[children chattering]
[Coe] You want to know something great about your country?
- Yep. - Yeah.
All of the kings love Jesus.
And even your future king.
- Did you know that? - [children] No.
Some kings in some countries are bad kings,
but in Norway, the kings are very good.
- [children] Yeah! - Right?
[child] What's your name?
I'm, uh-- I'm just a friend from America.
[child] Okay, but what's your name?
- [children giggling] - [Coe chuckling]
[man] You've traveled quite a bit with Doug.
You've seen what he's talking about.
Jesus is...
- the best diplomat ever. - [man 2] Right.
One of the first things I learned
on the first trip I went with Doug was, when you raise the name of Jesus,
when you put the name of Jesus into the conversation,
all you have to do is mention the name.
- Really? - Yeah.
[in Hebrew] God, Jesus, The Messiah.
I cannot think of a king or leader that we refused to meet with.
Bob, you were mentioning, even with dictators.
Well, the scripture says, "If I be lifted up,
I'll draw all men unto me."
And so, if we focus on the things that divide us,
then it will.
If we focus on him, he draws people together.
[Coe]When the little group in Japan
and the little group in Nepal--
There's a group of the top people of Bangladesh, all Muslims,
studying the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
From a Muslim follower of Jesus...
to an Evangelical from Alabama.
It didn't matter if they were on the terrorist list,
it didn't matter what their life was.
If they had had a conversation with Doug around the person of Jesus,
Doug wanted you.
[Sharlet] They built this tremendous access
to nearly every government on Earth.
The question then becomes what do you do with it, right?
[Coe] Come. All worry will be left behind.
All disappointment, too, will be gone forever.
[overlapping murmurs of prayer]
[Paul] We adopted a program for a worldwide spiritual offensive.
[Reagan] I know, as never before,
that we are all God's children.
[man] There is only one thing we can take with us through that door:
those whom we have led to the savior.
[Coe] "Fear him. Love him. Submit yourself completely.
Then you will be his disciple."
[George W. Bush] What we have begun... we will finish.
People say, "What does the Family wanna do?"
I say the question is, "What have they done?"
They moved overseas.
It's documented in the archives.
They moved from the state level
to the national level,
and very quickly moved to the international level.
[Getter] This was a group with tentacles around the world.
And the travel records were really important to show
who was spreading the word internationally.
By using the records,
I was able to come up with a list of a core group of members of Congress
who were tied to the Fellowship Foundation.
They claimed their mission was to help everyone
by changing the world through spreading the name of Jesus.
But I wanted to know, was this just about
spreading their worldview,
making sure that the world believed the way they believed?
Acts 2:42 says you get together on a regular basis, we say weekly.
And we do four things: we eat together, pray together, fellowship together,
and talk about the precepts of Jesus together.
[Trump] ...open hearts to God...
[Sharlet] The prayer breakfasts are absolutely central
to the mission of being Christ-bearer to the world.
[woman] ...the president of Uganda.
[Sharlet] But legislation is not their battlefield.
The prayer groups take no action as such.
But out of them, action grows.
[woman] We hold their hands, we pray with them,
then we send them out a world that's more dangerous and evil by the day.
Our children are growing up in a world where Christians are being persecuted
and radical Islam is on the attack.
I'm Robert Aderholt. The enemies of freedom must be confronted.
Evil must be defeated.
[Sharlet] Robert Aderholt,
a very fiercely conservative representative,
travels to Romania,
paid for by the Family.
[marching anthem playing]
[man] Robert Aderholt.
[inaudible dialogue]
[Sharlet] Aderholt, not a big name in US politics,
although he's been playing a part in the Family for years.
But, in Romania, he is a big man.
Romania, Albania, Montenegro.
The Family focus on these little places that no one else is paying attention to.
And they recognize that they can have wildly outsized influence.
[reporter] In Romania, people are voting on the change
of the constitutional definition of "marriage"
to a union between "a man and a woman," rather than "spouses."
It all began when an umbrella civil society group
called Coalition for the Family started a petition
that three million Romanians signed.
[man] How are you feeling about the referendum?
Scared. [chuckles]
Scared. We are scared like hell.
- Mmm, I'm more angry than scared. - I am scared.
I can feel the hate walking on the street.
I can see the look of the people.
They are watching me like never.
[organ music plays over speakers]
[in Romanian] So...
once again,
what are we celebrating
on October 6 and 7?
The referendum to define family.
- [phone vibrates] - [man] I have to take this call.
[woman in Romanian] Yes, my dears.
[man] Hello?
Yes. So, for the past three years
and especially during this electoral campaign,
what we've seen is an increase in hate speech against LGBT people
and also an increase in violence against LGBT people.
We have had more cases of violence in the past three years than before.
And also, like, we have politicians, we have religious leaders
which are using hateful language towards the LGBT people.
For the past three years, a group of conservative religious organizations,
they've been trying to change the constitution
from families based on marriage between spouses
to the families based on marriage between one man and one woman.
[crowd chanting]
[Viski] Right now, we are heading into a national referendum
to decide if the constitution should or not be changed.
If this referendum passes, it will ban gay marriages for the future in Romania.
In issues concerning gay rights, concerning abortion rights,
in Eastern Europe what we've seen is a stronger and stronger involvement
of the American religious right into internal politics.
In the US, we see that 60% of people support gay marriages.
- Love! - [crowd] Wins!
[Viski] So, in the US, the battle against gay marriage is a lost one.
Therefore, they move forward to other countries
where they can influence policies and politics.
They find fertile ground for their ideology
and create these networks with indigenous conservative movements.
They have a purpose now in their life: to hate you as LGBT.
And it's sad.
[woman] We are not against them.
We are not against the people. We are against the sin.
- Because it is a sin. - Yeah.
It's not something normal. So, this is what we don't want...
that will happen in Romania.
[Viski] There are certain Romanian parliamentarians
which belong to Evangelical churches,
such as Ben-Oni Ardelean.
He was supported by certain religious groups
in order to advance their agenda.
[in Romanian] These groups,
a tiny minority of society, wish to practice their chosen lifestyle.
But I don't think they should impose on us their legislative agenda,
or their personal agendas,
to the detriment of 99% of Romanians.
[man] The first person to be connected with the Fellowship was
my former pastor where I grew up from the small city in Haţeg.
He formed the first prayer group on the model of the Fellowship from US.
[in Romanian] The danger of losing our Christian identity,
as followers of Jesus or other Evangelical groups,
is an ever-present danger.
[Ardelean] He started that group and had these annual meetings.
And after a few years, I was introduced to the Fellowship in the US.
I think it's a very good concept
that Jesus could be a model of leadership, could be a model of faith.
And it's a network that, uh, creates friendship.
[in Romanian] A major project for us is religious diplomacy.
This project is coordinated by some individuals in Washington D.C.
[Ardelean in English] Congressman Aderholt is a very dear friend, and...
many of the people from the US Congress, they are my very good friends,
or from other parliaments around the world.
It's very important for everyone in the network
to know that we have friends everywhere.
We consult each other on different issues,
and we try to help each other to protect the Family.
[all laughing]
To try to promote a better way of living life,
uh, in the name of Jesus.
[Sharlet] Imagine your wedding.
You're in love.
You want to be with the person you love.
Now, imagine a powerful international organization says, "I wanna...
I wanna stop that guy from getting married."
The fight they couldn't win here, maybe they can win there.
And this has happened all over the world.
But at least Romania's not genocidal in this score
compared to what's happened in Uganda.
- [crowd shouting protests] - [whistle trilling]
[singing, chanting]
[man] I've read a comment from you
that you would like to kill every last gay person.
Did you actually say that, and would you like that?
People keep on... uh...
misquoting me about this issue.
We have proposed the death penalty in this bill.
But actually, we can rehabilitate these people
and then they come back to normality.
