The Fellowship (Christian organization)
U.S.-based religious and political organization
The Fellowship (incorporated as Fellowship Foundation and doing business as the International Foundation), also known as The Family, is an American-based nonprofit religious and political organization founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide. The stated purpose of The Fellowship is to provide a fellowship forum where decision makers can attend Bible studies, attend prayer meetings, worship God, experience spiritual affirmation and receive support.
The Fellowship has been described as one of the most politically well-connected and one of the most secretly funded ministries in the United States. It shuns publicity and its members share a vow of secrecy. The Fellowship's former leader, the late Douglas Coe, and others have justified the organization's desire for secrecy by citing biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting that they would not be able to tackle diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention.
Until 2023, The Fellowship held one regular public event each year, the National Prayer Breakfast, which is in Washington, D.C. Each sitting United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has participated in at least one National Prayer Breakfast during his term in office.
The group's known participants include ranking United States government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations, and ambassadors and high-ranking politicians from across the world. Many United States senators and congressmen have publicly acknowledged working with the Fellowship or are documented as having worked together to pass or influence legislation.
Doug Burleigh is a key figure in the organization and has taken over organizing the National Prayer Breakfast since the death of his father-in-law, Doug Coe. The current president of the organization is Katherine Crane.
“The Fellowship (Christian organization)” enters the record as u.S.-based religious and political organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fellowship, Christian and organization can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2299472. The first chronological checks are 1935 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Fellowship (Christian organization)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.