February 09, 2010
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October 20, 2009

Obama abuses faith office to promote his radical agenda

By Ed Lasky
During the entire Bush administration critics accused him of using religion for political purposes. Many people were aghast that our President was a religious man -- as opposed to his predecessor whose fidelity to the Ten Commandments was an on-off sort of affair. When George Bush named Jesus as his favorite philosopher he was laughed at as being a simpleton. What really provoked the left was when he created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives as a way to work with religious groups to perform social services. There were fears that the wall between church and state were going to tumble down as fast as the walls of Jericho.

Of course, the fears were unfounded, but the constant agitprop involving the Office was a useful partisan political tool. It stoked fears, and that was always good for Democrats as a fundraising tool.

One might think that Barack Obama would close the office as one of the first steps of his Presidency, a payback for support by the militant secularist community. Au contraire (an apt phrase that becomes our Europhilic President) -- he has kept "the entire architecture of the Bush-Faith based initiative intact-every rule, every regulation, every executive order".

Hypocritically, the usual critics of this government intrusion into the religious sphere have remained silent.

Why has Barack Obama waded into religious waters? His intentions become clearer by the day. He sees every taxpayer dollar, every government office, as a tool to further his political agenda. The prospect of this occurring was presciently recognized by Meghan Clyne in a Weekly Standard article earlier this year when she predicted that Obama would use the Office of Faith-based Initiative as one more "mechanism for nationwide community organizing".  Clyne notes that Obama himself telegraphed his goals back in 2005:

In 1995, Obama told the Chicago Reader:

In every church on Sunday in the African-American community we have this moral fervor; we have energy to burn. But as soon as church lets out, the energy dissipates. We must find ways to channel all this energy into community building. The biggest failure of the Civil Rights Movement was in failing to translate this energy, this moral fervor, into creating lasting institutions and organizational structures.

The tact Obama has taken is to populate the office with his own troops.

By tapping the likes of Moss to help steer his faith-based policies, Obama could be using the White House to "translate the energy" of black churches into "creating lasting institutions" of left-wing political agitation. A look at the other members of the advisory council certainly supports this interpretation. Vashti McKenzie is another proponent of black liberation theology, and another friend and defender of Jeremiah Wright who has preached at Trinity United. Jim Wallis also publicly supported Wright and has even been an inspiration to the reverend. In his National Press Club speech, Wright quoted Wallis as saying "America's sin of racism has never even been confessed, much less repented for." In an earlier life, Wallis once said he hoped "more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes." In recent years he has settled for working through congressional Democrats, helping them make their policies more palatable to people of faith. Wallis has been joined in that task by Rabbi David Saperstein--another prominent liberal and member of the new faith-based advisory council. The council looks like nothing so much as an attempt to build a powerful political grassroots network to advance the liberal causes dear to Obama's heart.

Wallis also has an animus toward capitalism and toward Israel, and has been an apologist for human rights abuses when they are committed by communists.

We have now begun to see Obama's strategy become clearer: bring a group of radicals into power by placing them in key positions throughout government. This often takes place under the radar screen. For every Van Jones, how many Otis Moss's and Jim Wallis's are there? We probably will never know.

But every once in awhile we see Obama's goals reach fruition. We are seeing one now with the Office of Faith Based Initiatives taking a sudden turn to the left and injecting itself into politics:

A task force charged with improving the White House's faith-based initiative program has waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, raising eyebrows and concern among Jewish leaders.

Most of the attention around the controversial Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, begun by President George W. Bush and continued by President Obama, has centered on church-state separation issues.


But in the final days of drafting the recommendations, a six-member task force on addressing interfaith issues inserted language about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into its recommendations for the faith-based program - which helps religious and community groups tap into federal funding for local projects such as drug rehabilitation, job training and soup kitchens.

The task force, one of several that were presenting recommendations, said the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships should "create a working group of multi-religious and community organizations focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to advise administration officials at the National Security Council and the State Department on a just resolution of the conflict."

Why this sudden breaking of precedent?  Personnel is policy. Obama chose the members of the advisory council precisely because they would fulfill his political goals. In this case, he wants to turn the American people against Israel and has the audacity of using a religious group to do so. Any Jewish person who has an atavistic fear of religion being used as a cudgel to hurt Jews should wonder why our President supports such a policy.

I believe it is abhorrent that Obama and his minions are using, under a religious guise, an office created to provide social services by using faith groups, to promote an anti-Israel political objective: to further turn America against Israel. Obama has already been criticized for turning many Americans against Israel-and this  was charged by a well-known and respected liberal.

It seems that for Obama every ally of America is expendable, and every government agency and office is a political tool to be manipulated to radicalize Americans.

However one might feel regarding the Israel-Palestinian conflict, we should all be concerned that Barack Obama sees every agency (whether the census board, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Federal Communications Commission, The Federal Election Commission)  as a tool to promote his radical agenda.  

We have not seen anything yet.

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
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