Howard Ahmanson, Jr.
| Howard Ahmanson Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 3, 1950 |
| Education |
Occidental College Bachelors Degree University of Texas at Arlington Masters Degree |
| Parent(s) |
Howard F. Ahmanson Sr. Dorothy Johnston Grannis |
| Relatives |
Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson (stepmother) Robert H. Ahmanson (cousin) William H. Ahmanson (cousin) |
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson Jr. (born February 3, 1950) is an heir of the Home Savings bank fortune built by his father Howard F. Ahmanson Sr. Ahmanson Jr. is a multi-millionaire and financier of many Christian conservative cultural, religious, and political causes.
Ahmanson was born on February 3, 1950. He is the son of Dorothy Johnston Grannis and the American financier Howard F. Ahmanson Sr. (1906–1968). His parents divorced when he was ten years old. Despite the trappings of wealth, Howard Jr. was a lonely child. He has said, "I resented my family background, [my father] could never be a role model, whether by habits or his lifestyle, it was never anything I wanted." His father died when his son was eighteen, and Ahmanson Jr. inherited a vast fortune.
He attended Occidental College, where he obtained a degree in Economics. He then toured Europe, but he returned because of arthritis. He earned a master's degree in linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington and has fluency in several languages.
In the 1970s, he became a Calvinist and joined R. J. Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionist movement. Ahmanson served as a board member of Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation for approximately fifteen years before resigning in 1996. In 1996, he said he had left the Chalcedon board and "does not embrace all of Rushdoony's teachings."Time magazine included the Ahmansons in their 2005 profiles of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, classifying them as "the financiers."
Ahmanson's ties as a young man to the Christian Reconstructionist movement and R. J. Rushdoony have been a source of controversy over the years. In an article on the Episcopal Diocese of Washington website attacking the American Anglican Council, Jim Naughton emphasized Ahmanson's ties with Rushdoony. After a $3,000 contribution to Linda Lingle, a Republican running for governor of Hawaii, was returned in 2002, the Ahmansons admitted they had an image problem and let the Orange County Register do a five-part series on them in 2004 to give the public a more accurate view of their work and beliefs. He is reported to have "never supported his mentor's calls for the death penalty for homosexuals"; instead, as the Orange County Register reported in 2004, he "no longer consider[s] [it] essential" to stone people who are deemed to have committed certain immoral acts. Ahmanson also told the Register, "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things. But I don't think it's at all a necessity."
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