's pray.
"I call out to the Lord.
I pray to him for his favor."
"I praise you for I am fearful..."
We would pray to be broken.
We would pray to be nothing.
We would pray to learn how to obey.
In here, we're safe
with our brothers,
learning the ways of Jesus.
They said this is
our prime relationship with this Jesus.
- Does that make sense to you?
- Yeah.
And so we would pray to crush
what we would call our inner rebel.
- Jeff?
- Hey.
- I see you're writing a lot down.
- Yeah.
But are you listening?
I know it's a lot to take in,
but this is all you really need.
It's the Bible.
It's the part that matters.
It's just Jesus.
One of the things
that surprised me was that
though most of these men
were very scripturally literate,
they didn't care very much
about the Bible.
There was a small book that you're given.
This little book that says "Jesus."
That's it. Just Jesus, nothing else.
And it was four gospels:
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
with the Book of Acts referred to here
as Acts of Ambassadors.
And they didn't need to read
too much further than that.
There's not a whole lot of theology.
There's no wrestling with God,
with conscience,
traditional concerns of fundamentalism.
They don't talk about the devil.
Just Jesus. Just Jesus. That's all.
Now, which part of Jesus
was Psalm 137?
137...
"O daughter of Babylon
who are to be destroyed,
happy shall he be
that taketh the little ones
and dasheth them
against the stones."
Which part of Jesus would be in that?
Jeff, brother, I don't know,
but I'm pretty sure
he'll let you know when it's time.
They said
Christianity's been misunderstood.
That all the rubes out there,
the suckers,
they think that Christ came to preach
equally to everybody. Not so.
They said he had rings of power.
Closest are James and Peter.
Then you go out another circle,
and there's the disciples.
And out here...
is everybody else,
and they'll get the message,
but they won't get it in unvarnished form.
They can't handle the truth.
Let us be nothing.
But now we've moved
from this outer ring
to one of those very near inner circles.
- And we are the new chosen.
- Please, Jesus...
- The ones that matter.
- ...work through us.
As a brother in Ivanwald,
as one among these new chosen,
some of us were assigned to work
in their headquarters called the Cedars.
We would rake leaves. We'd clean toilets.
I thought this was so absurd,
this religious movement
of humbling yourself
by cleaning the toilets of the powerful.
Load some of these up.
The Cedars is this big,
white-pillared mansion
that looks a little bit
like the White House.
And it is very clearly
the seat of their power,
because it's where they host
a lot of foreign leaders.
Wait, I recognize him.
That's that, uh,
Republican Senator from Oklahoma.
Yeah. They all come here.
Left, right,
Republican, Democrat.
But those terms don't reflect
the movement's vision.
It's bigger than that.
We had the president of Uganda here
the other day.
We prayed for him.
Yeah. The Family has friends
all over the world.
There were African diplomats,
Russian nationals,
congressmen, senators,
and that's when I realized:
this is important.
This is not just a fascinating story.
These are powerful people.
Yeah, I'd heard about 'em,
but it was more public lore.
They weren't neighbors that you really
got to know very well.
I got to know them because unfortunately
one of their limousines ran over my cat.
So there... there were
a couple of incidents like that.
They didn't endear themselves
to the neighborhood.
Hey! Carla's here, too.
- I found some correspondence.
- Oh, good.
Yes, yes.
Being involved in the neighborhood,
I got the impression
that you're either with them,
or you're not with them.
They had a... oh, a big map
of the neighborhood.
This is interesting, Carla.
Did you know that they had
a 3-by-4-foot map of the neighborhood
with each house and a designated color,
depending upon how supportive they were
of the Fellowship?
Green, yellow, and red.
Support, indifference, or antagonism.
- I forgot that, too.
- So it's kind of like a war map.
For a long time, I was the president
of the civic association,
which is why I knocked
on the door one day
and said, "I'd like to find out
just what this is all about."
So this very nice man gave me a tour
of the big house, the Cedars.
And it was very much
mid-nineteenth-century.
Beautifully restored
in the style of interior decoration
you'd have if you want to impress people.
And then they gave me a tour
of the boys' residence hall.
And the boys are outside,
landscaping and cleaning the gutters.
And the kids there said
that they would continue to do this
until God spoke to them
and gave them their instructions
for the rest of their life.
And I said, "I have to say that
for a bunch of people in their 20s,
these are abnormally passive."
While I was in the boys' dormitory,
one of them said, "You know, we have
a Tuesday night prayer meeting.
Why don't you join us?"
So I went to their Tuesday night
prayer meetings,
week after week after week.
What they offer their followers
is a sense of belonging,
a kind of unquestioning...
"We're with you through thick and thin."
And there's something very alluring
about that.
I wouldn't mind being accepted
by a group of people...
unquestioningly.
I only got a little glimpse
of their theology,
and I really don't know
about their form of Christianity,
or if even they are all Christians.
But when I learned how
they're very unapologetically targeting
the rich and powerful,
I found that to be disturbing.
But I never asked any impolite questions.
I just sat and listened.
And then the following week,
there was no prayer meeting.
And there was no prayer
meeting ever again after that.
I think they were trying to shake me off.
Okay. I know, I know.
Just try to take a deep breath.
You're home, right?
I mean, wish I was there with you
right now, I really do,
but there's nothing I can do about it.
Because I can't just walk out of here!
Be calm.
I will... I'll ask them, okay?
And maybe tomorrow, or...
No, no, you can't come here.
Hey.
How are you?
Yeah, it's good to hear your voice, too.
Yeah, no, I have a lot
to tell you about, so...
Gonna have to confiscate that.
Let me call you back.
All right, bye.
I'm just kidding.
Phone calls are allowed,
but they're discouraged for new brothers.
We want your full attention.
I was just, like, letting Luke have
some time with his fiancee.
Luke's fiancee is a Jezebel.
She doesn't obey God.
