Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
has done more for politics than poverty

From Working For Change, the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman:

Abroad, a recent Boston Globe series on foreign aid showed how, through a series of executive orders, religious groups have obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding -- 98.3 percent of it to Christian charities. Your tax dollars are at work, sometimes changing the message that comes with American aid, even promoting the healing powers of a Christian God.

In one hospital in the ultra-sensitive Muslim turf of Pakistan, the X-ray machine, the blood bank refrigerator and the radiology computer bear the USAID sticker, "From the American People." In the waiting room of this underutilized hospital "The Jesus Film" is shown.

At home, The New York Times reported at length that religious organizations are not only exempt from taxes but increasingly from civil rights laws. A church may now use its tax-free dollars to build retirement communities where the average resident's net worth is $1 million.

Finally along comes David Kuo, once the No. 2 man in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In his book, "Tempting Faith," he recalls how the stars in the religious right's firmament were described by White House honchos as "nuts," "goofy," "boorish." He confesses that the office did more for politics than poverty. How values voters were valued only for their votes.

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"Compassionate conservatism" was a joke from the moment the term was coined. After all, compassion has never been something that conservatives have really ever mixed with their politics, making the concept a bizarre oxymoron at the very least. But that didn't make it okay. My problem with the whole faith-based thing was that, by its very nature, it would serve as a major erosion of the separation between church and state.

Of course, the thing I never understood until lately is that Bush was never serious about it. That is, he wasn't serious about it in terms of actually doing what he said he was going to do: "compassionate conservatism" is simply a political ploy, a chunk of red meat thrown to fundamentalists in order to get their votes. So, yeah, some money has been diverted to religious charitable organizations, not nearly as much as the White House promised, but just enough to be able to say that they were helping out their zealot-brothers in faith.

Fortunately for the nation, the faith-based initiative didn't turn out to be the intermingling of government and religion that I had feared. Unfortunately for fundamentalist voters, they've been played for fools. Somehow, it's not very easy for me to feel sorry for them.

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