Christian Crusaders? Or Not?
Over nearly 20 years, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon has raked in tens of millions of dollars for his wars against pornography, the teaching of evolution in public schools, reproductive freedom for women, and civil rights for homosexuals.
But now Sheldon, the founder and chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition in Anaheim, California, has embarked on a new crusade: building a million-member army of dues-paying “Christian seniors.”
In fundraising appeals that he says are being mailed to more than 5 million older Americans, Sheldon portrays his new organization as a “Christian alternative to AARP” and promises anyone who joins it, for dues of $12.95 a year, “benefits that are as good, or better, than AARP’s.”
AARP has received dozens of inquiries about the “Christian Seniors Association” mailings. As it turns out, they were crafted by ultraconservative direct-mail entrepreneur Richard A. Viguerie, who over the years has had a hand in creating several other anti-AARP organizations, including United Seniors Association, the Seniors Coalition and the 60 Plus Association.
Christian Seniors Association, identified in the mailings as “a division of Traditional Values Coalition,” operates out of the offices of its parent organization in Washington, D.C.
In an interview with the AARP Bulletin, James Lafferty, the executive director of Christian Seniors Association, said it would seek to be a voice “for seniors who believe that the Christians in this country need to be protected.”
Lafferty, who is Sheldon’s son-in-law, told the Bulletin that Christian Seniors Association currently has four employees, but he declined to provide any membership figures.
“Obviously it is not about trying to serve senior citizens in this nation,” says the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance and a 20-year member of the Baptist World Alliance’s Commission of Christian Ethics. “Rather, it is about trying to enlist senior citizens to support a very narrow agenda and to advance a particular ideology that isn’t even in the best interests of the nation.”
Christian Seniors Association may represent a last-ditch effort by Viguerie to raise money for Sheldon. The Bulletin has obtained documents showing that Sheldon’s tax-exempt Traditional Values Coalition ran operating deficits of more than $1 million in both 2000 and 2001 and remains in deep financial trouble.
The organization’s own independent auditor, in a report prepared last year, warned that the recurring deficits “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”
Nonetheless, Sheldon continued to pay himself, his daughter, Lafferty and at least one other relative from Traditional Values Coalition accounts. Andrea Sheldon Lafferty, the organization’s executive director, was paid $58,933 in 2001 for working 26 hours a week. She also was paid $29,467 by an affiliated tax-exempt organization that Sheldon heads.
Sheldon also arranged to have the affiliate pay Phil Sheldon, one of his sons, and Lafferty, his son-in-law, consulting fees totaling more than $30,000 in 2001.
Sheldon hired Viguerie’s company in December 1999, under a five-year contract, to “help build a base of supporters.” But the deal has apparently pushed his organization to the brink of insolvency.
At the end of 2001 the Traditional Values Coalition had nearly $2.5 million in liabilities, including nearly $1.9 million owed to Viguerie’s firm, American Target Advertising Inc.
Neither Sheldon nor Viguerie responded to requests for interviews.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2003 issue of the AARP Bulletin.
Bill Hogan