In a press release filed in federal court in 2021, Quentin Van Meter, president of the American College of Pediatricians, described the organization as a “secular, scientific medical association” whose “views as such will not be religious.”
The documents show that the College also targets donors, doctors and other clinicians based solely on their political leanings. The group, for instance, maintains a listing of greater than 5,000 “conservative doctors” and records reveal that they were routinely targeted with mailings designed to generate interest in membership.
In 2021, the College approached the fundraising agency by mail with a proposal on easy methods to increase its fundraising efforts and where to issue an unexpected award. The agency beneficial the College’s goal of “30,000 potential conservative donors” whose donations, it said, would in turn be used to “goal conservative professionals within the medical community.” In an evidence of the services it offers, the agency said it could source donor lists from “other like-minded organizations” and that it could facilitate “trading” and “renting” other mailing lists if the College so desired.
The agency said details about health professionals won’t be sold or traded if the professionals are “existing ACPed members”. According to the file, the deal between the group and the agency was finalized in August 2021.
Despite homages to science, the views of the College and its board of directors are deeply rooted in a morality based solely on evangelical religious beliefs. Notes taken at board meetings that begin and end with prayer show that executives view the scientific consensus, those with advanced degrees, and even the law itself as a threat to their agenda. Prayer is beneficial as “armor” against perceived threats by the group, including other Christians whose devotion they’ve deemed insufficient.
The 2017 board meeting minutes read: “Threats to the College include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the LGBTQ lobbying body, in addition to mainstream medicine, psychology, academia, media, America’s corporations and nominal Christians, churches and organizations.
The atmosphere on the College’s closed meetings, dozens of that are meticulously documented, contrasts sharply with the image the College goals to make public. Conversations about how a non secular group could present themselves publicly have been occurring 12 months after 12 months. During meetings in 2014 and 2015, members discussed the potential advantages of declaring that they “recognize God, not only as a scientific organization.” The record clerk noted that no “final agreement” could possibly be reached on “whether to do it or not”.
Records of the College’s total membership show that only half of the College’s 700 members could also be practicing pediatricians, and their numbers are growing through subscriptions from students, retirees, and so-called “friends” of the organization. Records show the group was also exploring expanding its ranks to incorporate additional members with no medical knowledge in response to its poor returns from costly recruiting efforts.
The debates about whether to make a more public display of their religiosity included a Catholic lawyer who in 2014 advised them to “express belief in a deity without being evangelical.” After the opening prayer of the assembly the next 12 months, then-president of the group, Michelle Cretella, followed the lawyer’s advice, reminding members that the College shouldn’t be a “religious organization” but a “theistic” one which recognizes “natural laws” given by a supreme being.
