Dial-THE-Atheist is a free, recorded message service sponsored by
American Atheists and available at (512) 458-5731 24 hours a day.
Narrated by Madalyn O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, it features
short comments on state/church separation issues and viewpoints
originated by the Atheist community.


                        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
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Meanwhile, of course, you can dial this Atheist any time.