We're accountable to each other, Jeff.
That's the brotherhood.
I'm here to make sure you don't deviate
from Christ's will.
All right?
Okay.
It's important to remember,
these brothers,
they were not bad guys.
They were there
because they wanted meaning in their life.
They wanted to feel like they were part
of something valuable.
I remember one day,
I'd been there for a while,
and one of the brothers, he says,
"Guys, I have something for you to do.
Arm wrestle."
Don't stiffen up, man.
Here we go. No, no, no.
Use your... Lower, lower.
Get lower, Jeff.
And then someone yells,
"Fumble!" and then suddenly,
they were all piling on me
and, you know, hitting.
Get off me! Get off me!
I said, get off me!
And at that time, I thought,
"This is really strange."
But as it turns out, there was actually
a spiritual message to this.
The Jesus most of us are familiar with
is tender and loving.
He's the lamb of God.
A figure of peace and gentleness.
But no, their idea of Jesus...
Jesus' love is strong.
As they'd said, "Jesus is not a sissy."
And if Jesus was alive today,
maybe he would be a Navy SEAL.
If Jesus was alive today,
he'd be great at football.
And so this was spiritual training.
It was a kind of muscular Christianity.
And they were, as I came to understand,
crushing Christ into me.
This was the initiation
in which all our bodies became one.
I can't breathe!
Guys, I can't breathe.
I can't breathe.
Get off me.
One falls down,
his friend can help him up.
You're one of us now.
- Come on, circle up.
- Phew!
The brothers
referred to our group as a family.
And they said I'd become
a member of the Family.
Or the Fellowship,
as it's sometimes known.
But the name is not important.
Let's go.
And sometimes
I would make a mistake
and refer to some political figure...
"Oh, so they're a member? Can we..."
"No, they are a friend of the Family."
There was all these subtle distinctions.
And that's part of the invisibility of it.
I asked one time about the hierarchy,
the organizational structure.
And they said,
"Why do you keep talking about this?
It's just me and you, you and you,
and we are
accountable to one another.
And that's just the way God wants it."
It never occurred to me to, you know,
sort of asked for an org chart.
Who are the people, how is it organized?
What's the structure?
And of course, the people
who'd been around a long time
were just really quick to say,
"Don't call it anything."
I'm like, "You gotta call it something."
So yeah, you kinda call it
the Fellowship,
or you call it a group of friends
following Jesus, whatever it was.
But definitions aside,
you know, trying to stick a label on it,
you see what's happening relationally,
and where else is this happening?
This is something that the world
desperately needs.
Well, you're gonna have
a shorter nose.
You guys are here to learn
how to rule the world.
You have very intense eyes.
Thank you.
Hey, let's talk about the Old Testament.
Who would you say are its good guys?
- Moses?
- Noah?
David.
King David, that's a good one.
What would you say made him a good guy?
His faith was so strong.
King David liked to do
some really bad things.
I mean, this is a guy who slept with
another man's wife, Bathsheba, right?
And he basically murders her husband.
And this guy is supposedly
one of our heroes?
Jiminy Christmas.
God likes this guy.
What is that all about?
Is it because he tried?
He wanted to do the right thing.
Anyone else?
'Cause he was chosen.
Yeah. Chosen.
Interesting set of rules, isn't it?
Let's say here one of you here
raped three little girls,
and now you're sitting here
at Ivanwald.
What would I think of you?
That I'm a terrible person?
No, I wouldn't.
That's not why I'm here.
It's not my job to judge you.
I'm here for one thing.
What is that?
Jesus?
That disturbing moment
sort of crystallizes it for me.
This core idea that some people
are more chosen than others.
And if you're chosen,
doesn't matter what you do.
I'd still be with you.
- And then he said...
- We elect our leaders,
Jesus elects his.
And we warn everyone,
the future king is coming.
Not just of this country...
but of the world.
The Cedars is a set-apart place.
It's a historic place,
it's a beautiful place,
and it is a place that offers hospitality
to the world.
There was a weekly breakfast
that we were responsible for,
I think we called it
the ambassador's breakfast.
How many ambassadors were actually present
is always, you know...
I think a fairly limited number.
But it was a chance for people
who were in and out
of various stages of public life
to have breakfast together in prayer.
- Mr. Attorney-General.
- Oh, my! It's so wonderful to see you.
Folks are able to sort of
let their guard down,
folks in leadership positions,
and have real conversations,
out of the limelight.
Out of the eye of the camera.
And trusting that Jesus would...
would be present there.
This is impressive.
That's the former attorney-general.
Matthew 11:27.
"No one knows the son except the father.
And no one knows the father
except the son,
and those to whom the son chooses
to reveal himself.
I didn't have to ask who was in charge,
because we talked about him often.
It was a guy named Doug Coe.
Know we're going to do everything
we possibly can
to be of help to you and your country.
He hates the limelight.
It's not about him, it's about Jesus.
I wanted to give you a small gift
of our small world.
He was introduced to me
as sort of like a brother,
but he's like the first brother.
They said said he was a very simple man
who was closer to Jesus
than anybody alive,
and that if Doug Coe prayed for something,
it just happened.
They liked very much
that nobody outside of the Family
knew who Doug Coe was.
They loved telling stories
about how Doug Coe just showed up
in some president's office
or some prime minister's house.
He was clearly a leader to this movement.
And so, you know, "Who is Doug Coe?"
is what I really wanted to know
at this point.
You know what I'm concerned about?
The Muslim.
The Muslim has too many babies.
We kill too many of ours.
What is the best way for Christians
to win the race against the Muslims?
Too many Muslim babies
could be a problem.
But your focus on labels,
Christian and Muslim,
gets in the way of your prayers.
Organized religion distracts from Jesus.
We've got to take Jesus
out of the religious wrapping.
How do we do that?
It's good to have friends.
Do you know what a difference
a friend can make?
