But how realistic is it for him to get votes from the religious right?
It could however still be good tactics. By trying to appear less threatening to the religious right he may not get very many of them to switch sides but he may get some of them to feel that it is not neccessary to work hard against him.
I’m with you. None of the things that annoy me about him are dealbreakers. The death penalty thing bugs me and the religious thing bugs me, but he is by far, the better candidate in my eyes.
There’s a huge religious middle to go after as well. We just had a thread about James Dobson criticizing Obama and Jim Wallis hammering Dobson for it. There are a lot of evangelicals that are not right wing extremists and that’s who Obama is reaching out to.
Amen! 
My sister and brother-in-law are both what you would call “religious right”, but they are both voting for Obama mainly because he speaks so freely and openly about his faith. As my sister put it, she doesn’t know whether McCain is a Christian or not. She hasn’t heard him say anything about it.
Actually, Federal funds, in the form of contracts for services, have been going to religious groups for decades. Basically, Bush made a big deal about doing some vague thing “more,” but never got any serious legislation passed to expand it. Now that the idea is floating around in the public discourse, presidential candidates feel a need to talk about it.
(Bush’s influence did get some money spent on “new” groups such as people “working with kids” by pushing abstinence-based reductions of pregnancies and STDs, but the funds for those groups were pretty much marginal for the reasons outlined by Diogenes–they still had to meet existing Federal guidelines for actual public service that avoided religious proselytizing.)
Ahhhhhh. Thanks. I appreciate the education I get here.
Isn’t he also reaching out to non-evangelicals and the religious left and middle? Those, along with the evangelicals you mentioned, are the people much more likely to run pantries and such than are the Osteens and Hagees. Let’s not ignore the majority who are doing good because of the few who are assholes.
And mark me down as another liberal and parttime atheist who never had a problem with helping out F-BIs as long as they followed the rules.
He’s a Baptist who was a former Episcopalian.
You mean the same people who refused to place adoptive children in gay households ? Not to mention all all the sexual and financial scandals involving money the church gets it’s hands on; I notice that you carefully didn’t address by second claim, that if they could they’d divert money to the higher ups.
The Catholic church was exactly what I was thinking of; both because of it’s corruption when it comes to charitable donations, and due to the way a blind eye was turned to it’s misdeeds for so long. Including by parents whose children were molested, much less people who learned money was diverted. What happened with the Catholic Church is precisely why I don’t trust any “safeguards”; I expect history to repeat itself.
And lets be realistic; the whole point of such “charitable” programs is proselytizing people, as is the point of government funding for them. It’s just an attempt to get around the separation of church and state.
And it will succeed. We already have operatives in your area. When we find you, we will force you to worship statues of our god. And do not think we cannot detect a half-hearted effort. We will taunt you with prayer if you do not satisfy us.
DT, I’ve never once jumped on you before, but dude, you’re misinformed about this issue. Please understand that I thought the same way you do about it at first, and I’m just as concerned about SOCAS. If it wasn’t for the happenstance that I’m married to someone who deals with these grants and these programs on a professional basis, I would probably still feel the way you do.
These programs are montored and audited and the tendancy is for the monitors to be overly cautious about SOCAS safeguards, not overly permissive – sometimes (according to my wife) to the point of questionable legality.
Well, IF you are right, that still means that government money is being used to promote religion. Unless they go out of their way to make sure that everything is done anonymously so no one can tell it’s from a religion at all.
Look, I know that people think I’m going overboard. But that’s because there’s an automatic assumption by most people that religion isn’t threatening; I DO find it threatening. I regard this as no different than govenment funding being sent to the KKK for KKK run charitable activities; regardless of how well the money is watched, I don’t want my tax money going to make an evil organization look good.
I think you’re going overboard. As in, totally.
In a world where I didn’t see religion relentlessly screwing up and exploiting people and engaging in outright malice, you might have a point. But I live in the real world, where religion DOES do those things. I consider it perfectly reasonable to expect the worst, because that’s what religion tends to inflict on the world.
Real curiosity, DT, what degree of anonimity would satisfy you regarding making sure that the people receiving help don’t connect the helpful organization to religion? Do the programmes have to be held away from churches? Would monastic orders be forced to wear street clothes? (assuming the order wears habits), Chaning the names of the organizations so they don’t reflect religious origins? (i.e The Good Shepherd soup kitchen becomes Bob’s House of Free Soup or something?)
Why is it necessary that those who want to help conceal the reason that they want to help? If (and I understand this is a huge, huge IF for you) someone really is motivated to distribute sandwiches to homeless guys on the street because they believe God wants them to, how is it helpful for them to be required to conceal that reason?
That sounds to me like, “I have this terrible, terrible mental disease that makes me want to distribute food and clothing to those who need it. It’s a contagious mental disease, so I must not tell anyone who asks why I’m doing this, or they might catch it!”
Okay, stupid analogy, but still- really curious, not trying to attack you.
People do these things, Der. Religion isn’t a “thing”, it has no discrete identity, nor does it have universal attributes. I know some very religious people who I would trust with my life, my child, or my last dollar. I also know some very “religious” people that I wouldn’t turn my back on.
Its like being a policeman, in a way. Some people really do wish to protect and serve, they exist, I have met them. Some others want to carry a gun and push people around.
Or wealth, for instance. Some people, like me, would like to have a buttload of money so we could give it away. Others, like me, want to roll around on a pile of Benjamins snorting coke with supermodels…OK, maybe not the best analogy…
Perhaps I am just a paranoid agnostic Jew, but I have to agree with Der Trihs on the proselytizing.
If churches want to help, they can pay taxes for government programs. 
Pretty much, yes.
Because they are being dishonest, and often use the exaggerated respect religion gets to cover up incompetence, corruption or worse. The point of such “help” is to advertise for the religion in question, not help people. They typically don’t care about people, just their imaginary souls.
Because it keeps the government out of the business of promoting religion. We are talking about government funded “charity” here; basically, these people want to take government money and pretend it’s God’s benevolence.
No, it’s “Let’s pretend to be benevolent so we can suck people into our delusions.”
If, say, Pepsi wanted government funding for charity, and had soup kitchens prominently labeled “PEPSI soup kitchen”, I doubt many would consider it anything other than a government funded advertising campaign for Pepsi. Well, that’s how I regard government funded religious “charity”; an advertising campaign for those religions. An attempt to work around separation of church and state, and part of our drift towards theocracy.
I’m not sure, but I think paranoia is considered to be a delusional state.