The list of “faith-based” initiatives sponsored by the Bush administration continues to grow. In January, the Department of Health and Human Services released federal funds to religious groups in Ohio and Pennsylvania to promote marriage. Days afterward, the Bush administration proposed releasing federal housing money to religious groups to erect or refurbish buildings where religious services are held. That adds… return to article
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Reader Comments (33)Page 1 of 1 pagesMy thoughts on separation of church and state: “Amen, brother!” If I hear Bush talk about prayer at anymore press conferences, I’m gonna throw my burning Bible at the TV screen…
Posted by ROCKTIME on Mar 10, 2003 at 7:50 PM Dear In These Times,
For fear of being cynical, I now understand why George W Bush is so adamant about giving money to religious groups. It’s simple. Pastors, ministers, rabbis, imans, etc… influence large audiences in their weekly sermons. Would these same religious leaders bite the hand that feeds them when election time comes around?
It just seems too obvious that the “multplier effect” of federal funds going to these purveyors of political opinions would hammer another nail into the coffin of our great American democracy.
Just as George W Bush doesn’t believe in the United Nations, so George W Bush doesn’t believe in our Constitution. Separation of Churh and States Issues aside, giving token amounts to houses of worship for the “alleged purpose” of providing social services is a sham at best and political fraud at its worst.
Our great country was founded on the Age of Enlightenment of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. George Bush has been the leading taker of life as Texas Governor in this country. George Bush and his un-constitutional USA Patriot Act has taken away more liberties from American than any president in history and Mr. Bush’s never-ending “War on Terror’s” false warning has destroyed many an American’s pursuit of tranquiolity and happiness.
In a word, George W Bush SUCKS!
John Paul Jones
Posted by John Paul Jones on Mar 12, 2003 at 7:47 PM brilliant - think you could get the dallas morning news or houston chronicle to print this???
Posted by Jay Anderson on Mar 12, 2003 at 8:31 PM I believe strongly in the separation of church and state, Bush should read in the Bible when satan took Jesus up in the mountains and offered him to rule the nation, and everything therein if he would follow him. it looks like bush took the offer. Jesus chose his religion over politics because they should be separate
Posted by Deborah L. Craddock on Mar 13, 2003 at 9:24 AM http://opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=C101496&entry=11996
I have quoted some of your article in my opendiary account. The above URL is so you may go see it.
Posted by sherryl-Annette Snyder on Mar 13, 2003 at 10:23 AM I think that Americas founding fathers must be turning over in thier grave about now. The early settlers left europe to escape religious inequitys, and lo and behold Bush has single handedly turned the clock back 250 years, and seems to have made religious inequity his policy. Separation of church and state was a founding principle of America, who the #$%@ is Bush to ignore that!
On the Iraq scam; anyone who starts a war claiming “religous guidance” is as nutty as those he opposes. Iraq has done nothing to us, except perhaps, own a huge oil reserve Bush would like to control. I’m more afraid of Bush & Ashcroft than any nuke weilding 3rd word country!
Posted by Mark on Mar 13, 2003 at 10:50 AM Bush is insane. This article demonstrates only a small fraction of the theological crap being shoved down or throats. It is time to impeach this warmongering lying imposter.
Posted by Louis Lemire on Mar 13, 2003 at 1:50 PM Thank you for reporting on this important study re: the real success (or lack thereof) of Bush’s faith-based initiatives in Texas. These are simply proof of the wisdom of our nation’s founding fathers when the wrote the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution - e.g., erecting a wall of separation between church and state. This news needs to be disseminated to the public and the US Congress, so that we can avert further damage to our nation resulting from Bush’s federally funded (with our hard-earned tax $s!) faith-based initiatives. We are all in grave danger from this misguided, faith-driven “president” - in oh, so many ways!
Posted by Donna on Mar 13, 2003 at 1:51 PM Great job. Now start on the voting scam story, the medicare fraud story(Renquist/Jeb/Frist) And the Miguel Estrada is gay story. HA HA
Posted by Joan Ranade on Mar 13, 2003 at 3:10 PM Thank you for yor efforts in exploring and writing this story. Send this story on to other major neswpapers and to Congress.
Posted by Scott Tracy on Mar 13, 2003 at 5:42 PM Well I am flabergasted how could this be, I mean we know christian are the best just look at history 2000 years of hypocrisy murder and war. In the name of god.
Posted by A Howard on Mar 13, 2003 at 8:24 PM For anyone who’d like to find out more about bush’s thought process read “Bush isn’t a moron, he’s a cunning sociopath” by Bev Conover at Onlinejournal.com
Posted by Gail on Mar 14, 2003 at 10:39 AM Brother Jeb is pushing the same programs here, which I believe, will produce the same results.
Posted by George on Mar 14, 2003 at 6:44 PM The conservatives who have abducted our government are paying back their sugar daddy, Moon. His money and Washington Times made it happen for them. They are pushing the country further to a theocracy, which is Moon’s stated goal. They are pawns of the cultist. He said in the 70’s christians would follow them and this it.
Lean more:
http://moonieworld.blogspot.com/http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon.html
http://www.geocities.com/nomoonies/chronicles/a_moon_primer.html
Posted by nathan on Mar 16, 2003 at 12:14 PM Your short little blurbs regarding faith based social services in Texas are reminiscent of the sound-bites we get from most mainstream media. You failed to mentioned that Teen Challenge has consistently shown a far higher success rate in keeping its participants off drugs than any other program currently in existence. Also, there is ample evidence showing that the Prison Fellowship’s Innerchange Freedom Initiative has significantly reduced recidivism. Obviously, the God-haters don’t like the fact that religion has and does make a very positive contribution to all aspects of society.
