Intelligence Dispatch: Promise Keepers and Survivors

This weekend, the Christian Right will gather in Dallas, Texas for the Promise Keepers Men's Conference, and in Lake Charles, Louisiana, for the Ruth Institute's Survivors of the Sexual Revolution.

This week on Radical Reports: This weekend, the Christian Right will gather in Dallas, Texas for the Promise Keepers Men's Conference, and in Lake Charles, Louisiana, for the Ruth Institute's Survivors of the Sexual Revolution. In Dallas, conservative Evangelical Christians will embrace their “warrior ideal of Christian men,” and in Lake Charles, anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activists will be “reclaiming the professions for life and family.”

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Radical Right in the Spotlight

The U.S. House select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection will reportedly hold hearings this month. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) told MSNBC that hearings will be scheduled for July 21st or 22nd. “We take our work serious. We want to hear from any and all individuals who think they might have something to contribute to the investigation,” Thompson said.

The number of federal cases against individuals involved in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol: 530

Must Reads

• Alex Kaplan and Danil Cuffe report that “Amazon is selling multiple products associated with a far-right meme that is now synonymous with a known white nationalist group.” [MMFA]

• An advisor for the influential conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, Rip McIntosh, published a newsletter that included overtly anti-Black racism. As Nick Martin reports, “email marks the latest in a series of racist and bigoted incidents that have dogged Turning Point in recent years as the organization has clawed its way from the far-right fringe into mainstream conservatism, aided in part by its connections to former President Donald Trump.” [The Informant]

• Dr. Jessica White writes that there are some gaps—particularly in regards to the role of gender—in the National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism document recently published by the White House. White writes that while an “analysis of misogyny and expectations of toxic masculinity as a driver of domestic terrorism is essential, the need for inclusion of a gender lens runs much deeper than just this category.” [Rantt]

Intelligence Dispatches

• The Ruth Institute, an ultra-conservative Christian Right organization, is hosting the organization’s fourth annual Summit for the Survivors of the Sexual Revolution in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

• Conference Program Panels Includes:

  • Understanding the Global Sexual Revolution

  • Counting the Casualties of the Sexual Revolution

  • The Medical Costs of the Sexual Revolution

  • Demographic Winter and the Future of Freedom and Family

  • Resisting the Corruption of Education

• Featured Speakers at the Conference Include:

  • Sharon Slater, cofounder and president of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ organization Family Watch International, is a self-described “world-renowned speaker” on “human sexuality and family policy issues.” Slater has been involved in providing training for politicians in Africa on how to campaign against sex education and LGBT rights, claims that comprehensive sexuality education is “abortion, promiscuity and LGBT rights education,” and wrote that LGBT people are “significantly more promiscuous” and “significantly more likely to engage in pedophilia.”

  • Katy Faust, the author Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement, was raised by same-sex parents and is now an anti-LGBTQ activists. Faust has said that her organization has the “very modest goal of a total global takeover of all conversations around marriage and family,” and wrote that all embryos created though in-vitro futurization should be “implanted into their mother’s womb” even if that “means some parents will have more children than they originally wanted.”

• The Ruth Institute’s tax filings show a relatively modest budget, as the group reported $516,195 in revenue during 2019. The Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, the charitable foundation founded by the influential conservative Michigan family, as distributed $100,000 in total grants since 2011 to the Ruth Institute. The GFC Foundation (God, Family, and Country), the charitable foundation of a Utah-based influential conservative family, has awarded $229,500 in total grants since 2011 to the Ruth Institute.

• The Promise Keepers, an Evangelical Christian parachurch organization, is hosting a Men’s Conference at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

• Ken Harrison is the Chairman and CEO of Promise Keepers, and promoted the upcoming conference during an episode of Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. Harrison also serves as CEO of WaterStone, a donor-advised fund that provides millions of dollars in grants to right-wing organizations including Alliance Defending Freedom, American Center for Law & Justice, American Family Association, Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family. The KAIROS Company, a marketing firm founded by Johnnie Moore—the self-described “a modern day Dietrich Bonhoeffer” who was appointed by former President Trump to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom—also counts Harrison as a client.

