|
||||||||||||||||
ISSUESRELATED STORIESBill Berkowitz Wead in the Rose GardenDoug Wead, former advisor to George H.W. Bush and counselor to Dubya, has a history of self-promotion and crass opportunism. The release of the Bush Tapes is only the latest example.
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer Moonies knee-deep in faith-based funds Pushing celibacy, marriage counseling under Bush planPresident Bush has some new troops in his crusade to promote "healthy marriage" and teen celibacy with federal funds -- followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the controversial Korean evangelist and self-proclaimed new world messiah. At least four longtime operatives of Moon's Unification Church are on the federal payroll or getting government grants in the administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative and other "faith-based" programs.
Washington Post Bush Religion Adviser Quits Campaign PostSexual Harassment Allegations Surface Deal W. Hudson, publisher of the conservative Catholic magazine Crisis and a close ally of the Bush White House, has resigned as an adviser to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign because of allegations that he sexually harassed a Fordham University student a decade ago. Jeanne D'Arc: "Does Karl Rove know so few Catholics he couldn't find one who doesn't have a history of getting teenage girls drunk and then having sex with them?" Also see:
New York Times Court Says States Need Not Finance Divinity Studies"... decisive rejection of the proposition that a government that subsidizes a secular activity must necessarily ... subsidize the comparable religious activity as well." [MT EDITOR'S NOTE: This ruling declares that states cannot be forced to fund religious education - which I guess is some sort of achievement today] The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that states that subsidize secular study at the college level may withhold the scholarships from students preparing for the ministry.
AP Salvation Army Accused of DiscriminationCurrent and former Salvation Army employees sued the organization famous for its red Christmas kettles Tuesday, alleging the government-funded group preached religious and sexual intolerance to its staff.
AP Fla. Governor Dedicates Faith-Based PrisonLAWTEY, Fla. (AP) - Gov. Jeb Bush dedicated what is being called the nation's first faith-based prison Wednesday, telling its nearly 800 inmates that religion can help keep them from landing in jail again.
Charles P. Pierce, Globe Staff The CrusadersA powerful faction of religious and political conservatives is waging a latter-day counterreformation, battling widespread efforts to liberalize the American Catholic Church. And it has the clout and the connections to succeed.
Associated Press Bush Wants Drug Addicts to PrayPresident Bush has long preached of the power of prayer to aid drug addicts. Now he's putting dollars behind the rhetoric, asking Congress for $600 million for a new, three-year drug treatment program that would welcome the participation of religious groups. The proposal sparked conflict even before Bush touted it before Congress. Opponents fear government will pay for programs that replace professional counselors with prayer and Bible study. "The president wants to fund untested, unproven programs that seek to pray away addiction," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "People with addiction problems need medical help, not Sunday school."
Pete Hamill DON'T SEND A GOD TO DO A GOVERNMENT'S JOBProtesters greet Bush in New York
|
ISSUE: Faith-based watchFaith-based watchMuch of the energy and money, indeed the genesis of the faith-based movement is rooted in Conservative Philanthropy. This page provides links to original Media Transparency research and links to stories about the initiative around the Internet. These stories and grants demonstrate that George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative is little more than a religious patronage system.
Bill Berkowitz Faith-based confidentialA new book from administration insider confirms faith-based initiative is little more than political-religious patronage systemDavid Kuo, the former second-in-command of the White House Office and a true believer in the power of faith-based organizations to help the poor, has published a new book titled "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," which provides an insiders look at how the Bush White House politicized the initiative, sometime rejected applications for federal faith-based funds because they came from non-Christian applicants, mocked leaders of the Christian Right, and betrayed the very essence of the faith-based initiative's charge to help the poor. Bill Berkowitz Colson's complaintOpponents of faith-based prison programs are enabling terrorists, says Watergate felon Charles ColsonThose opposed to faith-based prison projects are blind to the threat of terrorism in the "homeland" from former inmates who have converted to Islam while in America's prisons, Charles Colson charged in one of his recent BreakPoint commentaries. Bill Berkowitz A quiet fifth anniversary for Bush's faith-based initiativeDespite the lack of media attention and grumbling from Bush supporters, the president's faith-based initiative continues apaceWith the Bush Administration on the defensive over the Iraq War, official reports detailing its horrendously slow response to Hurricane Katrina, the controversy over its use of the NSA to spy on Americans, the Abramoff Affair, and a vice-president who may be up to his knickers in Plamegate, it was somewhat surprising that the White House allowed January 29 -- the fifth anniversary of President Bush's faith-based initiative (FBI) -- to slip by the boards. Bill Berkowitz $14 million in federal faith-based money goes to Pat RobertsonTelevangelist's claim that Ariel Sharon's stroke was an act of God may have cost him the friendship of some Israelis, but it hasn't prevented his charity, Operation Blessing, from garnering faith-based grants from the U.S. governmentWhile the Reverend Pat Robertson was flayed recently over his suggestion that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was an act of retribution by God for the transfer of land in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, the Reverend's charitable organization, Operation Blessing, was raking in wads of faith-based money from the Bush Administration. Bill Berkowitz Charles Colson's Christian-based prison project on trial in IowaPrison Justice Ministries' InnerChange Freedom Initiative is a 'government-funded conversion program' says Americans United's Barry LynnIt isn't celebrity-laced like the trials of OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson or Robert Blake. It hasn't drawn the attention of CNN's Nancy Grace or the Fox News Channel's Greta Van Sustren, television's mavens of mystery. It appears to have little to do with whether or not President Bush's faith-based initiative is achieving "results." Nevertheless, the outcome of the legal proceedings currently underway in federal court in Des Moines, Iowa, could have a major impact on issues related to the separation of church and state for years to come. MediaTransparency.org FEMA Finds Faith in the Aftermath of Hurricane KatrinaThe Federal Emergency Management Agency's decision to reimburse faith-based organizations for services rendered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina signals another triumph for the president's faith-based initiativeDuring an early-October trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jim Towey, an assistant to President Bush and the director of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, told a group of more than 120 pastors, pastors' wives, and other leaders of faith-based organizations meeting at First Baptist Church's downtown campus that "if there was a gold medal ... given out for compassion, Baton Rouge would have the best claim." In other recent appearances, Towey has praised the yeoman work faith-based organizations performed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Bill Fleckenstein Faith-based charity fuels housing bubbleEmpty houses, falling prices: A boom dies"Homebuilders across