Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 10-15-2003, 12:37 AM

The vast right wing conspiracy strikes again.

US millionaire bankrolls crusade against gay Anglican priests

Howard F. Ahmanson Jr, a millionaire who has funded a number of right wing causes, including the neo-creationist Discovery Institute and the Chalcedon Report, a Christian Reconstructionist magzine (which advocates stoning gays - although Ahmanson has tried to distance himself from their extremist) is now stirring up dissention in the Episcopal Church over the issue of gay bishops.

Quote:

Leading the backlash is the American Anglican Council (AAC) based in Washington. Until recently the AAC's chief executive officer, David C. Anderson, ran St James Church in Newport Beach, California, where Ahmanson is often to be found in the congregation. The AAC's vice-president, Bruce Chapman, is president of the Discovery Institute, on whose board Ahmanson sits and which publishes research insisting Darwin was wrong.

. . .

The AAC's influence is bolstered by its close links to another right-wing religious organisation, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), which operates out of the same Washington office as the AAC, and on whose board Ahmanson's wife, Roberta, sits.

Between 1997 and 2002, the IRD, set up during the Cold War to fight the spread of communism, spent at least $2.5 million to monitor and resist the liberalisation of America's churches.

Much of the IRD's money comes from the conservative philanthropist Richard Scaife, heir to a banking and oil fortune and owner of the Greensburgh Tribune Review, the Pittsburgh newspaper that became the bane of President Bill Clinton's life, with a series of allegations surrounding the Whitewater affair.

abe smith · 10-15-2003, 10:05 AM

Oh hell, who cares what the Anglicans/Episcopalians do or don't do? Like religioneers and "religion" generally, their opinions & practises are probably irrelevant; and in (less than) "a hundred years all of that will be meaningless". If humankind be still here in existence by then.

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10-15-2003, 10:05 AM	#2
abe smith Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: springfield, MA. USA Posts: 2,482	Oh hell, who cares what the Anglicans/Episcopalians do or don't do? Like religioneers and "religion" generally, their opinions & practises are probably irrelevant; and in (less than) "a hundred years all of that will be meaningless". If humankind be still here in existence by then.

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