Religion from The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com

Going God Over Gas

Mike Lillis — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:15:00 GMT

Here's a valuable use of time: A group called the Pray at the Pump Movement will congregate at a Shell gas station in DC this afternoon to -- you guessed it -- pray in celebration of falling gas prices. Seems this group launched its plight in April, encouraging motorists to pray for lower fuel prices as they filled their vehicles. Now that oil prices have dropped to roughly $114 a barrel -- the lowest tally in months -- they want to give God a shout-out of thanks.

(Back on planet Earth, economists attribute the falling prices largely to the fact that Americans are driving much less. The Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday that U.S. demand in the first six months of 2008 dropped further, relative to a year ago, than it has since 1982.)

The group also says it plans to "pray for comedian Jay Leno for his comments against the Pray at the Pump Movement," according to one daybook entry announcing the event. That's because of remarks Leno made last month during his stand-up monologue:

Hey, have you heard about this group called Prayer at the Pump? They're a prayer group that springs up, and they go to gas stations and they hold hands and they pray for lower gas prices. Otherwise known as the Bush energy plan.

Seems pretty tame to us, but what the hell, maybe the push will gain traction. As Columbia University political scientist David L. Epstein said this week: "There are no atheists in a hurricane."

'We have a choice in this country'

Jefferson Morley — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:58:55 GMT

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
"A More Perfect Union"
Constitution Center
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters….And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Times Are Changing for Religious Right

Holly Yeager — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:32:30 GMT

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, has grown so accustomed to the steady drumbeat of death notices for the religious right that he can joke about it.

“I feel amazingly well,” Perkins said Wednesday. “I don’t feel like I am cracking up or dying – and the movement isn’t either.”

Instead, Perkins argues, recent “growing pains” are proof that the religious right is broadening its agenda and its reach. At the same time, evangelicals are exerting their independence from the Republican Party and, he hopes, increasing their influence on politics and policy.

Perkins makes his argument in a new book, “Personal Faith, Public Policy,” he wrote with Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, which brings together black churches and community leaders. The project is part history, part platform, and, it appears, a bid to take the helm of a movement from its original generation of leaders, men like the late Jerry Falwell.

Perkins and Jackson got to know each other through their work in opposition to gay marriage. Today, amid a shifting landscape, they see an opportunity to combine what Jackson calls “righteousness issues”, like abortion and marriage, that have long pre-occupied white-led evangelical groups, with “justice issues” like poverty, traditionally the focus of African-American churches. The result is a wide-ranging and ambitious agenda that calls for action on immigration, poverty, global warming, health-care reform and more, while also fighting abortion and strengthening traditional families.

“Our movement is not dead,” Jackson explained. “Our movement is maturing.”

It is a provocative – and perhaps hopeful -- spin on the current state of the religious right, whose ranks have recently been at odds with its leadership, frustrated by a focus on those righteousness issues and seeming disregard for other matters.

The surprisingly strong showing of Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister, in the Republican presidential primary – despite the lukewarm reception he received from the leaders of movement -- was just one sign of that tension. Since dropping out of the race, Huckabee has hinted at a role for himself at the leader of a new generation of Christian conservatives.

Whatever form its leadership takes, there is broad agreement that the evangelical movement is changing.
As Jim Wallis, a left-leaning Christian activist who is among those to declare the end of the religious right – put it during a Washington discussion of the new book, “What has felt like a monologue is over and a dialogue has begun.”

Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, pointed to a generational and ethnic shift he called “the browning of the evangelical movement,” which is bringing new priorities. For example, these evangelicals want to fight terrorism and AIDS, he said. “We have this crazy idea,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not either/or. It’s both.”

And, when it comes to politics, they also want a bit of both. “We definitely don’t want to be owned by one political party,” Rodriguez said.

Any new movement based on these many constituencies with sometimes divergent goals is sure to confront tensions of its own. Rodriguez complained about the “xenophobia” and “nativism” that had characterized recent immigration debates, and called on other Christian right leaders to reject those tactics.