the country, including Dominion Homes, have found a way around a Federal law barring [home] sellers from giving money directly to buyers for a down payment. They route the money through charities such as the Nehemiah Corp. of America, a faith-based group in California. Nehemiah provides down payments for both existing and new homes, and its relationship with Dominion is the largest of its kind in central Ohio between a builder and charity. Bill Berkowitz Deepening the FaithThe Bush Administration tries again to institutionalize its Faith-Based Initiative with legislative actionOne of the first orders of business for George W. Bush in January 2001 was to establish a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, thus kicking off the cornerstone social policy of his presidency. At a ceremony attended by numerous religious leaders Bush announced executive orders that instructed the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Justice, Education and Housing and Urban Development, to set up Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives within their agencies. That done, Bush moved to cement his executive actions in congressional legislation. There he was rebuffed, however, over objections that government money would be used for religious proselytization, and that recipients of government grants would be allowed to discriminate in their hiring based on religion. Bush called on Senators Ric Santorum (R-PA) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) to craft a legislative compromise. When they failed to win a consensus, the president went back to issuing executive orders. Now, House allies are trying to come up with a legislative package that will pass muster. One of the keys to the compromise is a "Sense of the Congress" resolution dealing with the religious hiring question. Bill Berkowitz Faith The NationThe Bush Administration awarded $2 billion in grants to religious organizations in 2004. Is Team Bush setting up a National Endowment for Religion?On March 1, President George W. Bush told the more than 250 religious leaders attending the White House Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Leadership Conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, that he was committed to his faith-based initiative "despite congressional apathy and criticism from some that he hasn't done enough to push the agenda," the Scripps Howard News Service reported. Also see:
Bill Berkowitz Team Schiavo's Deep Pockets'Following the money' reveals that a host of right wing organizations, many of which are affiliated with the Philanthropy Roundtable have been copiously funding the Terri Schiavo case David Domke Bush, God, and the MediaHow the president has used religion to control American politicsAmerican presidents beginning with George Washington have included religious language in their public addresses. Claims of the United States as a divinely chosen nation and requests for God to bless U.S. decisions and actions have been commonplace. Scholars have labeled such discourse "civil religion," in which political leaders emphasize religious symbols and transcendent principles to engender a sense of unity and shared national identity. George W. Bush is doing something altogether different. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the president and his administration have converged a religious fundamentalist worldview with a political agenda -- a distinctly partisan one, wrapped in the mantle of national interest but crafted by and for only those who share their outlook. It is a modern form of political fundamentalism, that is, the adaptation of a self-proclaimed conservative religious (Christian) rectitude, that uses strategic language choices and communication approaches designed for a mass-media culture to shape and implement political policy. Motivated by this ideology, the Bush administration has sought to control the national discourse by engendering a climate of nationalism in which large parts of the public views supporting the president as a patriotic duty, and where Congress and the United Nations are compelled to rubber-stamp administration policies. Bill Berkowitz Cash & CarryBush, Blacks and the Faith-Based InitiativeBy using faith-based money to court African American churches, is Team Bush laying the groundwork for a political realignment? On February 10, a headline in the Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times read "Bush continues outreach to Blacks". Bill Sammon reported that President Bush had met in the White House with hundreds of "Black leaders" and told them that his policies "would help Black Americans." According to Bill Sammon, "The president's 15-minute speech in the East Room was interrupted 17 times by applause from an audience that included Black clergy, veterans, business leaders and members of Congress. Among those in attendance were Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, and Rep. Melvin Watt, North Carolina Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus." This latest meeting with Black leaders is part of an aggressive strategy by the Republican Party and conservative philanthropy aimed at African American churches and, through them, Black voters -- the Democrat's most loyal constituency. In the 2004 presidential election, the GOP made a slight gain in the number of Blacks voting for Bush -- up from nine percent to 11 percent of Black votes, according to exit polls. And they did even better in the critical swing states of Florida and Ohio. In Florida, Bush's support among African Americans in November rose six percentage points to 13 percent, and in Ohio, Bush may have garnered as much as 16 percent of the Black vote. For the past two decades the leadership of the GOP has concentrated on building a solid cadre of Black conservative organizations and media personalities that could be counted on to support its agenda. Since the beginning of the Bush presidency, the emphasis has gradually added the courting of Black churches to its arsenal. This is being accomplished in no small part through the handing out of millions of dollars in faith-based grants to African American churches. A project that was once financed mostly by conservative philanthropies is now being underwritten by the public in the form of these faith-based grants. Bill Berkowitz Faith and FabricationsIn the process of institutionalizing its faith-based initiative the Bush administration has handed over $1 billion to religious organizations and more is coming to a state near you"It's true that much attention is being placed on the war in Iraq, but there's also another war that's going on. It's a culture war that really gets to the heart of the questions about what is the role of faith in the public square." – Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, during a conference promoting the funding of religious groups engaged in social service activities, July 2004. "President Bush does not want to proselytize or fund religion. We're talking about things like job training and substance abuse prevention, and opening up to small groups that have been shut [out] by the ACLU and a radical fringe that wants an extreme separation of church and state." – Jim Towey, San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 2004. In the coming year, while secular organizations providing much-needed social services to the poor will likely need the Jaws of Life to pry money from the Bush Administration, faith-based organizations will be taking in money hand over fist. In 2003 alone, the administration handed out $1.17 billion in grants to religious organizations, and if the president has his way, individual states will soon be handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to faith-based organizations. A report titled "The Expanding Administrative Presidency: George W. Bush and the Faith-Based Initiative," issued this past summer by the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y., pointed out that religious organizations have now become involved in a wide range of "government-encouraged activities...from building strip malls for economic improvement to promoting child car seats." The report also noted that Bush's faith-based programs "mark a major shift in the constitutional separation of church and state." Ron Suskind Without a Doubt: George Bush's Faith-based Presidency"The [Bush] aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' ...''I'm going to come out strong after my swearing in,'' Bush said, ''with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatizing of Social Security.'' The victories he expects in November, he said, will give us ''two years, at least, until the next midterm. We have to move quickly, because after that I'll be quacking like a duck.'' Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion. ''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . . ''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ''I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,'' he began, ''and I was telling the president of my many concerns'' -- concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. '''Mr. President,' I finally said, 'How can you be so sure when you know you don't know the facts?''' Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator's shoulder. ''My instincts,'' he said. ''My instincts.'' Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ''I said, 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough!''' The democrat Biden and the Republican Bartlett are trying to make sense of the same thing -- a president who has been an extraordinary blend of forcefulness and inscrutability, opacity and action. But lately, words and deeds are beginning to connect. The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- from cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin Powell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. The president would say that he relied on his ''gut'' or his ''instinct'' to guide the ship of state, and then he ''prayed over it.'' The old pro Bartlett, a deliberative, fact-based wonk, is finally hearing a tune that has been hummed quietly by evangelicals (so as not to trouble the secular) for years as they gazed upon President George W. Bush. This evangelical group -- the core of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- believes that their leader is a messenger from God. And in the first presidential debate, many Americans heard the discursive John Kerry succinctly raise, for the first time, the issue of Bush's certainty -- the issue being, as Kerry put it, that ''you can be certain and be wrong.'' Bill Berkowitz Slouching toward theocracyPresident Bush's faith-based initiative is doing better than you thinkLast week marked the third anniversary of the president's creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). Over the past three years, executive orders were issued, Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives were established at seven federal agencies, web sites were created, technical assistance to religious organizations was given at seminars and conferences, guidebooks helping religious groups apply for government funds were published, and billions were earmarked for faith-based institutions. ORI NIR Groups Seek To Monitor Faith-Based InitiativesList Compiled To Track GrantsIn a tacit admission of their inability to block President Bush's faith-based initiative, the Anti-Defamation League and other civil-liberties groups are shifting their fight to the field, in a concerted effort to monitor social service programs run by religious organizations. The Forward has learned that ADL staffers in Washington last month spent days combing through a list of some 3,600 organizations and institutions across America that received new government funds to deliver services to the homeless. The goal was to determine which religious groups received funds, the size of each allocation and how much of the total $1.1 billion in grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development was funneled to religious organizations. After the data was analyzed, computerized lists of the faith-based grantees were sent to ADL's 28 regional offices throughout the United States. Field officers with the league were instructed to use the lists to ensure that church-state guidelines are being respected as more religious groups receive federal funds. "We are literally following the money" as it's disbursed from Washington to religious groups in the field, said ADL's top lawyer, Michael Lieberman. The new strategy — which liberal groups acknowledge is highly inefficient, costly and unlikely to provide an adequate check against constitutional violations — is a result of two recent developments. First, a series of court rulings opened the way for the federal and state governments to fund social services through religious organizations. The other development is President Bush's insistence on bypassing congressional opposition and pushing his "charitable choice" initiative by executive order. Bill Berkowitz Faith-based drug warsBush recruits religious youth groups as ground troops for the 'drug wars'What does advocating "religious hiring rights," a $4 billion workplace retraining bill, and the war on drugs have in common? The short answer: Bring on the faith-based organizations! Although 30 months have passed since President Bush announced the centerpiece of his domestic agenda - his faith-based initiative - and no significant broader efforts to fund his initiative has emerged from Congress, the administration continues to move ahead on a number of fronts. Bush's latest faith-based proposal involves enlisting religious youth groups in the war on drugs. According to the Washington Times, the administration recently printed 75,000 copies of a guidebook to the drug wars called "Pathways to Prevention: Guiding Youth to Wise Decisions." The 100-page pamphlet "seeks to teach youth leaders how to handle questions and concerns about substance abuse." In addition to the publication, there's a new Web site (www.TheAntiDrug.com/Faith) and an e-mail newsletter. The new anti-drug project is built around three premises which are spelled out in a fact sheet titled "Marijuana and Kids: Faith": 1) "Religion plays a major role in the lives of American teens;" 2) "Religion and religiosity repeatedly correlate with lower teen and adult marijuana and substance use rates and buffer the impact of life stress which can lead to marijuana and substance use;" and 3) "Youth turn to faith communities [but] most faith institutions [with] youth ministries [do not] incorporate significant teen substance abuse prevention activities." Bill Berkowitz Head Start flim-flamThousands of Head Start workers and volunteers could be displaced as Bush Administration claims faith-based organizations have 'religious hiring rights'What does the Head Start program have to do with President Bush's faith- based initiative? Nothing -- and everything. Last week, the House Education and the Workforce Committee passed "The School Readiness Act of 2003," H.R. 2210. If a Republican-sponsored provision in the bill -- which allows religious organizations receiving government funds to provide Head Start services to discriminate in their hiring practices -- is retained in the final version, thousands of Head Start workers could lose their jobs. In addition, hundreds of thousands of parent volunteers who serve as teachers' aides and chaperones could also be displaced. Bill Berkowitz Bush's faith-based finaglingLegislation weakens but doesn't slow down president's faith-based initiativeAfter more than two years of haggling, in early April the Senate passed the Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Act of 2003 (S. 476), a stripped-down version of President Bush's highly-touted faith- based initiative. While the House has yet to pass its version of a faith-based bill, it appears that the proposal’s most noxious element, the charitable choice exemption, will remain on the cutting room floor. Does the shredding of the centerpiece of the administration's "compassionate conservative" domestic agenda signal an end to the president's obsession with pursuing faith-based solutions to vexing social problems? While the president's full package failed to generate enough Congressional or public support, the core of the initiative is alive and well. Administration-driven faith-based programs are moving down the pike at a steady clip. News Section Faith-Based Charities