{"id":1559,"date":"2009-07-23T18:00:15","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T18:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig.php"},"modified":"2009-07-23T18:00:15","modified_gmt":"2009-07-23T18:00:15","slug":"religious-group-paid-for-ensig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig","title":{"rendered":"Religious Group Paid for Ensign Trips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON, Jul 23, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) &#8212; A secretive religious group paid for trips to Japan and the Middle East by U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., now under fire for an adulterous affair, records show.<br \/>\nThe travel in 2003 and 2004 did not violate the Senate ethics rules then in force, the Las Vegas Sun reported. The Senate has since adopted new restrictions on travel paid for by outside groups.<br \/>\nThe newspaper said Ensign&#8217;s travel records show the trips cost $15,000, paid by the International Foundation, an arm of the Fellowship Foundation. That group is known informally as The Family and both Ensign and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, another Republican caught in a sex scandal, have ties to it.<br \/>\nThe Family operates a house on C Street where a number of congressional representatives live or come for prayer and study sessions. Jeff Sharlet, author of a recent book on the group, said it preaches a kind of Christian capitalism and reaches out to powerful men its leaders believe were chosen by God.<br \/>\n&#8220;The Family acts today like the most powerful lobby in America that isn&#8217;t registered as a lobby &#8212; and is thus immune from the scrutiny attending the other powerful organizations,&#8221; Sharlet wrote.<br \/>\n<em>United Press International &#8211; July 23, 2009<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 by United Press International <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON, Jul 23, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) &#8212; A secretive religious group paid for trips to Japan and the Middle East by U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., now under fire for an adulterous affair, records show. The travel in 2003 and 2004 did not violate the Senate ethics rules then in force, the Las Vegas&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Religious Group Paid for Ensign Trips<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religious Group Paid for Ensign Trips\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON, Jul 23, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) &#8212; A secretive religious group paid for trips to Japan and the Middle East by U.S. Sen. 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John Ensign, R-Nev., now under fire for an adulterous affair, records show. The travel in 2003 and 2004 did not violate the Senate ethics rules then in force, the Las Vegas&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-07-23T18:00:15+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig","name":"Religious Group Paid for Ensign Trips","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-07-23T18:00:15+00:00","dateModified":"2009-07-23T18:00:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/07\/religious-group-paid-for-ensig#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Religious Group Paid for Ensign Trips"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}