CRANKY CHURCH/STATE RANT

CRAWFORD, TX (IWR Satire) -- President Bush today issued a decree ending the separation of church and state.
"In addition to being the leader of the free world, I will henceforth also be known as Pope Hilarious II," said Mr. Bush.

As you might have noticed, I tend to think I do my best writing when responding to the comments of others, and I like to repost those comments here. Well, I was over at Ms. Liberty's blog this morning, and...

The question was asked: "Who cares if churches are the organizations helping people?"

I don't mind at all if churches are helping people. I care if the money I pay in taxes goes to fundamentalist Christian organizations, or to other religious organizations, because I disagree with their religious philosophies. Besides their having often noble humanitarian goals, I believe one of the basic aims of all religious organizations is to spread their faiths to others. I don't want my money used to help them spread their belief systems.

Having something not even related to government but related mostly to the promotion of religion by allowing the churches to have the spotlight, like the POTUS' faith-based initiatives, being paid for with tax money? No, thanks. I don't fault people who want to make the world a better place for all. But I would rather see churches stay out of government and the government stay out of churches, thanks... so that includes the churches' use of government monies. Which happens to be money from your pocket and mine.



The churches raise all kinds of money and they don't have to pay much money at all to the government... so I think that's already enough of a gift to the churches from the feds. Now the administration thinks they need to give the churches MORE money? Hmmmmm... That smells like the promotion of churches to me.

"Since when is giving money to organizations that help people a bad thing?"

It isn't a bad thing... but why not let the people who want to support churches and their doings attend the churches, write checks, and put those checks in the offering plates? The last I heard, this practice was still called "tithing". I attended church and I tithed for ten years straight, until about five years ago. My experiences with various churches have taught me that churches don't ever have "enough money" or enough of a person's time, and they always want more of both!



Even given that, I think churches are perfectly capable of raising their money for helping others through tithing and through advertising by mail, and they can leave the rest of us non-church types and our pocketbooks alone. And maybe they should not be holding their hands out to the federal government for more.



"The fact that they are churches is irrelevant; the fact that they want to help people is not."

Given the fact that not all Americans adhere to Christianity or to a particular religion, the fact they are churches IS relevant when it comes to their wanting to use taxpayer money to further their aims. I think it is correct to say the fact churches want to help people IS relevant, and in fact if doing good works (and not trying to spread their beliefs) is the ultimate motivation, it can be quite noble. Anyway, there are plenty of non-religious organizations we can all donate to if we like. Let's just let the churches do their thing with their own money, not mine.