Word: demoss
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...just trying to win hearts for Jesus, fine," says Chip Berlet of the left-of-center group Political Research Associates. "But given their history, I'm looking for the other shoe to drop." He cites The Rebirth of America, a 1986 book published by the foundation and edited by DeMoss daughter Nancy Leigh DeMoss that lists the gay-rights movement, abortion and "our humanistic, secular public school system" as proof that "Americans have lost their way in part because they do not know their own Christian heritage." Given that philosophy, critics look with skepticism on the foundation's promise...
Like a majority of DeMoss undertakings, the Power for Living campaign turns out to be a simple call to Christ. But a significant minority of the foundation's projects are harder edged, targeting abortion and gay rights and promoting a vision of a Christian America some find overzealous. The DeMoss family, led by matriarch Nancy, 61, is politically and theologically conservative. Its charity was "an early and significant supporter of the religious right," says William Martin, author of With God on Our Side, a history of the movement. As the DeMoss Foundation demonstrates its willingness to pour tens of millions...
Arthur S. DeMoss, who died in 1979, began his working life as a bookie. He ran two profitable Albany, N.Y., "horse rooms" and owned three Cadillacs by age 24. A year later, however, a revival-tent conversion redirected his energies. He embarked on what Tony Campolo, a Philadelphia-area pastor whose congregation DeMoss and his wife Nancy once belonged to, calls "the most consistent Christian life of any person I've ever known." Campolo recalls an early talk with DeMoss. "He said to me, 'I'm gonna give my life to full-time Christian service.' I asked...
...family carried it on. Nancy is the foundation's CEO, brother Robert is president, and three DeMoss children are directors. Nancy plays host at evangelizing dinners for the rich and powerful at her houses in Florida and Manhattan (one invitee estimated the events' cost at $80,000 each). Privately, she contributed $70,000 to Newt Gingrich's political-action committee, GOPAC. A daughter, Deborah, worked for Senator Jesse Helms as a Foreign Relations Committee aide, specializing in the right-wing Latin American parties Helms favored in the 1980s. (She has since left the foundation board.) Mark, a board member, worked...
...foundation's 1997 tax filings show both sides of the group's character. Of $25 million in expenditures, some $9 million paid for foreign evangelism. Domestically, roughly the same amount was put into a TV campaign for youth abstinence ("You're worth waiting for"). Thus three-fourths of DeMoss's giving qualifies as relatively noncontroversial. However, $1.6 million went to the American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit law firm founded by Pat Robertson that opposes gay marriage, defends abortion protesters and promotes various types of school prayer...