At the heart of the argument that Perkins and Jackson are making is an acknowledgement that the religious right has been too cozy with the Republican Party in the past, too willing to overlook its scandals and missteps in exchange for access and promises of action.

“All too often, evangelicals have tolerated major breaches of character or competence within the Republican Party or certain ‘pet’ conservative groups,” they write. “But if we are ever to speak as the moral conscience of the nation, we must consistently stand for a clear set of values and principles, no matter if that leads to a temporary loss of political power.”
This year, they said, evangelical voters are in play.

“The Republican affiliation of evangelicals is changing,” Perkins said. “They have not left the party, but they party has left them, they feel.”

Perkins said religious right voters would support Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in his presidential bid if he reaches out to social conservatives on their issues. But, if he does not, Perkins warned, “He will not have the energetic, enthusiastic support he will need to win.”

Yet as Perkins and Jackson push the idea that the religious right could become its own voting bloc, with “the ability to seed both parties and operate as a political ‘free agent’,” doesn’t that very term, religious right, underscore a link with the Republican Party?

Perkins and Jackson said they had talked about other monikers, and considered conservative Christian, Bible-believing Christian and evangelical. But they kept coming back to religious right. Though Perkins said, “Maybe a change in terminology is appropriate.”

Church Leaders Above the Law?

Mike Lillis — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:05:14 GMT

Last November, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley (R) sent letters (pdf) to six of the nation's largest ministries asking for information about their finances. The request was in response to concerns that church leaders were abusing their tax-exempt status -- concerns that seem to be merited in the wake of numerous reports about the platinum lifestyles adopted by some of these folks. (Think: private jets; Trump Tower condos in Manhattan; beachfront Malibu villas -- everything a good ascetic needs).

Four months later, however, only two of the six have supplied any information, with one more indicating an intention to do so. The other three, according to a statement (pdf) from Grassley issued Wednesday, are fighting the senator's request, citing their right to privacy or doubting the authority of the Finance Committee -- of which Grassley is the highest ranking Republican -- to access the information.

In response, Grassley this week is taking another stab, and he's recruited a powerful ally in the form of Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). In another round of letters delivered yesterday, the duo gently reminds the church leaders that even God's institutions are not above Washington's tax laws.

While the inquiry is not part of an enforcement action, which would properly belong to the IRS, it is within the jurisdiction of the Committee to make these inquiries. The Committee conferred with the Senate Legal Counsel to ensure that the letter was well within the scope of the authority of the Committee and that it does not infringe upon First Amendment rights.

Grassley and Baucus have given until the end of the month for the churches to reply. Expect lawyers to be involved.

Now We Know

Holly Yeager — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:18:10 GMT

We knew James Dobson didn't like John McCain. But now we know who he does like -- or at least, who he likes among the available choices.

Dobson, leader of the conservative Focus on the Family, will endorse Mike Huckabee today, according to the AP (hat tip TPM).

The support, from the kind of Religious Right establishment that has resisted Huckabee, will encourage him to stay in the Republican nomination fight. And it will remind McCain of just how many people in his party really don't like him.

Just Like We Thought

Holly Yeager — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:33:23 GMT

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Just like we thought, some of the people who used to be the biggest backers of President Bush's faith-based initiative aren't that impressed with what the program has accomplished over the past seven years.

Nonetheless, in their New York Times Op-Ed piece today, it's odd to see David Kuo and John J. DiIulio Jr place their hope for the program in a centrist -- or even Democratic -- future. That can't be the kind of legacy Bush wanted his marquee "compassionate conservative" program to leave.

From Faith to FISA

Holly Yeager — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:30:20 GMT

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Thanks to Michael Kazin for that great piece on Bryan, Huckabee and the tricky question of applying one's faith to public life.

I saw the same dilemma on display this afternoon on the Senate floor, when Utah Republicans Robert Bennett and Orrin Hatch each took time out to mourn the passing of Gordon Hinckley, the head of the Mormon church.

