Faith-based initiatives
“Thanks to President Bush and his plan to Christianize the nation’s provision of social services, one’s relationship with Jesus Christ has become a real resume booster. As author Michelle Goldberg reports in her new book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Bush has ushered in affirmative action for the born- again.
In 2005 alone, more than $2-billion in federal tax money went to faith-based programs for such services as job placement programs, addiction treatment and child mentoring. Overwhelmingly, this money went to groups affiliated with Christian religions.
This reallocation of social service money from secular agencies to religiously affiliated programs has also resulted in shifting employment opportunities. But some of these new employers have a shocking job requirement - only Christians need apply.”
This is proof that religious descrimination is occuring in our country. This policy of government-sponsored religion (another, more accurate term for faith-based initiative) is making a mockery of everything this nation is supposed to stand for. If things don’t change, I envision a day when a person might go to their local Health and Human Services Department and have to sign a statement of faith before applying for aid. Or perhaps only Christians will be allowed to get government grants or scholarships for college. Maybe only Christians will be able to get research grants. This is a very slippery slope we are on right now.
This is frankly disgusting. Religion and State should never be twinned. If faith is about personal belief, as it should be, how can personal belief be found in a place where you are TOLD what is the correct religion. My God! It’s Tudor England all over again.
The founding fathers are spinning in their graves so hard that if we could tap that energy, we could do away with fossil fuels altogether!
Faith-based anything in government needs to go the way of the dodo, and pronto. It can take the Patriot Act along with it.
I think it may have been on the Colbert Report (I might be wrong about that though), but someone pointed out that Al Qaeda is also a faith based initiative.
[…] Faith based groups are working out so well too. Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
[…] Back in August I posted about the corruption in the faith-based initiative programs. Sunday in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette there was an article on an abstinence-only group located in Fort Smith, AR called Tree of Life Preventive Health Maintenance Inc., the #1 abstinence promoter in the state. This company is completely entwined with a religious group and illustrates the obvious conflicts that occur with faith-based programs. Under the Bush administration, the federal government has doled out $ 781 million to programs that discourage teenagers from having premarital sex. The steadily increasing grants, many of them to faith-based charities, are making virginity a growth industry and creating a boom for abstinence promoters like Cindy Crawford of Fort Smith. […]