Christian Nation: Bush Moves Big Bucks to Religious Organizations
By Frederick Lane, Beacon Press. Posted July 3, 2008.
from AlterNet
Even worse, Bush wants to ensure that faith-based organizations receiving federal funds can discriminate in their hiring on the basis of religion.
The following is excerpted from The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court.
Faith-Based Organizations and Religious Discrimination in Hiring
For the Religious Right, the most significant workplace religion issue over the past decade has been the movement's push to free faith-based organizations (FBOs) from the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII, while still preserving (and expanding) their access to public funds. Thanks in large part to the movement's political success in Congress and the White House, billions of taxpayer dollars have been funneled to FBOs; even more importantly, FBOs have been freed of the allegedly onerous obligation of nondiscrimination.
When President Clinton issued his executive order on religious expression in the federal workplace, he tried to strike a delicate balance between the protection of federal employee religious rights on the one hand and the prohibition against government establishment of religion on the other. The order repeatedly warned against the appearance of governmental endorsement, and closed with a flat prohibition against establishment: "Supervisors and employees must not engage in activities or expression that a reasonable observer would interpret as government endorsement or denigration of religion or a particular religion."
But Clinton, unfortunately, was not always able to be so careful about the structural integrity of the Jeffersonian wall between church and state; the current feeding frenzy by FBOs can be traced directly to legislation that Clinton had little choice but to accept. In 1996 Congress passed a fiercely debated welfare reform package called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The legislation was largely the work of the Republican-controlled Congress that took office in 1994 after the so-called Republican Revolution. Under intense public pressure from bombastic House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and in the midst of a re-election battle with Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., Clinton signed the legislation on Aug. 22, 1996. Among the numerous provisions included in the legislation was the following language:
(Continued here.)
from AlterNet
Even worse, Bush wants to ensure that faith-based organizations receiving federal funds can discriminate in their hiring on the basis of religion.
The following is excerpted from The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right's Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court.
Faith-Based Organizations and Religious Discrimination in Hiring
For the Religious Right, the most significant workplace religion issue over the past decade has been the movement's push to free faith-based organizations (FBOs) from the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VII, while still preserving (and expanding) their access to public funds. Thanks in large part to the movement's political success in Congress and the White House, billions of taxpayer dollars have been funneled to FBOs; even more importantly, FBOs have been freed of the allegedly onerous obligation of nondiscrimination.
When President Clinton issued his executive order on religious expression in the federal workplace, he tried to strike a delicate balance between the protection of federal employee religious rights on the one hand and the prohibition against government establishment of religion on the other. The order repeatedly warned against the appearance of governmental endorsement, and closed with a flat prohibition against establishment: "Supervisors and employees must not engage in activities or expression that a reasonable observer would interpret as government endorsement or denigration of religion or a particular religion."
But Clinton, unfortunately, was not always able to be so careful about the structural integrity of the Jeffersonian wall between church and state; the current feeding frenzy by FBOs can be traced directly to legislation that Clinton had little choice but to accept. In 1996 Congress passed a fiercely debated welfare reform package called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The legislation was largely the work of the Republican-controlled Congress that took office in 1994 after the so-called Republican Revolution. Under intense public pressure from bombastic House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and in the midst of a re-election battle with Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., Clinton signed the legislation on Aug. 22, 1996. Among the numerous provisions included in the legislation was the following language:
(Continued here.)
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