SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An obscure investment fund which defines its mission as “investing with Biblical principles” is a leading donor and strategic partner of anti-porn organization Exodus Cry, currently receiving international attention for their single-focused campaign against Pornhub.
In August, Timothy Partners Ltd., the advising arm of Timothy Plan Funds, announced that they and their staff have joined Exodus Cry’s widely promoted campaign to “shut down Pornhub.”
Their press release explained that “Timothy Plan Funds was launched in 1994 as an investment product for people who didn’t want to profit from activities contrary to a Judeo-Christian ethic, such as 'harming the innocent' and that “pornography was one of the earliest filters employed to weed out culpable companies.”
Although Exodus Cry and their main spokesperson, Laila Mickelwait, repeatedly mislead the mainstream press by claiming to be a “non-religious, non-partisan” organization, their affiliation with Timothy Partners and the Timothy Fund tell a completely different story.
Yesterday, a writer named Robert Knight — who publishes a regular column in conservative newspaper Washington Times and appears to be involved with the investment fund’s press copy — confirmed the financial and logistic support of the “Biblically inspired” fund to Exodus Cry’s call for censorship.
“Timothy Partners, Ltd., adviser to Timothy Plan Funds, is supporting [Exodus Cry’s petition to shut down Pornhub],” Knight wrote in an op-ed for the Christian Broadcasting News (CBN) news site.
Knight claims that “after some Timothy Plan employees approached the firm’s president, Art Ally, with their concerns over Pornhub, Mr. Ally authorized double-matching by the company of employees’ contributions to the Traffickinghub.com campaign.”
The Lord Speaks to Art Ally
Art Ally, the man behind the fund now bankrolling Exodus Cry and Mickelwait’s campaign, makes crystal-clear that religion is the only real motivation behind their attempt to shut down Pornhub as a prelude to campaigning for the total eradication of online porn.
“Pornography has much greater power to do harm than many people realize,” Ally wrote in August when the strategic partnership with Mickelwait’s group was announced. “Because of its addictive nature, it poses great risk to the consumer. More importantly, it’s an ugly regression in the progress we had made to end exploitation and mistreatment of women. Biblically speaking, protecting the innocence and beauty of God’s creation is a clear commandment, so filtering out pornography is a must if we’re to be truly a biblically sound investment product.”
The investment fund’s “Our Story” section — headlined “Arthur Ally and His Vision for Biblically Reponsible Investing” — tells Ally’s own origin story as an anti-porn crusader, a role for which he claims he was personally selected by God.
“In 1992, Arthur Ally, then president and owner of Covenant Financial Management, was challenged to design a retirement plan for pastors of independent churches and offer it on a national scale,” the Timothy Fund website explains. “Mr. Ally searched the entire investment industry for any professionally managed program that would complement the Christian worldview of evangelical pastors.”
Ally’s search, the story continues, “unveiled several socially filtered funds, which only filtered for a few social issues such as alcohol and tobacco, but none that filtered for more central issues such as abortion and pornography.”
“The Lord used this challenge to burden Mr. Ally and cause him to rethink the current investment culture and ask the Lord if there was a better way — a way that would honor the Lord and allow others to invest with a clean conscience.”
Through prayer and soul searching, the corporate statement announces, Ally “was convicted to make a life-changing move" and he spent the next two years “developing and testing a moral filtering model.”
The Godly Way to Invest
Ally decided to initially focus on five major factors to “filter his investments”: abortion, pornography, alcohol, tobacco and casino gambling. "Years later, the filters for anti-family entertainment and alternative lifestyles were added to the mix, rounding out the filters that Timothy Plan is known for today."
Ally, according to the “About Us,” went on to help start an organization for Christian financial consultants (National Association of Christian Financial Consultants) and helped develop eVALUEator, “a tool to analyze mutual funds based on moral integrity.”
Timothy Plan now boasts of being “a leader in the 'Biblically Responsible Investing' arena.”
Sample funds that Ally peddles to the financially adventurous, but religiously limited, include the Israel Common Values Fund and the Defensive Strategies Fund; their advising branch, Timothy Partners, provides financial support “to numerous ministries including those involved in human trafficking, defending of Christian liberties and preserving the life of the unborn.”
A Highly Orchestrated Religious Campaign
Like yesterday's CBN column, the official August announcement of the Timothy Plan’s involvement in Exodus Cry’s campaign was also written by Washington Times columnist Robert Knight.
Knight and Ally present the orchestrated anti-Pornhub campaign — with encouragement from similarly religiously inspired groups like NCOSE (formerly Morality in Media) and the Mormon Church-driven Fight the New Drug — as a grassroots movement.
In fact, as Knight also points out, “the Traffickinghub.com campaign was launched on February 9, 2020 with an article in the Washington Examiner, 'Time to Shut Pornhub Down,' penned by Exodus Cry’s Director of Abolition, Laila Mickelwait.”
The Washington Examiner is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is owned by conservative Kansas billionaire Philip Anschutz. Knight's main outlet, The Washington Times, was founded and is owned by the Unification Movement, which follows the doctrines of the late religious cult leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Knight bills himself as a writer for Timothy Partners; a regular weekly columnist for The Washington Times and Townhall.com; a regular contributor to AmericanThinker.com, DailyCaller.com, OneNewsNow.com and others; and the author of books questioning the separation of church and state under cover of “religious freedom,” and also of “Invested with Purpose: The Birth of the Biblically-Responsible Investment Movement.”
A Dubious Investment
Knight brags that the Exodus Cry campaign “has also attracted backers on Capitol Hill,” and singles out Republican Senator Ben Sasse’s letter to Attorney General William P. Barr demanding a federal investigation into Pornhub.
Knight also quotes Exodus Cry — which has its origins in a controversial midwestern evangelical ministry, the International House of Prayer — making the extreme claim that “the sex industry is a global system of violence, exploitation and gender inequality that encompasses prostitution, pornography and stripping.”
Before making a blatant pitch to would-be investors, Knight quotes the Timothy Plan’s notion that “our culture has exchanged true beauty and sexuality for the lust of the eyes and impurity — and seeks to make it a commodity.”
“Tens of thousands of people place their investment dollars with Timothy Plan because of heartfelt beliefs such as this,” the “Biblical” investment fund urges their flock.
The Timothy Fund does not clarify the ROI on supporting strident media campaigns against sex workers and their sources of income.
Main image: Timothy Fund founder Art Ally and Exodus Cry logo.
