First up from The God Machine this week is a disconcerting story about what happens when religious ministries have to compete for access to the federal treasury: they start acting like every other interest group.
St. Vincent College, a small Benedictine college southeast of Pittsburgh, wanted to realign a two-lane state road serving the campus. But the state transportation department did not have the money.
So St. Vincent tried Washington instead. The college hired a professional lobbyist in 2004 and, later that year, two paragraphs were tucked into federal appropriation bills with the help of Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, awarding $4 million solely for that project. College officials said the work would improve the safety and appearance of the road into the campus, which President Bush visited two days ago to give the college’s commencement address.
Religious organizations have long competed for federal contracts to provide social services, and they have tried to influence Congress on matters of moral and social policy — indeed, most major denominations have a presence in Washington to monitor such legislation. But an analysis of federal records shows that some religious organizations are also hiring professional lobbyists to pursue the narrowly tailored individual appropriations known as earmarks.
The New York Times did some research on the number of earmarks for religious organizations and found some interesting results: “From 1989 to January 2007, Congress approved almost 900 earmarks for religious groups, totaling more than $318 million, with more than half of them granted in the Congressional session that included the 2004 presidential election.” (The NYT created an interactive database for the earmarks.)
My friends at AU noted that we’ve strayed pretty far from our constitutional roots on this one: “Nearly 200 years ago, when Congress passed a law granting federal land to a Baptist church in Mississippi, President James Madison vetoed the measure.” Madison told Congress at the time, “[R]eserving a parcel of land of the United States for the use of said Baptist Church comprises a principle and precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.'”
Now churches are hiring lobbyists to get a slice of the funding pie. This isn’t progress.
Also from The God Machine this week, Congress may be good enough to write some checks for churches, but apparently Congress is no longer worth converting.
It seems the Capitol is now manifestly beyond salvation. The Center for Christian Statesmanship, launched in 1995 to convert members of Congress and their aides to evangelical Christianity, has shuttered its operations in Washington.
The group had been a ministry on Capitol Hill of a 10,000-member megachurch, Coral Ridge Presbyterian, of Fort Lauderdale.
CQ suggests “the group brought in fewer converts than hungry staffers. Its best-attended Hill function had been its monthly ‘Politics and Principle’ luncheons, which supplemented evangelical appeals with complimentary sandwiches.”
I’ve been hearing for quite a while that Congress is beyond salvation. I guess now it’s official?
And finally this week, by way of reader M.W., it appears that Jerry Falwell’s funeral will have one unwelcome guest.
Westboro Baptist Church says it intends to state a protest at the funeral of Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Falwell died died Tuesday at age 73. The funeral will be Tuesday at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, the church he founded, in Lynchburg, Virginia.
On its Web site, Westboro says it will “preach” outside the funeral “of the corpulent false prophet Jerry Falwell, who spent his entire life prophesying lies and false doctrines like ‘God loves everyone.'”
Apparently, for the Phelps clan, Falwell wasn’t hateful enough. Wow.