Cafe Talk | Talking Points Memo | Do We Really Need Faith Based Religion?

Do We Really Need Faith Based Religion?

By Ahsay - July 11, 2008, 2:33PM

Our nation has found religion! We have been saved, baptised, dunked and drank the blood of Christ. We are a nation of God! We have religion on every television channel at one time or another during the week and innundated with religious fevor on the weekends.

There are cable television shows, mall stores and churches on every corner...and in some cases two or three churches on every corner. We sing praises to God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost with pride and burning in our bossoms and we incorporate religion in almost everything we do.

So with all this religion in our midst you'd think America would have the lowest crime in the world, right? With all this religion you'd think that we would have a compassionate health care that would follow what Jesus would do and care for the sick, the elderly and those incapable of taking care of themselves. With all the religion in America you'd expect to see fair business practice, communication companies more interested with providing good service and a free and unfettered internet. With all this religion you'd expect to see porn limited to just a few web pages.

Senator Obama supports faith based religion incentatives but why? The religions have done quite well for themselves, do we need to support them more? There has been no change in American values. We have no national health care, we have some of the poorest communication standards in the world and our crime is outrageous. We are soak and draped in Christ, but nothing changes. Try this for an example. Drive the speed limit in your town. See how many pass you and pass you at rates of speed that rattle your doors. That's the first test.

Next count how many churches you have in your town. I bet in some towns you have a 1:10 ration of churches to population. Next, see how big your church is. Is it larger than some airport terminals? Does it contain enough gold leaf to build and support a small health clinic? If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty, why not see how much of the churches tithe goes for the sick, poor, charity programs? I'm not sure myself, but check it out, you may be surprised.

The bottom line on all of this is that we call ourselves a nation of Christians, God fearing people, but do little to follow those principles. And some wonder why many are turning to atheism.

Comments (5)

As you seem like you might be a little uninformed, I'll try to clear it up for you: Bush started the faith-based programs.

First, notice I said 'programs' and not 'religion', as all religion is faith-based and you said 'Faith Based Religion'. But that's just a little correction, now back to the main point.

Bush started the programs and so something had to be done. Obama could have said he'd cut off the head of the faith-based program hydra, but it would have grown a LOT more heads and bit him in the ass, or he could try to tame the head he was faced with. He made the right choice.

The programs are running and are discriminating against people and are preaching to people in order to provide them with care. That is wrong and shouldn't be allowed. Obama will put restrictions on such funding to stop this, which is logical and proper.

Posted by DiegoUK
July 11, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink

Obama could have said he'd cut off the head of the faith-based program hydra, but it would have grown a LOT more heads and bit him in the ass, or he could try to tame the head he was faced with.

Or...he could have not simply cut off its head, but totally annihalated the horrid creature altogether.

Posted by loki redux
July 11, 2008 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink

Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell.
Spiritually is for those who have been there!

Posted by BabyBelle
July 11, 2008 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink

"Do We Really Need Faith Based Religion?"

Huh? Don't you get it yet? "Faith based" is the stealth lie intended to substitute for "religion" in the effort to destroy the separation between church/"religion" and state.

What is "religion" if not "faith-based"!?

Posted by JNagarya
July 11, 2008 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of "thou" and not just "I," resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal. . Some of this is already beginning to happen. Pastors, friends of mine like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influences to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur. Religious thinkers and activists like our good friend Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the Biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality. . And by the way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you've got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don't need and weren't even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate. . Across the country, individual churches like my own and your own are sponsoring day care programs, building senior centers, helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives, and rebuilding our gulf coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. . So the question is, how do we build on these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular people of good will? It's going to take more work, a lot more work than we've done so far.

-Barack Obama - Call to Renewal 2006
http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal/

Why is everybody screaming about the faith based initiatives? This is a good idea...it was just corrupted, like everything else by GWB. Run the right way (Obama's) it really could be a wonderful way to help fortify social programs.

Posted by mageduley
July 11, 2008 11:22 PM | Reply | Permalink

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Do We Really Need Faith Based Religion?

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