Wall Between Church and State Takes a Hit

Your timely story (“Bush Rewarded by Black Pastors’ Faith,” Jan. 18) exposes the tawdry scandal of explicit or implicit use of federal government money -- money that we all pay in our taxes -- to encourage religious groups to support a political agenda. This is bad for the churches and bad for the government. This is exactly why the separation of church and state is so critical. The seeds of government entanglement in religion are sown. Corruption and co-option will follow.

Michael Klein

Los Angeles

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The article pointed out how many black pastors in the battleground states who supported Democrats in past presidential elections endorsed George W. Bush after their churches received federal funds through Bush’s initiative to support faith-based social services. Along with a Jan. 8 story disclosing that the administration paid $240,000 to black commentator Armstrong Williams to promote Bush’s education agenda, we taxpayers should rightly be alarmed.

The Times article also said: “Administration record-keeping has made it difficult to track where the faith-based money has gone.” If one thinks that the term “bribery” is too harsh to use in indicting Bush for getting these pastors to help him win by spreading their influence over the black voters, then consider what Bush administration official Jim Towey said at one taxpayer-financed White House conference in the midst of the campaign. According to the Times article, Towey declared the faith program a flashpoint in the “culture war” between people of faith and the secular world.

As our soldiers are killed or maimed battling religious fanatics in Iraq and Afghanistan, the administration fuels a culture war here at home for political gain, using taxpayers’ money. When will this madness stop?

Leon M. Salter

Los Angeles

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The message of the Bush administration is clear: Walk in goose step with its politics and policies and you will be rewarded; disclose its deceptions and atrocities, as did CBS, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Ambassador Joseph Wilson and others, and you are on its hit list.

While Bishop Sedgwick Daniels and his ilk are gobbling their 30 pieces of silver, perhaps they might think of all the people who believe that integrity tastes better than corrupt government masquerading as the guardian of moral values.

Kathleen Burnside

La Habra