{"id":8888,"date":"2006-10-27T13:30:36","date_gmt":"2006-10-27T17:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8888.html"},"modified":"2006-10-27T13:30:36","modified_gmt":"2006-10-27T17:30:36","slug":"an-entirely-new-reasoning-behind-bushs-faith-based-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/an-entirely-new-reasoning-behind-bushs-faith-based-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"An entirely new reasoning behind Bush’s faith-based initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

It didn’t exactly capture the media’s attention, but in June, a federal court issued a very important ruling<\/a> when it comes to the separation of church and state.<\/p>\n

Prison Fellowship Ministries, founded by ex-Watergate felon Charles Colson, was effectively given an entire wing of Iowa’s Newton Correctional Facility, at which Colson’s group created what was basically a state-sponsored evangelism program. As U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt explained, while striking down the program as a blatant violation of the First Amendment, “For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one of its penal institutions…. There are no adequate safeguards present, nor could there be, to ensure that state funds are not being directly spent to indoctrinate Iowa inmates.”<\/p>\n

The case (filed by my former employer, Americans United for Separation of Church and State) is on appeal, but in the meantime, Colson has come up with a very creative<\/a> public-relations defense for his program: it’s necessary to win the war on terror.<\/p>\n

Those opposed to faith-based prison projects are blind to the threat of terrorism in the “homeland” from former inmates who have converted to Islam while in America’s prisons, Charles Colson charged in a recent BreakPoint website commentary published by Prison Fellowship Ministries. […]<\/p>\n

In his BreakPoint commentary titled “What’s Hidden in the Shadows: Radical Islam and U.S. Prisons,” Colson, who founded Prison Fellowship Ministries after serving time in prison for Watergate-related crimes, warned that a terrorist attack in the homeland could be spearheaded by “home-grown Islamist radicals” who are converting to Islam while in prison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“I don’t usually make predictions,” Colson wrote, “but here’s one I’ll venture: If, God forbid, an attack by home-grown Islamist radicals occurs on American soil, many, if not most, of the perpetrators will have converted to Islam while in prison.”<\/p>\n

Let’s flesh this out for a moment.
\n
\nScholars at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute and the University of Virginia’s Critical Incident Analysis Group recently concluded that America’s “large prison population” could become a long-term domestic security threat, especially if inmates get recruited into religious groups, some of which are potentially violent. “[E]very radicalized prisoner becomes a potential terrorist recruit,” the report said.<\/p>\n

Colson, whose ministry stands to lose quite a bit of money without access to inmates, believes he’s<\/em> the solution to the potential problem. As he sees it, prisons have to let him convert inmates to fundamentalist Christianity before those same inmates get converted to fundamentalist Islam.<\/p>\n

“The largely unimpeded spread of radical Islam through our prisons coincides with increased opposition to the one really successful antidote — that is, the presence of Christianity,” Colson wrote.<\/p>\n

Colson singles out Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, for special condemnation. “Unfortunately, opponents like…Lynn…are blind to this, which puts more than the program at risk–because, as we saw in the case of the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, groups that are now operating in the shadows of our prisons are a real danger to us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, if you don’t let Chuck Colson ignore church-state separation, you’re aiding and abetting terrorists. If a person is behind bars, gets converted to Islam, joins a terrorist group, and then commits an act of terrorism — it’s Barry Lynn’s fault for not letting Colson convert him first.<\/p>\n

It’s odd; I thought the religious right was no longer capable of surprising me….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It didn’t exactly capture the media’s attention, but in June, a federal court issued a very important ruling when it comes to the separation of church and state. Prison Fellowship Ministries, founded by ex-Watergate felon Charles Colson, was effectively given an entire wing of Iowa’s Newton Correctional Facility, at which Colson’s group created what was […]<\/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-8888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8888","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=8888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}