God Help Us All!

Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

President Bush ordered the Department of Homeland Security March 7th to create a center for faith-based and community initiatives within 45 days to eliminate regulatory, contracting and programmatic barriers to providing federal funds to religious groups to deliver social services.

Under President Bush, millions of dollars of faith-based and abstinence-only grants have gone straight into the pockets of religious conservatives, including major grants to right-wing evangelical outfits such as the Christian Coalition and Prison Fellowship Ministries. Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu organizations have yet to receive a single cent of faith-based funding.

Five years ago the Christian right was in a tenuous position. Its standard-bearer, the Christian Coalition, was under investigation by the IRS and the Federal Election Commission, and many of its state chapters were nearing collapse. Now, five years later, thanks to George W. Bush, the Christian right is on top of the world. Bush has not only bucked up the movement by ceding huge swaths of his domestic and international policy to this lobby, from his efforts to block abortions and gay marriage to his expenditure of significant political capital to support abstinence education, church-based social services and socially conservative judges. He has also revived the movement by injecting tens of millions of federal dollars directly into the coffers of the Christian right's grassroots organizations, while at the same time starving their most vigorous political opponents of funds--singling out family planning and AIDS organizations for special punishment.

Bush told the audience that since he had been unable to garner congressional support for his faith-based initiative, he issued executive orders; recently putting the finishing touches on regulations instructing all federal agencies not to discriminate against religious groups. This executive order makes religious groups eligible for $3.7 billion in Federal program funds dispersed through the Justice Department.