That's not necessarily true if you're referring to the non-religious activities of the organization. It would not involve government establishing a religion nor favoring/supporting a particular religion. I would imagine they couldn't discriminate against the Satanist caseworker in the non-religious portion of their charity work if they wanted federal money. They could always opt not to take federal dollars or not distinguish their charity work between faith-related and non.
I agree its not new or groundbreaking but I had the same criticisms regarding the current Admin's Faith Based program. I just think its a bad idea in general for the reasons I listed.
There is a problem though with separating the the religious from the secular in a religious institution, especially depending on there size. Ideally they could just spin off a completely secular organization, as I think Habitat for Humanity did, in which case they would avoid any Constitutional issues and in that case we wouldn't need a Faith Based Program.
The charity "section" of our church got so big theystarted a seperate entity entirely and just petitioned the church for volunteers and donations. I think they might have done it to get .gov funding. I don't see why other church cannot also do that.
So you really don't think this was a political move on Obama's part? Seriously? And if it is, why would that be "bad?" You seem to be implying that it would be, were it "political." Maybe I'm just not following you. Impeach Bush/Cheney.
For huge organizations, this makes sense. But setting up an organization requires a lot of work and staff - managing personnel, finances, legal, etc. If you have a smaller charity section, it's hugely wasteful to set up a separate organization for that side of things. You'd just be duplicating the bureaucracy part of the church.
