The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

Behind the closed doors on C Street - The family - which has counseled powerful members of Congress, lives and prays as a fundamentalist group with power at the center of its agenda. The Las Vegas Sun has a story about Senator John Ensign's affair and exposes his membership in this group here.

The author of The Family is Jeff Sharlet and he was interviewed this past Friday, July 31st, on Bill Maher's Show. He is a contributing editor to Harper's, Rolling Stone Magazine and Salon.com. He went undercover and lived with The Family in 2002. His book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," was published last year by HarperCollins.
From Jeff Sharlet's article in a 2003 Harper's Magazine

Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats.
Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.

Jeff Sharlet also wrote
Sex and power inside "the C Street House" at Salon.com:
Sanford, Ensign, and other regulars receive guidance from the invisible fundamentalist group known as the Family

July 21, 2009 | I can't say I was impressed when I met Sen. John Ensign at the C Street House, the secretive religious enclave on Capitol Hill thrust into the news by its links to three political sex scandals, those of Gov. Mark Sanford; former Rep. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., who allegedly rendezvoused at the C Street House with his mistress, an executive in the industry for which he then became a lobbyist; and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Although Sanford declared today that his scandal will actually turn out to be good for the people of South Carolina because he's now more firmly in God's control, the once-favored GOP presidential prospect will finish out his term and fade away. And Ensign's residence at the C Street House during his own extramarital affair now threatens to end a career that he and other Republicans hoped would lead him to the White House.

The book is available in paperback, hardcover and for Kindle here.