That's the path that we'd be very much interested in.
[man] There are a lot of people involved in the Fellowship who have
views on gay rights and other things.
But I've never heard any debate about family values internally.
There's certainly no kind of push in any direction.
The only time we ever took a position on a legislation
was when we were accused of...
of creating a bill in Uganda to-- that would,
quote, unquote, "kill the gays."
And that was only in reaction to us being accused of...
of being involved in it, which we weren't.
My work with the Fellowship in Africa started 40 years ago,
when I went and met with Doug Coe.
He said, "I find it very important
to have something you're praying for bigger than yourself.
If something good happens, you know you can't take the credit.
That kind of a prayer.
For example, you could pray for Arlington, Virginia, where you live.
You could pray for DC, there's lots of issues there.
You could pick a country, like Brazil," I remember he said.
"Or you could even pray bigger than that.
You could pray for a continent, like Africa."
We had no idea about Africa.
We tried to figure out which country should we pray for,
and we settled on Uganda because of Idi Amin.
It was going on right then, and it was on the news all the time.
[reporter] General Amin announced himself as the "Black Hitler."
He said he was happy with the title
because it meant he was a strong, tough man.
- [man shouts] - [gunshots]
I suggested that we really pray that we meet somebody from Uganda.
And we got out the map, and I said, "All right, the star is on Kampala,
that's the capital. Let's pray we meet somebody from Kampala."
And about two weeks later, three weeks later,
we met a missionary nurse from Kampala
that worked at Mengo Hospital. And when we made our first trip,
that's where we went. We went to Mengo Hospital.
After that, we created Friends of Mengo Hospital USA,
which has raised millions and millions of dollars of equipment and drugs,
has built a dental clinic, a place for prayer.
All that has come out of that meeting.
[chuckles] That meeting. And so that was the start.
[choir singing upbeat hymn]
[Hunter] At the time, in Uganda,
Museveni came in, and I built a relationship with him.
And Museveni opened up the whole continent for me.
I worked through him to get the first National Prayer Breakfast in Uganda.
And, at the time, he was a pretty good guy.
And I helped him a little bit, you know, meet people in Washington.
I thought he could have been a Mandela-type character
if he had stepped back and started to focus on maybe peace.
But, rather than that,
I thought he diminished himself greatly.
Do you personally dislike homosexuals?
Of course, they are disgusting.
[stammers] What sort of people are they? How can you go, uh...
I don't-- I never knew what they were doing.
That's all-- I've been told recently that...
what they do is terrible. Disgusting.
[Throckmorton] In 2009,
I'd become involved in following the anti-homosexuality bill,
which was introduced in Uganda.
It was a bill that would have made homosexuality
a capital offense in some cases.
And the American members, for the most part,
they found that appalling.
One of the things that I got to do
was interview Doug Coe at the National Prayer Breakfast.
I think my access to Doug Coe was specifically so he could tell me
that he opposed the Ugandan bill.
But when I visited the African suite,
I was struck by
how calmly they were discussing
getting rid of homosexuals.
[crowd shouting]
[reporter] This man was accused of being gay.
He was beaten to death by a mob.
Others have been rounded up by police and arrested.
[Throckmorton] I wondered, "Aren't these God's children?
Aren't they all in the image of God?"
And they seemed to discount that
and suggest that because these people were causing trouble in their society,
what's good for the society was that they not be there.
[overlapping shouts]
[Throckmorton] So I said, "American Fellowship members are saying
that this bill does not square with the teachings of Jesus."
And they felt that the Americans were being soft,
that they were unable to say what they really felt.
But Ugandans wanted to be God's country
and apply God's word
to every aspect of life.
The Fellowship couldn't make them withdraw that bill...
but I thought could say, "Well, they're no longer part of the Fellowship."
But there was reluctance to even say that.
[Sharlet] There's a level of deniability to it.
The Kill the Gays bill, the Family didn't write it.
So, when that becomes too hot, they can back away from it really quickly
and say, "We had nothing to do with that."