A friend that you can agree with?
Two or three friends agree and pray.
They can do anything.
Agreement.
You're a writer.
What's that mean?
Uh...
Unity.
Agreement means unity.
Total unity.
You know, there's another word for that.
A covenant.
- Covenant.
- Hmm.
Can you think of anyone
who made a covenant...
- with his friends?
- Jesus.
Hitler.
Hitler made a covenant.
The Mafia made a covenant.
Look at the strength of their bonds.
It's a powerful thing.
You see, with them, it's honor.
With us, it's Jesus.
Hitler, Stalin,
Mao Tse-tung, Osama bin Laden.
The Family possesses a weapon
those leaders lacked.
The "total Jesus"
of a brotherhood in Christ.
That's what you get with a covenant.
Jesus, plus nothing.
That phrase,
"Jesus plus nothing,"
simultaneously banal and totalitarian...
Well, guys, I gotta go.
...leaves these congressman sitting there
as if they've been given a revelation.
And it's just like other men have said.
"Doug helped bring me out of religion
and into Christ."
Doug Coe was a saintly person
who put other people first.
Put a relationship with the Lord first.
And he didn't really want any accolades.
I remember,
near the end of my season at Ivanwald,
I got to help plan a prayer breakfast,
and I remember Doug specifically saying,
"Hey, Google me,
and let's get any reference down.
We just... I just don't want to be...
I don't want anybody to know,
uh, and to have a sense of I'm sort of
this power figure behind this.
I just, you know... This is about the Lord.
This is about bringing people together.
This is about something
much greater than me."
What a wonderfully reassuring thing,
in a town that thrives on power
and prestige and influence.
So let's be influential,
but let's do it quietly.
Um... So, you know, that was Doug.
Jesus Christ,
when he organizes,
the way he puts the organization together,
he makes it invisible.
When you look at your body,
you don't see your liver and your muscles
and your brains hanging out.
What he did is
he put the finest organization,
and he put a beautiful skin over it.
When you look at the Mafia,
they also use
the same type of organization.
Everything visible...
is transitory.
Everything invisible is permanent
and lasts forever.
The more you can make
your organization invisible,
the more influence it'll have.
I wrote openly in my journal,
and less openly as time went on.
Things that surprised me,
conversation I heard
and questions that emerged.
As time went on, the journal becomes
more and more of a detective's journal.
I wondered, what do they really mean
by "Jesus plus nothing"?
What kind of influence
did they want to have in the world?
I didn't know then
what the ultimate vision was,
but life at Ivanwald
seemed to provide some clues.
One night, there was a social
with our sister house,
young women of this house
called Potomac Point.
Some of them were really young.
Most were sort of in their mid-twenties.
There was also a few wives
of the senior men around,
who had these sort of
den mother kind of roles.
Careful, boys.
And they were intense.
So obviously, there would be no sex.
- Hey. Hello.
- Hey!
- Are you going to a wedding?
- You wore a tie.
- None of you guys wore ties.
- No.
We didn't.
Ooh!
The whole organization is based
around this idea of male headship.
- Hello.
- Hi.
"As Christ is to the church,
so a man is to his family,"
and that there are
these levels of hierarchy
that must be observed throughout.
- ...mostly blueberries.
- Thanks.
It was the most
gender-segregated world I'd ever lived in.
Guys, this is Jeff.
- Yeah. Hi.
- He's new.
And the women
I got to speak to briefly would tell me
that whereas the young men
were being drawn into mentorship
by maybe an influential senior member
of the Family, maybe a politician...
Maybe you were going to get a junior job
in a political office.
But for the women,
that wasn't happening for them.
They were being mentored in service,
and directed toward relationships
with men of the Fellowship.
They said
appropriate matches was the goal.
Hey, can I ask you something?
- Yeah.
- Um...
You ever feel weird, like, serving men?
- No.
- No?
No. They're so busy loving us,
who's loving them?
Hmm.
You know, God wants to have
a personal relationship with each of us.
Jesus is a person.
A real person.
Not some abstract idea.
He wants you to know him.
How can you be so sure?
Don't you have doubts?
That's okay.
Doubt is just a prelude to joy.
As a brother in Ivanwald, we were chosen.
Me, not you.
You might be a good person,
but you're not a brother.
- You're not chosen. I am.
- I can't breathe!
That's what you got. What did you give up?
You gave up those who were not chosen.
Other relationships.
So you had the hierarchy,
the concentric rings.
At the middle is Jesus.
And next is your cell, your brothers,
and we are only accountable
to one another.
And then after that,
your family, your children,
your parents, your partner. After that.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao.
That kind of absolute loyalty,
that was the goal.
I've seen pictures of the young men
in the Red Guard, 20 years,
20, 22 years old, in China.
A table laid out like a butcher table.
They would bring in
this young man's mother and father.
Lay her on the table,
with a basket on the end.
He would take an...
axe and cut her head off.
The Viet Cong.
Hitler. Mussolini, with the Blackshirts.
The one thing in every one of their oaths
is we pledge to be totally unified,
even to death.
That was a covenant, a pledge.
After I spent many days there,
I had come to feel some affection
for the brothers,
and I was feeling more a part of it.
I had gone not with any plan
of how long exactly I was going to stay.
You know,
sort of depending on what I found.
I'd seen all these different,
and in some cases outlandish, Jesuses.
But Ivanwald was really
the most unusual thing I'd encountered.
And I thought, "Wow, look at these guys,
they're always thinking about one another.
There is a kindness here."
And so I wasn't ready to leave.
Then one day, Luke,
the man who brought me into it...
His fiance had apparently
been sexually assaulted
and of course his first inclination was,
"I'm on the next plane.
I have to go see her."
The brothers went, "No. No.
We're your brothers.
Your loyalty is to us.
And why was she sexually assaulted?
Where was she that this happened to her?
What was she doing?"
