Constance Cumbey (born February 29, 1944) is a lawyer and activist Christian author.
Contents |
Cumbey was born as Constance Elizabeth Butler to a family of English, German, and French ancestry in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and raised as a Seventh-day Adventist.
She was the first of seven children born to her parents. Her paternal grandparents were both raised as Quakers (Society of Friends) but after their marriage converted to the Church of the Nazarene. Her paternal grandmother was a Church of the Nazarene Sunday School teacher for upwards of 50 years. Her father's cousin, the Rev. Russell Butler, was a longtime Quaker pastor in Indianapolis. On her maternal side, Cumbey's mother, Margaret, as well as an uncle joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church as adults.
She served as one of nine members of the Speaker's Staff of the Michigan House of Representatives, holding the title of "Administrative Assistant and Legislative Analyst to the Speaker of the House."
Cumbey began law school in 1972. While attending law school, she was employed as a consultant to the Governmental Efficiency Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee for the Michigan State Senate. She was the first Charter appointee as Executive Assistant to the mayor of the City of Highland Park, Michigan from 1970 to 1972. She graduated from the Detroit College of Law, now known as the Michigan State University College of Law in 1975 with a Juris Doctor degree.
Cumbey has been a practicing attorney since 1975 and before writing her books was an active a member of the American Bar Association. Since returning to the active practice of law in the 1980s, she is an active member of the Macomb and Wayne County Bar associations as well as the mandatory State Bar of Michigan affiliation.
From 1992 to 2004, she hosted a Detroit radio program , focused on legal affairs, known as Law Talk on a Christian station.
Cumbey began a secondary career as a researcher and writer in 1981, to write about the New Age movement. She gave up her law practice for a while to dedicate herself to writing and public speaking to this end.
Cumbey offered the first major criticism of the New Age movement from a Christian perspective in The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism (1983).[1] In 2006, she accused Christian writer Texe Marrs of plagiarizing material from her book.[2]
Her rejection of New Age spirituality was based on her understanding of Christian teachings regarding the role of Christ as saviour, and of Biblical prophecy. She has also in her writings, expressed and documented her concerns that the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana could have potentially dictatorial potential.