Exclusive: Book says Bush just using Christians

The truth is that Clinton started faith based iniatives as this article infers.

 

Instead of letting politicians use God for their political gain . . . maybe it is time for Christians to use politicians for God's gain?

 

The so called Power and Faith is really Power and Fear

Tucker to Evangelicals
Here's what Tucker Carlson had to say on this weekend's Chris Matthews Show:

CARLSON: It goes deeper than that though. The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power. Everybody in...

MATTHEWS: How do you know that? How do you know that?

CARLSON: Because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Because I live with them. They live on my street. Because I live in Washington, and I know that everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals. And the evangelicals know that, and they're beginning to learn that their own leaders sort of look askance at them and don't share their values.

MATTHEWS: So this gay marriage issue and other issues related to the gay lifestyle are simply tools to get elected?

CARLSON: That's exactly right. It's pandering to the base in the most cynical way, and the base is beginning to figure it out

An Insider tells the truth:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/160/story_16092_1.html

snippet: I'm writing this now because there is a lot of time left. There are more budget supplementals to come for Social Security and Iraq totaling scores of billions. The White House can still do a great deal for the poor. It can add another few billion to insure every American child has health care. It could launch a program to simply eliminate hunger. Groups like America's Second Harvest have the plan. Bump up the Compassion Capital Fund to $500 million a year and be marveled by change.
Given new budget realities, climates, and conditions it is easy to dismiss these suggestions as naive. But no one ever said faith was easy...or cheap. In 2000, Gov. Bush said, "I know that economic growth is not the solution to every problem. A rising tide lifts many boats, but not all." He then went on to propose a new approach to those who were still stuck behind. The promises are still there and I am trying to keep the faith.



My comment:tithes and offerings should fund faith based not tax payers money it is a perversion of storing your gifts in heaven and knowing what you do is in secret and has pure motives....government and faith based has no spiritual rewards in heaven. imho. This only encourages Churches to get lazy and build extravagant mega churches and become power brokers and then practice trickle down help to the poor and their own members but spend mega millions on PR to spin themselves as great givers, like I said a perversion and has no value in heaven ..in fact they get zero, nada, zilch...doesn't even make it past the floor.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnXImj4_OJ0

 

:laugh:

I KNEW IT! It was President Clinton's fault. The former President sure does get a lot of the blame, doesn't he?

BiR

 

In fact, the Bush administration often promoted the faith-based agenda by claiming that existing government regulations were too restrictive on religious organizations seeking to serve the public.

Substantiating that claim proved difficult, Kuo says. “Finding these examples became a huge priority.… If President Bush was making the world a better place for faith-based groups, we had to show it was really a bad place to begin with. But, in fact, it wasn’t that bad at all.”

In fact, when Bush asks Kuo how much money was being spent on “compassion” social programs, Kuo claims he discovered the amount was $20 million a year less than during the Clinton Administration.

 

April 27, 2006
Op Ed: The Challenge for Faith-Based Initiatives

by John J. DiIulio Jr.
Philadelphia Inquirer

http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=10410

President Bush has repeatedly called supporting religious groups that help the poor "the most important domestic initiative of my presidency." Last year, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D., N.Y.) preached in Boston that nobody "is more likely" to serve the needy than "someone who sees God at work." Rather than continue to "have a false... debate about the role of faith-based institutions," she insisted, we should "provide the support that is needed on an ongoing basis."

Amen, but President Bill Clinton signed the first relevant federal law in 1996, President Bush's faith-based initiative began in 2001, and Washington still has not come close to providing "the support that is needed on an ongoing basis." That, however, can finally begin to happen, and soon.

For more than three decades, the Supreme Court has permitted government to partner with sacred places that serve civic purposes so long as no public funds are expended for sectarian worship, instruction or proselytizing. Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and related laws, houses of worship have the right to take religion into account in hiring (Jewish synagogues need not interview Catholics), plus a limited "ministerial exemption" to do so in their capacity as community-serving nonprofit organizations eligible for public funds.

As documented by Wheaton College political scientist Amy Black in her 2003 book, Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush's Faith-Based Initiative, the original Bush plan was a go-slow and stay-low effort to study and implement the constitutionally kosher Clinton-era laws, and to thereby "level the playing field" so that qualified faith-based groups that served their own needy neighbors received equal, not special, treatment from grant-making federal agencies.

 

Well Jamie, if your assertions are correct, GWB is about the smartest President ever.

 

Kuo was on "60 Minutes" just tonight talking about the issues in his book. He said plainly that Bush and others made fun of evangelicals (including Pat Robertson - well, not hard to see why on that one with all the zany things he's said lately) behind their backs. Kuo seems very sincere and does not seem to have something against Bush. He says that for some evangelicals politics is replacing faith and God.

I have always felt this way since I became a believer - I just couldn't go for the political route as politics to me is very corrupt. It might partly have to do with living here in the DC area. Everything here is about image and power and money. I have become quite cynical about politics and about both parties.

 

I too just saw Kuo on Sixty Minutes and felt his sincerity. I thought Leslie Stahl did a very good job of interviewing him and probing his history and his perspective too. The "evangelicals" cited are indeed among those that much of the world, including many mainstream Christians, thinks are "goofy". But by now most of us should be used to the idea that politicians will say one thing to your face and then will laugh you off behind your back. I do not see much real Christian commitment from the President, at least in his public persona. And we do not hear about his attendance at worship as we did Carter's and Clinton's. Worship attendance isn't everything, but surely even a President can get to church once in a while!

 

Book says Bush just using Christians

Does it also say that water is wet?