In a declaration in federal courtroom in 2021, Quentin Van Meter, the president of the American College of Pediatricians, described the group as a “secular, scientific medical association,” whose “views are not religious as such.” 

ACPeds has additionally focused donors, physicians, and different clinicians based mostly solely on their political leanings, paperwork present. The group maintains a listing of greater than 5,000 “conservative doctors,” for example, and data reveal that they’ve been routinely focused with mailers designed to elicit curiosity in membership. 

In 2021, ACPeds solicited a proposal from a direct-mail fundraising company on the right way to enhance its fundraising efforts and the place to spend the windfall. The company really useful that ACPeds goal “30,000 prospective conservative donors,” whose presents, it mentioned, would in flip be spent to “target conservative professionals in the medical community.” In a proof of the companies it gives, the company mentioned it may procure donor lists from “other like-minded organizations,” and that, if ACPeds wished, it may facilitate “exchanges” and “rentals” of different mailing lists.

Information about medical professionals wouldn’t be offered or exchanged, the company mentioned, if the professionals are “existing ACPeds members.” A contract between the group and the company was finalized in August 2021, data present. 

Despite its homages to science, the views of ACPeds and its board are deeply rooted in a morality based mostly completely in evangelical non secular beliefs. Notes taken at board conferences, which open and shut with prayer, present that its administrators view consensus science, individuals who maintain superior levels, and even the legislation itself as a risk to its agenda. Prayer is prescribed as “armor” towards the group’s perceived adversaries, which embody different Christians whose devotion they’ve judged to be insufficient.

Minutes from a 2017 board assembly learn: “Threats to the College include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and the LGBTQ lobbying body, as well as mainstream medicine, psychology, academia, media, corporate America and nominal Christians, churches and organizations.” 

The ambiance at ACPeds’ closed-door conferences, dozens of that are meticulously documented, contrasts sharply with the picture it goals to venture publicly. Conversations over precisely how non secular the group can current itself publicly have rolled from one yr to the subsequent. During conferences in 2014 and 2015, members mentioned the potential advantages of declaring their “recognition of God versus standing purely as a scientific organization.” A minute taker famous that no “definitive agreement” could possibly be reached about “whether or not to do this.” 

Records of its membership totals present that as few as half of ACPeds’ 700 members could also be practising pediatricians, with its numbers being boosted by subscriptions from college students, retirees, and so-called “friends” of the group. Records present the group has additionally explored increasing its ranks to incorporate further members with out medical experience in response to its lackluster returns on costly recruitment efforts. 

Debates over whether or not to harness its religiosity in a extra public manner have been attended by a Catholic legal professional, who in 2014 suggested them to “express belief in a deity without being evangelical.” After the opening prayer on the following yr’s gathering, the group’s then president, Michelle Cretella, mimicked the lawyer’s recommendation, reminding members that ACPeds shouldn’t be a “religious organization,” however a “theistic” one which acknowledges “natural laws” imparted by a supreme being.