No Popery here: Faith-based bigotry in North Carolina

Guest Post by Morbo

Proponents of so-called “faith-based” initiatives insist that religious organizations provide social services more efficiently than secular or government-based providers. To them, religion is always a good thing and taxpayers should have no fear of paying for its promulgation.

A recent Associated Press story from Charlotte, N.C., dramatically underscores what’s wrong with those claims.

The Central Church of God abruptly withdrew its support from a local food pantry because Roman Catholics were involved in the effort.

“As a Christian church, we feel it is our responsibility to follow closely the (principles) and commands of Scripture,” [church minister of evangelism Shannon Burton wrote in a letter].

“To do this best, we feel we should abstain from any ministry that partners with or promotes Catholicism, or for that matter, any other denomination promoting a works-based salvation.”

Burton’s church also withdrew its support from a local Rescue Mission after it learned that three Muslims had helped serve a meal there. It also pulled funding from interfaith efforts that provide emergency financial aid to those in need and assistance to the elderly. The Central Church of God has 6,000 members, so it’s probably safe to conclude that its financial contributions to these efforts were substantial.

People sometimes make the mistake of assuming that most Christian denominations are basically alike and that the theological differences that separate them are minor.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason we have so many Christian denominations is because people have spent thousands of years fighting over matters of dogma. Contrary to popular belief, this didn’t all start with Martin Luther. Early church leaders in imperial Rome squabbled incessantly over matters of doctrine, such as the nature of the trinity, the status of Mary and the divinity of Jesus. A series of church councils, most of them overseen by Roman emperors, hammered out church doctrine and determined what would be orthodoxy. Not everyone agreed, and those bishops who dared to dissent were either exiled or killed. (For more on this, see two excellent books: The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason by Charles Freeman and When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome by Richard E. Rubenstein.)

The Protestant Reformation hundreds of years later broke the Catholic Church’s monopoly and opened the door to dozens of new sects. These new churches explicitly rejected certain points of Catholic orthodoxy, with many insisting that their own faiths were “true,” setting up Europe for hundreds of years of inter-religious strife.

Ironically, the debate over “works-based” salvation, the doctrine that has the Central Church of God so worked up, goes back to the Middle Ages. It is the belief, common in Catholicism, that good deeds can put one in a state of grace and boost chances for salvation. Most fundamentalists reject this notion, insisting that salvation comes by faith alone.

It may seem a fine point, but it has divided branches of Christianity for hundreds of years.

The AP story did not say if the Central Church of God has received any federal funds, but under President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative, there would be no reason why it could not qualify. After all, Bush insists that religious groups need not water down their theological views when they take taxpayer aid. He has never satisfactorily explained what the government will do when those theological views are repellent.

Bush seems to believe that every tenet held by a church is benign and loving. In fact, some sincerely held religious beliefs are bigoted, ignorant and hateful. Lots of pastors spend every Sunday blasting gay people. Some assail Islam, Hinduism and other non-Christian faiths. Right-wing fundamentalists excoriate liberals, women’s rights advocates, non-believers, people who are pro-choice and so on.

Don’t think these types of crude attacks will automatically disqualify religious groups from getting public assistance. Right-wing fundamentalists are Bush’s base. If anything, their churches will be getting more of our money in the years to come.

Remember, TV preacher Pat Robertson has said all manner of rude, intolerant and misinformed things about Hinduism and once penned an entire book, The New World Order, that some critics charged was anti-Semitic. That did not stop Bush from giving Robertson’s Operation Blessing $1.5 million in taxpayer funds.

The pastor of the Central Church of God, Robertson and other narrow-minded fundamentalists have every right to bash other religions, spew hate about all those who disagree with them and hold all manner of exclusionary views. That is their constitutional right. However, I see no reason why they should be rewarded for it with big, fat government grants courtesy of you and me.