May Not Be Better, Study IndicatesThe assumption behind President Bush's faith-based initiative is that religious charities can do a better job, at a lower cost, than secular organizations in providing many social services, from drug treatment to employment training. But an Indiana study suggests it isn't necessarily so. The study by researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis is among the first attempts to compare the effectiveness of faith-based and secular organizations using objective data. The researchers looked at 2,830 people who went through job training programs run by 27 government-funded organizations in two Indiana counties. They found no difference between secular and religious programs in job placement rates or starting wages. But clients of faith-based groups worked fewer hours, on average, and were less likely to receive health insurance. "It's a surprising result," said principal investigator Sheila S. Kennedy, an associate professor of law and public policy. "All the political rhetoric beforehand was: Everybody knows faith-based organizations are better." Washington Post Senate Bill to Aid Charities RetooledGOP Abandons Funding IssueThe leading Senate Republican champion of President Bush's initiative to help religious charities agreed yesterday to drop its most controversial provisions in hopes of winning swift approval of tax incentives to encourage charitable contributions. The new plan leaves virtually nothing of Bush's original plan to expand government funding of religious charities but increases chances of a break in the two-year deadlock that held up passage of more general legislation aimed at helping charities of all kinds... ...Opponents of the administration's initiative hailed Santorum's announcement as a victory. "It's a huge break in the battle over this," said Joe Conn, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington advocacy group. "Frankly, they blinked," he added... In These Times Faith No MoreTexas' record shows dangers of faith-based policy...In 1996, Texas appointed an almost entirely Christian commission to eliminate regulations that prevented faith-based providers from receiving government funds. Then Governor Bush pushed agencies to change policies and eliminate licensing and inspection requirements for religious charities, and Texas became the first state to implement taxpayer-funded religious services. After five years of such experimentation, Texas discovered many serious flaws: * After Texas’ Department of Protective and Regulatory Services stopped regulating childcare providers, rates of confirmed abuse and neglect at the religious facilities rose quickly and are now 25 times higher than at state-licensed facilities. Religious facilities had a 75 percent complaint rate, compared to 5.4 percent at state-licensed facilities. * Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse inspectors presented Teen Challenge, a Christian residential drug treatment program and one of Bush’s highly-touted models, with a 49-page list of violations of state regulations. Teen Challenge said its mission was “to evangelize people” and “initiate the discipleship process to the point where students can function as Christians … applying spiritually motivated Bible principles.” The program had no credentialed counselors, no chemical dependency services, failed to inform clients of their rights, and was found to be illegally handling medications. * Jobs Partnership’s stated mission was to help clients “find employment through a relationship with Jesus Christ.” The group’s budget and curriculum show that $8,000 of state money was used to buy Bibles and that the program focused primarily on Bible study... * The Institute for Responsible Fatherhood and Family Revitalization, run by religious and crime-fighting Texas conservatives, was given $1.5 million in state funds for a religious-sponsored job training program that required “total surrender to Christ.”... * Bypassing public debate, the Department of Criminal Justice used $1.5 million to fund the Inner Change prison pre-release program, a “Christ- centered, bible-based” program sponsored by Prison Fellowship Ministries, founded by Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson... ...Despite failures in Texas, Bush continues to push his federal faith-based initiative, largely through the use of presidential orders that circumvent congressional debate. “As the nation considers this public policy possibility,” says Ashley McIlvain, political director for TFN, “Texas already has a record with these policies. We know that faith-based initiatives violate the religious freedom of people in need. In Texas, our record shows that the faith-based initiative also puts people in danger.” News Section Bush Plans to Let Religious Groups Get Building AidThe policy shift significantly expands the administration's contentious religion-based initiativeThe Bush administration plans to allow religious groups for the first time to use federal housing money to help build centers where religious worship is held, as long as part of the building is also used for social services. The policy shift, which was made in a rule that the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed this month, significantly expands the administration's contentious religion-based initiative. The White House says it wants to end discrimination against religious groups. Opponents say the policy breaches the separation of church and state. Editorial Using Tax Dollars for ChurchesPresident Bush punched a dangerous hole in the wall between church and state earlier this month by signing an executive order that eases the way for religious groups to receive federal funds to run social services programs. The president's unilateral order, which wrongly cut Congress out of the loop, lets faith-based organizations use tax dollars to win converts and gives them a green light to discriminate in employment. It should be struck down by the courts. ...While the initiative in theory bars federal subsidies for religious activities themselves, it clearly permits praying, proselytizing, religious counseling and other sectarian activities to be part of a program receiving federal funds. President Bush's initiative runs counter to decades of First Amendment law, which holds that government dollars cannot be used to promote religion. The White House claims money will not be used to directly support religious activities. But by financing religious people who provide social services in a way that includes religion, the program will be doing just that. The faith-based initiative is also unconstitutional, and fundamentally unfair, because it allows tax dollars to be used in programs that discriminate in hiring... Karen McCarthy Brown You Better Believe Federal Faith-Based Funding Is A Bad IdeaKaren McCarthy Brown is director of the Newark Project, a mapping of religious life in Newark, N.J., and professor of anthropology of religion at Drew University Graduate and Theological SchoolsLots of people seem to think that federal funding for faith-based charity violates the separation of church and state. It does. But there is another reason why Americans should be wary of allowing the government to have any financial control over our richly diverse religious traditions: Such funding allows the government to decide, essentially, what counts as a religion. Washington Post [Pat] Robertson Charity Wins 'Faith-Based' GrantToday, Operation Blessing International, a Virginia Beach charity created by Robertson, is to get $500,000 in the first wave of grants to be distributed under the faith-based initiative, which gives federal money to religious organizations that provide social services... Also see:How Pat Robertson self-dealt he and his son $90 million in tax-exempt funds Washington Post GOP Using Faith Initiative to Woo VotersOffice's Officials Have Appeared With Republican Candidates in Tight RacesRepublicans are using the prospect of federal grants from the Bush administration's "faith- based initiative" to boost support for GOP candidates, especially among black voters in states and districts with tight congressional races this fall. Top government officials overseeing the program, designed to funnel federal social service grants to religious groups, have appeared at Republican- sponsored events and with GOP candidates in at least six states. The events often target black audiences, such as a recent South Carolina seminar to which about 1,600 black ministers were invited. The events' hosts explained how the federal program will distribute about $25 million in grants to community groups affiliated with churches and other private-sector institutions...