A secret society that plans on staffing a future, right-wing government with Christian men is disbanding two of its Idaho chapters, records obtained by TPM show.
TPM found that two Idaho chapters of the Society for American Civic Renewal dissolved themselves in May, corporate records show, several weeks after a report by TPM revealed the group’s mission and the identities of some of its high-profile members.
One of the group’s members, Boise State University Professor Scott Yenor, confirmed to TPM Thursday that the chapter he heads in Idaho’s capital would be dissolved. The Boise chapter would continue to exist as a dues-paying organization, he said, but ending the legal entity would free it from having to do “annual reporting.”
The move to dissolve the chapters adds another layer of secrecy to the group. SACR already shields its membership rolls from the public, even as it seeks to reshape American government and society. Per an internal mission statement first made public by TPM, the mens-only, Christian-only group aims to “act decisively to secure permanently” the “dominance” of “Christendom” and to enshrine their view of America’s founding, bringing together a group of right-wing Christian men to try to ensure that the country is defined and governed as a Christian nation.
TPM was able to reveal the inner workings of the Society for American Civic Renewal in March using emails and documents largely obtained via public records requests that included Yenor’s Boise State email account. These records revealed that the group is not just exclusively Christian and male, it is only open to heterosexual men, “trinitarian” Christians, and “un-hyphenated Americans.” Yenor pitched one potential member by writing in an email that the group offered a means to “secure a future for Christian families.”
TPM’s reporting showed that SACR is composed of influential and wealthy men, including the president of right-wing think tank the Claremont Institute, a multimillionaire Indiana shampoo tycoon, and a Texas venture capitalist, among others.
SACR is unique in that regard: though it proclaims extreme goals in internal records like staffing the government of an “aligned future regime” and allows only men and certain types of Christians to become members, it’s largely composed of men who have means and have been successful in life. Yenor has influence as an ultra-conservative scholar; he has courted controversy by demanding that professions like law, engineering and medicine stop recruiting women into their ranks, and is senior director of state coalitions at the Claremont Institute. Charles Haywood, who incorporated the national SACR nonprofit as a 501(c)10, attended University of Chicago law school before developing and selling his cosmetics business.
The 501(c)10 form — described in typically sinister terms on SACR’s website as being “a national superstructure” — is the same used by other lodge-based groups like the Freemasons or the Shriners.
That allows the groups to shield the identities of their members from public scrutiny but, as Yenor told TPM, being a chapter within a larger nonprofit still requires financial reporting.
“We have to do annual reporting with the 10, and without it we don’t have to,” Yenor told TPM Thursday, referring to the 501(c)10 registration requirements. He added that the “burden” of doing the paperwork motivated the change.
“We initially got advice that in order to have a dues paying entity, we had to be a 501(c)10, and that ended up not being true,” he said.
Corporate filings show that the Coeur D’Alene lodge dissolved itself on May 20; the Boise lodge dissolved itself the next day.
Skyler Kressin, a Coeur D’Alene accountant who dissolved that city’s chapter, did not return a request for comment from TPM. Other publicly listed chapters in Dallas, Texas and Moscow, Idaho were still active.
The full scope of SACR’s membership, operations and activities aren’t clear. The records from Yenor’s email account showed attempts to organize an anti-marriage equality sticker campaign, and SACR’s involvement in an Idaho advocacy website. Claremont President and SACR board member Ryan P. Williams told TPM in March that the total number of chapters was around a dozen or fewer.
Yenor wouldn’t say whether SACR’s other chapters planned to make the change, or whether the national nonprofit would also dissolve itself. He declined to answer questions about the size of the Boise chapter and how often the group meets.
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