But Luke went anyways,
and they were so contemptuous of that.
They said Luke was a loser.
He chose her rather than...
playing sports with his brothers.
That made him a loser.
You Jesus before everything else.
It seemed so simple.
It's not.
You're doing the right thing.
Hope it works out for you, Jeff.
I really do.
I know you still have a lot of questions.
You ask a lot of fucking questions.
Yeah.
This might answer some of them.
Is there more of this?
Yeah, a lot more.
For an invisible organization,
they sure do have a lot of files.
Hmm.
All right, man.
- I'm out.
- Hey.
- Good luck.
- Yeah, safe travels.
So I started reading the history
of what I've gotten involved in.
Not just a Christian organization,
but a fundamentally
anti-democratic movement
at the heart of religious conservatism
in the United States for 70 years.
"We desire to see a leadership
led by God,
leaders of all levels of society..."
And what I discovered was
that this organization
that denied it was an organization
was really one of the greatest networks
of powerful figures in the world.
Uganda, Romania, Nigeria...
This is the beginning
of a worldwide spiritual offensive.
It began with a meeting
of 19 business executives...
Submerge the institutional image.
No organization, no membership,
- no publicity.
- Jesus infiltrating the world.
Only God can know
the measure of influence we have had
Chosen.
...the man who will commit himself...
...a challenge to be a true...
- We desire to see a leadership led by God.
- Chosen.
Leaders of all levels of society...
- ...led by God.
- Chosen...
True disciples...
Much has been accomplished.
Brothers committed to Christ...
Much more must be accomplished.
The enemy is still at large.
Get off me!
Hey, get off me!
Jesus said, "You have
to put me before other people,
and you have to put me before yourself."
Hitler... That was a demand,
to be in the Nazi party.
They had to put the Nazi party
and its objectives
ahead of their father, mother,
brother, sister, and their own life.
That was a covenant. A pledge.
But the real work is invisible.
And it is invisibly spreading.
The more you can make
your organization invisible,
the more influence it'll have.
They will accuse me
of betraying their trust.
In a fundamental way, I did.
They want to be a secret,
invisible organization.
I wrote two books about them.
But the story is no longer
just about my experience.
It took a long time
before I realized just who the Family was,
and the influence they have had
in the leadership of our country.
This was a group
with tentacles around the world,
meeting with presidents,
foreign leaders,
to spread their view of Jesus
throughout the world.
The National Prayer Breakfast:
a Washington institution for Republican
and Democratic presidents
since Eisenhower.
I want to thank all those
inside and outside of Congress
who made this all possible.
They said he's
the most powerful man in Washington
you've never heard of.
He's like the Wizard of Oz.
I wish I could say more about it,
but it's working
precisely because it is private.
We need to reach leaders.
And then if you reach the leaders,
then the whole nation
will be influenced for Christ.
The notion was floated:
What if we lived together?
I was part of a group called C Street
when I was in Washington.
Governor Mark Sanford,
Senator John Ensign,
all embroiled in scandal...
Doing the Lord's work
in the devil's playground.
We meet with some really horrible people.
Dictators and murderers and thieves.
If I were a bad faith actor
from another country,
that is exactly the kind of meeting
that I would want to exploit.
Everybody in the room
had their hands on this President-elect.
This is what the Family's
been waiting for.
He's God's man.
And they say it's about faith,
but there's a shared understanding
that what we're really about here
is power.
I lived with those guys,
prayed with them at their headquarters
at the seat of their power.
There were congressmen, senators,
world leaders.
An invisible organization that had been
hiding in plain sight for over 80 years.
People think
that there's something sinister.
There has to be a conspiracy.
It's the furthest thing from the truth.
It's a breathtaking enmeshment
of Church and State.
A humble example of leadership
that the world has never seen.
- That's a corruption of democracy.
- It's the power of God.
This is something that the world
desperately needs.
Hark! All worry will be left behind.
All disappointment, too,
will be gone forever.
We adopted a program
for a worldwide spiritual offensive.
I know, as never before.
that we are all God's children.
There is only one thing
we can take with us through that door.
Those whom we have led to the Savior.
Fear him. Love him.
Submit yourself completely.
Then you will be His disciple.
What we have begun, we will finish.
One of the things I've always
found interesting, even as a boy,
is the idea that there are these battles
between good and evil;
that we are actively engaged in a war
with the forces of evil every day,
and that there are demonic influences
in our lives,
and that you have to be on guard.
So as a boy, this, on the one hand,
makes the world a much scarier place.
On the other hand, it makes the world
a more exciting place.
My mother died of breast cancer.
Um... She was young, and I was just a kid.
She grew up
in vaguely Pentecostal Christianity.
And as she lay dying,
she would invite members of various faiths
in to pray with her.
And I noticed some of them prayed
for her salvation,
that she would become a member
of their faith, even in death.
And some of them prayed
for her deliverance,
for a reprieve from her suffering,
so that she might live longer.
And that question
of deliverance versus salvation,
the world to come or freedom now,
really struck me,
and has lead me into all the stories
that I've been interested in ever since.
When I was in my early 20s,
I decided to write about religion.
And I was living in New York,
working on this book,
and I'd heard that an old friend of mine,
a man named Luke, was in town.
Luke was a very promising guy,
from a sort of an upper-class family,
and had a fine trajectory to his life.
Engaged to be married,
and building a financial career.
But then he left all that
and moved across the country to join,
um, what his family feared was a cult.
He seemed to just drop out,
just to disappear.
And so his family said,
because they knew I wrote about religion,
they said, "Would you meet with him
and sort of see what he's up to?"
This was very shortly after 9/11.
And one of the things he said
he was there for...
He wanted to survey
the ruins of secularism.
But he said, "Now we see clearly.
This is a battle between good and evil."
He seems to be a transformed person.
And he told me about this amorphous thing
that he had joined.
- He says...
- "They're not Christians."
