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SECTORSInternal LinksGrants to: Profiles:
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CONSERVATIVE PHILANTHROPYReligious Sector OrganizationsFrom a report by NCRPThe foundations also awarded grant money to organizations committed to challenging the social views and practices of the nation's religious leaders. The funds flowing to religious sector groups, such as the Institute for Religion and Public Life, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, reflect conservative efforts to attack and transform mainstream institutions, in this case mainline Protestant denominations and clergy and many Roman Catholics. The Institute on Religion and Democracy was founded in 1982 to "promote religious liberty around the world" and to "fight for church reform" domestically, believing that "the National and World Councils of churches are theologically and politically flawed." Its early focus was international, supporting U.S. foreign policy in Central America during the Reagan years. Today, IRD publishes Faith and Freedom and monitors "mainliners and other Christian groups that often claim to speak for millions but really represent only an extreme few." IRD also published in 1994 Prophets and Politics: Handbook on the Washington Offices of U.S. Churches, whose author, Roy Howard Beck, is best known for his vociferous attack against the United Methodist Church. The Institute for Religion and Public Life and the Acton Institute both seek to influence the religious community through seminars, colloquia, sponsored research, book projects, newsletters and journals. They work to instill a stronger appreciation of the morality of capitalism in the U.S. and around the world. IRPL publishes First Things 10 times a year. In the words of its editor, conservative Catholic The Acton Institute's central mission is to counter what it sees as "the clergy's disturbing bias against the business community and free enterprise," principally by convening three-day conferences for seminarians and divinity students in order to "introduce them to the moral and ethical basis of free market economies." In 1995, the Institute also launched a national welfare reform initiative to help shape national policy debates, believing that "churches and private individuals and organizations, not the government, can best help change people's lives." Michael Joyce, of the Bradley Foundation, was a featured speaker at the Institute's 1996 conference while Institute staff also participated in activities organized by other conservative foundation grantees, such as the Koch Summer Fellows Program at George Mason University, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and Focus on the Family. Like the figures provided on state-based funding,religious sector funding, at $3.26 million (1992-1994), somewhat understates the amount of money that conservative funders have invested in shaping religious views. Other multi-purpose institutions with programs related to religious sector activities have been heavily funded. Another major national think tank grantee, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, places particular emphasis on clarifying and reinforcing "the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues." Central among EPPC activities is on-going analysis of the moral reasoning and policy positions of organized religion. Other national think tanks, both large and small, have also engaged religious and cultural conservatives' concern over the nation's morality, pushing the idea of national moral decline and linking what is seen as its most insidious expressions (teenage pregnancy, single-parent families, crime and drugs) to the ceaseless expansion of the Leviathan state. This linkage between morality, poverty and government spending - consistently propagated by a wide range of conservative grantees - has contributed to the movement's overall political coherence, helping to bridge the tensions between Religious Right activists and the often more secular fiscal conservatives. When moral failure is invoked to explain the plight of the poor, both can unite around a policy agenda stressing market discipline and the replacement of government social programs with personal responsibility. As James Morone has so trenchantly noted, "Once the lines are drawn [between a righteous us and a malevolent them], one can forget about social justice, progressive thinking,or universal programs. Instead the overarching policy question becomes, "How do we protect ourselves and our children? Never mind health care - build more jails."
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OTHER LINKSGrants to top Religious Sector Organizations
Institute on Religion & Democracy
Institute on Religion and Public Life
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Public Life
Bill Berkowitz Corporate captivesThe Acton Institute attacks Health Care Without Harm and environmentally conscious religious activists
Bill Berkowitz The Corporate/Think Tank ComplexFather Robert Sirico's Acton Institute and ExxonMobil lash out against corporate responsibility activists
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