The author of this post at Talk2Action was "surprised to learn that the National Prayer Breakfast was created and is hosted by The Family."
She interviewed Jeff Sharlet who wrote a great news article called
Jesus Plus NothingThey discussed some concerns that President Obama is letting some aspects of the Faith Based Initiatives remain. They also discussed some parts of the program that I never heard about, and that concern me.
Talk2Action interview with Jeff SharlettOne bad sign was that Obama has already backed away from his campaign promise to end the discriminatory hiring practices that were allowed under Bush's executive order concerning faith-based organizations. Sharlet told me that these hiring practices are primarily aimed at gays and lesbians. One organization, World Vision, threatened to pull out of the program if they were restricted from discriminating in hiring and firing decisions. Sharlet said, "Not only did Obama not put restrictions on their ability to hire and fire based on their view of homosexuality, he actually put one of the leaders of World Vision on the committee that will be making decisions on the organization."
But there's an even more important issue, according to Sharlet: the cozy relationship between church and state and how that undermines our democracy. It's a two-way street: government exploitation of faith-based initiatives and the corollary: church exploitation of federal funding. Sharlet says the Family’s real purpose in creating the idea of the Faith based initiatives -- and followed by government policy for the last thirty years--is to privatize federal efforts to work with the poor.
The other purpose, as has been documented by David Kuo in his book Tempting Faith, is for faith based initiatives to be a vote-getting machine. (Kuo, a long time member of the Family, helped direct the Office of Faith-based Initiatives under George W. Bush and helped write the legislation that created it.) "Even he was stunned by what faith-based initiatives turned out to be: essentially a modern update of Tammany Hall, a way of passing out walking-around money" said Sharlet. "And I think Obama in some ways signaled that."
I had never heard of this program, and it does concern me for the implications of using government money for religious purposes.
Using tax dollars for prosyletizing was something Sharlet witnessed in the faith based court program called Fugitive Safe Surrender--Sharlet calls it “church court”. He sees signs it will continue under Obama. It’s been praised by Josh du Bois and has support from some Democratic Senators, according to Sharlet. The program operates in poor, often African American, neighborhoods, moving the entire legal appartus into a local megachurch and adjudicating cases for people who have outstanding warrants. They can choose to go through a regular court officer, or a church-connected “judge”. If they go with the latter, they get special consideration. It's not that people are getting a legal break that disturbs Sharlet, but that it makes defendants vulnerable to being proselytized. "I witnessed judges asking people who were there to turn themselves in and clear up their legal business whether they intended to come back to church."
I asked Sharlet whether this was a violation of the separation between church and state. "It's a stunning violation," he said.
PastorDan at
Street Prophets quotes Reverend Welton Gaddy of State of Belief. Gaddy is one of my favorites, and he is concerned about the Faith Based initiatives.
In every conversation with senior officials on the transition team I have conveyed my preference for the faith based office to be eliminated and a community based office established to help the weakest, poorest, and neediest people in our nation. However, now that a decision has been made to establish and staff another faith based office, the question remains whether or not a change in the name of the office as organized by the Bush Administration will reflect substantive change in the policies of the Obama Administration that advocates for religious liberty find acceptable.
Here is more about
Jesus Plus Nothing, which is described as being undercover among America's theocrats.
The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of the Family's leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.”
The Family's only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”
There is more at the link about The Family including some of the many famous people, including brutal dictators, considered among their elite.
The Fellowship's long-term goal is "a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." According to the Fellowship's archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship's God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton, says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.
I have been outspoken on mixing religion and politics. I am amazed at how many here argue with me when I condemn the public tax money in my state going to private religious schools.
We are crossing lines that enable the religious right to dictate their views on Christianity to our government. There is nothing right about it.
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