Posted: 01/15/07

Tim Wildmon, President of the American Family Association Responds To Critics That Say AFA is Promoting Heresy

"As president of the American Family Association I am stating, for the record, that we do not endorse the contemplative prayer movement or the so-called emerging church movement. AFA has an on-line bookstore that is computer generated and run by an outside company that services other Christian ministries as well. I have personally asked this company to block the words 'contemplative prayer' and 'emerging church' as subjects to search on our bookstore. In addition, we have also blocked certain authors. Hundreds of new books, tapes, CD's and DVD's are added to the bookstore library every week so this is a task to keep up with. However, the only products people really buy from our on-line bookstore are products promoted by American Family Association or American Family Radio. The only people who come to our website looking for books on contemplative prayer or the emerging church -- because AFA doesn't promote these movements -- are people who are trying to see if they can find some 'dirt' on AFA and then put out misleading reports on their websites.

"Some of this false reporting that AFA was supporting contemplative prayer came as a result of an article promoting a contemplative prayer book that mistakenly ran on Agape Press, a news agency owned by AFA, in the fall of 2006. This was one article that appeared for only a few hours which I personally had removed once I learned of it from a phone call from Worldview Weekend president Brannon Howse who has done as much as anyone to sound the alarm on the dangers of these New Age practices that are becoming more mainstream in today's churches. In addition, Brannon and I co-host a radio program each week on AFR called Christian Worldview this Week and we have had many guests and authorities who have exposed what both contemplative prayer and the emerging church are all about. AFA also sponsors the Worldview Weekend conferences that educate attendees about these problems and AFR News has reported many times about them."

Tim Wildmon

By Tim Wildmon Click here for bio and archived articles