Link: Renaissance Weekend & Prayer Breakfast
My previous post about Cedars, the Fellowship Foundation's secretive headquarters on the Potomac, is still a work in progress. I'm trying to find out who financed the properties and who has donated funds to keep this alternate universe solvent.
But as I sorted through various articles and newspaper accounts, I realized that there was a connection between Fellowship Foundation ("The Family") and its activities, and Renaissance Weekend, the toney think tank event founded by Philip Lader in 1981, and held in Hilton Head, SC, or Charleston, SC.
Past attendees and panelists have included Al Franken, the Clintons, Larry Summers, Wesley Clark, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, actor Ron Silver, Barbra Streisand, Elmo Zumwalt, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, Washington Post's Thomas Edsall, and Paul Goldberger of The New York Times. A typical weekend has more than 500 attendees and many of the better known attendees don't want to talk about being there. The invitations are as prized as the ones for the National Prayer Breakfast in DC.
Lader is a former director of the Small Business Administration and former Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Lader founded Renaissance Weekend with his wife Linda LeSourd Lader.
Here's where it gets really interesting. According to a wedding announcement published in the July 27, 1980 issue of The New York Times:
"Miss LeSourd, a graduate of the Emma Willard School and Ohio Wesleyan University, is with the Fellowship Foundation in the National Prayer Breakfast movement, a nondenominational ministry in Washington. Her father, former editor of Guideposts magazine, and her stepmother, Catherine Marshall LeSourd, author of a number of best-selling inspirational books, are partners in Chosen Books, a Christian publishing firm whose titles include Charles H. Colson's 'Born Again.' "
Chuck Colson was a former Nixon aide, one of the "Watergate 7," and is a close friend of Doug Coe, who runs the Fellowship Foundation that runs Ivanwald, Potomac Point and Cedars.
Fasten your seatbelts. Turbulence ahead.
But as I sorted through various articles and newspaper accounts, I realized that there was a connection between Fellowship Foundation ("The Family") and its activities, and Renaissance Weekend, the toney think tank event founded by Philip Lader in 1981, and held in Hilton Head, SC, or Charleston, SC.
Past attendees and panelists have included Al Franken, the Clintons, Larry Summers, Wesley Clark, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, actor Ron Silver, Barbra Streisand, Elmo Zumwalt, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, Washington Post's Thomas Edsall, and Paul Goldberger of The New York Times. A typical weekend has more than 500 attendees and many of the better known attendees don't want to talk about being there. The invitations are as prized as the ones for the National Prayer Breakfast in DC.
Lader is a former director of the Small Business Administration and former Ambassador to the Court of St. James. Lader founded Renaissance Weekend with his wife Linda LeSourd Lader.
Here's where it gets really interesting. According to a wedding announcement published in the July 27, 1980 issue of The New York Times:
"Miss LeSourd, a graduate of the Emma Willard School and Ohio Wesleyan University, is with the Fellowship Foundation in the National Prayer Breakfast movement, a nondenominational ministry in Washington. Her father, former editor of Guideposts magazine, and her stepmother, Catherine Marshall LeSourd, author of a number of best-selling inspirational books, are partners in Chosen Books, a Christian publishing firm whose titles include Charles H. Colson's 'Born Again.' "
Chuck Colson was a former Nixon aide, one of the "Watergate 7," and is a close friend of Doug Coe, who runs the Fellowship Foundation that runs Ivanwald, Potomac Point and Cedars.
Fasten your seatbelts. Turbulence ahead.
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Go, SweetMolly go!!! For me the whole Clinton connection is disturbing. It brings me to think about those propositions that there really is only one party, with two faces.
July 17, 2009 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the Fellowship Foundation courts politicians from all parties, preying on outsiders new to Washington who want to fit in.
What would be more innocuous than doling out exclusive invitations to a non-denominational prayer breakfast?
And whoever gets invited to the breakfast wants to be invited to the weekend.
Fellowship Foundation and Renaissance Weekend organizers are especially clever at flattering Hollywood types and the fourth estate by inviting them, too.
Here's the link for Renaissance Weekend's 2006 advisory board - http://www.renaissanceweekend.org/site/participants/anniversaryadvisors.htm and a names of typical attendees from various fields - http://www.renaissanceweekend.org/site/participants/illustrativelists.htm
The Renaissance Weekend names that may surprise you the most include Steven Rattner, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Mort Kondracke, Howard Dean, Arianna Huffington, Susan Rice, Bill Richardson, Barbara Mikulski, Joe Wilson, Mary Landrieu, Sam Brownback, Jane Harman, Christopher Shays, Patricia Schroeder, Alan Simpson, Lamar Alexander.
The Clintons helped make Renaissance Weekend the coveted end of the year invitation. The Laders also hold weekend events three other times each year.
July 17, 2009 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dean, Huffington and Richardson?!?! DAMN!!!
July 18, 2009 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even Maureen Dowd was seduced by the exclusivity of the Renaissance Weekend experience.
Here is Dowd's account of NOT being invited from her column published in the October 2,1994 issue of The New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/02/magazine/on-washington-camp-can-do.html.
July 17, 2009 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I should have skipped the punctuation mark at the end of that URL. If you cut and paste this link, or click it, it will work
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/02/magazine/on-washington-camp-can-do.html
July 17, 2009 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is getting even more interesting than Olivia Peony's life....
Good digging, Molly.
July 17, 2009 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I liken the lure of the Renaissance Weekend to DC newcomers to my experience when I first moved to Charleston and got invited to lunch at the Carolina Yacht Club.
Wonderful experience.
Then I found out later that women don't really belong to the Club. A woman's membership piggybacks on her husband's or Daddy's membership.
And the only brown or black faces in the place wear white gloves, bus your table, and shake martinis.
Some exclusive events stroke your ego and pick your pocket, too.
July 17, 2009 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I heard someone mention yesterday that the 'Family' promotes male dominance... so the Club thing makes sense.
July 17, 2009 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, in my comment to my post about Cedars, I quoted these points:
"[Doug] Coe is a student of various social movements including the Nazis and the Mafia."
"Mafia solidarity is often forged in the crucible of hypermasculinity, and the Fellowship likewise effuses fraternity-like masculinity."
Excerpted from this article:
Lindsay, D. Michael.
"Is the National Prayer Breakfast Surrounded by a 'Christian Mafia'? Religious Publicity and Secrecy Within the Corridors of Power."
Journal of the American Academy of Religion Volume 74, Number 2, June 2006, pp. 390-419.
I think the Renaissance Weekend events are much smoother and subtler than the day-to-day operations of the Fellowship Foundation, despite their obvious ties, and similar motivations.
It appears that my order of Jeff Sharlet's The Family is on backorder. What?! I ordered it on July 10th.
July 18, 2009 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
sweetmolly - here are their (Freedom Foundation, aka International Foundation, aka International Christian Foundation) archived records from Wheaton College. I've only glanced at them, but there is a lot of info. Also an old LA Times article that references the archives.
I'm reading The Family now.
July 18, 2009 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink