US, Black Pastors Forge Effort (faith-based fight against AIDS in Africa)

[DeepModem Mom]

Los Angeles Times:
U.S., Black Pastors Forge Effort
Rice meets with clergy to discuss expanding the faith-based initiative to fight AIDS in Africa.

By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — Escalating its courtship of a politically powerful constituency, the Bush administration is teaming up with some of the nation's best-known and most influential black clergy to craft a new role for U.S. churches in Africa.

The effort was launched last week when more than two dozen leading African American religious figures met privately with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and senior White House officials at the State Department, according to administration officials and meeting participants.

The hourlong session focused largely on how the Bush administration's faith-based initiative could be expanded to combat the spread of HIV and provide help for tens of millions of children orphaned by the epidemic across Africa.

Some of the pastors said it was a matter of national security — that those orphans were susceptible to recruitment by Islamic extremists unless they could be exposed to black Christian churches.

The gathering yielded no formal financial commitment from the federal government for the Africa effort. But participants said it marked a new era of engagement by black clergy with U.S. foreign policy....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ministers29may29,0,4234932.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[expatriot]

1. "Operation Get Behind the Darkies":

Tell me if you don't get the reference or if you don't think it's funny.

It is tragic, however, how this administration knows no low... playing domestic electoral politics with the AIDS apocolypse in Africa.

[ConfuZed]

2. Delete

[TaleWgnDg]

3. May George Walker Bush and his followers reap . . .

.
May George Walker Bush and his followers reap . . . all that they sow, and may it be a huge harvest of dung for them all.

How dare GWBush use religion upon the backs of the AIDS victims in Africa! How dare GWBush ensnare religious ministers into his political web.





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"I believe in an America where no (clergyman) would tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the public acts of our officials, where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. The presidency must not be the instrument of any one religious group." - John F. Kennedy, campaigning for the presidency before a group of Southern ministers, Houston, Texas, 1960
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[rodeodance]

4. Reid an Hil Clinton have their own black faith-based groups

Read towards the end of this story.


.........This month, a separate organization of black ministers backed by the liberal group People for the American Way met to mobilize black church opposition to President Bush's judicial nominees. ............


Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada has hired three new staffers to reach out to faith-based groups, including African American constituencies.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has also joined in the effort. In a January speech at Boston's Azusa Christian Community Church, Clinton gave an endorsement of the faith-based initiative that sounded as though she were reading from a Bush White House script.

"We cannot come in, through the government, and dictate to faith-based organizations how they should best minister in their streets, and in their churches, and in their synagogues and mosques," she said. "We need to not have a false division or debate about the role of faith-based institutions; we need to just do it and provide the support that is needed on an ongoing basis."

[rodeodance]

5. 'promise of expanding gov.grants to woo political support"--yes

new low.


......White House strategists view black ministers as a path into a voter bloc that has traditionally been Democratic but is conservative on social issues such as abortion, school vouchers and same-sex marriage.

A relatively small group of sympathetic pastors has enjoyed extraordinary access to Bush and his top aides. Now, as the GOP outreach grows wider and more aggressive, some Democrats accuse the White House of expanding the promise of government grants to woo political support.

"I am concerned that this may be another enticement offered by the administration to African American clergy along the lines of the faith-based initiative," said Rep. Major R. Owens (D-N.Y.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.......