Dial-THE-Atheist;
19 September 1994
Thank you for calling Dial-THE-Atheist. This is Madalyn O'Hair.
Are you listening to President Clinton at all? It wasn't only that he asked the Full Gospel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Washington, D.C. to pray that his crime bill would be passed, but he added, inappropriately, in talking about his administration, "Our ministry is to do the word of God here on Earth."
That's funny, actually. I thought his job was to administer the Executive Branch of government and now it turns out that he thinks the Executive Branch is a ministry.
But he went on to explain that under the Crime Bill -- and here I am quoting --
The churches are eligible to participate -- and give kids something to do after school to get them off the streets where they can be in recreation.What are they supposed to do there? Pray? Oh well, to go on.
He then said, "We've got to be more honest with our young people in teaching them to respect themselves -- their bodies, their souls, and their futures."I don't know what he would expect my kids to do -- since neither one of them has a soul. I, myself, don't have one. The president is simply throwing words away hoping to appease the Black population of the nation by pretending he cares for their non-existing "souls."
That's disgusting. Then he added that:
We are going to kick off our National Service Program on Monday (September 12) which will, this year, involve 20,000 young Americans in serving their community, many of them in church groups. The Congress of National Black Churches is an active participant in national service. We want kids working with churches to solve a lot of these problems.No, we don't. I don't care to see any kid suckered into church work for any reason. And, this addresses a problem about which American Atheists do a lot of harping. Hundreds of millions of dollars of federal, state, county, and city funds are pumped into so-called social service programs administered by churches. These purely secular activities should be handled by trained social workers and administrators and not left to ministers, rabbis or priests to handle incompetently -- while the recipients of the benefits think that the churches are funding the programs. All the churches want to do is to sucker the kids into church membership by a pretended concern.
In any event, before Clinton left the church he talked about every child having a gift of God. That gift is "grace" within them. He went on then:
So let us leave here resolved to stir up the gift of God that is within us and do those things that will enable us to go forward with joy and confidence to make the future what it ought to be.By this, he apparently means to do the word of God on Earth.
Then, of course, he again went to Massachusetts for his vacation this year, as he did last year. Upon his return he immediately met with sixty members of the ministry.
Clinton is now meeting a dozen times a year with selected clergy. He loves the banter of Bible quotes being tossed back and forth between them. He honestly thinks that religion and prayer can solve problems and he is willing to throw as many tax dollars to the churches as he reasonably can without your getting riled up enough to want to stop it.
His objective is to find how churches can be a resource to - - quote -- recapture the common good -- end quote -- of the nation. He will then see that even more tax funding is channeled through the churches for welfare programs so that the semi-literate priests, ministers, rabbis, gurus, and other assorted charlatans can "administer programs" when they are evidencing, by their occupational choice, just how stupid they really are.
I don't have the God-given gift of grace in me when I hear slick talk like this placating the Blacks -- and the poor -- of the nation.
You can find out how we rave on and on about this by subscribing to the American Atheist Newsletter. It is just $20 a year. The address for that is PO Box 2117, Austin, TX. The zip is 78768. Alternately, you can get on your modem and dial the American Atheist Bulletin Board. That number is area code (512) 302-0223 and the subscription price is just $10 a year.
Meanwhile, of course, you can dial this Atheist any time.
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