[full story at Washington Post]. Also see:Bringing faith to the West Wing: FB Initiative laying the groundwork for GOP patronage machine Bill Berkowitz Funding On FaithDespite Setbacks, President Bush's Faith-Based Team Moves ForwardMore than 18 months after the introduction of his faith-based initiative, Congress is still debating a compromise version of the president's proposal. The "Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act of 2002" (CARE Act), which passed out of the Senate Finance Committee in mid- June, has yet to be voted on by the full Senate or be reconciled with a more controversial House bill passed last year. Although it is clear that Bush's vision of moving "armies of compassion" into just about every sphere of domestic life will not be realized by whatever legislation eventually emerges from Congress, the administration is making a great deal of progress funneling money to faith-based organizations.. Bill Berkowitz Faith-based liteCautious 'compromise' treads dangerous territoryOn February 7 President Bush, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), announced that they had settled on a deal for legislation that would incorporate some of the president's proposals from his faith-based initiative. Whether the provisions will become law or not is still up in the air, because they must be approved by both the House and the Senate. The most controversial provision in the proposed legislation would allow direct grants to religious based charities, which currently must setup non-sectarian branches of themselves in order to get federal money. This provision is an extension of the so-called "charitable choice" provisions, first introduced into the 1996 welfare reform bill by then-Senator now-Attorney General John Ashcroft. It is not now clear whether these religious federal money recipients would have to abide by all other federal laws, such as civil rights laws, or laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion, or religious beliefs. According to Rep. Bobby Scott, (D-Va), "The legislation does not make it clear that religious groups that discriminate in hiring will not be eligible. Rather, it will be up to the Bush administration to interpret the law..." Writes Berkowitz: "The result of this compromise is that the Bush Administration, stocked as it is with right-wing ideologues, will be the fox guarding the henhouse. And, at the risk of mixing metaphors, they've created a loophole you could drive a bunch of tractor-trailer trucks through." Of course the Bush Administration is not to be trusted to deal even-handedly with religious charities that support it. Berkowitz recounts last year's ugly dustup over a backroom political deal between the Salvation Army and the Bush Administration that would have allowed the Salvation Army to receive federal funds and still discriminate against homosexuals, while providing the Bush Administration with a $1 million campaign touting it paid for by the Salvation Army. Berkowitz also recounts how Marvin Olasky, the conservative philanthropy product who is the "godfather" of "compassionate conservatism" (and advisor to George W. Bush), reported last year in his World magazine that he had been given assuarances by the Bush Administration that its legislation-writer was a master at writing "vague language" that would create an opening for religious grant recipients to proselytize its beneficiares despite what appear to be restrictions against it. Meanwhile, "Senator Lieberman praised the president for his 'leadership' and pointed out that he believes the legislation is 'a constitutionally appropriate' way to proceed...." Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has a different take: "The White House claims this plan will offer equal treatment for all groups, but it actually gives special treatment to religious groups." "It is simply wrong for a publicly funded job training facility to post a banner that reads, 'Only Jesus Saves,'" Lynn added. "If a religious group receives public funds, they should display an American flag, not a crucifix. The faith-based initiative still has a giant question mark hanging over it." Concludes Berkowitz: "At the end of the day, the Bush faith- based team may not have gotten all it wanted, but it has certainly gotten a foot, a rather large one at that, in the door. From this point forward that door will continue to be nudged open inch by inch." Freedom From Religion Foundation Freedom From Religion Foundation Wins One Against Faith-based InitiativeThe Freedom From Religion Foundation's legal challenge of direct, unrestricted taxpayer funding of a faith-based social service agency has resulted in the first court decision in the nation against public funding of faith-based initiatives. In a decision announced this week (January 9, 2002), U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb, for the Western District of Wisconsin, found that a public "grant to Faith Works constitutes unrestricted, direct funding of an organization that engages in religious indoctrination" and that the "funding stream violates the establishment clause." Also see:"FFRF vs. Ashcroft", Freethought Today, August 2001 FaithWorks' Statement of Faith, Theology & Spirituality, Freethought Today, August 2001 Bill Berkowitz Voucherizing Bush's faith-based initiativeConservative ideologue Marvin Olasky - the so-called "godfather of compassionate conservatism" - has revealed a duplicitous bait-and-switch political tactic employed by the Republican Bush White House to get its faith-based initiative off the ground. Writing in the Christian magazine he edits called "World", Olasky called the dust-up over the Salvation Army's request to spend federal money in discriminatory ways a "feint": "The biggest feint of all, according to one executive close to the White House, has been the entire debate over separating 'religious' and 'nonreligious' content [of the recipient agency's programs]. 'Let people fight over that. It's all a show,' he said. 'We kick and scream. We didn't roll over too easy on language, or else they'll think it's what you wanted.' What's truly important in the legislation, he said, is a 'stealth provision' about vouchers: 'Let people argue over grants, but get the vouchers passed.'" According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Bush administration sources told Olasky that from the very beginning, they were confident that Department of Justice senior counsel Carl Esbeck who "is a master at writing vague language," would create an opening for proselytizing despite what appears to be restrictions against it. And that came to pass. Folded into the House bill is a "stealth provision" using a system of vouchers to allow faith-based organizations to get around the no proselytizing restrictions. In "Vouchers, Faith-Based Initiative's Saving Grace," an article posted on the Web site of the Center for the Study of Compassionate Conservatism, Michael Barkey describes vouchers as the "Faith-Based Initiative's saving grace." Barkey, president of the recently founded Center for which Olasky serves on its Board of Directors, describes the provision: "Like food stamps, vouchers can be issued directly to individuals who may then redeem them for goods and services at the qualifying institution of their choice. Vouchers maintain a wall of separation between the government and the service provider, reducing the likelihood of organizational dependency or regulatory creep. And the government doesn't support any particular religion through a voucher plan, only enable individuals to choose where to go for assistance." Barkey also points out that the House bill allows for cabinet secretaries "to convert 'some or all of the funds' earmarked for social service spending under the charitable choice provision of