Father Jonathan outlines the contradictions:
1) In an Obama administration, the federal government would supervise the hiring process of faith-based groups to make sure they do not give preference to employees who share the faith of the organization.
2) In an Obama administration, the federal government would only give money to “secular programs†of faith-based groups.
In his own words, Senator Obama explains and justifies his reforms in this way:
“Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea – so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs.â€Â
As a former professor of constitutional law, Senator Obama surely knows the Constitution says only two things about the federal government’s relation to religion: 1) it should not establish one religion over another 2) congress should pass no law that prohibits its free exercise.
But in the ubiquitous spirit of that phantom Constitutional wall of separation of church and state, Senator Obama promises his administration will discriminate against all faiths, as a way to respect the faith of all. In fact, his plan would whitewash faith-based groups of faith. Imagine what would happen to an after-school program run by an Orthodox Jewish temple that cannot give preference to hiring Orthodox Jewish teachers. The program would cease to exist. Or imagine an Evangelical ministry that helps prisoners reintegrate into society forced to “secularize†its programs in order to receive financial aid.
News Alert: religion is not poison. And it certainly is not the federal government’s role to supervise the religious content of a faith-based program. Its only concern should be the efficacy of the program in producing the desired secular objectives for society’s common good.
More from the Weekly Standard:
We thought this was a slam dunk because treating religious organizations equally by allowing them to hire employees who support their mission has long been the settled American consensus on civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in 1972, four Charitable Choice laws signed by President Clinton and Supreme Court case law all support the right of faith-based organizations to hire employees based on their religious commitment. (See the Center for Public Justice’s Guide to Charitable Choice.)
The hiring issue became a problem only when the cultural warriors of the Left saw Bush’s faith-based initiative as a threat to their political strength and sought to deny Bush a political victory. Even John DiIulio, Bush’s first head of the Faith-Based initiative gets this wrong. As Joseph Knippenberg shows in a review of DiIulio’s Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America’s Faith-Based Future, he mistakenly states that the Charitable Choice legislation signed by President Clinton and the Civil Right Act does not contain such a robust hiring protection.
Regardless, it is still hard to see the objection to maintaining these protections. It is a matter of simple justice. If a nonprofit center provided counseling to drug addicts based on some secular (say, Freudian) theory of counseling, they should not be required to hire, as a condition of government funding, Christian counselors (or anti-Freudian secularists for that matter) who take a different approach. And vice versa. Gay-friendly counseling centers should not be required, as a condition of funding, to hire fundamentalists or Roman Catholics who have profound moral objections to homosexual activity. And vice versa.
Breaking news on a scoop:
July 21, 2008: Chicago, Illinois. Barack Obama named his vice presidential running mate today. In another stunning first for the nation, he named himself as his running mate. What’s the catch? Well he chose not his current self, i.e., Obama circa Summer 08, but rather chose Obama circa Spring 08. This move allows him to reach across a wider part of the traditional Democratic electorate and allows him to expand his positions on numerous issues. Indeed, it allows him to take more than one position on many key issues in the hope that perhaps one will turn out to be correct.
Obama’s announcement was met with unbridled ecstasy by his supporters. Imma Freespirit, a Williams College senior, said “this is amazing; we were worried he was leaving his leftist policies behind to pander to the majority of Americans, but now we get both Obamas. This is truly a great day for the progressives of America.†Analysts were also impressed. Justin Cliché stated that “Obama has been taking flak for shifting from his positions in recent weeks. This way he excites his base voters from the primary and can still appeal to the middle in the general election. It is brilliant.â€Â
Obama declined questions from reporters, simply stating “I have stated from the beginning that it is time for change and for new politics. I think this shows that I can deliver on this message.â€Â
You didn’t get that from perfesser caric’s blog.
First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion.
Unless, of course, you are proselytizing them about the evils of whitey. Then it’s OK.
Mr HussienObama needs to just shut his piehole. We know what his religion is and it involves bowing 5 times a day to Meccah. Hell he could kill 2 birds with one stone and have a couple of lines of coke on his prayer rug.
Obambi is omnipotent. Right, thor and priggy?
If he was an observant Muslim, the coke would be verboten. My similar comment yesterday was a joke, which was playing off the joke of another.
Now be a good little Obama soldier and say it in Spanish.
I have to admit it. This is pure genius.
With a program like this, Obama won’t have to give one red cent to any true religious group. Only activists will be able to play his game – because they will play any game to get free money and increase their influence.
Well if you look at his church’s youtube videos they were not preaching any religion, just telling people to vote Democrat or vote for Obama over Hillary “she ain’t never been called a #$%%^*”. So this would be in perfect keeping with Obama’s past community organizing. He would just skip any pretext of it being religious based and they would go straight to “Republicans are the party of RICH WHITE PEOPLE.”
