Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Faith-Based Folly
It turns out that all the noise made in some quarters about Black churches selling out to the Bush administration is much ado about nothing - less than 3% of Black churches have participated in Bush's Faith-based initiatives. WaPo spins this to say that Bush is not using the initiatives for political gain, but that is transparently false. The truth of the matter is that Black folk have simply used Bush instead of being used by Bush - those who have taken advantage of Bush's initiatives are the same ones who took advantage of a wide variety of grants prior to Bush. There is no question that Bush would like to translate his faith-based initiatives into electoral gains, but Blacks have a long history of smiling in the face of those who cut the checks and then taking care of the interests of Black folk once clear Mr. Charlie's personal space.And most of the churches taking the funding are among the most liberal.
Think about that.
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I haven't thought of that as a reason. I just thought it was gay marriage that got them worked up. True, faith-based funding will end with the Democrats, but once the building is built it won't watter who's in power.
No, faith-based funding will not end with the Democrats since it didn't start with Bush. Churches - through their non-profit subsidiaries - have been accepting grants for decades, the difference is that Bush pushed for money to be set aside specifically for faith-based organizations, a kind of affirmative action for faith-based organizations. Democrats may scale back or end Bush's set-asides, but that will in no ways end faith-based organizations applying for and receiving federal grants.