Faith Based Initiatives - A Two Edged Sword

The President is promoting His “Faith Based Initiative” to the country as a great source of relief for the poor and for the “community” of churches mosques and synagogues. The plan is to provide taxpayer money to assist in soup kitchens, food pantries, after school programs, most anything that helps the needy is fair game. Not that these programs are not a good idea, but how good of an idea is a partnership between church and state? There seems to be a realization that the private sector can do acts of compassion better than the government does, but should there really be a partnership?

As the government has pushed through tax hike after tax hike, the American people have become less and less charitable. Individual giving to the poor and needy has gone down in direct proportion to the confiscation of income in the form of taxes.
Americans are a generous people. We feed the world and guard against totalitarian tyrannies. We "look out for the little guy." But as taxes have gone up, the spirit of giving has gone down. The government has done "charitable work" worse and more wastefully than private industry ever could. As a matter of fact, if private charities were as wasteful as the government, the government would indict them for fraud!

If the government is financially inept (and ultimately corrupt), why should, any church, partner with them to help the needy? Does anyone really believe that the government gives without strings?

Let's look at financial aid for colleges. What a great idea to help poor students who, without government grants and loans, would otherwise not be able to attend college and attain the American dream? But as the fine people at Grove City College will tell you, the blessing turned into a curse.

In the 1980s, Grove City College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, found that the blessing of governmental financial aid was nothing to be too happy about. Because of perceived inequities between men’s and women’s sports funding, people complained.
Enter the savior of the downtrodden, Senator Ted Kennedy who put before the legislature what became known as "The Grove City Act." This act said that if any institution receives ANY government aid (including student loans), there may not be any spending that is inequitable between any classes of people. So, in essence, a men's football team that may raise five million dollars a year should not receive any more funding than a women's field hockey team that raises five thousand dollars.

The result is that schools like Grove City and Hillsdale College have sworn off all of the government's money, along with its strings.

So what does this have to do with President Bush's “Faith Based Initiative?” Everything!
Initially, churches would be covered under the civil rights act of 1964 (which does not require churches to hire outside of their faith). But get a liberal president and see how long that holds true. Grove City College should serve as a strong warning to the church. What starts out as a tremendous boost from the government will inevitably be a heartache -- maybe not this year, maybe not in a decade, but it will.

President Bush's "Faith Based Initiative" program is a bad idea in that it will create even more dependency on the state.

The New Deal has shown us that welfare creates a class of slaves dependent on the state. Why do the poor vote for liberals? Because they are addicted to government handouts and programs from welfare to promises of free pharmaceuticals and health care -- and not just the poor any longer, but even many in the middle class are attracted to these programs.
Now the government is here to “help the church." Help it do what? Help it to tend to the needs of those that the government has already confiscated our income to help.

Those churches that are tempted to cooperate with the government should consider carefully what they do. They will inevitably become addicted to the "free" money that the government will infuse, addicted to the point that they will not be able to break the string. At this point, they are caught, and when the liberals again take Washington, their "politically correct fascism" will come swooping down and make great demands of such churches. Immediate gratification and altruistic rhetoric will deceive many churches into this snare. And it will be the demise of the exclusive proclamation of the inclusive Gospel in many churches, because the almighty dollar will rule supreme.

Remember one thing: When the government is involved with the church, the government is involved IN the church. And when the government is involved in the church, maybe "all of us, in the church or not, will be firsthand witnesses of the death of the First Amendment in America!"