Behind the 'C-Street House'

Washington’s infamous “C Street House” began as a prayer house but has become famous in recent months as something of a frat house whose residents—politicians like John Ensign and Chip Pickering—had affairs. The New Yorker’s Peter Boyer profiles the group behind the house, The Family, which hosts the National Prayer Breakfast and has a rare conversation with its illusive leader Doug Coe. The New Yorker says that The Family has attracted one-quarter of the members of Congress, largely through Coe’s intensely private and nondenominational guidance. Most troubling about the group is its international outreach: He’s worked with the worst leaders of Uganda, Sudan, and Equatorial Guinea. In 1997, he brought Republican congressman Mark Siljander to meet Sudan’s Omar Al Bashir right after the Clinton administration broke ties with the country; Siljander recently pleaded guilty to felony charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent and obstruction of justice regarding a charity he set up after the visit.