Don Wildmon
AFA/AFR founder
March 1994 – In last month’s AFA Journal, we reported on the “Re-Imagining” conference held in Minneapolis November 4-7 last year. The title of the conference was “A Global Theological Conference By Women; for Women and Men.” If you failed to read the article, I suggest you go back and read it. It can be found here.
News of the pagan nature of the conference is now beginning to reach beyond the approximately 2000 participants in the conference. Grassroots members of the sponsoring groups in the various denominations are just now beginning to learn of the conference and react. The Presbyterian Layman reported that Rev. James Brown, executive director of the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church USA, called in a Louisville public relations firm to help put the right “spin” on their response in dealing with the outcry.
United Methodist Bishop Earl G. Hunt of Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, said that deifying Sophia (which is what the conference did) is an “attempt to reconstitute the godhead. ...No comparable heresy has appeared in the church in the last 15 centuries. This material must be eradicated from Christian thinking now. When the church seems to be losing its struggle with powers and principalities, weird things begin to happen.”
One of the disheartening things about the conference and those who participated in it is that, in the final analysis, money for the conference came from devote God-fearing Christians in churches who had no idea that their gifts would be used in such a manner.
I am convinced that as long as the Christians in local churches remain ignorant of and silent about situations such as happened in Minneapolis, their gifts will continue to be used in a similar way. Without strict guidelines limiting how the gifts can be used, one way to prevent such from happening again is for local church groups (women’s groups, etc.) to withhold their donations to their denominational boards and agencies which supported the conference. I am sure that there are other worthy causes, more in line with the beliefs of the Christians in the local churches, to which those funds can be applied.
I hate to compare the two, but I have learned from the secular world that when funds begin to dry up, you can get some changes. Sometimes, that is the only way to bring about desired change.
At the time this column was written, not a single one of the denominational groups which funded and supported the “Re-Imagining” conference had repudiated the contents of the conference. Attending the conference were leaders from the Presbyterians USA (405), United Methodist (391), Lutherans (ELCA) (313), Roman Catholics (234), and United Church of Christ (144). Also participating were Baptists, Episcopalians, Mennonites, United Church of Canada and the Church of the Brethren.
Why mention the conference in the AFA Journal? Two reasons. What those in the highest level of our denominations do matters. And second, the AFA Journal goes to 175,000 churches and pastors – probably more than any other publication in America.
For more information on this situation, we suggest you contact Good News, P.O. Box 150, Wilmore, KY 40390 (phone 606-858-4661) or The Presbyterian Layman, 1489 Baltimore Pike #301, Springfield, PA 19064 (phone 610-543-0227) and your own denominational officials. 
