Minnery admits to the Alliance with Mormons, Muslims, etc. 

Brian Cooper sent an e-mail to his Vice President, Tom Minnery (head of Public Policy, the political arm of Focus), and asked him if he had heard from Dr. Dobson about the letter he sent on 3-7-01. He asked Brian into a meeting that very afternoon (3-19-01) to “discuss” the content of the letter. Brian had been exposed to Minnery’s character and behavior in the past, so he decided to secretly tape record the meeting for his own protection. Also present in the meeting was Brian's Direct Supervisor, Jimmy Peck. The following is a word for word transcription of that meeting.

---

3-19-01

Peck: "Did Tom step out?"

Maetta: "He’s not in there? Yeah, why don’t you just go in and sit down at the table, he should be right in."

Peck: "Alright."

Minnery: "Hi ya."

Cooper: "Hey, Tom."

Minnery: "Hey, come on in. I won’t keep ya long, I know it’s a busy part of the day."

(we all find a seat)

Minnery: "Brian, I wanted to get back to you, kind of on your question that uh... ‘Did your letter go to Dr. Dobson,’ and the answer is ‘No, it didn’t, and I want to talk to you about that. Uh, (indistinguishable) Who was fired here for mentioning Ryan’s divorce?¹"

Cooper: "A gal named Andrea, or Andrea, she was a mail deliverer. You know who I mean, blonde, blonde hair, she was here for 7 years, and I ran in to her at Mailboxes Etc. and she said ‘Hey stranger’ and I said ‘Hey how you doing?’ and she said ‘Well how things going at Focus?’ and I thought, ‘Well you ought to know’, you know, and she said ‘No I got fired in January’ and said that she got fired because her supervisor overheard her, this is before, evidently, before it was made public, uh.. got fired for telling somebody that... and her supervisor overheard it and they fired her the next day."

Minnery: "That’s not grounds for firing"

Cooper: "You wouldn’t think so, but uh.."

Minnery: "I, I checked that out and there was nobody fired for that kind of a thing."

Cooper: "Well this, this was straight from the horses mouth, the person that got fired and she said that’s THE reason they gave her for firing her."

Minnery: "Now it would have been better to check that out with HR, they would answer a question like that."

Cooper: "They wouldn’t tell me anything, not about another employee, why that person get fired."

Minnery: "Yeah, you know if you asked the question in the right way, they would. They wouldn’t tell you why she was fired but they’d tell you why she wasn’t fired. And uh, I checked into that and nobody was fired.

Cooper: "Well, she’s Andrea from, from mailing services and that was what she told me to my face and it wasn’t a rumor or somebody told somebody else. That was straight from the her."

Minnery: "Yeah, a lot of times when there are job issues like that when people get fired, there are two sides to it."

Cooper: "Oh, I’m sure, and I did, I realize that, that there may be more to it but that’s what she said, so..."

Minnery: "Yeah, now back to your letter dealing with the National Religious Broadcasters pursuing the big bucks. What did you have in mind when you said ‘National Religious Broadcasters recently broke with the NAE in order to pursue the big bucks waiting at the table of the National Council of the Churches?"

Cooper: "Well, it’s not the National Council of Churches, per say that has the money because they actually are kind of tapped out financially, but some of the big liberal churches that belong to the National Council of Churches."

Minnery: "Yeah, well that’s really not at all why the National Religious Broadcasters broke with the NAE, uh, not even close."

Cooper: "Well, and so what would your opinion be why they broke?"

Minnery: "Well, I don’t have an opinion, I know, because I talked with Brandt Gustavson who is the executive director of the NRB and I talked with Kevin Menoya who is the president of NAE and uh, the primary reason is that the NAE dropped its, its provision against dual membership. In other words you’re right, the NCC is not only tapped out, the belief by the NAE is that it’s crumbling, but before I go on, what am I taking you guys away from? This is a big, big part of your day here."

Peck: "We, we got it recorded, we pushed it a little ahead of time."