Bennett remembered the last sermon offered by Hinckley, back in October, when he talked about "the toxic effects of anger," and how we should do our best to stay free of that emotion. Bennett was with the world's movers and shakers last week in Davos, where, he said, "I heard a lot of people who could benefit from that sermon." It seems a lot of people he bumped into were angry at "other countries, and officials of other countries," but Bennett wasn't in the mood to name names.

Hatch followed, speaking about Hinckley as a great businessman and a great church leader. "This is a man I loved."

Then, in a seamless transition from religion to politics, Hatch asked for the chance to speak on the FISA bill now before the Senate. "The potential damage to our sources and methods of allowing these lawsuits to go forward is substantial," he said.

Church Groups Lose Faith in Bush Promises for Funding

Holly Yeager — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:10:27 GMT

Photo Credit: Lauren Burke, WDCPix

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Jay Hein, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, stepped to a Washington podium last week and quickly had the rapt attention of the 100 or so do-gooders gathered to celebrate the virtues of mentoring. But they couldn’t hear him well. The microphone was not working.

Smiling broadly, Hein fussed a bit, then decided to get started anyway. A few minutes into his talk about Bush administration efforts to “grow the supply of compassion,” a suited tech guy appeared, plugged a chord into a socket, and Hein was amplified.

The episode provided divine inspiration for Wilson Goode, a Baptist minister and two-term mayor of Philadelphia, who rose next to speak about Amachi, a faith-based mentoring program for children whose parents are in prison. “We have to be plugged in to the right source," Goode said. "Whenever we’re plugged into the wrong source, that’s when you have difficulty. That’s my sermon for Sunday.”

Seven years after President George W. Bush launched his office of faith-based initiatives, critics insist that by turning to Washington for funding, many religious groups have themselves plugged in to the wrong source.

“It’s religious window dressing for the government,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has gone to federal court to fight the program, told me in a telephone interview late last week. “It blurred the line between church and state and made people think it’s OK to use tax dollars to promote religion.”

Unfortunately for Bush, the program also has critics at the other end of the Establishment Clause spectrum. They complain that this president—who made faith-based programs a central part of his compassionate conservative campaign eight years ago –- hasn’t done enough to help religious groups that want to provide social services.

For some, tonight’s State of the Union address, which Bush has regularly used to promote the program, will serve as a sad reminder of their disappointment. In 2003, for example, he used the speech to propose spending $450 million to help supply mentors to more than one million disadvantaged junior high students and children of prisoners, and a new $600 million program to increase the availability of drug addiction treatment. The next year, he asked Congress to make a series of legal changes "so people of faith can know that the law will never discriminate against them again," and to provide still more millions for prisoner re-entry programs.

Since those presidential calls, federal money has been directed to many such programs. Hein last week highlighted Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Middle Tennessee, which in 2007 received a $1 million grant from the Dept. of Health and Human Services for its mentoring program, which uses the Amachi model. On Tuesday Bush is scheduled to go to Baltimore to visit the Jericho program, designed to help men leaving prison to rebuild their lives. The program, run by Episcopal Community Services of Maryland, is funded by the U.S. Labor Dept.’s Prison Re-Entry Initiative.

But the total funds directed to these programs have fallen far short of Bush’s goals and Congress refused to enact the contracting changes he requested. David Kuo, who spent nearly two years as deputy director of the office of faith-based initiatives, blames that performance on a weak commitment to the program at the highest levels of the White House.

Kuo left the office in 2003 and, in a stinging article on Beliefnet, where he is now Washington editor, and in his 2006 book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," he set out both his hopes for the program and its failings.

In a telephone conversation Friday, a still bitterly disappointed Kuo said the White House effort had been “pure politics”—hyped in Bush’s first term to gain support from religious conservatives and then rarely mentioned when the votes were no longer needed.

An $8 Billion Promise

In his first major policy address as a presidential candidate, Bush declared that it wasn’t enough to praise the efforts of faith-based and community groups and call for volunteers to help them. “Without more support and resources both public and private," he said in 1999, "we are asking them to make bricks without straw.”

Bush went on to promise about $8 billion for the effort—including $6.3 billion in tax credits to encourage charitable giving, a provision that didn’t make it into the final version of the 2001 tax cut legislation.

