[Links to the main sections of this long report on the Centre for Intelligent Design are given at the bottom of this page. If you want to disagree, discuss, add to or comment on the research, feel free to do so on our community forum. That's what it's there for.]
John Langlois OBE, Centre for ID Guernsey
According to an October 2010 report in This is Guernsey, John Langlois runs an organisation in Guernsey called Centre of Intelligent Design. The use of the word “of” instead of “for” in the name looks to be a typo. It appears that one of the objectives of this operation is to get Intelligent Design into Guernsey schools. However, the precise details of exactly what his position is cannot be readily established by us. As a lawyer, he may technically be just a trustee or a nominee with no executive function.
However, the apparently near simultaneous launch of the Guernsey operation with the Glasgow-based one, their near identical names and the registration of C4ID as a Guernsey charity seem to suggest beyond doubt that the two are very closely connected.
Recent changes in Guernsey tax laws allow full tax refunds on all profits from trading organisations donated to registered Guernsey charities. Very basically in the UK such profits are taxable with no refunds.
None of this, of course, suggests that Langlois is Mr Big. However, he is a top official in the World Evangelical Alliance which claims to act for over 100 million evangelicals worldwide. That puts a different perspective on the matter, especially as Langlois has claimed that he is looking to get Intelligent Design accepted across the whole of Europe.
Indeed, Langlois looks to be well connected elsewhere through his involvement in religious organisations. These include the UK-based John Newton Project (where he is chairman) and the Trinity Trust Company (a Guernsey Venture capital/private equity firm). He is a member of and for five years until 2001 he served as Chairman of the Board of Advocates International an association of lawyers based near Washington DC which works on human rights and religious freedom issues around the world. Top of his involvement appears to be with the World Evangelical Alliance.
Unlike the three C4ID staffers on the mainland of the UK, Langlois is an evangelical Pentecostal. We can't confirm which Pentecostal sect but it appears that all three pentecostal churches on Guernsey are Elim. It was for the Elim Pentecostals that Peter Loose organised a UK tour of Andrew Snelling and Phillip Johnson (the latter de facto head of the Discovery Institute).
He also has some theological training, having obtained a diploma at what is now the London School of Theology. He was, for fifteen years chairman of the Guernsey Evangelical Fellowship but I would not take this as evidence that he is well connected to the religious on the island. Guernsey is not really a evangelical sort of place (a Google search found only one reference for the fellowship).
What we couldn't establish is whether or not he is a Biblical literalist who believes that the universe is only 6,000 year old.
He's certainly well connected politically in Guernsey where he was a long standing and senior politician (1980-2004), a board member of the local telephone company, Guernsey Telecom and a lawyer (called advocate locally but on the mainland of Britain he would be known as a barrister and solicitor, the two vocations being combine in Guernsey).
Langlois is claimed to be the political driving force behind establishing Guernsey as a centre for e-commerce and intellectual property – his seat on the board of Guernsey Telecom would have helped. However, any organisation, such as C4ID, selling media online is operating in the e-commerce sector and is exploiting intellectual property rights.
When we at the BCSE stared investigation C4ID we pretty soon realised that somewhere there would be a lawyer behind it – we drew that conclusion from our experience of Truth in Science.
We strongly suspect that, this time round, the IDers will be looking to the courts either to shut us (and others) up or get ID into school science lessons (or both). They'll need a lawyer at least strongly familiar with UK law, something the Discovery Institute does not have in house.
Langlois is not the only “big fish” in C4ID – Noble is a big fish in Scotland and Nevin a big fish in Northern Ireland.
Robert Yerby: The channel islands are not a natural home for creationists and fundamentalists. As a rough guide, creationism is associated with Calvinism in some form or other and therefore is more prevalent in the UK in the “Celtic fringe” areas – Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Many of the creationist leaders in England have distinctly Scottish or Welsh names. Channel Islanders, though, have strongly tended to be either Anglican or Methodist.
However, Guernsey is not creationist free. One of the leading lights in Truth in Science, John Blanchard, originates from Guernsey. Some years back, one of the local creationists, Robert Yerby, caused a stink when he tried to get creationism into Guernsey schools. Yerby described himself as general secretary of the Guernsey Biblical Creation Society. It appeared to be an off-shoot of the British Biblical Creation Society. However, the organisation, which was probably never much more than a one-man-band, is believed to now be extinct. Yerby, though, still seems to be pushing creationism in the local press.
Navigate your way around this report using the following links:
First Page: Centre for Intelligent Design Executive Summary
Introduction to the Centre for Intelligent Design
How Many People are Behind the Centre for Intelligent Design?
Timing of the Centre for Intelligent Design
Who Runs and Organises the Centre for Intelligent Design?
Professor Norman Nevin OBE
Dr Alastair Noble
Previous Page: Dr David Galloway
Current Page: John Langlois OBE, Centre for ID Guernsey
Next Page: Peter Loose
Centre for Intelligent Design Strategy
The Channel Islands Connection
Centre for Intelligent Design's Headquarters
Supporting the Show – Messrs Michael Behe, Steve Fuller and Geoff Barnard
Miscellaneous Intelligence