Remember what the Family always says:
that the core idea, Jesus Plus Nothing,
is the insistence that it is so simple.
Just Jesus, that's all. Just Jesus. Nothing...
nothing but Jesus.
You gotta see this.
Uh, this is the headline on Senator Inhofe's trip to Africa.
"Inhofe's trips to Africa called a 'Jesus thing.'"
Now, if you reacted to that the way I did, you're saying,
"Praise God! That's wonderful!"
But that's not what the editors of this newspaper thought,
and yet, you got an overwhelmingly positive response from this.
You don't get anything worse than this. That's front page, above the fold.
And it goes on to say they think I'm using public funds for doing this.
Well, we're not.
Because there are other things we do in Africa.
I'm on the Armed Services Committee. We're helping them build their brigades
and all this type of thing. But we do it through the love of Jesus.
[Sharlet] When these guys would go out as missionaries for the Family,
they're exporting Abraham's idea.
That who God cares about most is not the everyday people,
not the people who need the wells and the orphanages.
God cares most about the elites.
People like Senator Jim Inhofe,
who runs on a campaign promise of what he calls the "Three G's."
God, Gays, and Guns.
And they would say that Inhofe
brought 200 African kings into relationship with Christ.
[Inhofe] A guy named Doug Coe, he talked me into going to Africa.
[Sharlet] Coe says, "Why am I sending you, Jim?
'Cause you're gonna get in to see kings."
You know, I've had the honor of visiting, uh, Africa
I think more than anyone in the history of the United States Senate.
I just got back from my 161st African country visit.
[Inhofe] I call it the political philosophy of Jesus.
And it's all scripturally based, Uh, Acts 9:15, you know,
"Take my name, Jesus, to the Kings."
And, of course, if you're a member of the United State Senate in Africa,
they think you're important, so you always get in to see the kings.
You're a great leader for that-- introducing that country,
to that continent, to us, and I appreciate very much
the time you've spent with me when I've gone.
- [Inhofe] That's nice of you. Thank you. - Thank you.
Inhofe is particularly proud of that access,
oftentimes on the taxpayer dime,
traveling as ambassadors for Christ.
That is to say, using elected office to gain access
and to shape the policy and fates of millions.
But Inhofe says,
"I just do my Jesus thing."
By building relationships with dictators
who are some of the worst authoritarian leaders in history.
- [helicopter blades thumping] - [police sirens wailing]
[reporter 1] It remains the worst terrorist crime in British history.
[reporter 2] ...terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103,
killing 270 people.
[reporter 1] There's never been much doubt
that it was an act of state-sponsored terrorism,
and that men with blood on their hands are still at large.
[reporter 3] Time and again, a trial over the Lockerbie tragedy does seem close,
but still the two Libyan suspects have not appeared in a Western court.
[Gadhafi in Arabic] I condemn America,
Imperialist America, who tries to rule the world.
[man] We engaged Gadhafi
in the late '90s and early 2000s.
Muammar Gadhafi's regime,
quite successfully to a rapprochement with the West.
At that time, Gadhafi was disdained by the West.
Gadhafi was blamed for housing two Libyans
who were accused of blowing up a Pan Am jet
over Lockerbie, Scotland. It killed 270 people.
And he refused to turn them over.
Gadhafi was also supporting weapons of mass destruction.
He was a horrible character.
So, one would ask, "Why in the world
would you wanna go see him?"
The answer is, "Why in the world wouldn't we?"
♪ Let's all join together ♪
♪ And stand for what is right ♪
♪ There's no place like America ♪
[man on TV] Congressman Siljander, leadership that's working.
[Siljander] I was elected to the US Congress in my 20s,
and as soon as I got to Washington, Newt Gingrich and I,
we plotted and planned to take over the House.
We'd talk of mobilizing Christians
and creating what we call "wedge issues."
Abortion, tax reform, foreign policy, gun control.
