Ian Bushfield - August 17th, 2008 in Commentary 0 votes Vote Up! Vote Down!

Chris, you ignorant slut.  In your recent article “Faith in 2008: Enough Already” you rightly assess that the media has completely overblown religion in the current race for the White House, however you miss several key points that should make secularists less disgusted.

The first, and key, is that among Obama’s changes to the Faith-Based Initiatives Office, the majority of the changes reduce the ability of religion to use taxpayer dollars to proselytize. A bit of reading reveals what Obama actually wants to do:

1. They were required to set up a separate 501(c)3 organization to receive federal funds. This prevented federal money from being funneled directly to houses of worship, where oversight of how those dollars were being spent (i.e. for secular vs. religious purposes) would have been a tricky task.
2. The separate 501(c)3 groups were required to provide services that were secular in nature. This means groups couldn’t use federal money to engage in sectarian religious activities, such as proselytizing.
3. The social services administered by faith-based groups and funded by government money were required to be available indiscriminate of religion. In other words, an evangelical group couldn’t make its services available only to other evangelicals. Jews, Muslims, atheists, and others — religious and non-religious — also had to have access.
4. Faith-based groups couldn’t discriminate on the basis of religion in their employment decisions for positions that were funded with federal money. (Note the caveat: “with federal funds.” Religious groups only had to adhere to the above regulations if they were spending government money. Where they used their own private funds they were exempt from these rules.)

In summary: the plan will remain, appeasing the fundies and getting Obama votes, but will tie the hands of religions that want to apply to only doing the same thing a secular charity could do. Sound’s pretty darn secular to me.

So I have to say your statement Chris,

Obama’s stance seems to be that atheists are either too stupid or too greedy to make charitable donations to religious groups, so we’d better just take their money and do it for them

Is a total mischaracterization of what Obama is trying to do. You’re still able to donate to whatever charities you want, Obama just wants to keep Christian votes while preventing state-sponsored evangelism.

What does all this come down to? The media is obsessing about religion, and so Obama’s pandering in a way that he needs to in order to be a viable presidential candidate.

Is it admirable and desirable? No, but I think Obama represents a clear move towards secularism from the past eight years of the growing American theocracy.

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Tags: Chris Ray, Faith-Based initiatives, Medi, Obama, politics, theocracy