Faith and politics
Bookworm on Feb 05 2009 at 11:28 am | Filed under: Barack Obama, Islam, Religion
I was not thrilled by Bush’s Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, since I don’t want the White House involved in faith, but I recognized it as a pragmatic means to increasing the effectiveness of existing religious charities. I also wasn’t too concerned because I did not see it as a government effort to co-opt religion.
I’m much less sanguine about Obama’s getting his hands on and revamping the whole office. This is a man who sees religion, not as a relationship with God, but as a means to a political end. Also, to the extent he’s an Ailinsky-ite, whose focus is on the religion of community organizing, I worry about his using his office to subordinate religion to his political goals — which is, of course, exactly what the Founders hoped to prevent. The details leaking out already show Obama’s attempt to rejigger religion to bring it in line with government:
“The goal of this office will not be to favor one religious group over another — or even religious groups over secular groups,” Obama said. “It will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities, and to do so without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state.”
The most contentious issue surrounding the updated office, potential restrictions on the hiring practices of religious groups that receive taxpayer dollars, will undergo a thorough legal review before Obama makes a decision on hiring guidelines.
The order would also direct White House officials and lawyers to work with the Justice Department to develop a hiring policy, according to a religious leader with knowledge of the plans. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been released.
The deliberate approach is unlikely to please either conservative religious leaders, who worry they’ll need to compromise their religious beliefs to participate, or liberal religious and secular leaders, who want to quickly undo Bush administration hiring practices.
Obama also misspoke about Islam, although no more than Bush repeatedly did when he tried to jam down our throats the false doctrine the Islam is a religion of peace. The latter is true, of course, only in the Roman sense of making a desert and calling it peace. In other words, under Islam, jihad (Holy War) precedes “peace.” When everyone is dead or enslaved, you’ve got your religious peace. So I guess it wasn’t any more ludicrous when Obama said
“there is no religion whose central tenet is hate” and all religions teach people to love and care for one another. That is the common ground underlying his faith-based office, he said.
To anyone with the slightest information about religion, the above is manifestly untrue. The Old Testament was extremely hostile to other religions, a hostility that has vanished with time (and the death of those targeted religions). Modern Jews are not trained to hate or desire the deaths of people in other faiths.
However, when it comes to islam, a central, vital, and very much practiced tenet of that religion is the death of the Jews. It’s a commandment from the Prophet and an article of faith that Jews must be killed. Sounds like hate to me. Further, given the fact that Islam demands the death of those who convert from Islam to another faith, you seem to have another hate-based tenet.
I understand that the American president has to be inclusive in his speech, but if all you can say to be inclusive is something that’s both stupid and untrue, isn’t it better to keep your mouth shut?
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6 Responses to “Faith and politics”
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Part of Obama’s problem–and it’s a common one among leftists–is his provincialism. The absurd things that he believes have never been challenged or questioned among the people he consorts with, namely, upper middle-class “educated” urban sophisticates.
So when he repeats idiocies like Islam being a religion of peace, he genuinely believes what he’s saying. His provincialness, which is an inability and unwillingness to perceive any other views than the ones he so comfortably holds, keeps him from seeing what an asinine statement he has made.
How long will it take before he realizes how tone deaf he is? Well, we’ve got another 205 weeks to find out.
…and at what price to the rest of us riff-raff will his education come, Charles? What you are saying is that he is too arrogant to know he’s ignorant.
Danny, that’s exactly it. The worst possible two-fer going.
The more we find out about this bird, the less he knows.
Greetings:
Having benefited from 13 years of Catholic education, I was in favor of the “faith-based initiatives” of former President Bush. I thought it showed some real promise in the sense that, hopefully, there would be less of an economic or political agenda involved with those organizations as opposed to organizations like ACORN which seems to have significant abilities in separating the government from our tax money. I would be really interested in information on the growth of NGOs and non-profits over the last 20 years or so. It seems to me that they’re growing like dragon’s teeth, just popping up everywhere. I don’t know enough about how they are funded, but I’m thinking that government contracts, subsidies or no or limited tax liabilities factor in there somewhere.
To return to my beginning thought, I think that the Catholic parochial school system is one of the really amazing stories of American history and I further believe that the neglect of that story proves it. Hardly a day goes by that the media isn’t informing us about the problems of our publicly funded education system and its dire distress. Yet, I never seem to see a “How Do the Catholics Do It” headline.
Now, my attempt to braid these two threads. It seems to me that both the government and the taxpayers of this country have benefited from the “faith-based initiative” of the Catholic school system. The Catholic Church has provided education to students who would otherwise be that government’s financial responsibility to educate. I’m am sure that the total amount since the beginning of the Catholic school system is in the billions. The government dictates most of the curriculum that must be taught in Catholic schools, I would guess 75-85%. Yet, many, if not most, people are comfortable with the government bearing none of this cost.
Now, I think the separation of church and state is a good thing. Jesus thought so, too. But I think there are areas, such as the aforementioned schooling, charity and disaster relief where modern information technology and auditing techniques would very much minimize the dangers to the public purse or individual’s freedom of thought.
11B40, what about Catholic hospitals? I read somewhere that about a third of the hospitals in the USA are affiliated with the church. I fear that if The One gets the FOCA act passed, many if not all of those hospitals will be closed.
And speaking of religion and disaster relief, I was pleasantly surprised to see a story on ABC news about a group sponsored by the Southern Baptists who go to disaster stricken areas and help clean up. In this case, it was about a group of men who took vacation time and went to northern Arkansas to help clean up all the trees and branches that had been torn down in the recent ice storm.
Meanwhile here in Kentucky, the local organizations have been most helpful, the feds, not so much at all.