Cooper: "Yeah"

Minnery: "I allotted for about 15 minutes here, I don’t want to get involved in an argument that will never end, I just want to give you an explanation. Uh, it has nothing to do with liberal bucks or big bucks coming from the National Council or any churches associated with it, it’s uh, the fact that uh, there’s now no prohibition against dual membership. There are a lot of reform groups, evangelical reformist groups within the NCC who would love to join the NAE but they can’t because if you belong to one you can’t belong to the other. For example, the Good News movement within the United Methodist Church is evangelical. They would love to join the NAE and provide membership dollars to the NAE, but because their parent group the United Methodist church belongs to the NCC they can’t do it. Robert Schuler who is a Reformed Church in America, pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, would love the join the NAE and give money to the NAE, but because his parent denomination is uh, is uh, NCC he can’t, and uh, now whether that’s a.. and so the NRB uh, really I think they got a misunderstanding about what Kevin Menoya is trying to do. He’s trying to topple the NCC by taking those people who can sign the NAE statement of faith and allowing them to join regardless of what their parent organizations are doing. Which, I think is a pretty neat strategy."

Cooper: "If it’s being portrayed to you accurately because the, the, what I put in there was, was told to a National Religious uh, NRB affiliate and that’s what he was told not by Gustavson but, the... he’s the chairman of the board and then there’s?"

Minnery: "Well he’s the head of the staff. He’s like the James Dobson."

Cooper: "O.K., but if, uh... who’s an executive director? Is there an executive director and a CEO? Or..

Minnery: "Well, he plays title of the Executive Director."

Cooper: "Then it was either someone just under him or sideways from him that told this to a good friend of mine and this person relayed this to me on tape, in person but I mean.."

Minnery: "I can’t, I mean, I can’t convince you of the..’

Cooper: "And to be honest with you those were the two smallest issues in the letter."

Minnery: "Yeah, well they’re only the first two I mean, but, see Our EVP’s read the statement that says "Ryan’s divorce has gotten to the extreme to where somebody was fired for somebody discussing the issue, their reaction was to roll their eyes and say, "My goodness, uh, you haven’t got your facts straight."

Cooper: "And, then we don’t have the right to do Family News In Focus then because it was from a horses mouth source. The person that it happened to said that to me personally. It was not.."

Minnery: "And we just talked about that, we talked about the fact that there are usually two sides."

Cooper: "True, but that’s the same way with our stories, I’m sure there’s two sides. I’m just saying those are the two smallest issues in the letter. The issue of the letter is, are we going to go through with this?"

Minnery: "Well, what I’m telling you is that uh, even into your first page you trip up on something like that. On your last page, or second to last page, you trip up on NAE versus NCC you’ve got those things pretty wrong. And that’s typical of this letter. First of all, I have never sent Dr. Dobson something this long. Whenever I send him something, I try to say it in one paragraph. And the reason is the guy’s got such a stack and he’ll never read it if I send something that goes four or five pages with two attachments. Um, and secondly you know most of what this is... preachin’ " (preaching is bad?)

Cooper: "Yeah, it’s scripture."

Minnery: "And, yeah, I mean, your not telling him anything he doesn’t already believe from the bottom of his heart.

Cooper: "Then how can you believe those scriptures and go ahead and align with the enemies of the cross?

Minnery: "Well, uh, we discussed this thoroughly at our Executive Cabinet and a lot of good points made and then we took it to the board and we discussed it thoroughly at the board and uh, Adrian Rogers whose with the Southern Baptists is uh, one of the strongest separationists there are and he gave some pretty good reasons, and uh, so there’s a lot more to this than you know about and had you asked me about it I would have told ya, uh, but you didn’t. Ya know, you just sent this to Dr. Dobson. (Here comes the confession:)

And uh, you’re focusing entirely on the Mormons here, but you make it sound like we’re aligning ourselves with Mormons. It’s actually worse than that. I mean, we’re aligning ourselves with Mormons, Hindus, Jews, and uh, Muslims, as well as other Christians.

