New York City, N.Y., Nov 6, 2017 / 04:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One wealthy activist is continuing to fund coordinated efforts to limit religious freedom and to foster dissent on abortion and LGBT issues within American Christianity and other religious groups.
The New York-based Arcus Foundation was founded by billionaire heir Jon Stryker in 2000. Arcus is a partner of the U.S. State Department’s Global Equality Fund, which engages in LGBT advocacy around the world. One of its board members is Darren Walker, the president of the deeply influential Ford Foundation, which gives out about $500 million in grants each year.
Since CNA’s February 2015 report on a multi-million dollar campaign against religious freedom protections, the Arcus Foundation has given an additional $2.8 million in grants earmarked for projects aimed at restricting legal protections for religious freedom, especially religious and conscience exemptions in state and federal law.
Among its recent donations is an ACLU grant designed to “beat back” laws protecting freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.
In fact, a CNA examination of grant listings and other documents has shown that the Arcus Foundation has funded a variety of coordinated projects, focused on limiting religious freedom, redefining religious liberty, and perhaps even shaping religious doctrine itself.
Redefining Religious Liberty
On June 30, 2016, the Arcus Foundation said that “countering religious exemptions to anti-discrimination law in the United States is the aim of grants to the American Civil Liberties Union, Catholics for Choice, and the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia University, all of which are working to reframe religious liberty in inclusive terms, whether through the courts, religious bodies, or policy-making bodies.”
Since 2016, $450,000 in Arcus grants went to the Center for American Progress, which was founded by John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s last presidential campaign manager.
The grants funded projects like promoting religious liberty “as a core progressive American value that includes LGBT equality and women’s reproductive health and rights.” The Center for American Progress sponsors a self-described “Religious Exemptions Public Literacy Project” that will oppose “religious exemptions policies that have a negative impact on women, LGBT, and POC (person of color) communities.”
Funding Dissent
Since June 2016, the Arcus Foundation appears to be focusing on controversies at Catholic institutions and schools where staff who publicly support or contract a “gay marriage” have been fired for contradicting Catholic doctrine. Some Catholic institutions have faced lawsuits over such employment decisions and invoke religious freedom protections as a defense.
In an apparent complement to its work on religious freedom limits, the foundation has also been funding some self-described Catholic groups that reject Church teaching on marriage and sexual morality, among them Dignity USA, the Equally Blessed Coalition, New Ways Ministry, and Catholics for Choice.
The Arcus Foundation outlines its strategy in a section on its website. It aims to mobilize “moderate and progressive faith leaders” and to leverage “strategic opportunities in historically resistant faith communities,” including Roman Catholic churches. It said that some resistant communities “still afford opportunities for making limited but significant progress.”
“In keeping with the focus on religious exemptions, Dignity USA and the Equally Blessed Coalition are working to combat the firing of LGBT staff and allies, who support marriage equality, at Catholic Institutions,” the foundation’s June 2016 announcement continues.
The Arcus Foundation gave a $250,000, two-year grant to Dignity USA to fund the Equally Blessed Coalition, in order to “ support and give voice to the growing majority of Roman Catholics who support full acceptance and equality for LGBT people.”
A 2017 grant gave $35,000 to New Ways Ministry to help develop the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics and its work “to connect the work of pro-LGBT Catholic organizations in every region of the world.” The Global Network of Rainbow Catholics had engaged in advocacy related to the Church’s Synod on the Family.
In February 2010 Cardinal Francis George, then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, released a statement on New Ways Ministry, which is also part of the Equally Blessed Coalition. Cardinal George rejected the claim that the group presents an authentic interpretation of Catholic teaching and Catholic practice. “Their claim to be Catholic only confuses the faithful regarding the authentic teaching and ministry of the Church with respect to persons with a homosexual inclination,” he said.
In October 2016 New Ways Ministries gave its Bridge Building Award to Father James Martin, S.J., editor-at-large of the Society of Jesus’ America Magazine. The priest’s lecture at the award ceremony was the basis for his book “Building a Bridge,” on Catholic-LGBT relations
In 2016, the Arcus Foundation gave a one-year grant of $125,000 to Catholics for Choice, to fund a coalition of religious leaders to oppose “discriminatory religious exemptions,” as well as a different coalition to oppose “religious intolerance” in southern and eastern Africa.
The U.S. bishops have frequently criticized Catholics for Choice, saying it is not affiliated with the Catholic Church. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, speaking as the bishops’ pro-life chairman in September 2016, charged that it is “funded by powerful private foundations to promote abortion as a method of population control.”
Beyond Catholics
Arcus Foundation grantees have been linked to doctrinal changes within mainline Protestantism as well, including groups that helped split the Anglican Communion. In 2011 and 2012, the Arcus Foundation provided financial support to raise the national profile of Center for American Progress’ expert V. Gene Robinson, whose controversial election as the Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 helped split the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican Communion.
