Posted on 04/23/2005 8:12:15 PM PDT by newheart
D iane Knippers, a religious strategist who helped conservative Christians raise an increasingly loud and unified voice in the traditionally liberal bastions of mainline Protestantism in recent years, died on Monday in Arlington, Va. She was 53.
The cause was cancer, according to the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small but influential Washington group, of which Mrs. Knippers, a laywoman, was the longtime president.
The institute is a resource center for conservative members of the mainline denominations - primarily the Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal Churches - disaffected by their churches' policies, especially on sexuality.
When the Episcopal Church consecrated its first gay bishop in 2003, Mrs. Knippers, a member of the church's Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations, helped lay the groundwork for a rebellion that threatens to split the church.
Her detractors accused her of exploiting and deepening divisions in churches that need healing. But she said she was merely working to give the silent majority its say in church policy.
"It's pretty clear that the church elite in the mainline denominations are to the left of the people in the pews," she told The New York Times last year.
John Green, a specialist in religion and politics at the University of Akron, credited Mrs. Knippers with changing people's ideas about what it meant to be a Protestant.
"Prior to her activities, traditionalists within mainline denominations were mostly an afterthought or a footnote," he said, "but she was able to empower them and bring them together."
The institute shared tips on how a conservative congregation could withhold money from its denomination's headquarters, how to win seats on judicial committees and how to force heresy trials of gay members of the clergy.
Mrs. Knippers also forged new links among traditionalists in the mainline churches, Roman Catholics and the much larger network of evangelical Christians from Baptist and Pentecostal churches.
"She was able to bring together Catholics, all kinds of Protestants and evangelicals who agree on the essential teachings of historic Christianity," said Roberta Ahmanson, a conservative philanthropist and one of the institute's main donors.
Mrs. Knippers urged evangelical Christians to reach across the lines of faith to their Muslim counterparts.
"There are things we may have in common and on which we could become political and cultural allies," she told an interviewer in 2003, "defending the unborn, upholding marriage, caring for refugees, advocating religious freedom."
Mrs. Knippers also worked through the institute to raise public awareness of the persecution of Christians in Asia and Africa.
At her death, Mrs. Knippers's influence was still growing. Two months ago, Time magazine named her one of the country's top 25 evangelicals.
Mrs. Knippers was born Diane LeMasters in Rushville, Ind., in 1952, to a Methodist minister and his wife, a schoolteacher. Before earning a master's degree in sociology of religion at the University of Tennessee, she married Edward Knippers, an artist who paints biblical scenes.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mrs. Knippers, who became the institute's president in 1992, gave the group its domestic focus, first on radical feminism within the churches, then on homosexuality.
Hers was a level and persuasive voice. Randall Balmer, the head of the religion department at Barnard College, who called her "one of the essential strategists for the religious right at the turn of the 21st century," said she came off like "a very bright and sophisticated housewife."
Mrs. Knippers is survived by her husband; her parents, Clarence E. and Vera LeMasters of Lakeland, Fla.; and a brother, Douglas LeMasters, of Fairfax, Va.
She was found to have cancer in 2003 but kept a demanding schedule until recently. Six weeks before her death, she appeared in Washington to promote a book of which she was co-editor, "Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation." While she had lost her speaking voice, Mrs. Knippers delivered a written address on the gap in religious values between Democrats and Republicans that sounded a valedictory note.
"I'm an evangelical and I am a Republican," the statement read. "But this gap doesn't please me at all because my religious convictions trump my party commitments. I want Christians to be salt and light - a strong influence - across the political landscape."
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. BTTT
Hit obit. They are peeing on this woman's grave.
Can't anyone stop them?
Considering the source, this is surprisingly balanced. Yes, the NYT agenda always shows through, but the fact that they even chose to remember Diane Knippers speaks volumes about the testimony of her life.
RIP Diane. It's our loss.
They can't even print a conservative's obituary without giving voice to her detractors. Probably at one time it read: "need quote from supporter".
Thanks for this.
Sharon Adams
http://www.trurochurch.org/content.asp?contentid=610
May God rest your soul in peace, Diane.
And may He rest the soul of Marty Lawrence in peace, too, a wonderful sister in the Lord, who was called into His presence the same day as was Diane.
What a festive welcome it was, by a great multitude.
Hallelujah,
Sharon
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