Howard Ahmanson, Jr.

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Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson, Jr (born 1950) is an heir of the Home Savings bank fortune built by his father, Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson, Sr. Ahmanson Jr. is a multi-millionaire philanthropist and financier of the causes of many fundamentalist Christian cultural, religious and political organizations. He has been highly influential and generous with conservative Republicans and Evangelicals.

Ahmanson is an Episcopalian and lives in Orange County, California. He has been married to Roberta Green Ahmanson since 1986. He is somewhat reclusive and has Tourette syndrome;^[1] his wife usually communicates with the media and others on his behalf.

1 Biography
2 Controversial Beliefs
3 Political, Cultural, and Religious Financing
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Ahmanson is the son of the American financier Howard F. Ahmanson, Sr (1906-1968). His parents divorced when he was 10, and his mother died shortly afterwards. Despite the trappings of wealth, he was a lonely child. Ahmanson has said, "I resented my family background, [my father] could never be a role model, whether by habits or his lifestyle, it was never anything I wanted." Howard Ahmanson, Sr. died when his son was 18, and Ahmanson Jr. inherited a vast fortune.

Ahmanson Jr. went to Occidental College, where he obtained a degree in economics. He then toured Europe, but he returned because of arthritis. He earned a master's degree in linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington and has fluency in several foreign languages.

Part of the series on
Dominionism

Ideas

Theonomy
Reconstructionism
Church-state separation

People who advocate Dominionism

R. J. Rushdoony
Greg Bahnsen
Gary North
Gary DeMar
Kenneth Gentry
David Chilton
D. James Kennedy
Marvin Olasky
Paul Weyrich

Dominionist groups

Chalcedon Foundation
Family Research Council
National Religious Broadcasters
Eagle Forum
Free Congress Foundation

People who influence Dominionism

Abraham Kuyper
John Cotton
Francis Schaeffer

People who define and track Dominionism

TheocracyWatch
Chip Berlet
Edmund Morgan
Political Research Assoc

Financiers of Dominionism

Howard Ahmanson Jr

v • d • e

In the 1970s Ahmanson became a Calvinist and joined R. J. Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionist movement. Ahmanson served as a board member of Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation for over two decades. In an article published in the Orange County Register on June 30, 1996, Ahmanson said he had left the Chalcedon board and "does not embrace all of Rushdoony's teachings." (Qtd. in Reason, Nov. 1998.) However, Max Blumenthal reported in Salon in 2004 that "until Rushdoony's death in 2001, Ahmanson served on the board of his think tank, Chalcedon, granting it a total of $1 million."

In the 1970s Ahmanson was instrumental in starting the career of conservative Christian intellectual Marvin Olasky who then became an important figure in the conservative Evangelical media and political scene where Ahmanson has also been a key behind-the-scenes player.

Ahmanson is a board member of the John M. Perkins Foundation and (along with his wife) the Claremont Institute. He was a member of the Council for National Policy in 1984-85, 1988 and sat on its Board of Governors in 1996 and 1998. He has written articles appearing in The Los Angeles Times, Philanthropy, Religion and Liberty, and other publications.

TIME Magazine covered the Ahmansons in their 2005 profiles of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, classifying them as "the financiers."

Howard Ahmanson Jr. is a trustee of The Ahmanson Foundation, which was established by his father and is still operated by members of the Ahmanson family. The Ahmanson Foundation serves Los Angeles County non-profit organizations "by funding cultural projects in the arts and humanities, education at all levels, health care, programs related to homelessness and underserved populations as well as a wide range of human services."

[edit] Controversial Beliefs

Ahmanson was a lifelong friend of R. J. Rushdoony, and his ties to the Christian Reconstructionist movement continue to be a source of controversy. For example, in an article on the Episcopal Diocese of Washington website attacking the American Anglican Council, Jim Naughton emphasized Ahmanson's ties with Rushdoony.^[2] Ahmanson told the Orange County Register in 1985, "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives." After a $3,000 contribution to Linda Lingle, a Republican running for governor of Hawaii, was returned in 2002, the Ahmansons admitted they had an image problem and let the Orange County Register do a five-part series on them in 2004 to give the public a more accurate view of their work and beliefs.

