Another hopeful development shows hints of taint
David French and Russell Moore need to think again about some of the company they're keeping
One of the hallmarks of our present age is finding out that a person or a movement that had earned one’s enthusiasm has problematic aspects.
I had this experience in November when it came to my attention that Andrew T. Walker, an Ethics and Public Policy Center scholar and theologian I’d long admired, not only asserted that newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson was a Christian with a sound moral compass, but colored his defense of his assertion with a detectable element of snark. I actually engaged him on the matter on Twitter (X, for those who are complying with Elon Musk’s reshaping of the landscape) and he said he was on record recognizing that Johnson’s election denial was a problem. I’ll take his word for it, but the fact that it wasn’t a deal breaker for him profoundly disappointed me.
Going back further - eight or nine years - I’ve had my respect for a great many cultural observers shattered over the matter of you-know-who: Roger Kimball, Victor Davis Hanson, the Heritage Foundation, The Claremont Institute.
But the latest example of the overall phenomenon is of a mirror-opposite nature (and this happens with some frequency as well).
David French and Russell Moore, two prominent Christian thinkers I’ve admired as greatly as Walker, seem to have employed questionable judgement in some of the company they’re keeping.
They, along with a third person I’ll bring in shortly, have embarked on a project called The After Party, and it looks like their motives in doing so are admirable:
We don’t have all the answers, but we know we have lost our way. As Christians, we must confront toxic polarization and heal our broken politics. As we rebuild, we have a perfect example. Jesus refused to be defined by the politics of his day, and he calls us to be salt and light for our world as well.
Our identity in Christ is far more important than any political party. But separating our Christian identity from our political one can be challenging. That’s what we’re here to explore together.
The project’s website offers some videos and registration for some upcoming events, so it’s definitely up and running.
But at First Things, Megan Basham provides details about the unsavory associations I allude to above:
. . . to get The After Party off the ground, [French, Moore, and their third associate] (all frequent critics of evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump) turned to “predominantly progressive” “unbelievers.” In fact, they turned to secular left-wing foundations.
Alberta’s book offers no details about the funding of the project, but a bit of internet sleuthing reveals that in May 2022, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors announced that The After Party would be one of the thirty-two beneficiaries of their New Pluralists project, which is investing $10 million to “address divisive forces.” If that money were divided evenly, it would more than cover the entire $250,000 budget of Chang’s umbrella organization, Redeeming Babel, which is behind The After Party. While Chang and company claim their program isn’t focused on parties or policies, the Rockefeller announcement noted it would launch in the “battleground” of Ohio, though none of The After Party founders call that state home.
Rockefeller’s interest in bankrolling Bible studies is a red flag. In the same grant round as The After Party is a group seeking to promote the “leadership of rural LGBTQ+ people.” Another is committed to “keeping the remaining fossil fuel resources in the ground” in the name of “climate justice.” In 2019, The After Party’s benefactor gave $100 million to the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity, an initiative that funds efforts to safeguard abortion and ensure “youth” have access to “gender-affirming care.” A full accounting of all Rockefeller grantees committed to furthering hard-left causes would require a book long enough to rival Alberta’s.
Rockefeller’s isn’t the only progressive purse with strings attached to The After Party. The project’s website lists One America Movement, an ecumenical group, as one of its partners. The group’s board includes the leader of an LGBTQ-affirming synagogue, as well as a co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York who excuses rioting as self-defense and has called Jesus a “black radical revolutionary.” One America has received over $2 million from some of the most powerful foundations on the left—such as the Tides Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Walton family’s Catena Foundation, and the John Pritzker Family Fund—all of which fund enterprises promoting abortion, LGBTQ issues, and other left-wing priorities. The Hewlett Foundation, which also directly funds The After Party, is the second largest private donor to Planned Parenthood.
Does anyone really believe these secular progressive grant-makers are interested in developing a church curriculum about politics without an eye toward affecting policy? Or that this curriculum will strengthen evangelicals’ commitment to the very causes progressives despise? Between 2013 and 2014, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Tides foundations contributed a combined $1.3 million to the Evangelical Immigration Table’s “Bibles, Badges, and Business” initiative, launched to mobilize evangelical support for amnesty legislation such as the failed Gang of Eight bill. Hewlett and a host of other major left-wing donors bankrolledthe Evangelical Environmental Network’s Evangelical Climate Initiativewith the aim of generating churchgoer support for cap and trade legislation. Secular progressive foundations have not hesitated to leverage new evangelical ministries to sway Christians to their political will.
Creating a Bible study curriculum to teach churches how to engage politics is by nature a political act. That’s even truer if you’ve turned for financial support to unbelievers committed to advancing left-wing policies. If these critics of conservative evangelicals are correct that their Trump-voting brothers and sisters are sick with political obsession, then they have the same disease. One would be hard-pressed to identify evangelical voices who’ve done more to bring a divisive focus on politics into the pews—all under the pretense of de-escalation and bipartisanship.
Now, about that third associate:
As a pro-life Democrat, Chang blamed the “American Church” for the January 6 riot, saying we “own what happened at the Capitol.” He urged California voters to oppose the recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom. And he leveraged his Christian platform to argue against religious exemptions from vaccine mandates, running the website Christians and the Vaccine, and distributing videos that described the jab as a “redemption” of aborted cell lines—all while acting as a paid consultant for federal health agencies. French and Moore have been no less outspoken on political matters.
To offer a politics curriculum backed by the secular left as the church’s solution to idolatrous co-optation by the right is like suggesting that a man who became obese eating cake and ice cream will lose weight by gorging on pizza and potato chips. As a friend told me, “If you want the church to be less political, start by focusing less on politics yourself.”
Now, I’m just bringing myself up to speed on where Basham is coming from. The archive of her articles at World seem to be free of any hyper-partisan excuse-making. Her general thrust seems to be looking for evidence of celebration of character and nobility in our culture - surely a worthy undertaking.
Her work at The Daily Wire covers this ground, but also gets into some culture war fare - which doesn’t bother me for the most part; I, too, am alarmed about transgenderism, and can now see, with a couple of years’ worth of hindsight, that the Fauci-led effort to address COVID went overboard. (I am not so quick as some to ascribe a collectivist agenda to Dr. Fauci himself.)
So she doesn’t seem to be some kind of ate-up yay-hoo.
That’s important, because it’s important to avoid getting taken in by such types, which is the overall point of the post you’re presently reading.
I guess if one takes a conversation about this to its logical conclusion, that’s what the challenge of living in fellowship is all about. A group of people may all recognize the centrality of Christ to everything, and accept him individually as their personal savior, and still have viewpoints fraught with the potential for conflict, given that no two human beings physically occupy the same space at the same time. Our perspectives have a uniqueness to them. Paul recognized this and addressed the danger of quarreling in various apostolic letters.
On a personal level, it’s incumbent upon me to cultivate a sense of what I’ve thought out soundly and with a God-inclined heart, and winnow that out from my more impulsive thoughts.
But I must also cultivate a radar in good working order with regard to where Christian activity I encounter is compromised.
And, based on Ms. Basham’s pretty straightforward laying out of where that has already happened with The After Party, I want to hear from Moore and French whether they’re okay with these ties, or what they plan to do about them.