Non-Christian religions are also a focus.
A June 2015 grant of $100,000 to Muslims for Progressive Values suggests religious exemptions sought by some Muslims are also unacceptable to the foundation. The grant listing voiced hope that the group’s advocacy at the United Nations would assist “in asserting that ‘religious exemptions,’ such as reservations on the basis of Sharia law, are unacceptable on matters of human rights.”
CNA took a screenshot of the Arcus Foundation’s grant listing to Muslims for Progressive Values in mid-2016. Since that time, the grant listing on the foundation website appears to have been changed to read simply “general operating support,” rather than directly listing advocacy against religious exemptions. The grant is one of several six-figure Arcus grants to the group, including one given to cultivate LGBT activists among imams and other Muslims
Kevin Jennings, a co-chair of Muslims for Progressive Values, is a former Arcus executive director and Obama Administration official. Reza Aslan, the controversial Iranian-American author of the book “Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” is a consultant for the group, according to its website.
Fighting Religious Exemptions
In 2016, the Arcus Foundation gave the ACLU a $150,000 grant to implement “a national coordinated media and public-education campaign to beat back religious exemptions at federal and state levels.”
This year, the foundation gave a $300,000 grant to the Proteus Fund’s Rights, Faith and Democracy Collaborative. The collaborative brings together wealthy activists who aim to restrict legal protections for religious freedom, in order to advance its vision of reproductive health and LGBT causes. According to CNA’s examination of grant listings and tax forms, the collaborative’s donors and others have spent at least $8.5 million in projects to advance a similar, narrow vision of religious liberty.
The Proteus Fund’s Civil Marriage Collaborative, which worked to recognize same-sex unions as marriages, closed in 2015 after spending more than $153 million over 11 years on various U.S. projects.
The Arcus Fund has given grants totaling $300,000 to Faith in Public Life: one to rally faith leaders to advocate “fair and balanced” religious exemptions, especially in the states Georgia, Florida and North Carolina; and the other for “pro-LGBT public education campaigns” and to organize “moderate clergy to inform state and national policymakers about the negative impact of using religion to deny the civil rights of LGBT people.”
A $125,000 grant from the Arcus Foundation to Columbia University’s gender and sexuality law center backs the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project “to promote progressive and nondiscriminatory views on religious exemptions.” This builds on Arcus’ previous support for the project, whose co-sponsors have included the deeply influential Ford Foundation.
Another $200,000 has gone to the ACLU, including support for its “religious refusals” communications hub and for ongoing research to gauge what it considers to be “the harm of anti-LGBT religious refusals.”
Arcus has also given $200,000 in grants to the D.C.-based Civitas Public Affairs group’s Religious Liberty and Equality Project aim “to advance equality protections and respect for personal autonomy, while dissolving public support for religious carve-outs that go beyond what is already protected in the First Amendment”; and to “reframe the current debates over religious exemptions by bringing together some of the most experienced thinkers and advocates within the reproductive justice and LGBT movements.” Another $100,000 2016 grant to NEO Philanthropy appears linked to this project, “to counter religious exemptions.”
The Arcus Foundation backs several news media projects, including National Public Radio, The Atlantic LGBT summit in 2015, and a series on LGBT issues for the public radio show Faith Matters. Many of those grants did not list religious freedom specifically, but the foundation did give $200,000 for the University of Southern California-based news site Religious Dispatches’ reporting on religious liberty and LGBTQ issues.
About $450,000 spread across four grants went to the Public Religion Research Institute to create “comprehensive state maps” of public attitudes on religious exemptions and non-discrimination policies. Other funding aims to track public opinion on “religious refusal legislation,” among other topics; and to help develop strategies “to stop the expansion of religious exemptions.”
The Interfaith Alliance was also funded in the amount of $75,000 to explore mapping state laws related to religious exemptions, for policy development, and for training of “skilled messengers to educate state and federal policy makers.”
The Pride Foundation received $150,000 in 2016 to strengthen coordination “among groups opposed to discriminatory interpretations of religious freedom,” and for “emergency-response grants to key public-education initiatives.”
Soulforce, which became prominent for busing LGBT activists to demonstrate at various colleges, received $100,000 to organize students of color in the U.S. South to challenge both “anti-trans policies at conservative Christian schools” and religious exemption statutes.
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Seems to me that we have here a bishop who’s a follower of Jesus Christ
Please publicize this video in youtube from Dr. Anthony Levatino M.D. Gynecologist Obstetrician and former abortionist detailing the horrors of abortion procedures at the different stages of pregnancy. Show it especially to young women who are not told in school the true details of abortion at the different stages; in this video age this is a most effective way to combat the killings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hqoLEhrGmQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFZDhM5Gwhk&t=269s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFZDhM5Gwhk&t=269s
A model bishop for sure.
Speaking into the abyss.
