AMERICANS UNITED APPLAUDS 'FAITH CZAR' TOWEY'S DEPARTURE FROM WHITE HOUSE
AU's Lynn Says 'Faith-Based' Point Man Was First Amendment Foe, Urges
President Bush To Shut Down 'Faith-Based' Office
Americans United for Separation of Church and State today applauded the
departure of White House "Faith Czar" James Towey and urged President
George W. Bush to close the Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives.
"Jim Towey has waged an unrelenting war against church-state separation,"
said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "He
played a key role in using the 'faith-based' initiative for improper
partisan purposes, and he did little or nothing to see that Americans get
the social-service help they need from their government. That's a sad
legacy to leave.
"Towey was the Bush administration's point man in trying to roll back civil
rights laws barring religious discrimination in hiring in government-funded
programs," Lynn continued. "I am pleased that he failed to push that
terrible idea through Congress."
Towey and other administration figures have worked hard to allow church-run
government programs to discriminate in hiring on religious grounds. In June
2003, Towey's office even issued a 12-page booklet, "Protecting the Civil
Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations: Why Religious
Hiring Rights Must Be Preserved," that promotes this kind of hiring
discrimination.
Americans United charged that the record shows the faith-based initiative
is a practical as well as civil rights and civil liberties failure.
In February, the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy reported
that direct federal grants to faith-based charities actually fell from 2002
to 2004. The non-partisan research group said the number of grantees rose,
but due to funding cuts, the available pool of money shrank by $230 million
in the 99 federal grant-making programs studied.
Americans United urged the president to close the Office of Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives.
"With Towey's resignation in hand, the president should do the American
people a favor and close the misguided faith-based office," Lynn said. "The
administration's faith-based initiative has always been about funneling
public funds to favored political constituencies, not helping the poor. In
the process, the White House has trampled the First Amendment principle of
church-state separation and jeopardized important civil rights laws."
Lynn criticized Towey's tactic of trying to intimidate critics of the
faith-based initiative.
"When civil rights and civil liberties leaders criticized the
administration's faith-based plan, Towey would respond with name-calling,"
said Lynn. "It's a tired, but annoying strategy to defend a
constitutionally suspect program."
In early 2005 not long after Bush's re-election, Towey vowed before a
Washington, D.C., gathering to fight "secular extremists" who oppose the
administration's scheme to fund religion and allow government-funded job
discrimination.
A couple of years earlier, Towey told National Public Radio that
legislation containing the administration's faith-based initiative had
languished in Congress because debate on it had been "held hostage by some
extremist groups that have a view that the public square should be
sanitized of all religious influence."
He groused to the Boston Globe that the faith-based initiative had failed
in Congress due to "extremist activity" of groups such as Americans United
and the NAACP.
In fact, a large number of religious, educational, civil rights and civil
liberties groups have opposed core provisions of the faith-based
initiative. The General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist
Church, the president's own denomination, opposed the initiative because of
the employment discrimination issue and the church-state problems.
Towey, who has served since 2002 as assistant to the president and director
of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, will become the
16th president of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., effective July 1.
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington,
D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the
importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
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You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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