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When the General Convention of the Episcopal Church meets next month in Columbus, Ohio, a small network of theologically conservative organizations will be on hand to warn deputies that they must repent of their liberal attitudes on homosexuality or face serious consequences. The groups represent a small minority of church members, but relationships with wealthy American donors and powerful African bishops have made them key players in the fight for the future of the Anglican Communion. Investing in Upheaval Millions of dollars contributed by a handful of donors have allowed a small network of theologically conservative individuals and organizations to mount a global campaign that has destabilized the Episcopal Church and may break up the Anglican Communion. The donors include five secular foundations that have contributed heavily to politically conservative advocacy groups, publications and think tanks, and one individual, savings and loan heir Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., who has given millions of dollars to conservative causes and candidates. Contributions from Ahmanson and the Bradley, Coors, Olin, Scaife and Smith-Richardson family foundations have frequently accounted for more than half of the operating budgets of the American Anglican Council and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, according to an examination of forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service and an analysis of statements made by both donors and recipients. The AAC and the IRD have worked together in opposing the Episcopal Church's consecration of a gay bishop with a male partner, its practice of ordaining non-celibate homosexuals to the priesthood, and its willingness to permit the blessing of same-sex relationships. Their campaign has entailed extensive international travel, heavily subsidized conferences and the employment of a professional staff and consultants to coordinate and publicize their efforts. Most recently the groups have organized several of their international allies to pressure the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to remove the Episcopal Church from the Communion, and to replace it with a significantly smaller and more conservative Church that would be headed by bishops with longstanding ties to the AAC. Ahmanson also helps sustain organizations in the United Kingdom and elsewhere that support removing the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada from the Anglican Communion unless they change their policies regarding same-sex relationships. The full extent of his contributions cannot be determined because most are made through his private foundation, Fieldstead and Company, whose records are not open to public scrutiny. And neither the AAC nor the IRD discloses the names of its most significant contributors or the amounts of their donations. As a result, Anglicans have no full accounting of how much money is being spent, and for what purposes, in the struggle for control of their Communion. The foundations Since the 1970s, charitable foundations established by families with politically conservative views have donated billions of dollars to what the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, has called "an extraordinary effort to reshape politics and public policy priorities at the national, state and local level." Five foundations are of special note for the magnitude of their donations to political and religious organizations. They are: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; the Adolph Coors Foundation; the John M. Olin Foundation, which ceased operations last year; the Smith-Richardson Trust and the Scaife Family Foundations. Much of the foundations' largesse supports institutions and individuals active in public policy, including think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute and individuals such as William Bennett, Charles Murray ( The Bell Curve ) and Dinesh D'Souza ( The End of Racism ). However, the foundations' activities also extend into the nation's churches-particularly its mainline Protestant churches. The foundations have provided millions of dollars to the IRD which, in a fundraising appeal in 2000, said it sought to "restructure the permanent governing structure" of "theologically flawed" Protestant denominations and to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence." The IRD was established in 1981 by neo-conservative intellectuals hoping to counter the liberal public policy agendas of the National and World Councils of Christian Churches. Its founders, including Michael Novak, a Catholic theologian and Richard John Neuhaus, then a Lutheran minister and now a Catholic priest, were particularly concerned about the role of mainline and Roman Catholic leaders in the civil wars that ravaged Central America in the late 1970s and 1980s. They were sharply critical of liberation theology, the Marxist-influenced school of thought developed by Central and South American theologians, and waged an aggressive media campaign in support of the Reagan administration's policies in Nicaragua, El Salvador and elsewhere, alleging links between liberal church leaders and Marxist guerillas. Peter Steinfels, then executive editor of the independent Catholic magazine Commonweal , wrote in a 1982 article that the