RIP Doug Coe: Washington DC Peacemaker and Prayer Warrior
Doug Coe, who died February 21, was one of the most strategic people in Washington, D.C., a city of titans.
Doug, trained in mathematics and physics, wanted always to be in the background, not because of a sinister agenda, but because he was a truly humble man called by God to impact the high and mighty.
Those to whom he ministered included, not just conservative Republicans, but others, like Hillary Clinton. She wrote in her memoir that Doug was "a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God and offer the gift of service to others in need."
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Doug walked in Washington in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and he touched all he met with that grace and humility.
A native of Medford, Oregon, Doug inherited the mantle of Abraham Vereide, a Methodist minister who had launched The Fellowship, a ministry to leaders, in 1942 in Chicago. Later he would move the project to Washington. Doug was given overall responsibility in 1969. That task included the National Prayer Breakfast, which Vereide had started in 1953, and which every president since Eisenhower has attended.
Doug was a strategic person in my life. I had arrived in Washington and the White House staff in 1970 at age 29, google-eyed and dazzled. A solid marriage anchored me morally, but I was philosophically and spiritually adrift. I was baptized in 1956, responded to God's call to preach in 1957, had graduated in 1964 from Birmingham's Samford University — a Christian school — and then headed straight to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas.
From seminary I went to Nuremberg, Germany, to pastor a small congregation and do graduate studies at the University of Erlangen (a dream never realized). Within months I left Europe disenchanted, determined to leave behind church ministry, and maybe even God.
I became a daily newspaper reporter and editor, which led to my appointment to the White House staff.
There God intersected my path with Doug Coe.
Harry Dent, counselor to President Nixon, asked me to help with details for a prayer breakfast that met every Thursday in the West Wing executive dining room. Harry had assumed coordinating responsibility with two other senior aides.
The four of us discussed the invitation list. Ironically, I struck off Charles Colson immediately, assuming he was a pagan who would scorn our attempts to invite him to a prayer session. I learned the hard way the Bible's admonition to never judge a person by externals. I made the same mistake regarding the most powerful people in the White House, chief-of-staff Bob Haldeman, and senior presidential advisor John Erlichman.
I have often been haunted by the thought that had they participated in the West Wing prayer breakfast, and been impacted as were other participants, Watergate may never have happened, Nixon would not have resigned the presidency, and the nation would have been spared the leadership crisis.
Though the prayer breakfast phenomenon has been described as a movement, Doug's preferred focus was on individuals. So one day he phoned and asked me to lunch. That marked the beginning of a mentoring relationship through which Doug "discipled" me. God used him to reawaken my passion for Christ and His Kingdom.
Doug Coe was a peacemaker. He believed profoundly in the importance of facilitating relationships and reconciliation. This was one of the functions of Fellowship House, considered by some the headquarters of The Fellowship.
Some sought to depict Fellowship House as the headquarters for Doug and his associates to carry out some hidden agenda. Doug's work was described more accurately by George W. Bush as, "quiet diplomacy, I wouldn't say secret diplomacy."
Others pointed out that Doug sometimes facilitated meetings between Washington political leaders and tyrannical dictators.
"Most of my friends are bad people," he said in a New Yorker interview quoted in the New York Times. However, he noted, Jesus "even met with the devil."
It was at Fellowship House that I, a young Republican tiger, met and prayed with Senator Harold Hughes, a Democrat and Vietnam War "dove". It was to Fellowship House that newly converted Chuck Colson summoned a small group of us, including Republicans and Democrats, to reveal the vision that would become Prison Fellowship.
Once I was part of one of Doug's teams traveling to an area of the world where there was much tension among neighboring countries. The wife of one of the chiefs of state had attended the National Prayer Breakfast, and invited Doug to send some of his friends to pray with her husband and other leaders in the region.
Representatives of the nations in the area gathered with us at the home of the president and his wife. Suddenly that chief executive looked across the table and accused the representative of a country next door of plotting to overthrow him.
An awkward silence shrouded the room. For one thing, we all understood the Logan Act, prohibiting private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments on issues of state. Finally, Dick Halverson, a member of Doug's team, and later chaplain of the United States Senate, spoke. "Mr. President, let's pray about your problem."
I was new to all this, and somewhat offended. Prayer? We don't need prayer, we need (Henry) Kissinger, I thought to myself. But pray we did, and when we finished the spirit of war had left the room and the spirit of peace had entered.
Strange and wonderful approach to peace-making, I thought. I wished the same spirit of peace would prevail in the negotiations for peace in Vietnam then going on in Paris between Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Lee Duc Tho.
Doug Coe's ministry in Washington and abroad, and the fruit still springing from it, prove that he was one of the most strategic and quietly authoritative people in a world of power-driven authoritarians.