And we wanted to wedge and divide people,
put those that are pro-Republican and conservative on our side,
and get enough of them with enough wedges and turn them out to vote.
However, we were so eager to take power,
it's like spirituality became
a side anecdote to the process.
After spending three terms in Congress, I lost my fourth term.
And that's when I started engaging radicals, combatants,
certain regimes
with a spiritual approach.
- [overlapping shouts] - The Holy Spirit come now.
[man translates into French]
- [Siljander] Encouragement in the minds... - [man continues translating]
- [Siljander] ...blessing in the heart. - [translation continues]
I speak a blessing.
[man continues translating]
[in Hebrew] God, Jesus, the Messiah.
[man translating into French]
- Amen. - [crowd] Amen!
[cheering]
[Siljander] According to the Bible,
the Apostle Paul and his teachings,
Paul was called by Jesus to carry his name to the kings.
So, the kings are leaders of today, the presidents, prime ministers.
Some are kings. [chuckles]
Still the title.
So, we're simply engaging in Paul's calling to the leaders.
In my job, I go and speak to groups of people here and abroad
about how to make peace or seek justice
for those who are suffering under dictators.
To try to stop the starvation, displacement, and suffering to begin with.
We simply present ourselves as struggling followers of Jesus,
trying to embrace and fulfill his commission
to try to reconcile and make peace.
You say that something changed when we had our meeting.
Now, we're just men.
We can't change anything. What do you think happened?
I think it's God.
[Siljander] It's not politics.
It's not prestige.
It's not good looks.
It's the power of God.
Doug Coe said, "You should devote your whole life to this.
What could be more exciting?" I said, "You know, you're right."
Jesus said when he left, he'd send back the Holy Spirit to teach us.
- Mmm. - What he said--
All that's recorded of what he said,
what he did, and how he thought is in this.
Jesus Christ is the center of history.
Fills the entire horizon of the past, the present, and the future.
- So, that's him. - Thank you.
- Okay? - [all] Thank you.
- Great. [laughs] Okay. - Thank you.
[Rise] I met Doug Coe for the first time in 1994.
We will continue to be supportive of you and the work that you're doing for Christ,
but we want our Family to stay together.
[Rise] I think those two hours I had with him
was a revolution for me. It was...
the biggest change in my life.
He said, "I want to ask you to do one thing:
forget everything that you have learned about Christianity.
Jesus didn't come for the pure.
He came for healing the sick."
And therefore, Doug found it always inspiring
to be with people with big problems.
I know some people were concerned about people he met with.
So, sometimes he would get--
"But this person is being investigated by the FBI for big crimes,
or there are these stories or these stories."
And then his response would be, "Well, the bigger crook, the better."
That doesn't mean that he will support the wrongdoing,
but he will be there for every person and see the potential in every person.
He would see a diamond in every person.
Many people would feel that is love.
[Sharlet] The Family has always worked with bad men, bad people.
And that idea goes back to the founder, Abraham Vereide.
Abraham was not a fascist,
but he was fascinated by the Nazis
and by how they built power, and he wanted to work with them.
He would say, "What if we had that strength?
The strength of Himmler and Goebbels, his brothers bound together?
A small group of men in Bavaria got together and look what they did.
What if we could do that for Jesus?"
He was commissioned by the State Department
to go among the post-war prisons in which
the United States was holding the high Nazi war criminals
and seek out men who could be changed and used for the good work,
who would switch out the Fuhrer for the Father.
- [crowd cheering] - [man] Heil Hitler!
- Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! - [crowd chanting]
[Sharlet] Abraham went to bat for a man named Von Neurath,
who was one of the really senior war criminals.
Von Neurath in prison wasn't getting proper dental care,
and Abraham moved the powers that be to arrange this.
He helped a man named Gedat, who became this key leader
and frequently traveled to the United States,
became a spiritual adviser to congressmen.
We go back in his record and he says,
"God has ordered us to hunt down the Jews."
And to great ends, then he went
to wash clean the records of these Nazi war criminals.