IRD advanced "a distinct political agenda while claiming only a broad Christian concern." Steinfels said the IRD asserted that churches should "cherish diversity and disagreement about the means to social justice" while manufacturing "an arsenal of vague and damaging allegations almost certain to cast aspersions on a broad band of church leadership." In one well-publicized instance in the 1980s, Diane Knippers, then an IRD staff member, and later its president, distributed information critical of the Nicaraguan Council of Protestant Churches (Consejo de Iglesias Pro-Alianza Denominacional, or CEPAD), a disaster relief organization founded after the devastating 1972 earthquake and sponsored by the mainline American Baptist Church. CEPAD ran a network of medical clinics for the poor, as well as a successful literacy campaign, according to Fred Clark, an editor of Prism , the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action. "That literacy work had won the admiration and support of Nicaragua 's president, Daniel Ortega, and his Sandinista regime. Ortega's praise of CEPAD gave Knippers what she saw as an opening," Clark wrote in a 2003 account. Although the evangelical churches did not support the Sandinistas, Clark wrote, "Knippers portrayed CEPAD -- and therefore the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society -- as 'guilty' by association. She wrote of CEPAD as a communist front, part of a supposed Soviet beachhead in Nicaragua . No one in this country paid much attention, but the contras did. CEPAD's clinics became targets for their paramilitary terrorists." The ensuing controversy was followed closely by mainstream evangelical publications such as Christianity Today . In the end, Clark writes, "CEPAD was vindicated and IRD suffered a devastating embarrassment. They were, rightly, perceived as an unreliable source of information - closed-minded ideologues who were willing to attack others on the basis of irresponsibly flimsy evidence." Still, Knippers, who died in 2005, and the institute remained a favorite of conservative foundations. Since 1985, the IRD has received 72 grants worth more than $4,679,000 from the Bradley, Coors, Olin, Scaife and Smith-Richardson family foundations. After the Cold War, the IRD turned its attention from the mainline churches' activities in Central America to the churches' internal affairs. In its Reforming America 's Churches Project, 2001-2004, the IRD invited donors to help it in "restructuring" the democratic governance of churches to which those donors might not belong. To challenge the elected leadership of the Episcopal Church, the IRD instituted an in-house effort called Episcopal Action. More significant, it nurtured an alliance with Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. Unlike the leaders of the secular foundations that donate to the IRD, Ahmanson and his wife, Roberta, a former religion reporter for the Orange County Register, are deeply involved in current Episcopal and Anglican controversies. For the last ten years, Ahmanson has significantly-and, for much of that time, secretly-underwritten internal opposition to the Episcopal Church's policies on homosexuality. Ahmanson and his teenaged son David are members of St. James, Newport Beach , one of three parishes in the Diocese of Los Angeles that declared itself part of the Anglican Church of Uganda because of differences with its bishop, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno. Bruno voted to confirm Gene Robinson, who lives with his male partner, as Bishop of New Hampshire, and supports the blessing of same sex relationships. Previously, Ahmanson was a disciple of the Rev. Rousas John Rushdoony, the father of Christian Reconstructionism. Rushdoony died in 2001 with the Ahmansons at his bedside. He advocated basing the American legal system on biblical laws, including stoning adulterers and homosexuals. Ahmanson, who suffers from Tourrette's syndrome, rarely grants interviews with the media, but he and his wife cooperated with the Register on a five-part profile that appeared in August 2004. "I think what upsets people is that Rushdoony seemed to think--and I'm not sure about this--that a godly society would stone people for the same thing that people in ancient Israel were stoned," Ahmanson was quoted as saying. "I no longer consider that essential." "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things," he added. "But I don't think it's at all a necessity." Ahmanson emerged as a political force in his home state of California in the early 1990s. Research conducted for The Los Angeles Times found that he and his wife had contributed $3.9 million to Republican candidates in state and local races and $82,750 in federal races between 1991 and 1995. They also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to ballot initiatives that banned gay marriage and affirmative action. Campaign finance records indicate that the couple continues to contribute heavily to Republican candidates nationwide. Ahmanson is a member of the secretive Council for National Policy, an elite group of politically conservative national leaders who meet several times a year to coordinate their efforts on a common agenda. According to a New York Times report, the dates and locations of the group's meetings are kept secret, as is its membership. Participants in