Our esteemed leader Governor Perry is stumping for public funding for faith groups and has made no bones about it. He wants the general public to fund the religious acts of select people:
“There are a great many who have heard a calling of service and have answered with the words of Isaiah, ‘Here am I. Send me,”
Why in blue hell should we, the public, be expected to fund someone’s religious calling? Exactly what would that crowd of over a thousand people murmured if he’d said something about answering the any-religion-but-Christianity call to “service” on the public dime?
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When you look for people in need, a church isn’t far away. Now my personal opinion, it’s the Church’s responsibility to take care of those people – and they shouldn’t be looking for government assistance. With mega-churches, a network of people who can mobilize to raise funds for new sanctuaries and the blight of overpriced bible-bookstores, churches obviously have resources. We don’t need government money or anyone else’s money.
That being said, I think that’s a two-way street. I don’t think public money should fund arts programs that promote a certain lifestyle. I don’t really like the idea that my money funds what I would construe as “anti-religious” groups like the ACLU – who’s more interested in politics than people.
I’m all for separation of church and state. The problem is that humanism is not viewed as a relgion – which I believe it is. It requires faith in a certain set of “truths”, it frames the way we deal with other people in all of life’s relationships, and it dictates to a large degree our priorities.
What works both ways is censorship and that’s exactly what you’re proposing when you talk of not funding art that promotes a “certain lifestyle”. What if you were really a minority (ie, Christianity practiced by about 10 percent of the population) and we non-Christians decided we weren’t going to let public money go to art that promoted that “lifestyle”?
As for your remarks about the ACLU, I don’t know where to start. The ACLU is not anti-Christian. It has defended Christians just as much as it has defended non-Christians.
The only way I can understand your charge of it being “anti-Christian” is if you think the government should be used to enforce Christian beliefs and practices upon everyone, which contradicts your statement that you’re “all for seperation of church and state”.
You simply can’t be for the seperation of the two and throw a fit about the “anti-Christian” group that works to keep the two seperated. That’s like me saying I support the second amendment and lashing out against the NRA or something.
Your remark about [secular?] humanism being a religion made me curious as this is the first time I’ve heard it, so I found this article by Austin Cline on About.com which I think covers what you’re trying to do. I suggest you pay particular attention to:
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