We're followers of Jesus,
and we just serve.
Who do you serve?
Men who are chosen by God for leadership.
Politicians.
- Is there an organization?
- No.
No church, no ministers,
no rules and rituals.
You read the Bible, though, right?
Sure, sure, but mostly, we work.
We...
rake leaves, play basketball,
clean toilets.
Wait, you clean toilets...
for politicians?
I know it sounds weird...
- Yeah.
- ...but it's not.
It's just a bunch of guys living together.
It's great.
It seemed so simple.
And then he invited me
to come see it for myself.
And knowing almost nothing of it, I did.
Do you take drugs, alcohol,
or prescription medication?
You only got in
by being recommended.
And had to go through a little interview
at this office on Capitol Hill,
with a senior aide to a Republican senator
from Oklahoma at the time.
And do you have a girlfriend?
He asked me about
my relationship with my girlfriend...
- Is she Christian?
- Yeah.
...and about my parents.
Questions that I would later
come to understand
were sort of testing
how much was I willing to renounce.
And I answered them very honestly.
Because you have to understand,
I was in no way
an investigative journalist at this time.
- Were you close with your mom?
- I was, yeah.
There was no stealth, no cleverness.
I told them I was a writer,
and I'd been traveling
around the country,
trying to understand
all the different ideas of Jesus,
and I was interested
in getting to know theirs.
Rent is $400.
That's with room and board.
I think it was about a week later.
I passed the test. I was welcome
to come and just live with them
and be a brother, as they put it.
A group of the brothers
had come to pick me up,
and they drove me across the river
to Arlington, Virginia,
a suburb of Washington
where a lot of
intelligence community folks live.
And we went down into this cul-de-sac
and past this big, beautiful
Georgian mansion.
- Nice house, huh?
- Yeah.
Wow.
Look, I didn't know
how to explain you to the guys,
so I just said that we're getting
a new dude. He's from New York.
- He's a writer. He's Jewish.
- Half-Jewish, actually.
And he wants to know Jesus.
Know what they said?
No.
"Bring him on."
Let's go.
♪ Everything to God in prayer ♪
♪ Are there trials and temptations? ♪
So, I move to this house called Ivanwald.
Guys? This is, uh, Jeff.
It was buzzing
with all these guys.
Sort of a frat house kind of feel.
But no beer, no...
Nothing else, you know, very...
A pious frat house for God.
♪ The Lord in prayer... ♪
And pretty quickly,
I realized this is not what I thought
it was going to be.
- Jeff.
- Hey, Jeff, welcome to Ivanwald.
- Thanks for having me.
- Yeah.
I think you're gonna enjoy staying here.
- Let's get you settled in.
- Yeah.
If you hang out
in certain sectors around Washington,
you've heard about it.
There was a guy's house
and a girl's house down the street,
and it was this little enclave,
sort of a sabbatical from regular life.
There were guys from all over the world,
all walks of life.
Religious, non-religious,
questioning, skeptical.
It was raw. It was real.
Little more like the 12 guys
you read about in this... this book, right?
And as a young Christian
working in politics,
it was exactly what I needed.
Yeah.
The regiment at Ivanwald
was so precise it was relaxing.
No swearing, no drinking.
No sex, no self.
You don't waste time on newspapers.
Never watch TV.
...steadfastly into heaven.
You eat meat. You study the gospels.
You play basketball.
- Yeah, here we go.
- I got outside.
God loves a man
who can sink a three-pointer.
Hey, Jeff.
Will you lead us in prayer?
Sure.
Lord, uh, Lord God,
uh, Heavenly Father.
Jesus, thank you so much for...
the guys here, and...
um, the chance
to play basketball, and to...
to learn teamwork, and, um...
And learn how to fight for you.
We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.
- Amen.
- Amen.
Yeah.
- Bravo.
- There he is.
The kind of storytelling
that I've always found interesting
is submerging of yourself
in the lives of others.
Crossing into that world of belief
until you're a little bit lost.
It's spiritually dangerous,
in the sense that you could be converted.
And at Ivanwald, it meant seeing
what happens if, for a time at least,
I accepted their ideas.
"Where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths,
you are there."
It's intense, right?
It's like, you can't run.
Doesn't matter where you turn,
'cause Jesus is going to be right there,
waiting for you.
Jesus is smart.
He's going to get you.
Let's pray.
"I call out to the Lord.
I pray to him for his favor."
"I praise you for I am fearful..."
We would pray to be broken.
We would pray to be nothing.
We would pray to learn how to obey.
In here, we're safe
with our brothers,
learning the ways of Jesus.
They said this is
our prime relationship with this Jesus.
- Does that make sense to you?
- Yeah.
And so we would pray to crush
what we would call our inner rebel.
- Jeff?
- Hey.
- I see you're writing a lot down.
- Yeah.
But are you listening?
I know it's a lot to take in,
but this is all you really need.
It's the Bible.
It's the part that matters.
It's just Jesus.
One of the things
that surprised me was that
though most of these men
were very scripturally literate,
they didn't care very much
about the Bible.
There was a small book that you're given.
This little book that says "Jesus."
That's it. Just Jesus, nothing else.
And it was four gospels:
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
with the Book of Acts referred to here
as Acts of Ambassadors.
And they didn't need to read
too much further than that.
There's not a whole lot of theology.
There's no wrestling with God,
with conscience,
traditional concerns of fundamentalism.
They don't talk about the devil.
Just Jesus. Just Jesus. That's all.
Now, which part of Jesus
was Psalm 137?
137...
"O daughter of Babylon
who are to be destroyed,
happy shall he be
that taketh the little ones
and dasheth them
against the stones."
Which part of Jesus would be in that?
Jeff, brother, I don't know,
but I'm pretty sure
he'll let you know when it's time.
They said
Christianity's been misunderstood.
