Powerful political interests are concerned about what Ohioans hear from the pulpit and what’s discussed in Ohio Bible study groups. At least that’s what the flow of cash into a new church movement indicates.
Millions from the Rockefeller Foundation, Tides Foundation, James Pritzker Foundation, and others have poured into Ohio political causes, often focusing on LGBTQ issues, immigration, shaping the state constitution, and, especially, abortion.
They are now bankrolling a new Bible study curriculum with political overtones — with the apparent outlook that shaping Ohioans’ Bible study curriculum may drive how they vote at the ballot box.
The Story
The AfterParty is a collection of leaders spearheaded by Never Trump pundit David French, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, and Duke Divinity School consulting professor Curtis Chang, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. Chang was behind a push to get Christians to take experimental COVID-19 vaccines.
The AfterParty says it aims to shape Christians’ political participation with a “biblically-based approach to navigating today’s challenging political environment.” The group offers Bible study curricula and resources for churches.
But it was revealed this year that the AfterParty, and its parent project, Redeeming Babel, are the brainchild of liberal philanthropy groups that bankroll pet Democrat issues such as abortion initiatives and Ohio’s Issue 1. Related groups have also been active in forcing transgenderism into the public square as a political issue, and in ballot initiatives that keep Democrats in power.
Investigative journalist Meghan Basham’s research showed Redeeming Babel and the AfterParty were not an organic outgrowth of Christians’ response to America’s political moment, but were instead the project of major Blue philanthropy dollars. She wrote in First Things in February:
“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.”
Basham also looked into the AfterParty’s funding from the One America Movement, linking the project with a host of other entities aiming to shape America according to leftwing priorities.
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.
Basham’s investigation was part of a deep dive into how evangelical leaders have sought funding from, and been compromised by, powerful interests. Her book, Shepherds for Sale, released July 30, documents how Christian pastors have changed views on hot-button issues or reshaped churches and denominations around liberal causes—and received cash and powerful connections.
Leaders have gone on the defensive. J.D. Greaar, who led the sex-scandal-plagued Southern Baptist Convention between 2018 and 2021, and who was named in Basham’s investigation of leaders cozying with the left, issued a statement this week amidst the book’s fallout.
Ohio Political and Religious Funding
The AfterParty’s and Redeeming Babel’s backers have been on the initiative in Ohio for a long time. The Tides Foundation, which is a major backer of the One America Movement has spent more than $8.5 million in Ohio since 2017, with the lion’s share going to Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights. Much of the rest has gone to other liberal groups involved in remaking Ohio’s constitution with Issue 1 last year.
The John Pritzker Family Fund represents but one wing of the Pritzker business and political dynasty. The Pritzkers are heirs of the Hyatt Hotel fortune, and extremely active in politics. J.B. Pritzker is governor of Illinois. Several members of the Pritzker family made contributions nearing $1 million to Ohio issues. The Pritzkers are major drivers of reframing sexual identity in schools, universities, and medical schools.
[READ: The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities]
The AfterParty’s main backer, the Rockefeller Foundation, exclusively funds democrats. Direct contributions to candidates went to Kamala Harris, Jon Tester, Ruben Gallego, and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, among others.
And now, the AfterParty is coming for Ohioans’ Bible studies, targeting the state with its Bible study curriculum. The group has telegraphed its activity in Ohio in podcasts and blog posts, suggesting the state would be a pilot for the curriculum.
Not only is the state a stronghold of regular church attendance, Ohio is a political keystone, often a bellwether for other states. With the exception of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, no president has taken office without carrying the state of Ohio since JFK in 1960.
The AfterParty went on the defensive after Basham’s exposé: “TAP was tested in Ohio because pastors there have reported a great deal of congregational political polarization and because Ohio’s political culture is broadly representative of the larger American public,” the group said in a statement.
Ohio was a major part of Trump’s rise in 2016, with other rustbelt states that saw firsthand the carnage and decay unleashed by offshoring, trade agreements, and loss of manufacturing capital. Just a few generations ago, Midwest cities like Detroit, Akron, Dayton, and Toledo had among the highest per capita incomes in the nation. Today tells a different story.
The AfterParty and its backers want Ohioans to accept this fate.
Neutralizing Ohioans at the Ballot Box
The group’s strategy appears to be getting out in front of political hot-buttons to recontextualize them in different language. The group consulted with Chuck Mingo, a pastor at Crossroads, a Cincinnati megachurch, on religious identity. With the innocuous-sounding starting point of religious identity transcending other allegiances — few religious groups, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim would disagree on this — the AfterParty then recontextualizes and reframes the specific issues.
Why the liberal philanthropic dollars? And why do Basham’s subjects in Shepherds for Sale all eventually tend toward changing their churches’ teachings or supporting liberal policies on, say, immigration, if the AfterParty doesn’t have very specific designs on Ohioans’ vote?
For instance, the AfterParty and Redeeming Babel partnered with The National Immigration Forum in Ohio last year, holding a church conference in Westerville. NIF advocates for granting citizenship to illegal immigrants and counts George Soros’ Open Society Foundation as its largest backer, according to InfluenceWatch.
The National Immigration Forum event in Westerville, held at the Westerville campus of Vineyard Columbus, couched language around Americans’ response to immigration in therapeutic terms like “anxiety.” Paired with spiritualizing keywords like “hope,” “anxieties” around immigration are to be put to rest without engagement of the downstream effects or upstream causes.
Immigration has become the central issue of the election with untold millions pouring over the U.S. border during the Biden-Harris administration, leaving a wake of high-profile crimes, strained infrastructure, housing shortages, and $12.5 trillion in anticipated fiscal costs.
Why wouldn’t Americans feel anxious about an arbitrary and unnecessary loss of security on the U.S. Southern border? Or about human trafficking or the flow of fentanyl into the country?
Meanwhile, opposition to an open border is widespread, with mass deportations favored by a majority of voters, not only by Christians. The AfterParty seems to aim to defang Christianity, one potential bloc of opposition to liberal policies, including the remaking of America through mass-immigration.
It should come as no surprise with David French’s involvement in the project. French, an avowed Never Trump Republican, has become a byword in right-leaning circles after a string of high profile endorsements of views and figures at odds with both Christians and conservatives.
French has become a symbol of an impotent Republican intelligentsia cozy with liberal DC elites on issues like foreign intervention and nation-building, social issues, open borders, and exporting U.S. jobs in search of cheaper labor.
French at last came full circle, endorsing Kamala Harris in a NYT op-ed last week.
Whether the AfterParty’s attempt at neutralizing Christianity and shaming Christians at the ballot box succeeds, their aim is clear: to change how Ohio Christians read their Bibles — while downplaying how they read the signs of the times in their own communities.
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