• Featured Speakers at the Men’s Conference Include:

  • James Robison, the televangelist and the founder and president of Life Outreach International, is the founder of The Stream, a right-wing media outlet that publishes articles attacking critical race theory, attacking the LGBTQ community, and promoting conspiracy theories about COVID-19.

  • Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, has often presented himself as a moderate Evangelical Christian, however, Rodriquez has a history of promoting right-wing views.

  • A.R. Bernard, pastor of the Brooklyn, New York megachurch Christian Cultural Center, who served on former President Donald Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board (Bernard resigned from the advisory board in the wake of Trump’s comments on the White supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.)

• The Promise Keeper reported $2.2 million in revenue during 2019, according to the organization’s tax filings. The Masters Table, the charitable foundation of the Tennessee family that founded King Pharmaceuticals, made a $691,000 donation in 2014 to Promise Keepers. The Christian Community Foundation, the donor advised fund known as WaterStone, has awarded total of $819,536 in grants to Promise Keepers since 2017. The National Christian Foundation, the donor advised fund, has awarded $1,636,735 in total grants since 2012 to Promise Keepers.

Events on the Right

• The Survivors of the Sexual Revolution, an event sponsored by the ultra-conservative Christian Right organization the Ruth Institute, is a summit for “activists in an exclusive environment to access research and seminars from the foremost thinkers combatting the Sexual Revolution.” The summit will be held in Lake Charles, Louisiana from July 15-16. (Price Tag: $85 - $400)

  • Featured Speakers Include: Reverend Walter Hoye; president of the anti-abortion group Issues4Life; Sharon Slater, founder of the anti-abortion and anti-LGTBQ organization Family Watch International; and Katy Faust, write and anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activists

• The FAMiLY Leader, the prominent conservative Christian Right Iowa-based organization, is hosting the Family Leadership Summit, an event billed as an opportunity for conservative activists to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness in America today.” The summit will take place is Des Moines, Iowa on July 16. (Price Tag: $75)

  • Featured Speakers Include: Former Vice President Mike Pence; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Ken Starr, former U.S. Solicitor General and former president of Baylor University; and Michael Youssef, senior pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, Georgia.

• National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a conservative Christian Nationalist conference of state lawmakers, is hosting the organization’s National Policy Conference in Dallas, Texas from July 15-18. (Price Tag: $100 - $400)

  • Featured Speakers Include: Sam Brownback, former Trump Administration U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom; Tim Barton, president of the Christian Nationalist organization Wallbuilders; Pastor John Hagee, conservative Christian televangelist and Christian-Zionist; Bob McEwen, former Republican Congressman and associate of The Family; Janet Porter, anti-abortion activists and architect of so-called “heartbeat” abortion bans.

• Patriot Academy, a youth program that seeks to “train students to understand and influence government policy with a Biblical worldview,” will be hosting a Northeast Regional Capitol Boot Camp at the Delaware Capitol. The boot camp, an initiative of by the Christian nationalist organization Wallbuilders, will be held from July 14-16. (Price Tag: $477 - $597)

• Right to Life Louisiana, the state affiliate of the anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee, is hosting an activists training camp by PULSE Leadership Institute (PLI), an organization that provides training for “high school and college students as leaders in the pro-life movement.” The camp takes place from July 12-16. (Price Tag: $214)

• Live Action, an anti-abortion group known for publishing surreptitiously recorded videos of the staff and physicians at clinics that provide abortion, is hosting an Activist Training, that will provide “world-class training from leading pro-life speakers and put your new skills to practice with hands on activism opportunities,” on July 11t-14th in San Francisco, California. (Price Tag: $399)

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