That all the rubes out there,
the suckers,
they think that Christ came to preach
equally to everybody. Not so.
They said he had rings of power.
Closest are James and Peter.
Then you go out another circle,
and there's the disciples.
And out here...
is everybody else,
and they'll get the message,
but they won't get it in unvarnished form.
They can't handle the truth.
Let us be nothing.
But now we've moved
from this outer ring
to one of those very near inner circles.
- And we are the new chosen.
- Please, Jesus...
- The ones that matter.
- ...work through us.
As a brother in Ivanwald,
as one among these new chosen,
some of us were assigned to work
in their headquarters called the Cedars.
We would rake leaves. We'd clean toilets.
I thought this was so absurd,
this religious movement
of humbling yourself
by cleaning the toilets of the powerful.
Load some of these up.
The Cedars is this big,
white-pillared mansion
that looks a little bit
like the White House.
And it is very clearly
the seat of their power,
because it's where they host
a lot of foreign leaders.
Wait, I recognize him.
That's that, uh,
Republican Senator from Oklahoma.
Yeah. They all come here.
Left, right,
Republican, Democrat.
But those terms don't reflect
the movement's vision.
It's bigger than that.
We had the president of Uganda here
the other day.
We prayed for him.
Yeah. The Family has friends
all over the world.
There were African diplomats,
Russian nationals,
congressmen, senators,
and that's when I realized:
this is important.
This is not just a fascinating story.
These are powerful people.
Yeah, I'd heard about 'em,
but it was more public lore.
They weren't neighbors that you really
got to know very well.
I got to know them because unfortunately
one of their limousines ran over my cat.
So there... there were
a couple of incidents like that.
They didn't endear themselves
to the neighborhood.
Hey! Carla's here, too.
- I found some correspondence.
- Oh, good.
Yes, yes.
Being involved in the neighborhood,
I got the impression
that you're either with them,
or you're not with them.
They had a... oh, a big map
of the neighborhood.
This is interesting, Carla.
Did you know that they had
a 3-by-4-foot map of the neighborhood
with each house and a designated color,
depending upon how supportive they were
of the Fellowship?
Green, yellow, and red.
Support, indifference, or antagonism.
- I forgot that, too.
- So it's kind of like a war map.
For a long time, I was the president
of the civic association,
which is why I knocked
on the door one day
and said, "I'd like to find out
just what this is all about."
So this very nice man gave me a tour
of the big house, the Cedars.
And it was very much
mid-nineteenth-century.
Beautifully restored
in the style of interior decoration
you'd have if you want to impress people.
And then they gave me a tour
of the boys' residence hall.
And the boys are outside,
landscaping and cleaning the gutters.
And the kids there said
that they would continue to do this
until God spoke to them
and gave them their instructions
for the rest of their life.
And I said, "I have to say that
for a bunch of people in their 20s,
these are abnormally passive."
While I was in the boys' dormitory,
one of them said, "You know, we have
a Tuesday night prayer meeting.
Why don't you join us?"
So I went to their Tuesday night
prayer meetings,
week after week after week.
What they offer their followers
is a sense of belonging,
a kind of unquestioning...
"We're with you through thick and thin."
And there's something very alluring
about that.
I wouldn't mind being accepted
by a group of people...
unquestioningly.
I only got a little glimpse
of their theology,
and I really don't know
about their form of Christianity,
or if even they are all Christians.
But when I learned how
they're very unapologetically targeting
the rich and powerful,
I found that to be disturbing.
But I never asked any impolite questions.
I just sat and listened.
And then the following week,
there was no prayer meeting.
And there was no prayer
meeting ever again after that.
I think they were trying to shake me off.
Okay. I know, I know.
Just try to take a deep breath.
You're home, right?
I mean, wish I was there with you
right now, I really do,
but there's nothing I can do about it.
Because I can't just walk out of here!
Be calm.
I will... I'll ask them, okay?
And maybe tomorrow, or...
No, no, you can't come here.
Hey.
How are you?
Yeah, it's good to hear your voice, too.
Yeah, no, I have a lot
to tell you about, so...
Gonna have to confiscate that.
Let me call you back.
All right, bye.
I'm just kidding.
Phone calls are allowed,
but they're discouraged for new brothers.
We want your full attention.
I was just, like, letting Luke have
some time with his fiancee.
Luke's fiancee is a Jezebel.
She doesn't obey God.
We're accountable to each other, Jeff.
That's the brotherhood.
I'm here to make sure you don't deviate
from Christ's will.
All right?
Okay.
It's important to remember,
these brothers,
they were not bad guys.
They were there
because they wanted meaning in their life.
They wanted to feel like they were part
of something valuable.
I remember one day,
I'd been there for a while,
and one of the brothers, he says,
"Guys, I have something for you to do.
Arm wrestle."
Don't stiffen up, man.
Here we go. No, no, no.
Use your... Lower, lower.
Get lower, Jeff.
And then someone yells,
"Fumble!" and then suddenly,
they were all piling on me
and, you know, hitting.
Get off me! Get off me!
I said, get off me!
And at that time, I thought,
"This is really strange."
But as it turns out, there was actually
a spiritual message to this.
The Jesus most of us are familiar with
is tender and loving.
He's the lamb of God.
A figure of peace and gentleness.
But no, their idea of Jesus...
Jesus' love is strong.
As they'd said, "Jesus is not a sissy."
And if Jesus was alive today,
maybe he would be a Navy SEAL.
If Jesus was alive today,
he'd be great at football.
And so this was spiritual training.
It was a kind of muscular Christianity.
And they were, as I came to understand,
crushing Christ into me.
This was the initiation
in which all our bodies became one.
I can't breathe!
Guys, I can't breathe.
I can't breathe.
Get off me.
One falls down,
his friend can help him up.
You're one of us now.
- Come on, circle up.
- Phew!
The brothers
referred to our group as a family.
And they said I'd become
a member of the Family.
