AU says investigate congressional earmarks for religious schools and ministries

[madfloridian]

They ask the Obama administration to investigate these earmarks to determine if they are inappropriate public funding of religion.

It is surprising these exist at all, and it frankly concerns me.

Watchdog Group Urges Obama Administration To Block Ten Grants Unless Constitutional Safeguards Can Be Enforced

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today called on the Obama administration to investigate ten earmarks for religious schools and ministries that raise constitutional issues about inappropriate public funding of religion. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and three other cabinet officers, Americans United urged the administration to examine the congressional earmarks and block the funding unless appropriate legal safeguards can be put in place.

“Taxpayers should never be forced to support religion,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director.

Here are a few of them. Be sure to read them all.

Atlanta Christian College (East Point, Ga.): $350,000 for curriculum development and technology upgrades. The college seeks to “educate students for Christ-centered service and leadership throughout the world” and “every degree includes a major or minor in Biblical Studies.”

Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch (Minot, N.D.): $475,000 to expand a program for high-risk elementary school students. The Christian ministry’s programs include prayer, Bible studies, counseling and discussion concerning God’s plan for participants.

Men of Valor Academy (Oakland, Calif.): $100,000 to expand building trades instruction that can only be taken by individuals who first complete a program that includes Christian teachings.

• Team Focus, Inc. (Mobile, Ala.): four earmarks for mentoring projects in four states: $500,000 each for projects in South Carolina and Alabama, $400,000 for one in Mississippi, and $100,000 for one in Texas. Team Focus is a faith-based non-profit organization that apparently includes Bible study and prayer in its mentoring programs for young men.

It concerns me that the religious right get so much of what they want. It as though we fear we can't win if we stand up to them.

Reverend Welton Gaddy, one of my favorite ministers, warned against letting religious views into the political field.

Rev. Welton Gaddy, State of Belief, warns against using religion as a political tool.

From December 2008:

So, where is the Democratic Party going with religion? Is the nation entering a new era of “Mutual Assured Devoutness “(MAD)-a religious version of the cold war’s “mutual assured destruction”? Is religion becoming as Pastor Dan Schultz of Street Prophets asks, a new religious industrial complex? And if Democrats no longer look down at their shoes when they talk about their faith, is it only if their faith is mainstream Christian? How do American Muslims, Hindus, Baha’s, Sikhs, Humanists, and even atheists, just to name a few other beliefs, fit in?

As we look to the future of religion and politics, what role will religion have in uniting or dividing the nation? In crafting our founding documents our early leaders sought to protect religion from politics and politics from religion so that both could flourish as positive influences. The positive role of religion is tarnished if it becomes just another political tool that plays one side off of another. As we start with a new Administration and a new Congress, all parties should pray that does not happen.

More interesting remarks about the "religious industrial complex."

The Making of the “Religious Industrial Complex”

Eyes aimed upward, the loudly faithful Democrats have achieved a lot in four short years. The party launched a Faith in Action initiative and hosted, for the first time, a faith caucus at its convention. Under the leadership of then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic caucus organized a Democratic Faith Working Group, which meets regularly with religious constituencies to craft policy.

Operatives and advocates sprang up to offer advice on how to win over religious voters. Amy Sullivan, an editor at Time magazine, published The Party Faithful, both a castigation of Democratic elites for allegedly failing to understand or connect with religious voters and a blueprint for electoral outreach. Mara Vanderslice, the former director (and critic) of John Kerry’s religious outreach opened Common Good Strategies to advise Democratic candidates on faith outreach, before founding the Matthew 25 Network, which supported Barack Obama. Burns Strider, the Pelosi aide who helped launch the Faith Working Group, went on to become the religious outreach strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and runs his own consulting firm, the Eleison Group. In 2007, Religion News Service named him, Sullivan, and Vanderslice among the “twelve most influential Democrats in the nation on faith and values politics and issues.”

I am afraid that though our party is in power they are following the 2001 advice of the DLC. Here is Will Marshall writing in the 2001 issue of the DLC Blueprint.

Keep the Faith, Baby

Above all, Senate Democrats should avoid knee-jerk opposition to the faith-based proposal as well as the rhetoric of their House counterparts, which too often was tinged with hostility to religion. This only plays into the hands of GOP strategists determined to drive the wedge deeper between Democrats and religious people, who leaned strongly toward the Republicans in 2000.

Democrats cannot afford to let stridently secular groups define their views on the interplay between religion and public life. Instead, they should follow the lead of Lieberman and his running mate, Al Gore, who challenged Democrats during the campaign to reject the "hollow secularism" of the left, and added: "We must dare to embrace faith-based approaches that advance our shared goals as Americans."

The "stridently secular groups" are mostly remaining silent now.

[madfloridian]

1. Federal audit cites problems with Team Focus, Inc. 2009

Federal audit cites problems with popular Mobile nonprofit

WASHINGTON - A new federal audit has questioned $718,000 spent over three years by Mobile-based Team Focus Inc., a nonprofit that has received substantial political support from members of Alabama's congressional delegation.

The audit by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Justice found several problems with how Team Focus kept its books, such as using federal money for purposes not allowed by their grants and not providing adequate documentation for certain expenses.

The audit does not allege any criminal wrongdoing or accuse anyone of personally profiting from the mistakes. But it does expose several shortcomings in how the organization was set up and how it handled the sizable federal grants that rolled in, often at the direction of members of Congress. The audit covers $1.5 million in grants from November 2005 to May 2008.

It found Team Focus Inc. had the same employee preparing invoices, signing checks and posting expenditures, duties that should be handled separately. The nonprofit agreed with the recommendation to separate the tasks and has done so, according to Gottfried's May letter to the inspector general.

[zbdent]

2. I doubt that these are the "earmarks" that the Repugs want to outlaw ...

[madfloridian]

4. Right...they probably want to outlaw "other" earmarks...

Just not these.

[patrice]

3. Institutionalized Poverty = Careers for Do-Gooders.Do NOT give the Poor the "fishing pole" they NEED

Give middle & upper-middle class folks money to be "saints" at the expense of the Poor and Disadvantaged = VOTES.

[madfloridian]

5. careers for "do-gooders"....

Good point.

Makes one think the only good people are religious people.