Throughout the Netflix documentary The Family, clips of Family leader Doug Coe preaching a sermon to a Christian audience are played. The clips come from his sermon to the Navigators, a Colorado based Christian mission group, on January 16 1989. This sermon — titled Jesus Demands Total Commitment — had not been available online until 2010 when Coe sent the video to me to post on YouTube. He felt his words had been taken out of context and wanted the entire sermon posted.
The video doesn’t include Coe’s introductory remarks about George Bush and is also cut short. Bruce Wilson has the entire audio available which does have several minutes of Coe praising Bush for his Christianity and asking the audience to pray for him. One thing that is typical of Coe in those remarks is that he doesn’t ask for the audience to pray for Bush to pursue certain policy goals (e.g., end abortion, appoint judges), but instead to make godly decisions. While Coe might have had preferences, he did not seem as interested in specific policy outcomes as the current crop of evangelical leaders surrounding Trump.
I believe this is the only posted video of the event which begins just after the sermon begins. Given YouTube guidelines at the time, I had to break it up into four parts.
More on Doug Coe.
“. . . he doesn’t ask for the audience to pray for Bush to pursue certain policy goals (e.g., end abortion, appoint judges), but instead to make godly decisions. While Coe might have had preferences, he did not seem as interested in specific policy outcomes as the current crop of evangelical leaders surrounding Trump.”
But we all know what the “godly decisions” are, don’t we? Pursue a small-government, pro-business, anti-labor agenda, with a veneer of faith added on to neuter critics. As people like Jeff Sharlet and Kevin Kruse have documented so well, all of these major figures (Navigators, The Fellowship, Billy Graham) are notable for being reactions to New Deal progressivism. Kruse especially documents the Christian libertarian concepts that were incorporated into the various discipleship and educational materials of so many evangelical groups, and it continues just as strong today.
Thank you for posting this and these videos. I am suspicious about the effect of “The Fellowship” on DC but it doesn’t seem like Doug Coe was a particularly nefarious figure. But power seduces everybody successful in this world, and certainly seduced Coe. There is an inherent insidiousness in The Fellowship’s mission to proffer a morally diluted type of Christianity to amoral elites. Giving comfort to those people has consequences.
Including getting to sit at their Right Hand.
NAVIGATORS.
When I was at Cal Poly Pomona in the Seventies, The Navigators had a reputation for the highest burnout and flunkout rates of any on-campus Christian group.
J Michael Jones (formerly “The Christian Monist” and author of Butterflies in the Belfry, Serpents in the Cellar was one of those Nav burnouts. The Nav’s Total Commitment demands (worthy of a CULT) almost drove him to suicide.
To me, the Navs are a CULT. The only difference is that like the “Fellowship” that messed up my head in the early Seventies, the Navs have “Correct Theology” — Fundaglical. And Christianese Cult Sniffers (also Fundagelical) define CULT entirely by Theology and Doctrine, Not Repeat Not Abusive Controlling Behavior.
“While Coe might have had preferences, he did not seem as interested in
specific policy outcomes as the current crop of evangelical leaders
surrounding Trump.”
… which is more consistent with “Thy will be done”.