{"id":8688,"date":"2006-10-07T10:09:50","date_gmt":"2006-10-07T14:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8688.html"},"modified":"2006-10-07T10:09:50","modified_gmt":"2006-10-07T14:09:50","slug":"this-week-in-god-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/this-week-in-god-34\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in God"},"content":{"rendered":"

First up from the God machine is, coincidentally, a machine for God. Well, sort of. It’s a machine, which is becoming increasingly common, and which will take your money at convenient locations in the name of God. (thanks to reader B.T. for the tip)<\/p>\n

The LA Times ran a fascinating feature<\/a> on an evangelical congregation in Augusta, Ga., which found that a large number of congregants didn’t carry a lot of cash on them, so Pastor Marty Baker embraced “ATMs for Jesus.”<\/p>\n

\"atm\"<\/p>\n

It was one of Stevens Creek’s three “Giving Kiosks”: a sleek black pedestal topped with a computer screen, numeric keypad and magnetic-strip reader. Prompted by the on-screen instructions, Marshall performed a ritual more common in quickie marts than a house of God: He pulled out a bank card, swiped it and punched in some numbers.<\/p>\n

The machine spat out a receipt. Marshall’s $400 donation was routed to church coffers before he had found his seat for evening worship.<\/p>\n

“I paid for gas today with a card, and got lunch with one,” said Marshall, 30. “This is really no different.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The kiosks can let donors identify their gift as a regular tithe or offering, or direct it to building or missionary funds. The machines send information about the donation to a central church computer system, which shoots the donors an e-mail confirmation.<\/p>\n

Pastor Baker and his wife began selling the devices to other churches through their for-profit company over the summer. A church buys a kiosk for between $2,000 and $5,000, plus a monthly subscription fee of up to $49.95 for licensing and support, plus a small cut of the credit card-processing company’s 1.9% on each transaction.<\/p>\n

The LAT noted that the Bakers have heard some “church leaders apparently fear that a technology so closely associated with commerce might come across as crass.”<\/p>\n

You don’t say.
\n
\nNext up from the God machine is an item<\/a> Focus on the Family sent to its membership this week about a religion story from across the pond.<\/p>\n

Being Christian in Britain may not guarantee your child can get into a U.K. Christian school.<\/p>\n

As part of an education “reform,” the British Education Ministry wants “faith schools” — schools run by religious groups, whether Church of England, Roman Catholic, Jewish or Muslim — to prove that their school admissions “reflect the social nature” of the areas from which they recruit.<\/p>\n

As part of that mandate, religious schools must now accept “children of all faiths” and set aside one-quarter of their open seats for non-Christian students. That means Christian applicants for the popular schools may soon be rejected in favor of agnostic or even atheist students.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I understand it, British Education Ministry extends public funds to these religious schools, which in turn leads the government to interfere with the schools’ admissions policies.<\/p>\n

Note to U.S. voucher proponents: be careful what you wish for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First up from the God machine is, coincidentally, a machine for God. Well, sort of. It’s a machine, which is becoming increasingly common, and which will take your money at convenient locations in the name of God. (thanks to reader B.T. for the tip) The LA Times ran a fascinating feature on an evangelical congregation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}