Disaster Christianity

by digby

Stirling Newberry has an interesting post up at FDL about Rick Warren’s African AIDS ministry. It’s always seemed obvious to me that this was a thinly disguised conversion effort and it appears to be true. That’s not to say that it isn’t doing some good work, but the work could just as easily be done withouet religious proselytizing. (The ABC method — abstinence, be faithful, use condoms — works fine as a secular public health message.)

The idea was supposed to be that because churches were already present, they could be the disseminators of the message. But that’s not actually how it’s working:

… let’s take another PEACE project, the community in the Philipines:

We shall help bring Christ into the lives of these people by insisting in them to form into small groups and study small group materials that would direct them to God and to growth in character. Hopefully, we can also assist in building a network of support (government and non-government) for these people from whom they can appeal for financing assistance (livelihood loans and funding) and other things that can add to the welfare of the community. This would include building a network of churches that would be ready to receive new attendees coming from the small groups we have formed.

After the recitation of facts, the core of their proejct is laid out: set up a community they control, including the political leaders, and make them meet every week to study the Bibles that they pass out and the materials they send. This is Disaster Christianity. Find hopeless people, give them a few goods and services, and then build a theocracy. It is the model of Hamas in Palestine.

The difference, of course, is that a large amount of the funding for the Warren project comes from taxpayers who don’t know that they are paying to convert the third world to evangelical Christianity as part of the plan. Not that they have a choice in the matter. Their tax dollars a spent on this religious project whether they like it or not.

Meanwhile, the conservative argument for everything from the Hyde Amendment to these new “conscience clauses” is that people should not have to pay or provide services for things they find morally objectionable. But that’s only for Real Americans. The rest of us just have to eat dirt and do what we’re told.

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