Jim Minnery on Faith, Politics, the Pro-Life Movement, and Alaska's Cultural Crossroads
The Northern Ledger
Jim Minnery, President of the Alaska Family Council, joins host Jonathan Quick on The Northern Ledger to discuss the intersection of faith,
Key takeaways
- Lasting cultural change requires both policy work and sustained civic engagement rooted in faith.
- Religious liberty and pro-life advocacy are central to Alaska Family Council's mission, with a focus on influencing public policy through bipartisan relationships.
Main topics
- Faith and politics in Alaska
- Pro-life movement and abortion policy
Notable quotes
"All we can do is give people opportunities to make good decisions. We can't make those for them, but we have to make sure that they know that they have options to make good decisions to honor God."
Conclusion
Jim Minnery emphasizes the enduring importance of faith-driven civic participation in shaping
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Well, Jim, welcome to my podcast. I'm so excited you're on. This will be the first time you're on the new podcast, The Northern Ledger. And I know we've chatted several times on my previous one, but welcome to the show. Excited to have you on. Great to be here, Jonathan. I need to get down to Nikiski and hang out at some point soon. Yeah, it'll be fun. You know, you and I were catching up a little bit. You got a lot of really exciting things happening with Alaska Family Council. For folks that have been living under a rock and have never heard of the Alaska Family Council, give us kind of like a, you know, fire hydrant version of what do you guys do? Why do you exist? Why do you operate in Alaska? What spurred you to want to, you know, head this up? Give us the story. We'd love to hear it. Speaker 1 (0:45) Well, I was actually in graduate school. I don't know if I ever told you this. And I was doing a paper. I was writing. My degree was nonprofit management at Regis University, a Jesuit school in Denver, although I wasn't and I'm not a Jesuit. But I'm doing a research paper and saw a guy by the name of Tom Minnery. I'd never met a Minnery that wasn't related to. So I'm like, I got to track this dude down. And turns out he was the vice president of. Focus on the Family, a group out of Colorado Springs that Dr. Jobson started. And together, him and Tom started this group of ministries across the country that essentially deal with the intersection of faith and politics. To say, this is what scripture has to say. This is how the culture can be impacted by your faith so that it's not just compartmentalized on a Sunday. Speaker 1 (1:38) but that it animates everything that you do. And in particular in the political realm, because all the politics really, it's a bad word in a lot of pulpits, but it's nothing more than just the way that societies communicate and transform their culture through dialogue, through different governments and different agencies. And of course, Christians should be involved in that. So we started in 2006. Actually, Dave Bronson, a lot of people may not know that, love him or hate him, but... Speaker 1 (2:07) He's running for governor. He was our mayor. And when I first started looking into Alaska Family Council in 2006, I was going to secure the domain name. And I saw it was already secured. And I'm like, all right, who's this dude that has this domain name? I called him up and said, hey, what is Alaska Family Council? What are you going to try to do with it? And I want it. And he's like, well, I've been wanting to do this one thing for a while. And it sounded like exactly what I wanted to do. And I said, well, are you doing it? And he's like, well, no, I don't have that time. Speaker 1 (2:36) full-time pilot, full-time parent, and can't do it. I just said, all right, well, why don't you give me the domain name and you can be the president of my board. And so we ended up doing it and started in 2006. He was my board president for probably 10 years, 12 years. And over the years, we've just been focused on that intersection where we bring in a faith component, specifically a Christian component on what scripture has to say about. Speaker 1 (3:05) All kinds of issues. We typically focus on the religious liberty issues, right to life, sanctity of life, you know, biblical marriage and school choice is a huge thing that we've worked on for a long time. And we're expanding that effort this year significantly. We can maybe talk about that. But yeah, we go down to Juneau, used to have a full-time lobbyist. He's no longer with us. He ended up, I think you knew Mike Pauly, didn't you, at one point? He's an amazing guy, but he ended up. Speaker 1 (3:33) going down to South Dakota and becoming the executive director of the South Dakota Catholic Conference. And anyway, so we work with all different denominations. I just got off the phone with the LDS Church to have them help us on a couple different issues related to education. And so we're just trying to figure out ways to plug in the body of Christ to the political realm so that we can have an influence and, you know, change culture. So how do you what do you what's your take on the state of the union as it relates to having faith in the political sector in Alaska? Because you started in 2006. I think you said, you know, we're we're now it's 2026. It's been a couple of years. Yeah. You've been at this. Tell me about what you think. Speaker 1 (4:21) You know, what's you got the finger you have your finger on the pulse. Is it a good pulse or is it a scary pulse? Yeah, it's so hard to tell. It goes by individual legislative session, individual, you know, local assembly or government borough. I mean, there's just so many factors involved that I don't think there's ever going to be like, oh, we got everything teed up exactly the way we want now. Everyone kind of gets it because. You know, we're still working with a lot of people that have we've worked with for many, many years that are in the legislature or in local government positions. And we're still having to work with them pretty closely on doing the right thing. And then we end up having a partnership with someone, you know, not necessarily a partnership. But I mean, if you saw the vote that happened down in Juneau. Speaker 1 (5:11) regarding dropping babies off at boxes to get protected and not have to be aborted or left to die. The majority of the legislature voted for that. And, you know, so it's never really a defined thing like, oh, if we just get this many Christian conservatives elected, then everything's going to be all right. It's just it doesn't work that way. There's just too many too much human sin. involved in that, you know, people struggle and they are still learning. And, you know, I'd like to think that we have been able to establish enough of a presence to where we can get people to call us back. And we have lots of good relationships with all of those who have been, a lot of those who have been elected. But ultimately, what we're just trying to do is just to honor God and making sure that the voice of biblical truth is being heard in the political arena. And, you know, Mike. Speaker 1 (6:04) Paulie, the guy we just talked about, he used to tell me all the time, it's my favorite famous quote that he gave me was, Jim, all we can do is give people opportunities to make good decisions. We can't make those for them, but we have to make sure that they know that they have options to make good decisions to honor God and to look out for the welfare of our city, which is what we're called to do. And so we continue to try to expand our footprint in terms of the number of churches that help out and the number of... of people that we have on our constituent list that reach out to folks. But ultimately, we just have to be, just keep being faithful and knowing that Satan's on the prowl for hearts and minds and deceiving all sorts of people in all different ways. And we just have to press forward and always lift up that, you know, lift up what is true, good, and beautiful. Speaker 1 (6:54) What's it been like having Denlevy in there as governor? Somebody who is