Let’s give grants to faith based programs, but only if they take the faith out of them. Note: Liberation theology is not faith, except for when it is.
Believe in oppression! It pays off!
I wonder how oppressed we will all feel when we end up hearing these prayers over a loudspeaker at 6 am every morning.
Hmmmm.
Soooooooo.
Obama believes in the good works churches can do … as long as there’s no actual religion in it?
Sorta kinda like Oboner’s “new politics” without the newness part.
– I visited some of the Lefts blogsites last evening. What a mess. They don’t even know what this asshole is about. Total mass confusion. They go from carping about some <S< Conservative hit piece where whatever is actually happening is perverted and biased with the usual ankle deep BDS screeds, to openly bitching about Obama’s “move to the center”.
– Kos writes a post bragging about getting Harold Ford jr. to attend the “Netroots Nation” convention this year, and most of his commentators tell him Ford sucks, is way to moderate, and can’t do them any good, so why bother.
– HuffPo is just a confused jangled pile of discordant posts that seem to have no common theme, but overall seems to be pro-Hillery.
– DU seems to have become a headlines post blog for AP, and FDL looks nothing like it used to.
– None of them seem to be getting much readership these days, and the comments I read showed a lot of bickering back and forth, and anyone that disagrees with the narrative gets told to leave.
– Which in itself is par for the course, but now seems to be all they do anymore, just piss and moan and rip each other, and edit comments.
– In the mean time, over at PUMA they are really pouring it on with the fuck Obama, hes not one of us posts, and calling for all Hillery supportors to rally. They have this “125 delegates, please come back and support the only true Liberal candidate – Our Hillery” campaign going on.
– The Left is not a happy camp these days.
– As for the man himself, he just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Secularize religion? What the fuck is this guy smoking.
– Scratch an Obama, find a Marxist.
So by taking Federal money, Catholic Charities will have to hire abortion activists? I can see how that would work.
In an astounding coincidence, the Muslim brotherhood gets millions for Islamic Charities, but somehow, coincidentally, finds no qualified Jews for their staff.
The millions of kids enslaved by cumpulsory voluntary service will be entertained by Michelle Obama’s exhortations to work harder for the glory of the
Reichstate. Ironic, isn’t it. Slavery in the 21st century, courtesy of Obama.– This approach hes talking about would put the government in direct control of religions, then churches like Trinity could openly politic from the pulpit, in fact they could be coersed to do so, and carry whatever messaage the Left wanted to propagandize.
– I see it as a not so thinly veiled attempt to monopolize religion, just as the Left does now with the legacy press.
– This asshole needs to be stopped, and never let anywhere near the WH.
The Dems have only themselves to blame.
Gotta be Lenin for the primaries. Have to be at least Carter, if not Truman, for the general, and pray the moonbats don’t bolt in November even if you haven’t publicly promised to castrate all the straight white males to celebrate the nationalization of all corporations.
I don’t feel sorry for them in the least.
Religiousiness™
O! can star in the new version of Metropolis, “Democropolis”, and he can be The Mediator, or “Demediator”.
Ya know, the funny thing about the McCain candidacy is, the Right never had any illusions about him. Which makes it, oddly, easier to swallow the fact that he’ll stab us in the back over little things like free speech.
But didn’t “Timecop” teach us, the same person from two different times, can’t occupy the same space” and “no crossing the streams”
I thought “no crossing the streams” was Ghostbusters.
Or, in a stroke of what I can only describe as elegant simplicity, eliminate all federal taxes and allow people to donate their money to whatever organizations they see fit so that those organizations can actually help people.
That dovetails into why government help for ‘faith based initiatives’ don’t work. The organizations can not find enough people that agree with their core values or ideology to expand when offered the ability to expand with federal money. Ergo they hire people at odds with what was working for them as a small organization… and they become just another non faith based group with normal ho hum results.
I realize my suggested approach is a non-starter, since it does nothing to help government employees’ unions or any NGOs, but still.
Cynicism is unavoidable when the object of “problem-solving” is not to solve the actual problem. No wonder more than half the population has completely given up on voting.
Well if you look at his church’s youtube videos they were not preaching any religion, just telling people to vote Democrat or vote for Obama over Hillary “she ain’t never been called a #$%%^*â€Â.
Come on, a good parody wouldn’t be so shy as to use #$%%^*â€Â.
I visited some of the Lefts blogsites last evening.
Thank you BBH, for doing the dirty work for us.
I thought “no crossing the streams†was Ghostbusters.
I thought it was in the event of a MMF threesome.
Oh. Wait. That’s no crossing swords.
Never mind.