Posted by John Lanier on Mar 16, 2003 at 12:56 PM John: “God-haters”
I love the way you holier than thou’s like to tell people what they think and feel about God. That is precisely the reason I don’t want my tax dollars going to people like you and Falwell and Robertson and Moon.
I believe Jesus Christ didn’t do anything to deserve what they have done to his vision. On my Jesus’ behalf, I don’t want to help them. In the case of the Moon organization, I don’t want ANY MORE of my tax dollars going to a group who wants to control my country and the world and believes its leader is the Messiah.
We finance Moon’s theocracy.
http://moonieworld.blogspot.com/2003_02_09_moonieworld_archive.html#88963993‘They do tremendous work out there now.”
http://www.familiefederatie.org/2NwsMaart2.html
Blitzer: “....But now some religious conservatives, Pat Robertson, Marvin Olasky, who is the author of compassionate conservatism, suggesting this may not necessarily be such a good idea, if the federal government gives money, for example, to the Nation of Islam or the Church of Scientology or the Unification Church. What is the policy?
CHENEY: Well, the president’s made it clear that he would in fact like to be able to have these organizations play a more prominent role in terms of dealing with community problems. They do tremendous work out there now. As we campaigned last fall, we stopped and visited an awful lot of these organizations.
Posted by nathan on Mar 16, 2003 at 3:07 PM btw: you speak of successes of FB groups, well...to my knowledge, other than Moon’s son, there is very little drug use in Moon’s organization. Why don’t we ALL become moonies that might solve the drug problem.
Interview with Moon’s daughter in law she tells of Moon’s son beating her while drugged up.
http://www.time.com/time/community/transcripts/chattr101398.htmlFrom NPR http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1000731
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOONS Sep. 26, 1998
Brooke speaks with Nansook Hong, author of In the Shadow of the Moons (Little Brown). Ms. Hong was the former daughter-in-law of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church. She broke away from the church, and left her husband, Hyo Jin, Moonís heir apparent.
Posted by Nathan on Mar 16, 2003 at 3:33 PM After all is said and done, Bush will have been a much better president than Clinton ever was!
Posted by helen on Mar 18, 2003 at 3:12 PM Helen, you are trained. Is there a conservative in the country who isn’t trained like a dog to point at Clinton when confronted with how bad Bush or your movement’s ‘survival of the fittest’ policies are? Conservatives are only convincing themselves it is an argument that holds water. It really shows what a sad state your views are, when you defense is always “WHAT ABOUT CLINTON?”
Bush has already proven he has little undertsanding of the world. Try something dear, try taking a step back and looking at your country and the world. Sad state, and the child king’s short sighted right wing fanatical controllers are the problem. He is their pawn. Thing is, after 911 if Bush would have told you conservatives to eat a dog turd you would be folowing Spot around with a knife and fork.
Nice world now isn’t it. Now do the ONLY thing you know to do, point at Clinton’s zipper. Like I said, trained.
You pro-death folks are a sad state.
Posted by Tom on Mar 18, 2003 at 5:02 PM Do you really think “Adolph W. Bush” will pay any attention to this OR the constitution?!
Posted by dwight boness on Mar 20, 2003 at 3:59 PM Tom, that was well said!
John Laniar there is plenty of evidence that government programs are wonderful at helping people and lifting them out of the poor classes and helping them to become productive citizens. That is the way we should go but people like Bush and the republicans do all they can to tear down social programs and run us into bankruptcy so that these programs can’t be funded. Then people like you trun around and tell us why we should give money to a religion they we don’t believe in or choose to support.
How would you like it if there was no seperation between the state and the god haters.
Posted by Barbara Cornett on Mar 21, 2003 at 11:54 AM Does anyone know where to find the entire TFN report?
Posted by Matt Daniel on Mar 29, 2003 at 6:02 PM The predictable abuse of opportunity by “true believers” whose code allows them to make use of any opportunity to pursue their religious agenda should not blind us to the potential for this program to become the opposite of what the promoters intended. I am not as quick as many to condemn the entire idea. Have we forgotton that the civil rights movement in this country was a “faith based initiative”? Why not seek out the progressive pulpits and preachers, and help them gain access to these funds?
Posted by Seth Eben Shapiro on Apr 6, 2003 at 11:45 AM Seth, that is silly, “let’s just get in a race and see if we can beat them for the most dough...we will ‘out religion’ them”
I can’t believe anyone can’t see the folly of furthering this, especially when we know who will work the system. Bush just gave 475 grand to Free Teens, which is a MOONIE sex abstinence program. Are you familiar with that group? You want to finance them. If you support anything but rolling back religious funding, you do not respect your liberty.
Some people are just gullible enough to think when we become more theocratic it will be ‘their’ version of Christianity or their ‘values’ which will ensue. This is foolish, you ever watch these people? Falwell, Robertson, Moon, they are all extremists IMO, and the last thing I want is to help them tarnish the memory of Jesus Christ.
check it out.
http://moonieworld.blogspot.com/
Posted by Frank on Apr 7, 2003 at 3:47 PM “Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, you’ll be able to use public money to send yours kids to General Beauregard Bigot Private Academy, Fundamentalist Football, and Frequent Drug Tests. They have these religious schools that teach these kids insanity like the earth is 5,000 years old, where the pope is a demon. I don’t want my tax money going to that kind of crap. You can practice religion until you fall out. I don’t want to pay for somebody else’s bigotry.” --James Carville
Posted by neil on Apr 8, 2003 at 2:52 PM Seems to me folks think todays organized religions have something to do with the creator. They are in the business of making a profit. That has nothing to do with spirtual pursuits. So go ahead and give the lieing bastards all the money they want. Maybe they will quit preying on the weak minded and elderly.WWJD.
Posted by Mike on May 10, 2003 at 11:03 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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