the 1996 welfare reform law ($47 billion annually), into 'indirect assistance,' that is into vouchers." Washington Post "The departure of John DiIulio means George Bush officially becomes the president of white America"John DiIulio resigns as head of Faith Based InitiativeStunning blow is dealt to Republican President Select George W. Bush's scheme to privatize and religion-ize welfare John DiIulio is resigning as head of the Bush Administration's so-called Faith Based Initiative (FBI). The Washington Post reports that: ...DiIulio's allies charged that the resignation meant the White House's faith initiative...had been taken over by religious conservatives. "The departure of John DiIulio means George Bush officially becomes the president of white America," said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a black minister who appeared with Bush in Austin and Washington as a vigorous backer of the effort. "The message in Professor DiIulio's departure is that the black and the poor in the inner cities can go to hell. It sends a signal that the faith-based office will just be a financial watering hole for the right-wing white evangelists." Of course, why anybody should believe anything that DiIulio says is itself in question. Besides being on the payroll of the conservative philanthropies, his previous research and writings have proven to be spectacularly wrong. The 1996 book that he co-wrote with fellow sponsored conservatives William J. Bennett and John Walters that warned of a coming wave of teenage "superpredators" led to a nationwide wave of teenage imprisonment and prison building - yet the predicted sociatal change never occured - a concept which, according to the New York Times he now "regrets" promoting. Also see:MSNBC Faith Based BilkingA new report details how a deep desire to make money combined with deep religous faith makes many Americans easy prey for religious-based scams. Conservative philanthropy funded propagandists have helped fuel this environment by arguing that Wealth Creation is somehow a path to salvation. The report on MSNBC details how some 90,000 religious Americans have been bilked out of nearly $2 billion over the past three years by con artists who "tap into the accepting and often non-questioning pockets of religious-minded people...promising unearthly rewards from divinely blessed investment..." Washington Post Bush Drops Rule On Hiring of GaysDemocrats: 'Faith-Based' Initiative at RiskOne day after the Washington Post broke a story about how the Salvation Army had worked out a secret deal with the Republican Bush Administration that would have allowed them to discriminate against Gays - in exchange for them supporting the administration's so-called "Faithbased Initiative" and undertaking a $100,000 publicity campaign for it, the Bush Administration said yesterday that it "will not pursue the [Office of Management and Budget] regulation proposed by the Salvation Army and reported today." The update also points out how the Salvation Army is technically a church, and already receives $300 million per year from government. Also see:NY Times: Charity Is Told It Must Abide by Antidiscrimination Laws Washington Post Charity Cites Bush Help in Fight Against Hiring GaysSalvation Army Wants Exemption From LawsThe Bush administration is working with the nation's largest charity, the Salvation Army [Which - the report makes clear - already receives $300 million per year in government money], to make it easier for government-funded religious groups to practice hiring discrimination against gay people, according to an internal Salvation Army document. ...The report also offers an image of the Salvation Army starkly different from that of volunteers ringing bells outside shopping malls at Christmas -- a notion that concerns the charity. "The Salvation Army's role will be a surprise to many in the media," it says, urging efforts to "minimize the possibility of any 'leak' to the media." Washington Monthly Utah: Where Church Meets StateIs This Our Faith-Based Future?...If you have lived, as I have, as a non-Mormon in a place whose population is 70 percent LDS, you would understand the real dangers in mixing too much church with state. I was born and raised in Utah, and my entire family still lives there. Every time I go back, from the minute I wade past the missionaries in the Salt Lake City airport to my first watered-down beer, I am struck by the fact that, while inmates may be able to duck Chuck Colson, the average Utah citizen has no hope of escaping the Mormons... Phil Wilayto Milwaukee GenesisWhere George W. Bush's "Faith-Based" initiative really comes fromMuch has been written about George W. Bush's new "faith-based" initiative, but a look behind the curtain finds the same old conservative-Republican philanthropies and their funding recipients behind the whole movement. And most media and pundits have missed the main thrust of the faith-based initiative, which is meant to destroy public-sector unions, build a Republican patronage system in poorer communities of color, and to convince citizens that they shouldn't look to their government to provide for the "general welfare." Salon.com Bringing faith to the West WingJohn DiIulio, who once spread fear about juvenile "superpredators," will now run President Bush's faith-based charity programs...the greatest impact of which will be to lay the groundwork for a national GOP patronage machine to rival the old days of Richard Daley and Boss Tweed...the damage [from his previous failure of vision] came because DiIulio -- judging from his subsequent regret -- failed to see the cynical political uses to which his research...would be put. The same...is true of his new elevation to the White House. DiIulio wants to promote good works. Instead, he's been hired as chief engineer for a patronage machine.
|
RELATED STORIESEditorial Government by Law, Not FaithThe Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that could have a broad impact on whether the courthouse door remains open to ordinary Americans who believe that the government is undermining the separation of church and state.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups
cyncooper Supreme Court Taking It on FaithLater this month, on February 28, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on its first "faith" case in front of the new bench that includes President Bush’s two appointees -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. The case, known as Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), is a challenge to Bush’s faith-based funding program.
Daniel C. Dennett Not Yet The Majority But No Longer SilentThere are many more atheists and agnostics in the country than is generally recognized. For instance, we atheists and agnostics are as numerous as Southern Baptists, and we are also the fastest growing category–-faster even than the Mormons and the evangelicals.
Diana B. Henriques and Andrew Lehren Religion for a Captive Audience, Paid For by TaxesA growing number of programs use tax dollars to pay for religious activities aimed at prisoners, recovering addicts, job seekers and others.
Michael Kranish Democrats inspect faith-based initiative2 call for probe to determine use of taxes Two leading Democrats on the House International Relations Committee said they want to investigate President Bush's faith-based initiative to determine whether taxpayer funds are being used to reward Bush's Christian conservative supporters and whether the faith-based groups are using the funds to help gain converts.
John Donnelly Faith groups urge cuts to AIDS fund[editor's note: Christian's against AIDS victims - how Jesus-like!] Some leading Christian conservatives, angry over the Global Fund to Fight AIDS's promotion of condoms and its perceived lack of support for faith-based programs, are pushing Congress to cut US support for the AIDS initiative, which was initiated by President Bush in a Rose Garden ceremony five years ago with a $200 million commitment.
Andrew DeMillo Ark. begins faith-based inmate programArkansas correction officials are dedicating a Bible-based program for female prisoners, but a national group said it's a risky move while a similar system is being challenged in federal court.
