Did you see the headlines today? Barack Obama announced that he will not only embrace the Faith Based Programs, but he will expand them. The story on the Fox News website says:
Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.
Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday in Zanesville, Ohio, at Eastside Community Ministry, which provides food, clothes, youth ministry and other services.
“The challenges we face today … are simply too big for government to solve alone,” Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “We need all hands on deck.”
Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Obama is trying hard to woo the vote of the Evangelical Christians, and in essence, his announcement sounds good and for many the dollar signs in their eyes will be all it takes to garner their vote and for them to sway those in their churches to vote for Obama.
But there is a catch folks. Read the small print and read between the lines. If you read this entire news story, near the bottom it is briefly mentioned, but you have to put on your thinking caps to really get it. What he says in a nutshell is this: If you receive the government money for these faith based programs, then you cannot discriminate in hiring.
Hey, no one wants to discriminate, right?
Think again. What he is saying is that if Harvest Church of God (my church) applies for and receives government money to open a center to work with youth in our community, then we must not practice discrimination in our hiring of staff. That means if a Muslim, a Satan worshiper or a homosexual applies for a job, then I cannot use that information as a reason not to hire them. That is bad enough, but we all know it goes deeper than that. American "anti-discrimination" laws always work backwards.
Allow me to illustrate what I mean:
Some years ago it was announced that they would be building a series of new locks and dams on the Mississippi River, and they were doing some hiring. I had worked at a steel mill for several years and was well qualified with equipment that would be used in this project. I was laid off from the steel mill so a couple of friends and I went down to apply. They were going to hire a little over 200 people for the local job. Over 1500 showed up to apply. We had to stand in line out in the freezing cold for hours, then they allowed us inside where we filled out an application that was like 5 pages. (Government job, you know.) Then they took us in and showed us a film about the job, then we had to listen to 3 different people speak. After 9 hours of being there, the last speaker finally told us how the hiring procedure would be done. He began to tell us all about affirmative action and the guidelines they must follow in hiring. I don't recall the exact numbers used except for how it effected me. Basically it was something like this:
For every 100 people hired X% must be Hispanic men, X% must be Hispanic women, X% must be black men, X% must be black women, and on it went until we told that only 5% of the positions were available for white men. The place erupted. Out of that entire auditorium of people, there was only about 35 people there who were NOT white men. The man called them up front and they were hired on the spot, simply because they were women or a certain color. Did not matter if they had no experience or that there were many of us very well qualified, they BY LAW could only hire a maximum of 10 white men. Period. They had to repeat this process of bringing people in 5 times to get enough people to meet the requirements for hiring the correct percentages of each "minority" employees.
I don't know if those kind of restrictions are still in place as this was back in 1980 and the laws may have changed, but my point is still the same. If a church has an opening for employees in one of these "Faith Based" programs and a homosexual, or Muslim wants that job, you had best believe there will be lawsuits filed for discrimination.
What Obama is doing is dangling the carrot of huge amounts of money out in front of the Christian church to fund these programs, but the reality is it will open the door where churches will be forced to hire employees that are opposed to our Christian values. I just hope the Christians are smart enough to see through this!
