Put Ye No Faith in Bush’s Ministers

by Joe Conason

As a sales team seeking to promote their political goals, the present occupants of the White House truly excel. By now, everyone must know that the Bush administration is a cheerfully efficient team of “compassionate conservatives” presenting the nation with “charitable choice” so that we can achieve “faith-based solutions” to our national woes. Yet behind all this happy-sounding rhetoric lies a reality that is less uplifting and wholesome.

The President’s determination to channel billions of tax dollars to religious organizations may support some worthy inner-city programs, and his lawyers may find a way to finesse the Constitutional questions raised by such funding. But eventually, choices will have to be made about which groups get money and which do not—and those choices, being made in the White House, will inevitably carry a political tinge.

Bearing in mind that the original promoter of “compassionate conservatism” in the Bush camp was campaign strategist Karl Rove, it seems likely that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives will soon become a highly effective patronage scheme. That assumption is confirmed by the new administration’s reduced emphasis on such traditional executive-branch operations as the Domestic Policy Council, the Office for Intergovernmental Affairs and the Office of Public Liaison. Despite all the feel-good assurances offered to justify the new partnership between church and government, it would be a mistake to forget that Mr. Rove more closely resembles Boss Tweed than St. Francis of Assisi.

There were a few ominous hints of what Messrs. Bush and Rove may intend during one of the Washington gatherings that celebrated the Bush inauguration. At an enormous “prayer luncheon” held in the Hyatt hotel ballroom on Capitol Hill on Jan. 19, the featured speaker was none other than John Ashcroft, then in the midst of those difficult hearings concerning his nomination as Attorney General. The former Missouri Senator—who wrote the first federal “charitable choice” legislation a few years ago—told the assembled multicultural divines that he had just been endorsed by a street musician who played “Amazing Grace.”

The luncheon was also addressed by Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis appointed to oversee the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. “This is an administration that will clear out the regulation problems, clear out the legal problems,” he vowed. What made Mr. Goldsmith’s pledge slightly eerie was the luncheon’s sponsorship by the Washington Times Foundation. The foundation is yet another tentacle of Sun Myung Moon, the would-be messiah who went to prison for federal tax evasion and illegal commingling of his business and spiritual interests. At the luncheon, the Unification Church leader received an award for his “work in support of traditional family values” (which presumably did not include spiriting young people away from their homes to serve his cult). Before returning to whatever palatial compound he currently inhabits, Mr. Moon reminded his fellow ministers that “religions tell us to fast, to serve others, to be sacrificial.”

In keeping with that injunction, Mr. Moon runs charitable organizations along with his huge media and industrial holdings. So does Jerry Falwell, the partisan Baptist preacher who in recent years has become a virtual adjunct of the Moon empire. And like his Korean benefactor, Mr. Falwell has long been a loyal promoter of the Bush family’s political causes.

Another dependable Bush ally is Pat Robertson. The wealthy televangelist and Christian Coalition leader also controls Operation Blessing, a far-flung charitable outfit that he expects to benefit from the President’s faith-based federal boodle. He, too, has had his troubles with government authorities, due to violations of the Christian Coalition’s tax-exempt status and also because of Operation Blessing’s misuse of certain assets to serve his commercial enterprises. Specifically, the charity’s airplanes were found to have secretly transported personnel and equipment for a diamond-mining enterprise in Zaire, undertaken by Mr. Robertson in 1994 with the blessing of the late and unlamented dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

An expose of that affair by the Virginian-Pilot newspaper led to a state investigation of Operation Blessing two years ago. That probe’s findings were embarrassing, but Virginia’s Republican governor and attorney general—both recipients of large contributions from Mr. Robertson—saw no reason to seek indictments or fines. And now, quite predictably, Mr. Robertson anticipates a nice big check for Operation Blessing from his White House friends. With one hand he feeds the hungry, while with the other he endorses and finances candidates like George W. Bush.

Still, Mr. Robertson says he is concerned about governmental interference in his charity’s promotion of fundamentalist dogma. With officials like Mr. Rove and Mr. Goldsmith handing out the money, under the sympathetic eye of Attorney General Ashcroft, he and his fellow evangelical entrepreneurs can probably rest easy. The same cannot be said for the rest of us taxpayers.

-- Debra (Thisis@it.com), February 14, 2001

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Response to Put Ye No Faith in BushÂ’s Ministers

If a system doesn't work then something needs to be done.

-- dudesy (dudesy@37.com), February 14, 2001.

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