This is not a theological battle we’re fighting here, obviously, because we have different theologies. We don’t talk about theology. We’re trying to preserve the traditional definition of the family within the United Nations. We’re trying to pull a lot of people who believe in uh, religious...religious tenets about the family that we can agree with and point them toward uh, the United Nations (why not point them to Jesus?) It’s not, you know... uh... the Mormons have, have been doing this now for quite some time. We’re just now beginning to pay attention as Evangelicals and uh, Evangelicals who have been paying attention to these issues are saying, "Great! We’re glad you’re there. We need an Evangelical voice for the Evangelical church. We’re happy you’re there." So, um, that’s the kind of thing we talked about at the board meeting. So, you, you made it sound like, uh, we’re uh, we’ll be working with the LDS Mormon Church on political issues...well, officially working, well, I don’t know, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t call it officially. I mean there’s no letterhead that’s gonna have their name and our name on it (of course not; you’re not that foolish). Uh, we’re trying to organize the World Congress on the Family and we may have it in a Muslim country. ‘Cause the Muslims are members of the United Nations. And they are tremendous fighters against uh, homosexuals."

Cooper: "And tremendous fighters against the Gospel. And they’re the number one murderers of Christians in the world. And to, to fight on a different issue and overlook those kind of issues... you can’t have... There is no biblical basis for that kind of a compromise."

Minnery: "Oh, I disagree, and uh, uh"...(Tom, you actually believe that there is a Biblical basis for being unequally yoked with unbelievers?)

Cooper: "Based on what though?"

Minnery: "Well, I’m not going to get into an argument with you here at this meeting (no one asked for an argument, just the Biblical basis for the Alliance). I just want to explain to you why uh, why this letter didn’t go to Dr. Dobson, because that was your question. Uh, you raise good issues. The issues are the same issues have been raised at Executive Cabinet and they’ve been raised at the Board. (by Adrian Rogers?) But you’re not a good, you’re not a good vehicle to voice that, because uh, you overwrite and you preach and you don’t have facts that are accurate."

Cooper: "Well, and I would disagree with you. I would say that your facts are inaccurate, but that’s a difference of opinion. You’re, you’re saying that you talked to Brent Gustavson, uh, my pastor talked to the head of...whoever is just under him and said, they said that this is what’s happening and that’s the only reason that I put it in there. He said from the pulpit, Ted Haggard² said from the pulpit, two weeks ago, to be praying for the NRB because they are compromising the Gospel. That’s what Ted Haggard said from the pulpit two weeks ago."

Minnery: "If you want to believe Ted Haggard over what I just told you..."

Cooper: "Oh I’m not, I’m just saying that, that my facts.. you can’t say that my facts are inaccurate, it’s just that they’re in conflict with yours. That’s all. Just, just because the facts don’t necessarily line up..."

Minnery: "The facts here say that the NAB, NAE in order to pursue the big liberal bucks waiting at the table of the National Council of Churches..."

Cooper: "And I don’t mean the organization. I mean the people that belong to the organization."

Minnery: "None the less it’s still, it’s still inaccurate."

Cooper: "Well, that’s the way it was portrayed to me by my pastor who said that he talked to the head of the NRB. Which his definition of the head was either the CEO or the director, one or the other, which I don’t know. And then the other uh, statement that, that you feel is inaccurate came from the, the source. It wasn’t..."

Minnery: "Alright, we talked about that."

Cooper: "Actually it could be a conflict of information but not necessarily that mine’s inaccurate and yours is accurate. But..."

Minnery: "What is accurate is: that what I’m telling you is not trusted by you, it’s not necessarily believed by you and I think that’s your view of management here on these issues. I can’t make you happy. Either uh, work here, take it or don’t work here. But, uh, I can’t have you continuing to do this kind of thing... and you’re, you’re uh, little message, e-mail message to me today, "Any word on the letter that the Lord wrote to Dr. Dobson?"

Cooper: "Right."

Minnery: "I assume that you mean the letter that Brian Cooper...and so you have identified yourself with the Lord. Brian... that’s unusual." (Actually, Tom, identifying yourself with the Lord is a good thing! It may be unusual at Focus, but not where I come from. You should try it sometime.)

