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> I believe it was President George HW Bush who advanced the federal policy of "faith-based charity" initiatives in order to fill gaps in entitlements and State

> I believe it was President George HW Bush who advanced the federal policy of "faith-based charity" initiatives in order to fill gaps in entitlements and State-administered welfare programs. I'm pretty sure that later Obama had to take it to court to defend it, because it obviously weakens the boundaries between church and state in the service of letting private entities provide services that the government is at a better scale to provide. Most people would be upset if the money were going to Scientologists, because it's not one of the right religions. Or if you sent the money to me, I'd both be able to distribute food and make myself a billionaire; it's obviously a subsidy. > the government cannot provide the volunteers or trained staff who are necessary to actually sustain operations, keep unemployment low, and foster organizational growth. Of course they can.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
> the government is at a better scale to provide But it's not. Never has been. They're firing federal workers because of the deficit, national debt, Deep State issues, crumbling empire typical issues, man. The only ‘volunteers’ the government provides are military forces! I have never once met anyone at church who says that Uncle Sam conscripted them into a ministry! Good God, can you imagine a bishop conscripting priests and colluding with the military to make them chaplains? The State has always relied on Subsidiarity to provide charity or welfare. The federal level is a last resort, an emergency safety net when Subsidiarity and every other non-profit and religion fails to fill the gap. The New Deal and all the social service programs here in USA and UK as well have arisen in a secular context just to ensure that churches wouldn’t get too powerful and conversely, that citizens wouldn’t feel obligated or beholden to faith-based charities who were providing many of their basic needs. But c’mon. No state is realistically capable of doing charity at scale. Basically impossible. Therefore we re-invent church tax. Just look at the shitty situation of health care as the Secular West wrests it from Christian hegemony and literally needs to eviscerate Hippocrates. Many places with established religions just have the government funding that religion, and it’s not a tangled web like what we’re weaving in 2025. Disestablishmentarianism simply means “we’ll eventually need to reinvent religion in some form.”

AStonesThrow 2y ago

> the government is at a better scale to provide But it's not. Never has been. They're firing federal workers because of the deficit, national debt, Deep State issues, crumbling empire typical issues, man. The only ‘volunteers’ the government provides are military forces! I have never once met anyone at church who says that Uncle Sam conscripted them into a ministry! Good God, can you imagine a bishop conscripting priests and colluding with the military to make them chaplains? The State has always relied on Subsidiarity to provide charity or welfare. The federal level is a last resort, an emergency safety net when Subsidiarity and every other non-profit and religion fails to fill the gap. The New Deal and all the social service programs here in USA and UK as well have arisen in a secular context just to ensure that churches wouldn’t get too powerful and conversely, that citizens wouldn’t feel obligated or beholden to faith-based charities who were providing many of their basic needs. But c’mon. No state is realistically capable of doing charity at scale. Basically impossible. Therefore we re-invent church tax. Just look at the shitty situation of health care as the Secular West wrests it from Christian hegemony and literally needs to eviscerate Hippocrates. Many places with established religions just have the government funding that religion, and it’s not a tangled web like what we’re weaving in 2025. Disestablishmentarianism simply means “we’ll eventually need to reinvent religion in some form.”