Frank Cocozzelli A Question for Neoconservatives of the Catholic Right...But for all the neoconservatives' bluster about the need for a religious orthodoxy to hold society together, [Leo] Strauss was an atheist and taught that "philosopher-kings" had to maintain their special standing by keeping silent about their personal atheism, playing along with the illusion of there being a God and an afterlife. Believing that reason and revelation cannot be reconciled. Strauss believed that religion can only have currency if it stifles dissent, imposes clannishness and gives citizens a reason to die for one's homeland. As Professor Holmes observes, Strauss also believed that only philosophers can handle the truth that there is no Creator and that we are only left with nature which is indifferent to human values and needs. In other words, organized religion is nothing more than exoteric myths for the rubes, designed to sedate them by fear of eternal damnation.
New Jersey Record Faith-based aid not going to most black N.J. churchesThe Bush administration's faith-based initiative is reaching few black churches in New Jersey because it is not well publicized, churches are wary of federal involvement and smaller congregations lack the resources to apply for funding, local pastors say.
Jonathan Singer "Faith Voters" Are Not Why Democrats Won on TuesdayDespite the fact that the data do not support the conclusion that a more mobilized religious base was the key to George W. Bush's win in 2004*, it still remains a commonly held assumption by the political media. So it should not come as a surprise then that both The New York Times and The Washington Post run stories today trumpeting the supposed importance of Democratic gains among religious and Evangelical voters in the party's win in Tuesday's midterm elections.
James D. Besser Faith-Based Program Could Be Target Of Democratic HouseProbes seen into use of funds; Jewish vote heavily Democratic; new faces on the Hill. This week’s Democratic wave, which swept at least six Jewish candidates into the U.S. House and two into the Senate and capsized the careers of several high-ranking Republicans, could also lead to probes of charges of corruption and misuse of funds in the Bush administration’s faith-based initiative.
Think Progress BOOK EXCERPT: Rove Demands ‘Just Get Me A F—ing Faith-Based Thing. Got it?’David Kuo, the former second-in-command of President Bush’s Office on Faith-Based Initiatives, has a new book detailing how the office was “used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.”
Jonathan Larsen Book says Bush just using Christians‘Tempting Faith’ author David Kuo worked for Bush from 2001 to 2003 ...[Kuo] says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”
Diana B. Henriques Roman Catholic Nun in training contracts cancer, and church fires her!Where Faith Abides, Employees Have Few Rights In her complaint, the novice, Mary Rosati, said she had visited her doctor with her immediate supervisor and the mother superior. After the doctor explained her treatment options for breast cancer, the complaint continued, the mother superior announced: “We will have to let her go. I don’t think we can take care of her...
BooMan Who Likes Torture?Catholics, it turns out Richard Cranium brings attention to a disturbing Pew Research Poll. 46% of the public thinks torture is often or sometimes justified, 49% thinks it is rarely or never justified. But...
Bill Berkowitz Bush Names new Faith-based czarJay Hein, an experienced conservative think tanker, will also be deputy assistant to the president Jay Hein, a long-term conservative think tanker, has been named by President Bush the new director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and a deputy assistant to the president. Hein, who takes over the faith-based office from Jim Towey, will advise the president on domestic policies such as immigration or responses to emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina, the Associate Press reported.
Rachel Zoll Religion-related fraud getting worse...Billions of dollars has been stolen in religion-related fraud in recent years, according to the North American Securities Administrators Association, a group of state officials who work to protect investors.
Dave Orrick Minnesota Republican Governor Pawlenty fires prison chaplain for opposing Charles Colson's religious prison programInnerChange Initiative already ruled illegal by judge Four state senators have accused Gov. Tim Pawlenty's office of having a prison chaplain fired for speaking out against a controversial program to bring Jesus to inmates. Through a spokesman, Pawlenty, a Republican, denied the accusation by the four lawmakers, all Democrats. The state's top prison official declined to provide a reason for the termination of Kristine Holmgren, former chaplain at women's state prison at Shakopee.
Bill Berkowitz GAO report raises serious questions about Bush's Faith-Based InitiativeFor years, President Bush has being going around the country touting his faith based initiative (FBI), claiming that it has been achieving remarkable results delivering social services to the needy. Few reporters have bothered to ask what the president meant by "results." Well, the results are in on the FBI and they are decidedly not positive. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has affirmed what many critics of President Bush's faith based initiative have long asserted: too many religious groups that have received government grants have been mixing religious activities with their social work; and the government has not yet established a concrete process to monitor grant recipients to see if they are being effective.
Neela Banerjee Safeguards fail for faith-based programsGAO finds oversight of grantees thin; Possibility of religious discrimination The Bush administration’s program of financing social service initiatives run by religiously affiliated groups lacks adequate safeguards against religious discrimination and has yet to measure the performance of the groups, a new Congressional report says.
Bill Berkowitz Jim Towey's Brave New Faith-Based WorldThe head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives moves on after successfully promoting and expanding the president's religion-based patronage system
Neela Banerjee Federal judge in Iowa rules Charles Colson prison program violated the separation of church and stateSays program used money from taxpayers to pay for a religious program that gave special privileges to inmates who accepted evangelical Christian teachings and terms A federal judge in Iowa ruled Friday that a state-financed evangelical Christian program to help inmates re-enter society was "pervasively sectarian" and violated the separation of church and state... Also see:Americans United: Ruling Is A Sharp Rebuke To President George W. Bush's 'Faith-Based' Initiative
Frederick Clarkson Rev. John Thomas, President of the United Church of Christ, Denounces IRD Attacks on ChurchesAn historic battle is unfolding for the future of the of mainstream Protestantism in the U.S. and in the world. You might have read press reports about the battles over gay ordination and the threats of walk-outs by hard line conservatives. But that is only a small part of one of the biggest, and most underreported, religion stories in American history.
Spencer S. Hsu Bush Orders DHS to Create Center for Faith-Based AidPresident Bush ordered the Department of Homeland Security yesterday to create a center for faith-based and community initiatives within 45 days to eliminate regulatory, contracting and programmatic barriers to providing federal funds to religious groups to deliver social services, the White House announced last night.
AP U.S. agrees to stop funding abstinence programThe federal government has agreed to stop funding a Pennsylvania-based abstinence-only program for teens that a civil liberties group claimed was using federal dollars for Christian evangelization.
