President Obama's Faith Based Community Organizing

Hey all you religious zealots who thought President Bush's Office Of Faith Based Initiatives was a good idea:

President Obama's social kommissars have hijacked the joint. Oh, the name won't change; they need the religious cover. Plaster a cross on the community organizin' and it's all good!

The Obama approach will keep the basic structure that the Bush administration took. There will be a White House-based office and Centers for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the executive agencies.
White House officials and outside advisors say that Obama's effort will be broader than his predecessor's and he will expand the scope of the office to include more emphasis on community organizations and a greater coordination with policymakers.

It's not all good. It's all bad. I said it then and I'll say it again. It was bad when Bush did it and it's bad now that Obama is doing it.

A religion can only sully itself by contact with the government. Jefferson's separation of Church and State goes both ways. Everybody worries about the US becoming an Evangelical theocracy when what they really should be worrying over is government's grubby mitts corrupting and besmudging religion.

First Amendment notwithstanding, government may prohibit the free exercise of a religious organization that voluntarily enters into a lawful agreement with it. That money has strings attached. That is why I am opposed to my religious organization taking any federal funds.

The Mormons, God bless 'em, have the good sense to stay away from this nonsense.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has operated an "effective welfare and humanitarian program for more than 60 years without government funding," spokesman Scott Trotter said Wednesday, signaling the church also is unlikely ever to accept federal money under Obama's initiatives.

That stance continues the approach taken by the church in 2001, when President Bush created the first faith-based initiative.

"We like to do [our welfare projects] on our own," the late President Gordon B. Hinckley said at the time. "Once the government is involved, regulations follow."

Here's a libertarian lesson for social conservatives who don't mind hijacking government for their own social causes. It doesn't look so good when the other side does it, does it?
The only honest answer to all this is to get government out of all extra-constitutional activities, including buying off and co-opting religious organizations.