Praying for a better Department of Homeland Security

March 8, 2006

The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t enjoyed much success lately. There were the high-profile disasters such as DHS’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, but there have been a series of lesser fiascos, including the department’s inability to secure its own headquarters, its inability to set up a list serve, and a Washington Post series explaining in alarming detail how the agency has been beset by almost every bureaucratic problem imaginable.

But the president has faith that DHS can get one thing right: deliver more tax dollars to churches.

President Bush ordered the Department of Homeland Security yesterday 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, the White House announced last night.

Pressed both by churches that have not received privately raised Hurricane Katrina relief funds as promised and by the outpouring of help of religious groups to Gulf Coast storm victims, Bush also called on the department by September “to identify all existing barriers . . . that unlawfully discriminate against, or otherwise discourage or disadvantage the participation” of such groups in federal programs.

On the surface, the idea of mixing Homeland Security and faith-based ministries may seem odd. But because DHS oversees FEMA and responds to natural disasters, Bush envisions a scenario in which disaster relief is partially privatized — the government will pay churches and the churches will come to Americans’ aid.

There are constitutional concerns, of course, but a different problem also comes to mind. After Katrina, one of the first faith-based groups FEMA promoted was Operation Blessing, a controversial charity created by TV preacher Pat Robertson.

Now, Bush wants to make it easier for DHS to not only promote groups like Robertson’s, but also to provide them with federal grants (i.e., our money).

Sometimes, it seems like the reality-based community doesn’t have a prayer.

Update: Here’s Bush’s executive order on the DHS faith-based office.

Kinda makes sense if you were living in New Orleans with the hurricane coming…
You better start praying cuz that’s all the help you were going to get.

  • Well churches do have access to all those buses. They could evacuate millions!

    And who will have oversight over the money given to the churches? What if someone decides their church should provide a copy of the bible to the people they help? Will the government be buying bibles?

    I am not seeing how this is a good thing at all. Is Bush suggesting the government can better provide funds to religious relief organizations than say the Red Cross? I thought the government was wasteful and inefficent and that is why we need to privitize these services. I’m so confused. I hope “Scotty McC” can clarify this for me.

  • I attend a so-called Left Wing church here in Pasadena, All Saints Episcopal. I’ve often wondered aloud when the parishoners will see this as a battle that requires feet to the street. They are rightly interested in programs like we presently have going on between us and some local Ring Wing churches, “Reaching Across the Divide”, but I wonder if it is a distraction.

    Winger Christian efforts to run this country are aggressive and non-conciliatory. Chris Hedges recently spoke at our church and he was advocating an aggressive, strong Left Wing Christiand and Left Wing Democrat response….or we won’t have a country we’ll be able to operate in much longer.

    Too many apathetic people. Too well-intentioned people wanting to be loving towards their “enemies”. Not enough vigorous defense of our Christian religion and the government our Founding Fathers established.

  • It’s not a huge stretch to imagine churches turning away people in an emergency because they are gay, unmarried couples, women using birth control, single mothers, alcohol or drug users, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, etc. The Bush Administration already supports loosening civil rights protections on churches and “faith-based” organizations in hiring practices. Why not allow the same in emergency response? That’s not to say that there aren’t scores of Christian and religious charities who give aid selflessly and without questioning a person’s circumstances and lifestyles. But everything the Bush Administration does is political and a it’s already demonstrated who it would favor to get federal tax dollars.

  • I often wonder how these right wing Christians are reading their Bible. I thought one of the dread end-time prophecies was a serious marriage between an evil political leader and a “whore church.” I’m confused. Isn’t our President a fundamentalist Christian? Does he read the scriptures he is so hell bent on supporting? Just wondering.

  • Once right wing Christians get nestled into homeland security, they can branch out to the office of defender of the faith, with powers of inquisition and torture. Why not bring back a war on witchcraft? It’s much more effective way to repress women.

  • As an Associate Director of Development for a large social services nonprofit, I can tell you this is nothing new. The last 6 years have shown RFP’s insisting on ‘faith based’ and though they say “and community” it’s not reflected in who actually gets these grants.

    This is just another way nonprofits are struggling to raise money. It’s already proven the end of some small not for profits, and has hurt everyone I know on some level in the nonprofit community. Communities can’t help communities I guess. Only churches can.

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