Cooper: "No actually, I prayed about that letter and I said "Lord, write this letter through me." Write, have me write what you want me to say...and so I was motivated by the Lord to write that letter because I believe that this ministry will come under judgment if, if you form this alliance that is so utterly unbiblical...to align with the enemies of the Cross on any level for any whatever reason."

Minnery: "Why would you...We are going to do that. Why would you continue to work here? You are aligning yourself with us even as we are aligning ourselves with them. How can you continue to work here? Is it the, is it the, is it the paycheck that’s more important than your principles?"

Cooper: "No! Absolutely not! I feel that, that my uh, responsibility would be to stay here until you make the mistake and at that point if you do, if you haven’t repented by then, and which is my prayer, then obviously... and this is what I told Jimmy, that you know, if we could find out when the conference is going to be then we can, I can turn my two week notice in, uh, six months ahead or two months ahead or, however long ahead because if Focus does go ahead and do, go through with it, then obviously I would have to quit."

Minnery: "So what you’re telling me now is your gonna protest this?"

Cooper: "Meaning what?"

Minnery: "Meaning just that."

Cooper: "I just said that I was going to stay here and pray...my, my hope and prayer is that through praying...staying here and praying and be an influence to pray to have you... everybody to make a, a better decision...that I would stay here until Focus either does it or repents of it."

Minnery: "Yeah, well, I’m tellin’ ya we’re gonna... we’re working on dates. We’re gonna do it."

Cooper: "Yeah, but I serve a big God and he can change big people’s minds. And that’s what I’m trusting is gonna happen. That He will reach somebody before they do this. That’s, that’s my hope."

Minnery: "If you continue to uh, wallpaper the place with copies of this stuff, I’m not gonna like it. We had an agreement, that you would go up in your own channel. You signed it, it’s in the file and uh, I’ll expect you to honor that."

Cooper: "And, and if you identify this as being associated with that letter then I don’t have a problem with that. When we uh, had that meeting...and if you read the letter over again, my understanding was that, that was to my co-worker. ‘Cause the whole first page of the letter is reaffirming that it’s an open door policy for anybody that’s in uh, supervision over me...that it’s still an open door policy. So, that’s...the whole meeting was about that little salmon colored pamphlet that went out to my co-workers that, for whatever reason, somebody was offended by that, uh, just quoting scripture again. Uh, which I don’t think we’ve dealt with that at all...this is uh, the, the things that were brought up, seriously this is, this is the kind of meeting that I have with the LDS. We’ll talk about an issue and it will be a big huge major issue but they’ll hone in on...I just had this happen a couple weeks ago with a couple of missionaries down in Canon City. They honed in on the fact that I misspelled something in, in the little brochure that I gave them. The whole time: "Well it’s not accurate. We can’t trust it. There’s a misspelling. Who knows what else is..." Well, see the issue here is that the Scripture says to not greet one that is a false teacher. And if you do...if you even give them a greeting, you participate in their evil deeds." 

Minnery: "Disagree, completely. (you disagree with II John 10-11?) Jesus met with many false teachers and evil people" 

Cooper: "And confronted them, and confronted them and...called them a brood of vipers and confronted them and called them to repentance, not linked up with them and said ‘Hey brother.’ Uh, then that scripture is inaccurate then. How can we have that scripture?" (referring to II John 9-11)

Minnery: "Uh, you mention that uh, your reference to the uh, Mormons as honing in on the small misspelling uh, Brian this is a letter to Dr. Dobson, your saying here in the uh, third paragraph on the first page that his son, his son’s divorce caused someone here to be fired. In Dr. Dobson’s eyes that’s not a small issue. That’s a huge issue. And I’m telling you that uh, that’s the kind of thing that caused the EVP’s to roll their eyes over because they know what’s happened here. That didn’t happen here."

Cooper: "Well, then, then if that’s the case then anybody can’t have a source that they can trust if it’s a...a coming straight from the horse’s mouth, ‘Well, you can’t really base anything on that because this is just the person that it happened to, you’d have to have da, da, da, da, da...’ Well, we do that all of the time in our broadcast. We have one certain source quoting something over here and another source quoting over here. This came from the person that got fired.