And Vereide constantly emphasized this.
The bigger the monster,
the greater the work of God we're doing.
If you're a Nazi and I forgive you,
ah, God's grace is flowing through me.
Forgiving and forgetting, not holding accountable.
And this becomes the model for what would become
theirsort of official slogan, "A Worldwide Spiritual Offensive."
Recruiting key men into a veritable underground
of God's men all through government.
Diplomats scoff...
to think that you're gonna waltz in there,
have a little "Kumbaya" prayer time
with these horri-- some of these despot leaders like Gadhafi, Sadam,
uh, Bashir, and other regimes.
I cannot tell you how many State Department officials over the years
would sit down or call me and tell me that-- "You're a naive fool.
They're gonna use you and embarrass the United States."
The trip to see Gadhafi was inspired by the president of Benin.
The president calls Gadhafi. Gadhafi sends his plane.
My friend and I were on the plane. I'd rather not say who, but--
[man] Well, you say it in the book.
Well, I only call him by his first name.
All right, Doug. Doug Coe.
All right, so, as Doug Coe and I get on the airplane,
and we travel hours to Tripoli.
And then Gadhafi was furious, so he wouldn't see us.
So, we were called to go see the foreign minister.
The foreign minister was so angry
and he started yelling, "Why are you here? What do you want from us?
Why didn't the president of Benin come? Why isn't he here?"
Because here's a former congressman and Doug, whom they didn't know at all.
And so, I knew we were in trouble, really.
And, by the way, we had to go without a passport,
we couldn't buy a ticket, we couldn't spend any money,
and couldn't receive a visa, 'cause it was illegal under US law.
So, no one knew we were there. There's no evidence anywhere.
And I was just sort of praying while he was yelling at us,
and it just occurred to me,
humility...
will work.
So, I said, "Excuse me, Your Excellency.
I was a congressman during the time
President Gadhafi's daughter was killed by a US bomb."
We were attempting to kill him.
"Therefore, I have the spiritual authority to ask for your forgiveness
as a nation for killing his daughter."
And immediately, he changed.
He spoke Arabic, snapped his fingers and they rushed in, tea and sandwiches.
Filled the whole table.
This is amazing. It was like a transformation.
So, he gets up while we're eating. He had to call the president, Gadhafi.
He comes back, and we get up to walk out,
we hug each other and we hold hands and pray. Three of us.
And I could feel his hand trembling.
And he looked at me and said, "I have authority to tell you
that you're gonna have good news in ten days."
He hugged a second time, and we left.
[Sharlet] Coe at that point
had amassed a significant amount of power and influence, right?
And Gadhafi might say, "Look, this is a good channel to work through."
But whether Gadhafi does a damn thing,
they get to go back and say, "Yeah, we met Gadhafi."
You walked into a room with somebody that half the planet
considers one of the most dangerous men alive, and what did you do?
We just got down on our knees and we prayed to Jesus.
The miracle stops right there
without people really thinking too deeply.
"No, but wait a minute. What was the point of that meeting again?"
[Siljander] Ten days later, the two Libyans
were released to be tried at the Netherlands.
And then the reconciliation began, building US hotels and buying his oil.
He denounced weapons of mass destruction.
We didn't have, like, an agenda.
It was simply letting the Holy Spirit do whatever the Holy Spirit will want to do.
[Coe] "When you talk about setting up meetings between political leaders
on senatorial junkets to Afghanistan,
where they can discuss the political issues 'as brothers, '
if I were an Afghan, I would ask, 'Down what road am I being taken?
Are they using a religious gimmick to get my government to adopt some laws?
Where does politics end and religion begin?'"
[Sharlet] The Family's foreign policy
is the insistence that it is so simple.
The insistence that it is so simple,
backed up by the power of American Empire.
When Senator Inhofe and Congressman Siljander
meet with these world leaders,
they go...
as representatives
of the most powerful government in the world,
maybe in human history.
And they like to pretend, "I'm just a guy.
