Tearing Down the Wall
As a Christian, I am admonished to feed the hungry, visit the sick, and minister to the prisoner. I am also encouraged to pay my taxes, to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." Jesus took what I consider to be a very rational position that the roles of a citizen are different and separate from that of a believer. That sounds pretty clear to me, and it's made even clearer in the U.S. Constitution which forbids the establishment of religion. Apparently the distinctions are lost on a lot of Christians, probably because the current administration has conscientiously and intentionally blurred them.
An article in today's NY Times describes one area in which the wall between religion and government has been partially demolished. An Iowa "faith based program", funded by federal tax dollars, works with prisoners in an attempt to rehabilitate them. If accepted into the program, the inmates are moved into much nicer accomodations than the standard issue prison cell. But there's a catch.
But the only way an inmate could qualify for this kinder mutation of prison life was to enter an intensely religious rehabilitation program and satisfy the evangelical Christians running it that he was making acceptable spiritual progress. The program — which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was governor at the time — says on its Web site that it seeks “to ‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems” and showing inmates “how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.” [Emphasis added]
The "spiritual progress" was, of course, to be measured only according to evangelical Protestant doctrine: Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists needn't apply. A federal judge took a look at the program and decided that it just didn't pass Consitutional muster:
For Robert W. Pratt, chief judge of the federal courts in the Southern District of Iowa, this all added up to an unconstitutional use of taxpayer money for religious indoctrination, as he ruled in June in a lawsuit challenging the arrangement. [Emphasis added]
This should have been a no-brainer, but because of the "Faith Based Initiative" bills passed by the GOP congress, religious organizations have been encouraged to tap into government money to do what is clearly the government's job. To make matters murkier, the Bush administration has promulgated federal regulations making it almost impossible to stop egregious abuses of the system (itself flawed at its base).
Government agencies have been repeatedly cited by judges and government auditors for not doing enough to guard against taxpayer-financed evangelism. But some constitutional lawyers say new federal rules may bar the government from imposing any special requirements for how faith-based programs are audited.
In other words, the government has outsourced one of its responsibilities to its friends in the religious reich, just as it outsourced many of its responsibilities to feed and house the military in Iraq and to clean up and rebuild the Gulf Coast after Katrina to its friends in corporate America. In both cases, the regime has shown a flagrant disregard of the proper role of government. In both cases, certain sectors of the population have been unduly enriched with taxpayers' dollars.
This is unacceptable. It is also unAmerican.
An article in today's NY Times describes one area in which the wall between religion and government has been partially demolished. An Iowa "faith based program", funded by federal tax dollars, works with prisoners in an attempt to rehabilitate them. If accepted into the program, the inmates are moved into much nicer accomodations than the standard issue prison cell. But there's a catch.
But the only way an inmate could qualify for this kinder mutation of prison life was to enter an intensely religious rehabilitation program and satisfy the evangelical Christians running it that he was making acceptable spiritual progress. The program — which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was governor at the time — says on its Web site that it seeks “to ‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems” and showing inmates “how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.” [Emphasis added]
The "spiritual progress" was, of course, to be measured only according to evangelical Protestant doctrine: Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists needn't apply. A federal judge took a look at the program and decided that it just didn't pass Consitutional muster:
For Robert W. Pratt, chief judge of the federal courts in the Southern District of Iowa, this all added up to an unconstitutional use of taxpayer money for religious indoctrination, as he ruled in June in a lawsuit challenging the arrangement. [Emphasis added]
This should have been a no-brainer, but because of the "Faith Based Initiative" bills passed by the GOP congress, religious organizations have been encouraged to tap into government money to do what is clearly the government's job. To make matters murkier, the Bush administration has promulgated federal regulations making it almost impossible to stop egregious abuses of the system (itself flawed at its base).
Government agencies have been repeatedly cited by judges and government auditors for not doing enough to guard against taxpayer-financed evangelism. But some constitutional lawyers say new federal rules may bar the government from imposing any special requirements for how faith-based programs are audited.
In other words, the government has outsourced one of its responsibilities to its friends in the religious reich, just as it outsourced many of its responsibilities to feed and house the military in Iraq and to clean up and rebuild the Gulf Coast after Katrina to its friends in corporate America. In both cases, the regime has shown a flagrant disregard of the proper role of government. In both cases, certain sectors of the population have been unduly enriched with taxpayers' dollars.
This is unacceptable. It is also unAmerican.
Labels: Religion
posted by Diane at 4:32 AM
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