The Family Policy Alliance is perhaps the most influential conservative Christian pro-family organization most Americans have never heard of.
Founded four decades ago by Focus on the Family, the nonprofit serves as Focus’ public policy partner, promoting its political agenda in 41 states.
In March, CEO Craig DeRoche made his annual appearance on Andrew Wommack’s Truth and Liberty Coalition TV show to give an unvarnished look at FPA’s work and its strategy for the culture war battles that will figure into the 2024 election and beyond.
“We can impact key races all across the nation but need critical election designated dollars to do so,” says a fundraising appeal on FPA’s 2024 elections page. “Help Christians cast their light. It takes resources to win elections.”
FPA is celebrating victories on many fronts, including restrictions on drag shows, abortion and IVF, and transgender rights in medical care and sports. (Some of these laws are facing legal challenges.)
Its goals include a war against online porn, “eradicating” abortion and IVF, and reshaping state legislatures and public school boards.
Throughout their March interview, DeRoche and show host Richard Harris claimed voters and government officials who don’t support their agenda are guided by “Satan,” in league with a “demonic onslaught that’s happening in our culture” and “literally evil prowling on this earth.”
At a glance
The Family Policy Alliance, which is headquartered on Focus’ Colorado Springs campus, oversees a network of 41 ideologically allied state organizations, including new partners this year in Oklahoma and Maryland.
Together, the network employs more than 350 people and has revenue of more than $50 million. FPA says it has a network of 50,000 churches.
“FPA is a Christian organization that advances policy to protect your family,” DeRoche said on the program. “We bring that to Washington instead of Washington trying to dictate how to live our lives and to raise our children where we live.”
He added: “It’s time for us to recognize where we are in this battle in America right now. It’s not the end stage where we’re losing. It’s the end of the beginning where we get to reclaim our country for life and liberty and the Lord.”
A new war on porn
In 1986, After James Dobson served on Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, Dobson declared the battle against smut a “winnable war.” A decade later, the internet made porn readily available online.
FPA says its major policy focus for 2024 is “protecting children from pornography” through state legislation that works to “effectively shut off” porn access.
Seven states have passed FPA’s model legislation so far in 2024, following seven states that did so last year. The Focus-aligned Family Research Council is promoting one such bill in Kansas.
“FPA was able to organize a coalition of allied organizations, legislators and expert witnesses all committed to working together,” says its website. Its partners include the Institute for Family Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Center for Renewing America, a Trump-aligned group targeting conservative Christians and Christian nationalists.
DeRoche said the goal was to make porn “unavailable unless you set up a complex virtual private network, which is difficult.”
Restricting transgender care and sports
As BNG reported last year, FPA is the nation’s leading promoter of legislation in 22 states that restricts transgender medical care and threatens those who provide such care with prison sentences. Its legislation restricting trans students’ participation in school athletics has been enacted in 20 states.
“I want to say this out of gratitude, not pride, but it has fallen on us to be one of the leading organizations,” DeRoche said. “We were the organization that actually built those policies and started marketing them out at the local levels and through the states.”
“DeRoche warned against a satanic conspiracy to seduce America’s children into sexual perversions.”
DeRoche warned against a satanic conspiracy to seduce America’s children into sexual perversions: “Our public schools and our government officials seem to want to take the serpent’s place in whispering in the ears of our children and giving them these evil off-ramps.”
DeRoche also sees the political power of anti-trans legislation.
“Folks, this is the biggest thing of any political movement I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, celebrating FPA’s victories. “We overrode five governors in the last 18 months; three of them were Republican governors.
“This is something to organize around. This is something for us to build our movement and to call the evil one out and stop him in his tracks.”
DeRoche compared voluntary transgender medical procedures to the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” a 40-year involuntary study involving hundreds of Black men that violated many ethical standards, led to the deaths of many subjects, and caused an outcry that led to legislation requiring informed consent in medical experiments.
“That’s what I think doctors are doing to our children right now,” he said.
DeRoche also compared FPA’s political activism to the battle for civil rights in the 1960s, saying the movement took off “when the body of Christ showed up.”
At the time, most white evangelicals opposed civil rights. Today, both Focus and FPA oppose Critical Race Theory, which Focus says spreads “lies perpetuated by spiritual darkness” and “wokeness.”
Eradicating abortion and IVF
“Roe v Wade being overturned wasn’t the end of abortion in America, but it was the beginning of the end of abortion in America,” DeRoche said. “We have the opportunity now to eradicate abortion with the Supreme Court out of the way, folks. … It might take us several years. It might take us a couple of decades. But we’re going to win.”