I don't know why the president of this nation agreed to meet me.
I'm just a guy talking about my Jesus thing.
I don't know why they had a military parade to greet me.
Who knows?"
[band plays marching anthem]
[reporter] General Sani Abacha. For five years he ruled Nigeria
in the most ruthless regime in the country's history.
Notoriously, he had jailed and executed his opponents,
including human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
But most of all, he looted the country.
[Inhofe] The first one we went to
was a guy that our State Department
thought was the worst terrorist in the world.
His name is Sani Abacha from Nigeria.
We went in there and-- and just... not really knowing what we were doing.
[Sharlet] Inhofe travels to Africa
and he sees General Sani Abacha, the dictator of Nigeria.
The intermissional government is hereby dissolved.
This guy who looted his country.
The national and state assemblies are also dissolved.
The state executive councils are dissolved.
[Sharlet] Abacha's a dangerous man who had killed some of his own citizens.
[Inhofe] He started talking about political things, so after a while,
I said, "Mr. President, really, yeah, I'm a member of the United States Senate,
but I didn't come over here as a senator. In fact, we came all the way across
the Atlantic and down to sub-Saharan Africa
to tell you that in the spirit of Jesus we love you."
[stammers] That-- Probably the first time
this man has ever cried, at least in front of people,
when we prayed together.
[Sharlet] Bacha sends all of his aides out of the room.
So, now, here we have this access.
This is what we have built this veritable underground of men in government for.
What did they say? They say, "Brother, I love you." That's all.
Not, "Brother, I love you,
and let us talk about what love means and let us talk about murder,
about killing your own citizens."
That's not what happens. Instead, what's he saying it's all about?
Jesus.
And what do you know, the dictator says, "Yeah, yeah, sure. Jesus."
"Jesus?" Jesus.
Jesus, Jesus. And the money flows. And the guns flow.
And the oil flows.
There are all these ways that these figures,
in return for their deference, their subservience,
their recognition of the natural order of God, are rewarded.
[man speaks indistinct commands]
- [men grunt] - [gunshot]
[Owens] From my perspective,
the difficulties with the Fellowship foundation
go to the involvement in, um,
in Africa,
paying travel expenses of members of Congress.
There was always a veil behind the sources of money.
There's a budget, a fairly large budget, many millions of dollars.
There's a staff, too.
But you might look at the records, and one year their salary is this,
and the next year their salary is zero.
And yet, all the time, they're flying around on private jets.
This is what they call the "Man Method."
You need to go visit a head of state somewhere,
so you ask a wealthy man, "Can I use your jet?"
And he sees something in it for himself where he is led by God.
[Coe] "God's method of all the ages has been the 'Man Method.'
Give me the man who will commit himself utterly to Jesus Christ
and our problems are largely solved."
[Sharlet] That's the "Man Method."
Otherwise known as "off the books."
[Owens] The group of individuals involved with this organization
were truly unusual.
In one case, even involvement with an organization
on the specially designated nationals list,
the so-called list of terrorist organizations.
A former United States Congressman from West Michigan is going to prison
for his connection to a terrorist group.
Mark Siljander was sentenced today in federal court,
and 24 Hour News 8's Tom Hillen is here now with what he did
and how long he'll be behind bars. Tom.
Well, good evening, Brian and Sue.
Today, a judge sentenced former Congressman Mark Siljander
to one year and one day in prison.
Siljander pleaded guilty last year to obstructing justice
and for acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
He lied to the government, but wasn't directly involved in terrorism.
I was indicted for absurd charges.
We needed to finance the trips, so we created a nonprofit
and we were seeking donations.
And a Muslim charity said, "We'd like to donate to you."
I said "Wow! It's all been Christians so far.
Wow, this is kind of affirmation."
Later, they're raided, and evidently, they were accused
and indicted for stealing government funds,
and they used that account to pay the donations.
The Fellowship was drawn in because one of the checks went to them,
and I felt terrible because my friends
were being drawn into this quagmire.