Bruce Wilson $500 Million for federal "bigotry based" initiative ?Federal religious patronage system? President George W. Bush has just quietly signed legislation adding even further - by half a billion dollars, to be spent over 5 years - to growing rivers of federal cash flowing, under Mr. Bush's presidency, to "Faith Based" initiatives allowed to both practice religious discrimination in hiring and also, by mandate of federal law, enjoined - claims the Bush Administration - from using federal "faith based" money targeted at strengthening marriages to help gay couples who are married or have domestic partnerships and civil unions.
Walter Armstrong Missionary PositionHow Bush’s rock-star-endorsed African AIDS program became an evangelical boondoggle ...But what Ed Bradley didn’t tell you is that the U2 frontman’s coup is looking more and more like a pact with the devil. So far, we’ve spent $4.8 billion, less than a third of the total monies promised. And more insidiously, according to people in the field, every year a greater proportion of the funds earmarked for prevention are going to evangelically popular but ineffective abstinence-only programs, rather than, say, condom distribution.
Freedom From Religion Foundation FFRF Challenges "Faith-based" Prison Ministry: Sues State of New Mexico"God always comes first, family second, and all else is secondary." A state-funded fundamentalist Christian prison ministry program ("God pod") in a women's prison in New Mexico is being challenged in federal court by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a state/church watchdog. Also see:Santa Fe Reporter: Beyond the God Pod
Stephen Pizzo Welcome to Faith-Based AmericaWhy not just streamline hiring at federally funded faith-based organizations by requiring that everyone's religious affiliation be tattooed on their arms? As part of President Bush's "faith-based initiative," US taxpayers gave the Salvation Army's children services division $47 million this year -- 95% of its total budget. Several Salvation Army employees refused to take the Salvation Army's pledge "proclaiming Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord," reveal which church they belong to or identify gay co-workers -- and were summarily fired.
Mark Mazzetti Air Force Chaplain Policy Cited in Faith Bias CaseGuidelines that may have encouraged Christian evangelizing were rescinded in August, according to a lawyer for the service. The Air Force until August provided guidelines to chaplains that officials believe may have encouraged them to aggressively advocate Christianity throughout the ranks, according to a letter written by a top military lawyer in a lawsuit over religious discrimination.
David L. Kirp Faith-based disasterThat the Federal Emergency Management Agency mismanaged the Hurricane Katrina relief effort is old news. But there's more to FEMA's failure than simple bungling. The Bush administration's core belief that faith-based organizations can do the job better than the government or experienced nonprofits has compounded the problem.
Mike Mosedale God at the U: He's not dead, just suspendedThe Freedom from Religion Foundation is declaring partial victory in its spat with the University of Minnesota. As City Pages reported previously, the Madison-based organization of free-thinkers sued the U in federal court this spring. The cause of action? The U's participation in an organization called the Minnesota Faith Health Consortium , which in the view of the FFRF violates the constitutional prohibition against government promotion of religion.
Bill Berkowitz Tom Monaghan's Big Box ChurchPizza Magnate is building homes in a Florida sanctuary for orthodox Catholics called Ave Maria, where there won't be any porn, condoms, or television smut
Bob Moser The CrusadersChristian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image It's February, and 900 of America's staunchest Christian fundamentalists have gathered in Fort Lauderdale to look back on what they accomplished in last year's election -- and to plan what's next. As they assemble in the vast sanctuary of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, with all fifty state flags dangling from the rafters, three stadium-size video screens flash the name of the conference: RECLAIMING AMERICA FOR CHRIST. These are the evangelical activists behind the nation's most effective political machine -- one that brought more than 4 million new Christian voters to the polls last November, sending George W. Bush back to the White House and thirty-two new pro-lifers to Congress. But despite their unprecedented power, fundamentalists still see themselves as a persecuted minority, waging a holy war against the godless forces of secularism. To rouse themselves, they kick off the festivities with "Soldiers of the Cross, Arise," the bloodthirstiest tune in all of Christendom: "Seize your armor, gird it on/Now the battle will be won/Soon, your enemies all slain/Crowns of glory you shall gain."
Bill Berkowitz James Kennedy's Christian CrusadeTV Evangelist's ministerial and media empire claim US a 'Christian nation', aim to extend religion's political reach
Richard B. Schmitt Justice Unit Puts Its Focus on FaithA little-known civil rights office has been busily defending religious groups ...The Salvation Army was accused in a lawsuit of imposing a new religious litmus test on employees hired with millions of dollars in public funds. When employees complained that they were being required to embrace Jesus Christ to keep their jobs, the Justice Department's civil rights division took the side of the Salvation Army. Also see:
Max Blumenthal Air JesusWith the Evangelical Air Force at the National Religious Broadcasters' convention.
Jeff Krehely Funding the Culture Wars...the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy's recent report on evangelical grantmaking, Funding the Culture Wars: Philanthropy, Church and State...examined the grantmaking activity of 37 foundations, uncovering nearly $170 million in grants given to hundreds of evangelical organizations from 1999-2002...Most of the grant recipients have a "Statement of Faith" prominently displayed on their websites or other promotional materials. Others declare themselves "faith-based" or "Christ-centered."
AP Poll: Americans Wary of Politics in ChurchMost Americans oppose political parties obtaining church rosters, says a new poll that found bipartisan opposition to a step the Republicans have taken to identify voters The Republican National Committee has sought church directories from Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics who support President Bush, a move it said would help them mobilize new voters. Republicans argued that the directories are public documents available to anyone, and the request to church members violated no law. They have continued the practice.
SFGate.com Bush's faith-based changes scrutinized - He has made changes without Congress' OKPresident Bush has gone "under the radar" and around the Congress to spread his faith-based initiative throughout the federal government, according to a new study released Monday.
Mark Kleiman Faith-Based FudgingHow a Bush-promoted Christian prison program fakes success by massaging data
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Faith-Based Parks?Creationism Crowds Out Science National Park Service employees from across the country who are concerned that Bush political appointees are taking our national parks in a new, dangerous direction have contacted PEER to ask for our assistance. In a series of recent decisions, the National Park Service has approved the display of religious symbols and Bible verses, as well as the sale of creationist books giving a biblical explanation for the Grand Canyon and other natural wonders.
|
||||||||||||||