the group's discussions promise not to reveal their content. Members in recent years have included Gary Bauer, Tom DeLay, James Dobson, Bob Jones, III, of Bob Jones University, Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series, Grover Norquist, Oliver North, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly. Ahmanson also supports several think tanks. He was a major benefactor and former board member of Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation. He also contributes heavily to the Discovery Institute, the intellectual flagship of the Intelligent Design movement, and the George C. Marshall Institute, which disputes research indicating that human activity contributes to global warming. In what may be his only published article, Ahmanson advanced a Scriptural case for opposing minimum wage laws. Ahmanson's views are considered controversial enough that two Republican candidates, Linda Lingle, now governor of Hawaii and Virginia Congressman Frank R. Wolf have returned his contributions to their campaigns. The Institute on Religion and Democracy and the American Anglican Council have shown no such reluctance. Ahmanson gave the IRD more than $528,000 in 1991-92. In 2001, after a five-week vacation in Turkey with Knippers and her husband, the Ahmansons became the principal supporters of the IRD's Reforming America's Churches project. Howard Ahmanson made five gifts totaling $460,000 to the institute that year. In addition, Roberta Ahmanson agreed to join the IRD's board. In 2003, Knippers told the Washington Post that Ahmanson continued to give the IRD an average of $75,000 a year. From 2001 to 2004, the IRD spent more than $2.1 million on its church reform project, $449,182 of it on activities related to the Episcopal Church. While Ahmanson was cementing his relationship with the IRD, he was also building up the American Anglican Council. Ahmanson and the American Anglican Council The AAC was founded in 1996 to oppose Episcopal Church policies including the ordination of sexually active gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex relationships. Knippers and two veterans of the Reagan administration's Justice Department, Richard Campinelli and James Wootton, were its incorporators. Initially based in Dallas , the AAC moved to Washington in 1999, and shared office with the IRD until 2005. Knippers was the AAC's first treasurer and a longtime member of its board. Bishop James Stanton of Dallas , founding chairman of the AAC, served on the IRD's board. Ahmanson's relationship with the AAC began in 1997, when he passed a gift through the AAC to the Ekklesia Society, which had been founded the previous year by the Rev. Canon Bill Atwood to foster international alliances within the Anglican Communion. The donation helped underwrite the Anglican Witness and Life Conference in Dallas, at which conservative leaders from across the Communion began work on an agenda that eventually included the creation of a strong, centralized form of church governance, an evangelical approach to Biblical interpretation and the defense of traditional teachings on human sexuality. One year later, they achieved one of their most important goals when the 1998 Lambeth Conference passed Resolution 1.10, declaring that same-sex relationships were incompatible with Scripture. From the outset, the AAC relied heavily on donations from wealthy individuals. Of its $565,647 in revenues in 1997, $67,000 came from membership dues, while more than $497,000 came in large donations from unnamed individuals, according to data the AAC provided to the Internal Revenue Service. Of that total, $230,000 came from one person. That funding pattern is still in evidence. In 1998, the AAC reported $443,765 in revenues, less than $38,000 of it from dues. In 1999, membership dues accounted for less than $23,000 of the $496,000 that the council received in revenues. Some $265,000-53 percent-came in two large gifts, possibly from the same donor. The organization intensified its efforts to cultivate Ahmanson as a donor in the summer of 2000 at the suggestion of Bruce Chapman, another veteran of the Reagan administration, who was then vice president of the AAC. "Fundraising is a critical topic," Chapman wrote in a memo to other board members. "But that topic itself is going to be affected directly by whether we have a clear, compelling forward strategy. I know that the Ahmansons are only going to be available to us if we have such a strategy and I think it would be wise to involve them directly in settling on it as the options clarify." Chapman was the founder and president of the Discovery Institute, and Ahmanson was the principal backer of its Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. In addition, the Rev. David C. Anderson, the AAC's president, was Ahmanson's rector at St. James', Newport Beach, and a family friend. The Ahmansons assented to the AAC's request, and the group's budget increased significantly. In 2000, the AAC received just over $1m in what IRS forms term "public support." Some $7,000 came from membership dues, and $515,000 from the Ahmansons. The following year, the AAC stopped listing membership dues as a source of revenue. It received $730,238 in revenues, $462,408 in gifts from Ahmanson. In 2003 and 2004, the AAC had combined revenues of more than $3.15 million, but stopped listing