As shown on Congressional travel disclosure forms obtained through Legistorm.com, a nonprofit dedication to government transparency, in February 2000 a bipartisan pair of US congressional representatives, Frank Wolf (R-VA-10) and former Democratic Ohio Congressional representative Tony P. Hall, traveled with their wives to Hawaii on what the two described as official US government business but the trip was financed by two interconnected fundamentalist ministries, Youth With a Mission and "The Family", which both advocate Christian theocratic rule.
Suggesting they confused the agenda of those ministries with US government interests, representatives Frank R. Wolf and Tony P. Hall, who is now a US ambassador working to foster a Middle East peace initiative, each signed their names to statements on their travel forms which read:
I have determined that all of the expenses listed above were necessary and that the travel was in connection with my duties as a Member of officer of the U.S. House of Representatives and would not create the appearance that I was using the office for appearance of public gain.
The stated destination of Tony Hall's and Frank Wolf's February 18-25, 2000 conjugal junkets was Kona, Hawaii, home of the international campus and headquarters of Youth With a Mission. YWAM is a global Christian ministry that owns the C Street House and whose founder Loren Cunningham proposes an ambitious plan for Christian domination in which believers achieve control of key societal sectors including government, business, media, and education: the 7 Mountains Mandate [ link: "7 Mountains" promotional video.]
The "7M Mandate" as well as "Reclaiming the Seven Mountains," is being promoted widely in a multilevel marketing campaign which includes websites with dowloadable Powerpoint presentations, affiliate programs, Teleseminars, professionally produced videos, inspirational posters and other dedicated graphic arts branding images, yearly conferences (1, 2, 3), and traveling motivational speakers such as Lance Wallnau. The 7-M Mandate has also been promoted at Sarah Palin's most significant church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.
YWAM also seeks to evangelize the world by driving out demon spirits the group alleges plague non-Christian areas of the world. YWAM literature describes the area of the globe between the 10th and 40th parallels, where most of the world's Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims live, as a "stronghold of Satan."
In the Youth With a Mission book "Praying Through the 100 Gateway Cities" ( 1995, YWAM Publishing ) contributing author Luis Bush writes, on page 15, "[w]hy do committed Christians need to focus on the 10/40 Window? Because it is a stronghold of Satan. The people living in the 10/40 Window have suffered not only hunger and a lower quality of life compared with the rest of humanity, but also have been kept from the transforming, life-giving, community-changing power of the gospel."
YWAM Publishing currently sells a twelve tape audiotape series by Dean Sherman, Dean of the College of Christian Ministries at Youth With A Mission's Kona, Hawaii University of the Nations, with the description,
"God has called Christians to overcome the world and drive back the forces of evil and darkness at work within it. Spiritual warfare isn't just casting out demons; it's Spirit-controlled thinking and attitudes. Dean delivers a no-nonsense, both-feet-planted-on-the-ground approach to the unseen world."
The Hall and Wolf Hawaii trips together cost $6,937 dollars. The two congressmen wrote identical explanations on their respective forms as to the nature of their Hawaiian marital junkets: "Meeting with government officials, outreach and other National Prayer Breakfast activities." The explanations seemed to indicate that the bipartisan duo thought the National Prayer Breakfast was run by the United States government.
In reality, the National Prayer Breakfast, held annually since 1953 and whose speakers have included the rock singer Bono and King Abdullah of Jordan, is by far the most public event sponsored by The Family, also known as "The Fellowship": a global Christian influence ring whose members have likened the group to a Christian mafia.
The private, shadowy Washington D.C.-based internationally influential fundamentalist Christian ministry was the subject of a 2008 book by journalist Jeff Sharlet, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Journalist Sharlet has characterized The Family as an antidemocratic institution which celebrates the organizational accomplishments of Hitler's Nazis and Bolshevik revolutionaries, and operates prayer cell-groups on Capital Hill that have included top Republican and Democratic Party senate leadership.
Longtime Family leader Douglas Coe, who has for decades been able to arrange private meetings with sitting US presidents, has come under scrutiny as footage has surfaced showing Coe expressing admiration for the dedication, and organizational and revolutionary prowess, of Hitler's Nazis, Chinese Red Guard, and Lenin's Bolshevik revolutionaries.
As shown in an April 3, 2008 NBC expose', in 1989 video footage obtained by NBC Doug Coe described to an audience how, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, young Chinese Red Guard chopped off the heads of their own parents, allegedly for the good of the Chinese communist state. Coe stated, "they have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of their father, mother, brother, sister, and their own life. That was a covenant, a pledge. That's what Jesus said."
Describing his time living in a house run by The Family, journalist Sharlet told NBC, "[w]e were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin, and Mao... and I'd say, 'Isn't there a problem with that ?' and they would seem perplexed by the question."
The Hall and Wolf 2000 Hawaii trips were part of a much larger pattern.
Over the last decade, Family members such as Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe have promoted the agenda of The Family while on US-paid foreign trips. And, as revealed in on a July 28, 2009 segment of the Rachel Maddow Show, the International Foundation, one of The Family's non profits, has over the last decade paid more than $95,000 for twenty Congress members to go on foreign trips in which they met, in some cases, with world leaders. During that show segment, journalist Sharlet stated that,
"[The Family's] long term goal is two hundred world rulers that are God-led and united through The Family. They're not like the 'Rapture Christians' you might be familiar with. They have this idea that Christ can't come back until they can build a worldwide movement that they call 'invisible' - that's their word - of strongmen, authoritarian leaders on that Hitler-Stalin-Mao model that they are linking together and that they have access, the leader says, with Washington as the capital of a "worldwide spiritual offensive."
The Family runs the increasingly well-known "C Street House", a well appointed Washington, D.C. townhouse valued at 1.8 million dollars, registered as a church, which provides substantially below-market to "Family" members, runs Bible study groups, and claims to cater to the spiritual well-being of Washington's elite.
Combining a church, a rental agency and a Bible study center under the same roof, the C Street House has come under intense scrutiny during the summer of 2009 because of an outbreak of sex-scandals that to date have engulfed three national GOP politicians who have either lived at or attended Bible study sessions held at the house: GOP Senator John Ensign, North Carolina governor Mark Sanford, and Former GOP Congressional Representative Charles "Chip" Pickering.
Another Congress member C Street affiliated with the C Street House is Randy Forbes (R-VA), who attends Bible study classes at the house. Forbes has introduced a House Resolution, H. Res. 397, which asserts the United States is a Christian nation and is replete with falsified American history.
For years, the program of The Family's yearly signature event, the National Prayer Breakfast, has featured a falsified quote incorrectly attributed to George Washington, known as "Washington's Prayer". GOP Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann has recently wielded the falsified Washington 'prayer', on the floor of the US Congress, to attack president Barack Obama.