Or the Fellowship,
as it's sometimes known.
But the name is not important.
Let's go.
And sometimes
I would make a mistake
and refer to some political figure...
"Oh, so they're a member? Can we..."
"No, they are a friend of the Family."
There was all these subtle distinctions.
And that's part of the invisibility of it.
I asked one time about the hierarchy,
the organizational structure.
And they said,
"Why do you keep talking about this?
It's just me and you, you and you,
and we are
accountable to one another.
And that's just the way God wants it."
It never occurred to me to, you know,
sort of asked for an org chart.
Who are the people, how is it organized?
What's the structure?
And of course, the people
who'd been around a long time
were just really quick to say,
"Don't call it anything."
I'm like, "You gotta call it something."
So yeah, you kinda call it
the Fellowship,
or you call it a group of friends
following Jesus, whatever it was.
But definitions aside,
you know, trying to stick a label on it,
you see what's happening relationally,
and where else is this happening?
This is something that the world
desperately needs.
Well, you're gonna have
a shorter nose.
You guys are here to learn
how to rule the world.
You have very intense eyes.
Thank you.
Hey, let's talk about the Old Testament.
Who would you say are its good guys?
- Moses?
- Noah?
David.
King David, that's a good one.
What would you say made him a good guy?
His faith was so strong.
King David liked to do
some really bad things.
I mean, this is a guy who slept with
another man's wife, Bathsheba, right?
And he basically murders her husband.
And this guy is supposedly
one of our heroes?
Jiminy Christmas.
God likes this guy.
What is that all about?
Is it because he tried?
He wanted to do the right thing.
Anyone else?
'Cause he was chosen.
Yeah. Chosen.
Interesting set of rules, isn't it?
Let's say here one of you here
raped three little girls,
and now you're sitting here
at Ivanwald.
What would I think of you?
That I'm a terrible person?
No, I wouldn't.
That's not why I'm here.
It's not my job to judge you.
I'm here for one thing.
What is that?
Jesus?
That disturbing moment
sort of crystallizes it for me.
This core idea that some people
are more chosen than others.
And if you're chosen,
doesn't matter what you do.
I'd still be with you.
- And then he said...
- We elect our leaders,
Jesus elects his.
And we warn everyone,
the future king is coming.
Not just of this country...
but of the world.
The Cedars is a set-apart place.
It's a historic place,
it's a beautiful place,
and it is a place that offers hospitality
to the world.
There was a weekly breakfast
that we were responsible for,
I think we called it
the ambassador's breakfast.
How many ambassadors were actually present
is always, you know...
I think a fairly limited number.
But it was a chance for people
who were in and out
of various stages of public life
to have breakfast together in prayer.
- Mr. Attorney-General.
- Oh, my! It's so wonderful to see you.
Folks are able to sort of
let their guard down,
folks in leadership positions,
and have real conversations,
out of the limelight.
Out of the eye of the camera.
And trusting that Jesus would...
would be present there.
This is impressive.
That's the former attorney-general.
Matthew 11:27.
"No one knows the son except the father.
And no one knows the father
except the son,
and those to whom the son chooses
to reveal himself.
I didn't have to ask who was in charge,
because we talked about him often.
It was a guy named Doug Coe.
Know we're going to do everything
we possibly can
to be of help to you and your country.
He hates the limelight.
It's not about him, it's about Jesus.
I wanted to give you a small gift
of our small world.
He was introduced to me
as sort of like a brother,
but he's like the first brother.
They said said he was a very simple man
who was closer to Jesus
than anybody alive,
and that if Doug Coe prayed for something,
it just happened.
They liked very much
that nobody outside of the Family
knew who Doug Coe was.
They loved telling stories
about how Doug Coe just showed up
in some president's office
or some prime minister's house.
He was clearly a leader to this movement.
And so, you know, "Who is Doug Coe?"
is what I really wanted to know
at this point.
You know what I'm concerned about?
The Muslim.
The Muslim has too many babies.
We kill too many of ours.
What is the best way for Christians
to win the race against the Muslims?
Too many Muslim babies
could be a problem.
But your focus on labels,
Christian and Muslim,
gets in the way of your prayers.
Organized religion distracts from Jesus.
We've got to take Jesus
out of the religious wrapping.
How do we do that?
It's good to have friends.
Do you know what a difference
a friend can make?
A friend that you can agree with?
Two or three friends agree and pray.
They can do anything.
Agreement.
You're a writer.
What's that mean?
Uh...
Unity.
Agreement means unity.
Total unity.
You know, there's another word for that.
A covenant.
- Covenant.
- Hmm.
Can you think of anyone
who made a covenant...
- with his friends?
- Jesus.
Hitler.
Hitler made a covenant.
The Mafia made a covenant.
Look at the strength of their bonds.
It's a powerful thing.
You see, with them, it's honor.
With us, it's Jesus.
Hitler, Stalin,
Mao Tse-tung, Osama bin Laden.
The Family possesses a weapon
those leaders lacked.
The "total Jesus"
of a brotherhood in Christ.
That's what you get with a covenant.
Jesus, plus nothing.
That phrase,
"Jesus plus nothing,"
simultaneously banal and totalitarian...
Well, guys, I gotta go.
...leaves these congressman sitting there
as if they've been given a revelation.
And it's just like other men have said.
"Doug helped bring me out of religion
and into Christ."
Doug Coe was a saintly person
who put other people first.
Put a relationship with the Lord first.
And he didn't really want any accolades.
I remember,
near the end of my season at Ivanwald,
I got to help plan a prayer breakfast,
and I remember Doug specifically saying,
"Hey, Google me,
and let's get any reference down.
We just... I just don't want to be...
I don't want anybody to know,
uh, and to have a sense of I'm sort of
this power figure behind this.
I just, you know... This is about the Lord.
This is about bringing people together.
This is about something
much greater than me."
What a wonderfully reassuring thing,
in a town that thrives on power
and prestige and influence.
So let's be influential,
but let's do it quietly.
Um... So, you know, that was Doug.
Jesus Christ,
when he organizes,
the way he puts the organization together,
he makes it invisible.
When you look at your body,
you don't see your liver and your muscles
and your brains hanging out.
What he did is
he put the finest organization,
and he put a beautiful skin over it.
When you look at the Mafia,
they also use
the same type of organization.
Everything visible...
is transitory.
Everything invisible is permanent
and lasts forever.
The more you can make
your organization invisible,
the more influence it'll have.
I wrote openly in my journal,
and less openly as time went on.
Things that surprised me,
conversation I heard
and questions that emerged.
As time went on, the journal becomes
more and more of a detective's journal.
I wondered, what do they really mean
by "Jesus plus nothing"?
What kind of influence
did they want to have in the world?
I didn't know then
what the ultimate vision was,
but life at Ivanwald
seemed to provide some clues.
One night, there was a social
with our sister house,
young women of this house
called Potomac Point.
Some of them were really young.
Most were sort of in their mid-twenties.
There was also a few wives
of the senior men around,
who had these sort of
den mother kind of roles.
Careful, boys.
And they were intense.
So obviously, there would be no sex.
- Hey. Hello.
- Hey!
- Are you going to a wedding?
- You wore a tie.
- None of you guys wore ties.
- No.
We didn't.
Ooh!
The whole organization is based
around this idea of male headship.
- Hello.
- Hi.
"As Christ is to the church,
so a man is to his family,"
and that there are
these levels of hierarchy
that must be observed throughout.
- ...mostly blueberries.
- Thanks.
It was the most
gender-segregated world I'd ever lived in.
Guys, this is Jeff.
- Yeah. Hi.
- He's new.
And the women
I got to speak to briefly would tell me
that whereas the young men
were being drawn into mentorship
by maybe an influential senior member
of the Family, maybe a politician...
Maybe you were going to get a junior job
in a political office.
But for the women,
that wasn't happening for them.
They were being mentored in service,
and directed toward relationships
with men of the Fellowship.
They said
appropriate matches was the goal.
Hey, can I ask you something?
- Yeah.
- Um...
You ever feel weird, like, serving men?
- No.
- No?
No. They're so busy loving us,
who's loving them?
Hmm.
You know, God wants to have
a personal relationship with each of us.
Jesus is a person.
A real person.
Not some abstract idea.
He wants you to know him.
How can you be so sure?
Don't you have doubts?
That's okay.
Doubt is just a prelude to joy.
As a brother in Ivanwald, we were chosen.
Me, not you.
You might be a good person,
but you're not a brother.
- You're not chosen. I am.
- I can't breathe!
That's what you got. What did you give up?
You gave up those who were not chosen.
Other relationships.
So you had the hierarchy,
the concentric rings.
At the middle is Jesus.
And next is your cell, your brothers,
and we are only accountable
to one another.
And then after that,
your family, your children,
your parents, your partner. After that.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao.
That kind of absolute loyalty,
that was the goal.
I've seen pictures of the young men
in the Red Guard, 20 years,
20, 22 years old, in China.
A table laid out like a butcher table.
They would bring in
this young man's mother and father.
Lay her on the table,
with a basket on the end.
He would take an...
axe and cut her head off.
The Viet Cong.
Hitler. Mussolini, with the Blackshirts.
The one thing in every one of their oaths
is we pledge to be totally unified,
even to death.
That was a covenant, a pledge.
After I spent many days there,
I had come to feel some affection
for the brothers,
and I was feeling more a part of it.
I had gone not with any plan
of how long exactly I was going to stay.
You know,
sort of depending on what I found.
I'd seen all these different,
and in some cases outlandish, Jesuses.
But Ivanwald was really
the most unusual thing I'd encountered.
And I thought, "Wow, look at these guys,
they're always thinking about one another.
There is a kindness here."
And so I wasn't ready to leave.
Then one day, Luke,
the man who brought me into it...
His fiance had apparently
been sexually assaulted
and of course his first inclination was,
"I'm on the next plane.
I have to go see her."
The brothers went, "No. No.
We're your brothers.
Your loyalty is to us.
And why was she sexually assaulted?
Where was she that this happened to her?
What was she doing?"
But Luke went anyways,
and they were so contemptuous of that.
They said Luke was a loser.
He chose her rather than...
playing sports with his brothers.
That made him a loser.
You Jesus before everything else.
It seemed so simple.
It's not.
You're doing the right thing.
Hope it works out for you, Jeff.
I really do.
I know you still have a lot of questions.
You ask a lot of fucking questions.
Yeah.
This might answer some of them.
Is there more of this?
Yeah, a lot more.
For an invisible organization,
they sure do have a lot of files.
Hmm.
All right, man.
- I'm out.
- Hey.
- Good luck.
- Yeah, safe travels.
So I started reading the history
of what I've gotten involved in.
Not just a Christian organization,
but a fundamentally
anti-democratic movement
at the heart of religious conservatism
in the United States for 70 years.
"We desire to see a leadership
led by God,
leaders of all levels of society..."
And what I discovered was
that this organization
that denied it was an organization
was really one of the greatest networks
of powerful figures in the world.
Uganda, Romania, Nigeria...
This is the beginning
of a worldwide spiritual offensive.
It began with a meeting
of 19 business executives...
Submerge the institutional image.
No organization, no membership,
- no publicity.
- Jesus infiltrating the world.
Only God can know
the measure of influence we have had
Chosen.
...the man who will commit himself...
...a challenge to be a true...
- We desire to see a leadership led by God.
- Chosen.
Leaders of all levels of society...
- ...led by God.
- Chosen...
True disciples...
Much has been accomplished.
Brothers committed to Christ...
Much more must be accomplished.
The enemy is still at large.