Kuo and others involved with the program said some religious leaders were left with the impression – perhaps the result of overzealous marketing from the White House – that the faith-based office would generate large new pools of money intended solely for their social service work. Instead, what the Bush administration set out to do was to make it easier for faith-based groups to compete with other social service providers for government funds.

Faith-based groups like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services have received federal funds for their work for decades. But the premise of Bush’s vision, as set out by Marvin Olasky – a Marxist-turned-evangelical – was that to be effective, the groups had to be more explicitly faith-based.

Bush was unable to get Congress to change laws to allow faith-based groups to hire and fire on the basis of their religion and still receive federal funds. Instead, he issued a series of executive orders and other regulations to make it easier for them to retain their religious identity and get federal money – while insisting that those funds would not be used for proselytizing.

The result is a confusing set of federal laws and regulations governing the use of public funds by faith-based groups, on central questions like religious hiring and whether secular alternatives must be available to clients. To further complicate things, some states have taken actions of their own in this realm, as I saw when I wrote recently about how Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney handled the issue when they were governors.

That’s why Stanley Carlson-Thies, director of social policy studies at the Center for Public Justice, a leading advocacy group for faith-based initiatives, could only muster a “probably yes” when I asked if, seven years on, it was now easier for faith-based groups to access federal funding. “The whole process is pretty complicated.”

Leveling the Playing Field

The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives can claim some accomplishments. Faith-based groups now get an estimated 11 percent of federal grant money issued for social services. That figure is difficult to put in context, however, because the government only began collecting data on grants to faith-based groups in 2003, when it looked at contracts in just five federal agencies. By 2006, when it looked at 11 agencies, about $2.2 billion went to the groups.

The tally is a bit neater in the Compassion Capital Fund, launched in 2002 to provide technical assistance and capacity building for faith-based and community organizations that provide social services. Since its inception, the fund has sent $264 million to more than 4,500 groups. For example, in 2005, one-time awards of $50,000 were made to 310 groups to improve their ability to deal with at-risk youth, the homeless, people in rural communities, and to organizations that provide "marriage education."

Hein last week highlighted one area of success: a demonstration project that provides mentoring for recently released prisoners had cut the average recidivism rate in half in its first three years, he said.

As Goode saw it, “The one thing President Bush has done is he has leveled the playing field so that faith-based organizations and congregations now have a seat at the table and feel they have a right to be involved in this process.”

But for critics of the program, there is still plenty to complain about. A June 2006 report from the Government Accountability Office found wide differences and severe deficiencies in the way agencies monitored their grants to faith-based initiatives and uneven understanding of rules on permitted religious activities and the rights of program beneficiaries when they face religious content to which they object.

“The administration has shied away from special oversight of church-state safeguards,” said Melissa Rogers, visiting professor of religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School. “The administration has not been willing to recognize that in a number of situations, there are some special concerns here and we need to take those seriously.”

Rogers pointed to a rule that prohibits "inherently religious activities" from being part of any government-funded program. "Everyone agrees that that is the case," she said. "But the word ‘inherently’ has caused a lot of confusion. What is it? Drug rehab that relies on the gospel to get people off drugs? Is that an inherently religious activity?"

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., has filed several suits against the program. In a 2002 case, a Wisconsin judge ruled that a grant to Faith Works, a faith-based residential addiction program, was unconstitutional because it amounted to direct government support for a faith-intensive program.

But in June 2007, the Supreme Court decided that the group did not have standing to sue the White House office. Gaylor said the group continues to bring cases, and is now at work on a challenge to a North Dakota juvenile detention program that is run by a Lutheran group. Residents who do not want to participate in worship services are forced to return to their rooms, she said.

Gaylor said that case and others show the trouble that stems from the very nature of the program: the belief faith-based groups are well suited to provide social services precisely because they are grounded on religion, while operating within a constitutional framework that prohibits them from using federal funds to proselytize. “It was set up as a paradox and that’s always been the weakness of it.”

Religion from The Washington Independent - U.S. news and politics - washingtonindependent.com

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