From the
AP:
President Bush said Monday that he will hold a White House summit next spring to encourage corporations and foundations to give more money to churches and religious charities.
Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said his staff checked the policies of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and found that 17 percent of their foundations had written policies banning or restricting donations to religious organizations.
So let's see if I've got this right: The White House has been searching the policies of Fortune 500 companies to figure out a way to convince them to start giving more money to non-secular charities. Not charities in general, but only faith-based charities?
Of course there's more......
Jim Towey again:
"I think we can all understand their reluctance, just as we see within government a reluctance to fund a faith-based organization because you don't want money to go to preaching or proselytizing," Towey said. But he said the donations can be targeted to support the groups' social service efforts instead of their worship
Wintley Phipps, president of the U.S. Dream Academy, which funds programs for at-risk children, applauded Bush's effort. He said religious organizations could put corporate and foundation money to good use in the community.
"The president wants to see that happen and we were very grateful to hear him say that," Phipps said as he left the West Wing.
Since taking office in 2001, Bush has pushed to give religious groups equal footing with secular groups in competing for federal dollars. The president says religious organizations often do a better job of serving the poor and meeting other social needs. Civil libertarians fear the government will wind up paying for worship, eroding the separation between church and state.
...............
Bush intended to have the corporate summit in the fall of 2001, but the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that year forced a cancellation. It has been rescheduled for a day to be determined in March 2006.
When he originally announced plans for the summit in May 2001, Bush said corporations must give more and "give better" to reduce substantially poverty and suffering in the United States.
"The federal government will not discriminate against faith-based organizations, and neither should corporate America," Bush said at the time.
Now, of course they say only that 17% of these companies have rules against faith-based giving, so out of 500 companies the are 85 of them that only give to secular organizations.
So what is Bush saying? That the only form of valid charity is faith-based? That if a company gives large sums of money to secular charities they also have to give money to church organizations or the government is going to come knocking on their doors and tell them that they need to pay their "church tax"?
This is outrageous!
What is also outrageous is the assertion that these "faith-based" charities are both willing and able to seperate their proseletizing from their work.
For example:
Recently on either FSTV or LINK, they had a documentary called 'American Virgins'. It was about the faith-based abstinence program "The Silver Ring Thing".
This group had been given $700,000 from the feds to help "teach" abstinence. While they were setting up their massive light and sound stage, the director was talking about how, since they had been given federal funds, that they had to set up special "secular seminar" rooms for those kids that didn't want to hear the religious aspets.
Now, considering that they have this thing set up as a "happening" of sorts, with lights and music, skits and participatory activities, it is somewhat ridiculous to say that they will set up a room in the back for "those" kids.
What is also ridiculous is that, while they were setting up this extremely expensive light and sound system, the director (who has his 10 year old daughter involved, even though he was sure that the "rapture" would take her before she reached a sexual age, so that she would "be prepared" at the gates of heaven), was explaining that "this" event was not using federal dollars, so they were able to make it a purely spiritual event.
I challenge him to show that no federal dollars were spent on the lights, sound, and stage system they had set up. You would have to see it, because we are not talking about a small, amateur setup here, we are talking about a system that many professional performers would drool over!
But the kicker was the meeting that they had for the directors, supporters, funders, etc., where the one man (I think he was a minister, but the memory fades) said "Don't you forget that the abstinence is what gets us in the door, but let's not fool ourselves that once we get there, it's our opportunity to deliver the word" or something very close to that.
I know I say this a lot, but dammit, These people are shameless!
Let corporations give there charitable contributions wherever they want, but it is NOT the federal government's, and certainly not the President's place to tell them they must give the money to church charities!