Since Roe was overturned, six states put abortion access on their ballots. Bucking the trend FPA hopes for, abortion access won handily in all six: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Vermont and Ohio.
In 2024, more than a dozen states may have abortion access on their ballots, including Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Pennsylvania and South Dakota.
“It might take us several years. It might take us a couple of decades. But we’re going to win.”
Political analysts predict victories for abortion access at the ballot box, but DeRoche claims that’s a false “leftist narrative.”
He said conservatives “buy into it and it causes us to silence ourselves. … We surrender the field to the leftist narrative of ‘You’re oppressing women.’ And of course, it’s going to cut their direction when we’re not even in the fight” instead of “articulating a pro-life position, which people can respect and get behind.”
DeRoche blamed recent GOP election losses on poor candidates, not Roe. “It wasn’t that the American people were suddenly very angry about the reversal of Roe v. Wade,” he said.
Comparing the fight against abortion to the battles against slavery and for suffrage, DeRoche said overturning Roe resulted in 30,000, 60,000, or 100,000 cases of “human beings that are now on this earth and weren’t murdered in the womb. That’s something we can rejoice over.”
But a study from the Society of Family Planning, a group that supports abortion access, said the number of abortions carried out in the U.S. now is “similar if not higher” than the abortion rate before Roe was overturned.
FPA also opposes access to the abortion drug mifepristone: “It’s against our Constitution. It’s against our 14th Amendment. It’s against our statutes, our mail statutes. And our FDA has never approved it. So we’re living in this bit of an alternative reality.”
And DeRoche said the February Alabama Supreme Court ruling declaring frozen embryos children “was a very proper ruling.” The ruling halted in-vitro fertilization treatments because such procedures often result in the destruction of unused fetuses.
“They had these excess human beings that they felt that they could just discard,” he said. “You shouldn’t be able to do that anywhere in their nation. If you want to understand the abortion industry and IVF industry, please understand that people are making millions and millions of dollars.”
Training conservative Christian activists
What do you do when even conservative Republican officials aren’t conservative enough? FPA influences officials who will promote its agenda through two training initiatives.
“Shape our nation,” says an FPA fundraising appeal. “We’re training our nation’s rising leaders to boldly stand for godly principles. Give today to help fund these impactful programs and invest in a new wave of biblical leadership in America!”
The Statesman Academy trains GOP candidates and officials “for successful policymaking. Christian legislators can feel alone in today’s hostile political environment, and in the face of a combative media.”
The academy now claims graduates serving in 36 state legislatures, including a state speaker of the House and two members of the U.S. Congress. It hopes alumnus Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana wins his Senate race this November.
“Wherever you live, if you’re watching this show, if your school board goes woke, you can count on several hundred of your neighbors standing up for right and good.”
FPA’s School Board Academy now claims graduates in 33 states and is seeking more students. “If you know local school board members, send them our way,” DeRoche said.
“Mark my words, wherever you live, if you’re watching this show, if your school board goes woke, you can count on several hundred of your neighbors standing up for right and good. It’s just too bad that it takes us to go that far and let the evil one have that much rope before the citizens come back.”
Colorado a bad state
Richard Harris, a pastor who serves as executive director of Andrew Wommack’s Truth and Liberty Coalition, expressed appreciation to leaders at FPA who mentored him and have helped the organization out.
“What a blessing they have been throughout our short tenure here,” Harris said. The Coalition was founded in 2017.
The two Christian leaders painted a grim picture of Colorado’s politics, saying the state government is trying to force pro-LGBTQ speech in indoctrination.
“I actually think Colorado maybe descended faster than other states,” DeRoche said, “but it means it can snap back faster.”
Public education isn’t any better.
“When a parent tried to have sex with you, you could call the police on them in the ’70s or ’80s or ’90s,” DeRoche said. “Right now, they’re saying, no, go back in the class and let the teacher do whatever they want with your kids.”
“They have crossed the line that parents know how to react to you right now,” he continued. “It’s a violation of your constitutional rights right now as a parent. It’s a violation of your child’s constitutional rights. It’s a violation of their civil rights, of justice, liberty and equality.”
“It’s time that we pop their balloon, show up at the meetings, and change everything everywhere we can in Colorado,” DeRoche declared. “We want you to rise up, folks. This is our opportunity. And I’m excited.”
This article was originally published in Baptist News Global.
