First Thing, Set the Baseline Value. Churches are Dogmatic, Inherently Discriminatory Things.

Let us never forget that. Catholics do not let Rabbis into their Apostolic Pulpits to declare that the Moshiach has not yet come. Nor do Jews allow some snake-handling Pentecostal pastor to stand up in the Temple to declare they,"Be saved , Lawdy, and the power of the Holy Spirit will pro-tect them from the venomous serpent." I could go on longer but let's not belabor the point. You can get peeps from different faiths to sit around a table, and explore what they have in common (and that is mostly the non religious stuff -- funny how that works out), but when push comes to shove, they all individually think they are right, and everyone else is wrong. Why else would they be members of any specific faith, synod, sub conference, or mere church, if they did not think that specific dogma was the right one? (All of a sudden I am recalling some tiresomeness I have directly and indirectly experienced from some of the more extremist of Evangelicals, who talk about the "True Faith," and the "True Bible," and the "True Church." I did say that was tiresome, right? I will leave off there, then.)

But back to the baseline. But for maybe Unitarians/Universalists, most all religious people are not only the most biased if not bigoted of people, they are damned proud of that, not so much for the result, but for the reason they are at least biased, if not bigots -- that being their Faith. To be a member of a particular Faith is to be at least biased in favor of that Faith. Their Faith is the only one they really can thing of as legitimate, as if they did not think only theirs was the only legitimate one, they would not be committed followers of their Faiths. It is sorta a logic loop, but hey. I don't make the rules, I am just laying out the base line facts here.

So why am I on this topic? President Obama is continuing the Faith based office in the White House. That is not news. He said that all along. He did, in the past, say he was going to (try?) rewrite the Bush Administration rule that allowed for Federal money to go to religious community organizations and institutions that discriminate in hiring practices. The default rule of the Federal government is not to give any money to any organization that has discriminatory hiring practices. But Bush and his people carved out an exception. And it appears that even if President Obama is tweaking that rule, to give his Faith Based Office some more leeway to bar the worst of the offenders from the funds, the old policy is not being changed much at all, seems.

Administration officials rejected the notion that Obama was backtracking on a campaign promise.

A White House spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, said the new executive order "strengthens the constitutional and legal footing" of the faith-based office. She said the order "doesn't resolve all issues at the outset, but it does provide a mechanism to address difficult legal issues."

"On contentious issues like hiring, the president found that one of the problems with the previous initiative was that tough questions were decided without appropriate consideration, data and input from different sides," Psaki said.

Faith Based Policy Changing? Not So Much.

So here is my take on this. Am I surprised that instead of bringing the Faith Based office fully in line with the usual Federal standard, The Obama Admin. elected for a middle of the road, wiggle room sort of position? Not really. Now I am not going to deride or exult his own depth of faith. I am the guy, who ordinarily is flat out unimpressed with declarations of faith. However, Obama is the guy who came up through Chicago Community Organization. Those smaller churches are his kind of people, as a matter of record. So I am not surprised he is setting up a system where the Office of Faith Based Initiatives can do some log rolling and horse trading.

Still, from my POV, I am not happy with the Federal Government getting entangled with religions, faiths, and churches; not with the mere idea of it, leave alone the reality of it.

But I confess my own bias here. I am one of those people who are profoundly uncomfortable with religious dogma, as in having to endure it, or pretend that stuff makes a lick of sense to me. And I am also one of those people who distrusts religions based on the fact that religious people are, like I said before, people who think they have a monopoly on right and wrong; they are right and everyone else is wrong. God says so!

And even if I know that some churches do good, with providing charitable and social services, I don't really think they should be receiving Federal Funds for that. So I fully admit, I would rather see the Faith Based office closed. But that does not mean I do not get it, why that as far as American Politics goes, it is a winning idea.

I may believe that my ideas are better. But I am not a bigot. I know that what I think and believe is not necessarily universal truth. And the mere fact that the world is not conforming to my will is not cause for stroking out, or throwing a clot. So why you may ask, did I bother to post this? My answer is as follows; to show that I can disagree with the policy with out stroking out or throwing a clot.