Minnery: "Yeah"

Cooper: "From the person that got fired and said.."

Minnery: "?"

Cooper: "Right, Right"

Minnery: "For the last ten minutes we’ve discussed this twice."

Cooper: "Right."

Minnery: "And I..."

Cooper: "And I didn’t bring it back up."

Minnery: "I’m making really no head way over here."

Cooper: "No, no, I’m not... I didn’t bring it back up. I’m just reasserting my position that it is a valid statement and it’s a valid source. It was the person that got fired. I don’t know how much more valid I could get."

Minnery: "I just told you uh, HR knows why people get fired. I think that if you were the kind of communicator who uh, could communicate well and be a proponent of your message rather than an enemy of your message, you’d get the answer. They would tell you why someone was not fired."

Cooper: "And, and see, you say that so often (calling me a poor communicator) and yet, I’m just different from you. I’m not wrong or bad. They said the same thing about anybody that stood up for what they believed in. You take John the Baptist, for an example, John didn’t candy coat things, he just told people the way it was. Jesus didn’t candy coat things, He just told people the way it was. Elijah just told people the way it was. The church doesn’t handle that real well. This, this is a fact. If Focus does this, I believe the Lord will judge this ministry severely, severely, harshly on levels that may go beyond our wildest imagination. I think that we’ve been exposed to some of that judgment in the recent months. Things being brought out in the open, this is what goes on behind closed doors, this is what’s been going on in the ministry. (I was referring to Mike Trout's extramarital affair/ John Paulk getting caught drinking alcohol in a gay bar/ Dobson’s son’s divorce/ Oneness Pentecostals and Seventh Day Adventists leading worship at Chapel) And the Lord says look "I’m tired of this, I’m fed up with the games. You either get this straightened out or I’m going to pull the veil back and it will all come down." Just like uh, uh Daniel uh, the hand writing on the wall mene, mene tekel upharsin. That may be the message for this ministry."

Minnery: (totally ignoring my previous statement) "Uh, (chuckles) right here I have an e-mail where you sign The Lord, the Lord’s name uh, or where you interpret your letter as being from the Lord, when your letter has.."

Cooper: "If it wasn’t from the Lord, I wouldn’t have written it."

Minnery: "Yeah, that is uh, that’s unusual for an employee to put the Lord in his own place, Brian. I mean..."

Cooper: "No, see your doing it backwards, I’m not saying I’m the Lord, I’m saying the Lord prompted that letter."

Minnery: "No."

Cooper: "What?"

Minnery: "It didn’t say that, ‘Any word on the letter that the Lord wrote to Dr. Dobson?'"

Cooper: "Right, and my emphasis--here’s a man that can tell you exactly what I meant by that (referring to Jimmy Peck), the emphasis is that letter is from the Lord. Whether you... whether Focus receives that letter from the Lord or not is inconsequential to me, but the Lord wrote that letter through me to you and whether you receive it as such, that’s between you and the Lord. If you pray about it and say ‘Lord is this letter from you? Are these statements from you?' Is... uh, because see you’ve honed in on the least important parts of the letter."

Minnery: "I just told you that that was not, that Ryan Dobson¹ issue was not a least important part of the letter.."

Cooper: "It is to me."

Minnery: "That’s a huge part because you’re writing it to Ryan’s father."

Cooper: "OK, but it’s inconsequential compared to the rest of the letter. The rest of the letter is dealing with the fact that Focus is lining up with the enemies of the cross on an issue that, who gives a rip what the issue is, we cannot do that scripturally. There’s no basis for lining up with the enemies of the cross and making alliances with the enemy of the cross."

Minnery: "My purpose in bringing up those issues was to tell you why the uh, letter doesn’t represent your position well. You know it’s overly long and it has obvious inaccuracies in it."

Cooper: "According to your data."

Minnery: "Yeah, alright, well, I think we’re done and I think I need to think this through and come back to you on something else but I wanted to get back to you on the question of 'is the letter going to Dr. Dobson?' So the answer is, ‘No."

