The Wilks Brothers: A Fracking Fortune Devoted to a Right-Wing Agenda
Televangelist James Robison recently declared that he’s praying for a merger of the tea party and the religious right. Is he kidding? That merger is well underway. And it’s getting a hefty push from a couple of billionaire brothers.
No, not Charles and David Koch. Brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who reaped a fortune off the fracking gold rush and cashed in their Texas-based company a few years ago for more than $3 billion. In addition to buying up vast swaths of land in the West, they’re “using the riches that the Lord has blessed them with to back specific goals,” as Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody puts it.
What are those goals? They’ve embraced both the anti-government politics of the Koch brothers and the religious right’s anti-gay, anti-choice cultural warfare. The Wilks brothers belong to Pastors and Pews, an organization connected to Christian-nation extremist David Lane, who wants to make the Bible a primary public school textbook.
Dan Wilks told Brody that we need to “bring the Bible back into the school, and start teaching our kids at a younger age.” Adds brother Farris: “They’re being taught the other ideas, the gay agenda, every day out in the world so we have to stand up and explain to them that that’s not real, that’s not proper, it’s not right.”
The brothers and their wives have followed in the footsteps of other far-right funders and set up foundations. Together they’ve funded them to the tune of more than $200 million. In 2011 and 2012 they gave away millions, both to churches and to culture-war political groups. More than $5.5 million buttressed groups in the Koch brothers’ political networks.
To read Peter Montgomery’s whole article in Alternet, click here.
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The Wilks Brothers: A Fracking Fortune Devoted to a Right-Wing Agenda
Televangelist James Robison recently declared that he’s praying for a merger of the tea party and the religious right. Is he kidding? That merger is well underway. And it’s getting a hefty push from a couple of billionaire brothers.
No, not Charles and David Koch. Brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who reaped a fortune off the fracking gold rush and cashed in their Texas-based company a few years ago for more than $3 billion. In addition to buying up vast swaths of land in the West, they’re “using the riches that the Lord has blessed them with to back specific goals,” as Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody puts it.
What are those goals? They’ve embraced both the anti-government politics of the Koch brothers and the religious right’s anti-gay, anti-choice cultural warfare. The Wilks brothers belong to Pastors and Pews, an organization connected to Christian-nation extremist David Lane, who wants to make the Bible a primary public school textbook.
Dan Wilks told Brody that we need to “bring the Bible back into the school, and start teaching our kids at a younger age.” Adds brother Farris: “They’re being taught the other ideas, the gay agenda, every day out in the world so we have to stand up and explain to them that that’s not real, that’s not proper, it’s not right.”
The brothers and their wives have followed in the footsteps of other far-right funders and set up foundations. Together they’ve funded them to the tune of more than $200 million. In 2011 and 2012 they gave away millions, both to churches and to culture-war political groups. More than $5.5 million buttressed groups in the Koch brothers’ political networks.
To read Peter Montgomery’s whole article in Alternet, click here.
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