Who Are Those Guys?

Torri Walters, a Manhattan hair stylist, had seen the ads often enough to be intrigued. The 30-sec. TV spots featured celebrities such as Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte and former Miss America Heather Whitestone McCallum testifying that their most important relationship was with God and praising a book called Power for Living. The ads ran about 50 times a day on CNN alone; print versions showed up in TIME and other magazines and on the walls of the A train Walters took to work. They were mysterious. They bore the name of no known ministry but merely the words Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation and an 800 number for ordering a free booklet. "I kept seeing it and seeing it," Walters says. "And one day I just thought, O.K., let me check it out." She did so, she acknowledged later when quizzed about the book's impact on her, partly because she had been feeling a bit distant from God. And partly out of curiosity. "I was thinking, What's the gimmick? There's always a gimmick. And who is this foundation?"

Who, indeed? Although the spots' frequency has been reduced for summer, the advertising database CMR reports that in the six months ending last March the DeMoss Foundation spent more than $27.8 million--a sum outpacing the media buy of a presidential campaign--on a saturation blitz that was most likely publicizing Power for Living. DeMoss ranks 73rd among U.S. foundations, and it's one of the most secretive. Journalists who call its Florida offices receive demurrals ("We're not a cult, but we can't say what we are," one was told) and a fax stating "The Foundation has a history of not seeking publicity." Foundation grantees sign a confidentiality agreement so strict that they will not even discuss the group to praise it.

Like a majority of DeMoss undertakings, the Power for Living campaign turns out to be a simple call to Christ. But a significant minority of the foundation's projects are harder edged, targeting abortion and gay rights and promoting a vision of a Christian America some find overzealous. The DeMoss family, led by matriarch Nancy, 61, is politically and theologically conservative. Its charity was "an early and significant supporter of the religious right," says William Martin, author of With God on Our Side, a history of the movement. As the DeMoss Foundation demonstrates its willingness to pour tens of millions into reaching a mass audience, it inevitably courts the question, What are its larger social goals?