Ahmanson seems to have moderated his views to adopt a broader but still extremely far-right Dominionist political theology. He is reported to have "never supported his mentor's calls for the death penalty for homosexuals," (The Observer, March 6, 2005), but as the Orange County Register reported in 2004, "he stops just short of condemning the idea," saying that he "no longer consider[s] [it] essential" to stone people who are deemed to have committed certain immoral acts. Ahmanson also told the Register, "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things. But I don't think it's at all a necessity." (Orange County Register, August 10, 2004) Also in 2004, when asked by Max Blumenthal for Salon if "she and her husband would still want to install the supremacy of biblical law," Roberta Ahmanson replied: "I'm not suggesting we have an amendment to the Constitution that says we now follow all 613 of the case laws of the Old Testament ... But if by biblical law you mean the last seven of the Ten Commandments, you know, yeah." (Salon, January 6, 2004)

In any case, Ahmanson was (at the time of Naughton's article) a member of an Episcopal parish^[3], and in the 2004 Salon profile he distanced himself from some of Rushdoony's opinions on homosexuality. ^[4]

[edit] Political, Cultural, and Religious Financing

Howard and Roberta Ahmansons' personal philanthropic organization is Fieldstead and Company, AKA the Fieldstead Institute, an unincorporated entity which has never had an online presence or telephone number. Fieldstead's Senior Program Officer is Steven Ferguson, an expert in public policy funding and a member-at-large of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS). OCMS is part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians network (INFEMIT), which previously shared its address with the Ethics and Public Policy Institute. At that time, between 2000 and 2004, the EPPI contributed $357,414 to OCMS and $262,000 to the Network for Anglican Mission and Evangelism (NAME) which was then supporting the secession of American Episcopal dioceses from the ECUSA over such issues as the ordination of a gay bishop. INFEMIT and OCMS, also a recipient of funds from the Ahmanson-funded American Anglican Council (AAC), aim to redefine missionary evangelism among Evangelicals, training them in missions as an activity that can include the normal professional activities of laymen. Ahmanson himself has written for an OCMS publication.

Fieldstead does not disclose its finances, but in 2004 they gave the Orange County Register a list of the top 20 organizations they support. In order of the total amount they had given up to that point: Fullhart-Carnegie Museum Trust, Perry, Iowa; Drew University, Madison, N.J.; Discovery Institute, Seattle, Wash.; Claremont Institute; St. James Episcopal Church, Newport Beach; Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.; American Anglican Council, Washington, D.C.; Food for the Hungry, Phoenix, Ariz.; Mariners Christian School, Costa Mesa; Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.; Biola University, La Mirada, Calif.; Orange County Rescue Mission, Santa Ana, Calif.; The Chalcedon Foundation, Vallecito, Calif.; INFEMIT USA, Washington, D.C.; Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.; World Vision, Federal Way, Wash.; Maranatha Trust, Washington, D.C.; National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, Cincinnati, Ohio; SEN USA, Hobart, Ind.; InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Madison, Wis.

Ahmanson has funded the magazine Chalcedon Report, the magazine of the Chalcedon Foundation. He funds the Claremont Institute and has been an important donor to the Reason Foundation. He has donated to numerous political candidates and organizations associated with the United States Republican Party. Some of his donations have been returned because of his views and associations.

