Tax Dollars are funding the Unification Church & the Christian Coalition..

[Q]

...and buying votes for George Bush and the Republican party.



Transforming America “One Soul at a Time”

Bush Administration’s “Faith-Based” Initiatives

By Don Monkerud | February 18, 2005


"...In the past four years, President Bush has gone around Congress and behind the public’s back to spread his faith-based initiative throughout the government, raising serious issues that the public appears to accept. When Congress refused to pass his proposals to lower the long-standing barriers against spreading the gospel in publicly funded social services programs, Bush used administrative rules to integrate religion into social welfare services. He established faith-based offices in ten federal agencies, including The Department of Agriculture, the Agency for International Development, and the Department of Commerce, increased funding for religious-sponsored programs and connected a vast network of religious groups, which Republicans used in the 2004 election.

- Once considered a “cult,” Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church receive government grants to teach “healthy marriage” programs. Josephine Hauer, a Unification leader, works for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and told a seminar of religious leaders in Oakland California, “I want to make this a marriage culture.” The seminar was sponsored by a $366,179 grant from HHS.

- Richard Panzer, another Unification leader, runs Free Teens USA, which received a $475,000 grant for after-school abstinence programs in New Jersey. David Capprara, former president of a group funded by Moon’s Washington Times Foundation, currently runs the U.S. Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees groups such as the AmeriCorps Vista.

- Although he criticized the Faith-Based Initiative as “a Pandora’s box,” Pat Robertson, founder of the right-wing Christian Coalition, received a $500,000 grant from HHS for Operation Blessing, to support international food relief. Overall, funds to religious groups from the HHS increased 41 percent—from 483 to 680 programs—in 2003 and now account for $1.17 billion of social service funds. Florida even has a “faith-based” prison—the first in the nation.

According to Wilfred McClay, professor of history and humanities at the University of Tennessee, Bush’s changes are “a dramatic change” from past practices. The push to encourage religious groups to address social problems is a continuation of Clinton’s welfare reform, which allowed religious organizations to compete for social welfare service funds. Tom Barry, policy director for the International Relations Center, traces religious involvement in government from Ronald Reagan, who based U.S. foreign policy on moral clarity combined with military might. Since then, a number of think tanks along with conservative and neoconservative groups began framing foreign policy in moral terms. “These groups want to spread Judeo-Christian values around the world,” says Barry. “They support a national security policy based on preventive war to spread U.S. ethical and moral values as superior to other values.”


http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2005/0502religion.php

[zbdent]

1. I wonder if the Iraq office workers took positions in this office

You know, shovelling out $$$ without an accounting of who received?

Oh, wait. The money was handed over "on faith" - maybe that's what they mean when they talk about "faith-based initiatives" - "Hi, here's $100k. I have faith that you will spend it wisely (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more!)."

[blm]

2. Please call them what they are...MOONIES. There's nothing churchlike about

them.

[Toots]

3. "U.S. ethical and moral values as superior to other values."

Dumbfounded. I can find no words to express my disbelief. Now we openly admit that we think we are morally superior to others. Especially Rush Limbaugh I assume. He has to be the most morally superior of them all.