the amounts donated by major contributors. Ahmanson's continued involvement is suggested by the fact that he placed the AAC fifth on a 2004 list of the 20 charities he has supported most generously. In 2003, the AAC spent $248,000 on its presence at the Episcopal Church's General Convention. By contrast, Integrity, the gay and lesbian organization which was the AAC's principal adversary on sexuality issues, spent some $60,000. By 2004, the AAC was a well-established advocacy group, not unlike others that flourished in Washington . It spent just under $600,000 that year on employee compensation, $124,000 on travel, and $114,000 in printing and publications. It was also developing a global reach. Summarizing its expenditures for that year, the AAC says it spent more than $361,000 on "advocacy and diplomatic efforts with international partners on issues surrounding Anglican communion." Three of those partners-the British evangelical organizations Anglican Mainstream ($60,000), the Church Missionary Society (CMS) ($27,000) and the Oxford Center for Mission Studies ($7,000)-received gifts from the AAC during 2003-04. A CMS official said the donation was for tsunami relief. The AAC is not the only Ahmanson-funded organization that has aided conservative Anglicans in the United Kingdom. The International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians (INFEMIT), which is based at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies (OCMS), pursues philanthropic activities beyond the scope of an advocacy organization. However, it played a significant role in the Anglican controversy. From 2000 to 2004, its American branch, INFEMIT USA , which, until recently, listed the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Institute as its U. S. mailing address, contributed $357,414 to OCMS and $262,000 to the Network for Anglican Mission and Evangelism, (NAME.) NAME held an international conference in Africa in 2004 which produced papers justifying the actions of foreign bishops who had claimed Episcopal churches as their own, or announced plans to found a missionary church in the United States. According to IRS Forms 990, INFEMIT USA raised more than $2.75 million from 2000-2003. More than $2.6 million was contributed by an unnamed donor or handful of donors. It is not clear how much of this money was donated by Ahmanson, but he listed INFEMIT 14th on the list of charities to which he has given the most money. In a recent interview, Canon Vinay Samuel, executive director of INFEMIT and OCMS, said that while the organizations had once been deeply involved in the Anglican struggle over same sex relationships, “we’ve tried our best to distance ourselves from that battle” in the last two years. In 2003, the organizations were “totally involved” in the successful campaign to stop the Rev. Jeffrey John, who had been appointed Bishop of Reading, from assuming the office, Samuel said. John is celibate gay man. As the organizations became identified with inter-Anglican issues, donors of other denominations stopped contributing, he added. He said last year INFEMIT USA, which does not currently have a U. S. office, had raised approximately $300,000. “We have paid the price,” he said. Samuel said “not a cent” of the organizations’ current budget is spent on inter–Anglican activities. The next step: General Convention, 2006 When the General Convention of the Episcopal Church meets in Columbus next month it will do so in a politically charged atmosphere, created in some measure by conservative organizations supported by a small number of wealthy donors. Filings made by several of these organizations give a partial accounting of the donations received and expenditures made by the AAC, INFEMIT and the IRD. But the groups do not observe the standards of transparency and accountability practiced by the Episcopal Church and its dioceses, whose budgets must be approved in public meetings by elected representatives. Nor are the groups or their donors required to give a fuller accounting of their transactions, as would be the case in secular U. S. politics. In addition, two key conservative organizations, the Ekklesia Society and the Anglican Communion Network, are not required to file Forms 990 because they are classified as religious institutions. As a result, the bishops and deputies to General Convention will be left to guess at the intentions and resources of the American conservatives and bishops from the developing world who are pressing the Church to change its course or pay a price. Responses Alan Wisdom, vice president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy said the IRD did not typically disclose the names of its donors or the amount of their donations. He confirmed that Howard and Roberta Ahmanson were donors, however, and said that the institute was "proud to be associated with them." Cynthia Brust, director of communications for the American Anglican Council said the AAC received roughly 62 percent of its support from individuals, 26 percent from foundations and 12 percent from parishes and that donations ranged from "$25 checks from people on fixed incomes to foundation-sized grants." "I don't release any information on donors publicly," she added. The Ekklesia Society didn’t respond to requests for an interview. -- Jim Naughton
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