Is the Arcus Foundation influencing your church’s agenda?

Thanks to Stand Firm (Traditional Anglicanism in America), we can find out more about how one foundation is promoting the LGBT agenda in Christian churches and organisations.  Whilst this is primarily in the US at the moment, it is likely to become more widespread internationally.

My vicar and I have the occasional head-to-head about LGBTs in Anglicanism.  He’s never been to the US.  I lived there for more than half of my life and was deeply involved in The Episcopal Church (TEC) during the 1980s.  At my parish LGBTs ran all the big committees and had a lot of power. We all knew it, and only a few families switched parishes because of it. The vicar says, ‘That couldn’t be true — they suffer so much and the Church offers them no place at all.’  Pomo alert — doubting someone’s experiences! Well, sorry, I’m also going to tell you, my readers, how it was 20 – 25 years ago.  If it was like that at the time, I’m sure the situation has only improved for many Christian LGBTs in the metropolitan US.  And, to my knowledge, no outside funding or lobbying was necessary! 

But, back to the story.  Fr Andrew Gross, an Episcopal priest, has uncovered donations made by the Arcus Foundation, which has a dual purpose: saving apes and promoting gay rights.  No, you couldn’t make it up.  Fr Andrew asks readers of his post to communicate the following.  Happy to oblige.

As revealing as the following points are, the headline donation is to Lutherans Concerned (see below, highlighted).

Arcus’s 2008 annual report, divided in halves — one for the apes and one for LGBT activities, gives to some interesting foundations, seminaries, churches and religious initiatives, among them:

Churches and church-based groups

Cathedral Church of St James, Chicago, IL: $177,251 of the Chicago Consultation to promote the full inclusion of LGBT faithful in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion

Integrity, Rochester, NY:  $60,000 for two half-time field organizers to support efforts to promote the full inclusion of LGBT faithful in the Episcopal Church

Lutherans Concerned, St Paul, MN: $200,000 over two years to organise and support a grassroots collaborative to change existing denominational policy at the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America toward the full inclusion of LGBT people of faith

Mainstream Media Project, Arcata, GA: $23,000 to work with four leading Catholic LGBT organizations to conduct a messaging campaign and schedule interviews in the broadcast media that promote pro-LGBT messages in connection with Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Washington, DC and New York in April 2008 

United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns, Cleveland, OH: $45,000 for general operating support of the primary LGBT advocacy group working within the United Church of Christ to expand its efforts to promote the full inclusion of LGBT people in church and society 

Seminaries

Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL: $335,000 over three years for the LGBTQ Religious Studies Center to develop and disseminate a theological and philosophical framework that affirms the full expression of LGBT sexuality

Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL: $132,162 for support of the Chicago Consultation’s efforts to promote the full inclusion of LGBT faithful in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion 

University religious programmes

Emory University, Atlanta, GA: $50,000 over two years to expand the coverage of sexuality and gender in the new online magazine, Religion Dispatches, by supporting the inclusion of LGBT contributors and an ongoing analysis of issues concerning sexuality

Western Michigan University Foundation, Kalamazoo, MI: $44,263 for the performance of Western Michigan University Theatre Department’s production of ‘Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians’ at the Anglican Communion‘s Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England 

Foundations and charities

Dignity USA, Medford, MA: $20,000 to support media and advocacy activities in connection with the first visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States in April 2008

Tides Foundation, San Francisco, CA: $198,000 over two years for the Global Development Fund to support ARC International to advance the recognition of human rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity at the international level through strategic planning, coalition and movement building and advocacy 

Please read the link above for Tides, which explains:

Set up in 1976 by California activist Drummond Pike, Tides does two things better than any other foundation or charity in the U.S. today: it routinely obscures the sources of its tax-exempt millions, and makes it difficult (if not impossible) to discern how the funds are actually being used.

In practice, ‘Tides’ behaves less like a philanthropy than a money-laundering enterprise (apologies to Procter & Gamble), taking money from other foundations and spending it as the donor requires. Called donor-advised giving, this pass-through funding vehicle provides public-relations insulation for the money’s original donors. By using Tides to funnel its capital, a large public charity can indirectly fund a project with which it would prefer not to be directly identified in public. Drummond Pike has reinforced this view, telling The Chronicle of Philanthropy: ‘Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with.’

In order to get an idea of the massive scale on which the Tides Foundation plays its shell game, consider that Tides has collected over $200 million since 1997, most of it from other foundations …

Among the most unbelievable ‘projects’ of the Tides Center is something called the Institute for Global Communications (www.igc.org). IGC is a clearinghouse for Leftist propagandists of all stripes …

Now reread above regarding how Arcus’s grant to Tides will be used.

I’ve mentioned before on this and another blog how important it is for a church to be financially independent, beholden to no one.  The aforementioned donations show the power money brings to a cause.  As Fr Andrew warns (emphasis mine):

It means that money from a secular organization is being used to tilt the balance of power within our churches.

It means that in 2008 while Seabury Western Seminary was slashing its budget, cutting staff, and dramatically ‘restructuring’ and ‘revisioning’, they were also acting as a conduit for the Chicago Consultation.

It helps us understand where some of the money came from for the gay lobby’s presence at the 2008 Lambeth Conference … I would say it’s highly probable that the Arcus money helped pay for the Chicago Consultation‘s Voices of Witness Africa documentary.

It reveals some of the funding behind Integrity’s ‘field organizers’. Currently Integrity only lists one field organizer on its website, but the job description is worth noting: ‘Diocesan Convention Resolutions, General Convention Resolutions, Electing Bishops, Electing Deputies, Integrity’s legislative team at General Convention.’ If your diocesan Integrity chapter seemed well organized in 2008-2009, you have the Arcus Foundation to ‘thank’.

While the Arcus Foundation modestly increased their funding of Integrity, it appears that the Foundation recognizes that the most contested arena in the Anglican battle is now international, where the Chicago Consultation is better positioned to effect change.

Then, he explains the Arcus strategy:

The Arcus Foundation was created by billionaire Jon Stryker, one of the heirs to the Stryker fortune. Stryker is a medical manufacturing company, and if you’ve had a joint replacement surgery, and/or laid in a hospital bed recently, odds are you’ve used one of their products…

In addition to the vast array of organizations funded by the Arcus Foundation, Jon Stryker has also spent millions of dollars to fund the campaigns of LGBT friendly politicians in Michigan. Focusing on state politics was a strategy that Jon learned from watching activists at work in Colorado. His sister, Pat, and multi-millionaire Tim Gill have worked to re-shape Colorado politics. As Salon.com reported in 2006, Jon, inspired by their example, took that model and ‘super-sized it’…

Lisa Turner, political director for Jon Stryker, reassures us: ‘Jon is committed to this for the long term,’ said Turner. ‘This is just the beginning.’

Fr Andrew goes on to say in the comments:

The Arcus Foundation has been actively working on partnerships targeting Africa with much larger foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.  Our African brethren in the Anglican Communion have chosen to turn down large sums of money from TEC, Trinity Wall Street, and others because the money for ‘economic development’ came packaged with a revisionist agenda.  Those moneys will pale in comparison to the ‘economic development’ initiatives that Arcus and the Rockefeller Foundation are working on, and the Africans charged with accepting or denying the money are more likely to be secular politicians, rather than Archbishops and Bishops.

Be warned.  Be aware.