I was very angry at God.
You know, doing all of this good work,
and yet, you're allowing our whole family
to be swept into this horrific web of...
of accusations and innuendos.
[Sharlet] The Justice Department said what Mark Siljander was doing
was channeling money through the Family
from a designated terrorist organization
that wanted to be removed from the list of supporters of terrorism.
He was illegally lobbying for them
and funneling the money through the Family.
The whole operation is not through the Family, it is in the Family.
It is of the Family. It--
He was doing their work. And he gets convicted.
[woman] This referendum was a very simple question
about the most basic institution of society:
marriage between a man and a woman,
marriage between a mother and a father.
Everyone is affected by the result of this.
[Sharlet] Leaving aside the fact that there's one member of the Family
who gets indicted for conspiracy...
a lot of the most problematic work of the Family
doesn't involve money changing hands. That stuff's important.
[crowd chanting]
[Sharlet] But more important are the ways in which you shift the conversation
not just right-ward,
but towards an authoritarian idea of religion.
[in Romanian] This abnormality first polluted Western countries
and now we find it here.
There are people in Romania, as there are people in every country,
who are working toward democracy and human rights.
The question is,
if you're gonna go over there, who do you come alongside of?
I commend, uh, Romania in their preserving traditional values.
That is something I think is very important for a nation.
The traditional family is so important.
And I think what makes a strong country is having a strong family.
And if the families of a country are not strong,
then the country cannot be strong.
And that's why you have all-- [stammers]
The information that I'm getting,
and I also relayed this to your prime minister,
that having a strong family unit
between a man and a woman is very important.
- Thank you very much. - All right. Thank you very much.
[Ardelean] I mentioned to the Fellowship that we were going to have a referendum
in my last visit in, uh, US, which was last year.
Ever since then, I, uh, was talking with them,
uh, several time, uh, about what's going on with the process.
The Fellowship,
they are people that I can call them, day or night,
and my problem, it will be their problem right away.
I see it as a support group for those countries
that want to promote good values in society.
[Sharlet] The Fellowship say that legislation is not their battlefield.
They've been explicit about that from the beginning.
Yet, you have this congressman, probably the most powerful figure
that has come across the border of Romania for a while.
What does he say he's doing?
Building relationships. And he's speaking about family values.
So, this is May 29.
So, he meets with Ben-Oni Ardelean...
former Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu, who...
Marian Munteanu, he's pretty much a right wing person,
an extremist right wing.
And yes, Mihai Gidea of Antenna3,
who is one of the leading news TV stations in Romania.
This sort of lobbying, this sort of talking,
this sort of keeping in touch, trading favors,
uh, everything can influence a certain process to move forward.
[indistinct news broadcast in Romanian]
[indistinct chatter]
It is not US foreign policy to stop same-sex marriage in Romania...
yet you have this congressman coming
to give support to this idea.
And he can say, "That's just my opinion, I'm just representing Jesus."
And the Family can say, "It's not our policy either.
We just paid for Bob to go. And he did what God led him to do.
We didn't tell him to do that."
When you're elected as a member of Congress,
you're representing the United States in an official capacity.
If you go off and meet with a head of state,
you can't suddenly become unofficial.
And that's what they were doing.
[reporter] It was a result gay rights supporters in Romania were hoping for.
On Sunday, they celebrated, after a vote to change Romania's Constitution failed.
[cheering]
[reporter] They said if the poll was successful,
it would embolden further attempts to chip away at the rights of minority groups
and push the country onto a populist authoritarian track.
[cheers continue]
[Sharlet] The Family dispatch representatives around the world
to build these relationships with foreign leaders
to teach them to be God-led through them.
[children chattering]
[Sharlet] They make negotiations without our consent.
This is nonconsensual diplomacy.
They are not transparent about their role in affairs
of global power that affect the lives of millions.
[camera shutter clicks]
- [woman] Who do you think that was? - [man] Douglas Coe.
[woman] Oh, okay.