Ahmanson is the chair of the California Independent Business Political Action Committee (PAC) and a member of the Republican state central committee. Since the 1980s, he has successfully worked with a small number of conservative businessmen and multi-millionaires, principally Rob Hurtt of Container Supply Corporation, to organize political action committees and increase conservatives' control of the California state government. Ahmanson and Hurtt created the Capitol Resources Institute, which became a major lobbying force for Christian conservatives in Sacramento. The Ahmansons made political donations to the 1993 California school voucher initiative (which failed) and a 1992 voucher initiative in Colorado. Donations from the Ahmansons, Howard's associate Rob Hurrt, and the PACs they are involved with added up to almost $3 million split between 19 conservative candidates and various causes in 1992. Hurtt himself was elected State Senator in 1994 and became chairman of the Republican campaign committee for the State Legislature. At that time, the GOP was only four seats away from majority control in 1994. This political success has been seen as the result of planning undertaken at the Third Annual Northwest Conference for Reconstruction in 1983 by Wayne Johnson, who, according to The Public Eye, helped craft California's 1990 term limits initiative and "managed the campaigns of several Ahmanson-backed candidates in 1992." The Ahmansons supported Proposition 22, a ban on same-sex marriage in California. Howard Ahmanson contributed $62,500 to the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom which aided the citizens and leaders of the Kern County school district defend their choice to ban One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book by Gabriel García Márquez, for its "profanity" and "vulgarity." (Other Ahmanson political initiatives and their results are discussed in Blumenthal's 2004 Salon article.)

Through Fieldstead, Ahmanson is a primary backer of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and has supported groups such as the American Anglican Council on projects to resist efforts to liberalize mainline Protestant churches, particularly with respect to issues concerning homosexuality.

Ahmanson is also a major backer of the Discovery Institute, whose Center for Science and Culture opposes the theory of evolution and manages a public relations campaign promoting Intelligent Design.

Ahmanson has been the major funder for the Capitol Resource Institute, the California political front of Focus on the Family; the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, the Reason Foundation, an offshoot of Reason Public Policy Institute (RPPI); and the California Pro-Life Council. Ahmanson helped found the Rutherford Institute and is a major donor to Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation. The Ahmanson Foundation was a contributor to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) from 1990 to 1993. Fieldstead has acted as co-publisher with Crossway Books to publish the "Christian Worldview Series" of books under the title Turning Point, in which some critics have perceived the influence of Reconstructionist ideas.

Through Fieldstead, Ahmanson's wife Roberta, a former religion reporter, has funded and been directly involved with some programs of the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities (now known as the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities). These include the CCCU's World Journalism Institute, its Washington Journalism Center, its Summer Institute of Journalism, and its Fieldstead Journalism Lectures. Fieldstead has funded other conservative Christian journalistic projects such as Gegrapha and GetReligion.org. Roberta Ahmanson is currently working on a book called They Got It All Wrong that covers major news stories she believes were "not covered accurately ... because they left out religion."

Fieldstead funds a summer seminar at Calvin College that started in 1996 with a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The Ahamansons also fund Christian scholars such as James Davison Hunter, a chaired professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Virginia. The Ahmansons pledged support of $1 million through 2005 for Hunter's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, which publishes The Hedgehog Review. This journal receieved an award from the Modern Language Association in 2000 as the best new academic journal.

Ahmanson has funded a four-year series of conferences on holistic development co-sponsored with Food for the Hungry International, held in Thailand, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, and the Philippines, an international photo exhibit and book on the victims of war in Nagorno-Karabakh, support for music education for elementary students in public schools in Orange County, California, sponsorship of Stanley Spencer: An English Vision, a retrospective exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City, and the Palace of Fine Art in San Francisco.

The late Rev. John Perkins, an African American minister who promoted racial reconciliation was financially supported by Howard Ahmanson.

There are several interrelated articles on Wikipedia about this subject, see: Phillip E. Johnson; Wedge strategy; Teach the Controversy; Discovery Institute

[edit] Notes

^ Doward, J. Anti-gay millionaire bankrolls Caravaggio spectacular. The Observer. March 6, 2005.
^ "Naughton, Jim, "Following the Money", part 1 from the Episcopal DIocese of Washington website
^ Naughton, ibid.
^ "Due to my association with Rushdoony, reporters have often assumed that I agree with him in all applications of the penalties of the Old Testament Law, particularly the stoning of homosexuals," Ahmanson wrote. "My vision for homosexuals is life, not death, not death by stoning or any other form of execution, not a long, lingering, painful death from AIDS, not a violent death by assault, and not a tragic death by suicide. My understanding of Christianity is that we are all broken, in need of healing and restoration. So far as I can tell, the only hope for our healing is through faith in Jesus Christ and the power of his resurrection from the dead." From Salon profile of January 6, 2004