Our thanks and prayers must go to this true Disciple of Christ, Archbishop Sample. But, that is not enough. We must cut this news article out wherever we see it — local newspaper, Catholic World Report, etc. — and mail it to our own local Ordinary [Cardinal or Bishop.] Ask them to be strengthened by what true discipleship looks like. If theirs is lacking or insufficient or invisible, ask them to be strengthened by the knowledge that speaking the truth is a requirement for good Shepherds, if they are to be true shepherds and not just wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Today, I asked a priest to bless some religious articles. He was leading a tour group. I said: “Thank you, especially for your priesthood.” He blushed, looked so happy, squeezed my hand and smiled.
We should do this more often for our wonderful clergy.
So, to Archbishop Sample: Thank you for speaking the truth in love for our unborn brothers and sisters. Thank you for your priesthood and saying Yes to lead us as a Bishop.
Amen.
Sick sick sick!
2 people enter an abortion clinic, one exits.
Enough said.
Oregon was one of the very last states still practicing eugenic sterilizations. I believe back when Oregon became a state it was set up to exclude people of colour and some Oregon communities had a reputation as Sundown towns.
Oregon had a long history voting GOP.
Human rights violations seem to come from the same inspirations no matter which political label is applied.
Let’s see if any other clergy speak up in his defense, because there will surely be those who attack him.
Oregon’s most recent governors, Brown and Kotek, are enough to make anyone vomit. The both of them are a prime example of why liberal policies ruin everything. Sort of like the Midas Touch, except they turn everything into human blood instead of gold.
While glancing at “The Cardinal Newman Society” website, it stated that, “While too many of America’s schools and colleges, including much of Catholic education, have become battlegrounds for today’s culture wars, causing as many as 85 percent of Catholic youth to lose their faith by adulthood.”
After reading the above, I took a peek at where Gov. Kotek received some of her schooling. Lo and behold, it did not surprise me to learn that she spent time as a student at Georgetown University. Need I say more.
As it is probably unfair to cite only one institution of higher learning, allow me to mention one that is closer to where I reside and that being, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.
U.S. Senator Peter Welch, a 1969 graduate of Holy Cross College, delivered the 2023 Holy Cross commencement address and was also given an honorary degree.
In presenting that degree to Sen. Welch, Vincent D. Rougeau, president of Holy Coss stated: “We are thrilled to present an honorary degree to Senator Welch. Senator Welch has championed many causes that are aligned with our College’s core values-making higher education accessible to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, stewarding our environment and engaging in constructive dialogue across differences. We are proud to count him among our alumni.” After hearing that, one could rightfully assume that Senator Walsh must be a wonderful senator well worthy of the accolades heaped upon him by Holy Cross. I wondered what other wonderful deeds Senator Walsh was instrumental in promoting and this is what I learned.
“With the Supreme Court overturning Roe, Peter has consistently supported legislation to protect and expand the right to abortion. He cosponsored the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would create federal protection for abortion. He also supports fully funding Planned Parenthood and has fought to ensure veterans can access reproductive care regardless of where they live.”
All of a sudden, I’m beginning to wonder, could certain factions within our Catholic community believe that we are pointing our fingers at the wrong culprits? Could they believe that too many of us see evil where there isn’t any and that those who have a profound respect for life are full of malarkey? It would not shock me if many in our midst feel that abortion provider appreciation day is a wonderful thing and that it should be promoted by the Catholic Church. They probably already have designs on a request for the speedy canonization of the late Rev. Robert F. Drinan, S.J. as his strong support of abortion rights would more than make him worthy of being chosen patron saint of the day.
As March 10 is already designated as “ABORTION PROVDER APPRECIATION DAY” and like I reported in my opening paragraph, that “as many as 85 percent of Catholic youth to lose their faith by adulthood” would it be too far-fetched to imagine that some in authority would want March 10 designated as a “Holy Day of Obligation” in honor of those abortion providers.
May God help us.
“The need to frame it as a social good, as a moral necessity, reveals the guilt just beneath the surface” as worded by Archbishop Sample correctly frames the inviolability of conscience in the negative rather than positive. That is to say, it’s not that one’s viewpoint is inviolable, rather it’s the violation of what conscience informs the abortion purveyor is a serious sin.
Beneath the surface of the celebration of intrinsic evil, the killing of infants in the womb is what conscience condemns. This dynamic stems from the Natural Law Within, what is written on the hearts of men, the inherent knowledge of good and of evil. Which is why murder, false witness can never be justified by rational argument. Our inherent knowledge of good and evil serves as the rule for reason, the measure of the rule.
While overly brief, but clearly reaffirmed in Gaudium et Spes, is this:
“…the Council wishes to recall first of all the permanent binding force of universal natural law and its all-embracing principles. Man’s conscience itself gives ever more emphatic voice to these principles. Therefore, actions which deliberately conflict with these same principles, as well as orders commanding such actions, are criminal. Blind obedience cannot excuse those who yield to them” (ibid., n. 79).