Family Policy Alliance Foundation and Christians Engaged, two conservative Christian groups focused on political activism, have merged so they can “sign up 1 million Christians to engage in the upcoming U.S. presidential election and local elections across the country for years to come.”
The July 1 announcement said the two nonprofit groups hope to “help shape the future landscape of America” through “an expanded network capable of driving cultural and legislative change to advance biblical values.”
The Colorado Springs-based Family Policy Alliance Foundation is a sister organization to Family Policy Alliance, which is the least familiar of the three activist organizations James Dobson founded at Focus on the Family in his “battle for righteousness” through politics and law, not ministry through the church. The others are the D.C.-based Family Research Council and the powerhouse legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which Dobson founded with others.
The Alliance, which was founded within Focus in the 1980s and is based on the Focus campus, oversees a network of nearly 40 allied state groups that have led the charge to pass laws in nearly two dozen states that restrict the activities of transgender athletes and restrict gender transition medical care. The Alliance also says it battles Satan through laws restricting drag shows, access to online porn, abortion and IVF.
Together, the Family Policy Alliance and its Foundation have income of less than $4 million, but their national network has revenue of more than $50 million, employs more than 350 people and claims to reach a network of 50,000 churches.
The merger announcement comes weeks before the Alliance hosts its second annual SoConCon gathering in D.C. for social conservatives, including dozens of groups involved in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 for the next Republican president.
Christians Engaged was founded in Texas in 2019 by Bunni Pounds, a former political consultant who raised more than $10 million for Republican congressional candidates and made her own unsuccessful run for a U.S. House seat. Christians Engaged had revenue of $692,121 in 2022.
Pounds portrayed the merger as a fulfillment of Christ’s prayer that his disciples “all may be one.”
“I love gathering with top conservative leaders and seeing Lutherans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Reformed and all the rest together in one room,” she said. “This is huge news for the Body of Christ, the social conservative movement, and our nation,” she wrote in The Stream, an outlet of Texas televangelist James Robison.
Pounds said that today’s conservative Christian activists share a nondenominational unity similar to that previously enjoyed by fans of Christian recording artists Steven Curtis Chapman, Margaret Becker, Steve Camp and Carman.
“No one cared what denomination they were from. The only questions were, did they know him, and could they communicate his heart for people and for the church? I believe Bible-believing political activists today, and the larger social conservative movement, operate that way now. We understand each other — and we need each other. We are on the front lines of the battle for the soul of our nation, and we all know it.”
“When we join forces to push back against bad policies, corrupt leaders, and outright wickedness, we shouldn’t care where our battle buddies come from or the nuances of our beliefs. All that matters is stopping the enemy’s forward advance.”
Christians Engaged’s work will be absorbed by Family Policy Alliance Foundation, and Pounds will serve as vice president of civic and church engagement for both the Foundation and the Alliance.
The merger with Christians Engaged means Family Policy Alliance now joins a growing number of faith-based groups targeting conservative religious voters, including My Faith Votes (which claims it helped elect Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Virginia), iVoterGuide (a division of the American Family Association’s AFA Action), and CatholicVote (which is not authorized by America’s Catholic bishops).
Focus on the Family President Jim Daly said the merger would help believers “put feet to their faith by voting and serving in their communities. By joining forces, Family Policy Alliance Foundation and Christians Engaged will help make this daily task easier — and faith-driven cultural activism more effective. History rests in the hands of believers, and turns on the hinges of seemingly small things, including our willingness to register and vote our values.”
The Family Policy Alliance’s upcoming invitation-only gathering, SoConCon 2024, will meet in D.C. July 23-26 and will feature a who’s who of conservative speakers from Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, the Koch family’s Americans for Prosperity, and GOP officials.
SoConCon 2023 featured sessions on “woke capitalism,” abortion after Roe v. Wade, “the LGBT agenda,” “cancel culture,” sex education, transgender rights, parental rights in education, justice reform, big tech, and restoring faith in America. One lunch session featured a talk titled “We Are in a Religious War” that claimed liberals are “just adherents to a different religion.”
D.G. Hart, a conservative Christian author and associate professor of history at Hillsdale College in Michigan, says SoConCon is reminiscent of 1980s-style social conservatism promoted by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Dobson.
“It’s a new Social Gospel,” says Hart, contrasting today’s religious activists with those who led the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century.
A century ago, it was progressive religious leaders who said liberal government policies would help bring about God’s kingdom on earth. Today, conservative religious leaders say conservative government policies will help remake America as a Christian nation. The political values may have changed, but the faith in political salvation remains.
“Evangelical political engagement has been a flop,” Hart wrote in his 2011 book, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism.
He says part of the problem is that unlike traditional and libertarian conservatives, who embraced diversity, politically conservative evangelicals reject it.
As BNG reported in May, the Family Policy Alliance and its Virginia affiliate, The Family Foundation, helped elect a new conservative school board that restored the names of Confederate leaders to two schools in Shenandoah County. Neither the Alliance nor The Family Foundation responded to questions we asked about restoring the Confederate names.
This article originally appeared in Baptist News Global.