Cooper: "So what would you be afraid of for it to get to Dr. Dobson? Who would, who would be afraid to deliver this and why would they be afraid?

Minnery: "Other people have delivered this message to him. There are other employees who are concerned and have uh, written uh, memos in a format that are acceptable that, that communicate. (He evidently didn’t listen to them either) This does not communicate."

Cooper: "Your way."

Minnery: "(Coughing (?) Well, obviously it didn’t communicate because it didn’t get to him. (Coughing (?)

Cooper: "That’s, that’s not my fault. That would be your fault or somebody else’s fault. I wrote the letter and sent it to him.

Minnery: "Yep"

Cooper: "If somebody intervenes and keeps it from getting to him, that’s not my fault."

Minnery: "There are a lot of letters that are written to him that don’t get to him, there are a lot of letters that are written to him that do get to him and I.."

Cooper: "Candy coated maybe"

Minnery: "No"

Cooper: "Or shorter?"

Minnery: "Yeah"

Cooper: "Leave out content"(?)

Minnery: "Not inaccurate"

Cooper: "We'll see, that’s what I’m saying. That’s your facts and my facts, I’m just saying from the source the two things that you said were inaccurate I got from the person that got fired and the other person was from a friend of Dr. Dobson’s.

Minnery: "Well, your version of reality is different than mine and, uh were just going to continue to knock heads here. Uh, but there you have it the answer’s no. O.K., I think were done."

Cooper: "So, your, your uh, feeling about what we had talked about before was there is no open door policy for me with Dr. Dobson?"

Minnery: "I told you that if you had, or what I had hoped to convey to you was that if you had brought this to me and said look, I really feel burdened to communicate with Dr. Dobson on this, tell me how to do it, I would’ve helped you, I really would. But you didn’t, I mean this is, this is the word for the Lord as interpreted by Brian Cooper, BANG!"

Cooper: "And that’s bad?"

Minnery: "Didn’t work"

Cooper: "So far... do you... do you ever feel the Lord tells you anything? I mean, do you have a relationship with the Lord where he guides you and leads you to do things?

Minnery: "Well Brian, I’m not going to get into that, that such basic question dealing with why I’m here. That’s, that’s a silly question."

Cooper: "I’m assuming that the answer is yes."

Minnery: "Well that’s a good assumption."

Cooper: "O.K., then, then why, why is that not the case for anybody else?"

Minnery: "(muffled) I gave you the answer and our meeting is over."

Cooper: "OK" (Jimmy Peck and I get up and walk out)

Apparently, Tom Minnery wanted to major on the minors. Tom obviously was using a very common tactic called a "red herring" argument. Basically, a red herring argument is where you constantly run off on rabbit trails rather than deal with the real issues. The issue is not the NAB, the NAE or even Ryan Dobson’s divorce. The issue is Focus ignoring God’s Word and lending credibility to the Mormon Church by joining the Mormon U.N. lobbying group, the World Congress of Families.

Since being fired from Focus for fighting this unholy Alliance, Focus has gone out of their way to try to personalize the issue, as if it was them against me. That is another common tactic called an ad hominem attack. If you can’t deal with the issue, attack the messenger. They have also sicked their hired guns on me. Steve Reed; Corporate Attorney, ("Have $ Will Travel") recently threatened me to not even talk about it "in private," unless I relay the facts as Focus sees them! When will they see that it is not a personal issue, it is a Biblical issue?

John 1:9-11, says, "Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; 11 for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds." (Mormons? Muslims? Hindus?)

James 4:4, says, "You (spiritual) adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

II Corinthians 6:14-17, says, "Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?... 17 "Therefore, Come out from their midst and be separate," says the Lord."

Ephesians 5:6-11, says, "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not be partakers with them... 11 Do not participate in their unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them." (Dobson has praised the Mormons on his radio show!)

Focus cannot see that God is jealous and will not share His Love or Glory with Allah or Joseph Smith or any other false gods or false prophets. We serve a very real God. He will not strive with this type of disobedience forever. Dr. Dobson has prophesied that, “If we fall, it will be from within.” Let us pray (in Jesus’ Name) that this does not come to pass.