Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas - The Christian right gets scammed!

I should be unsympathetic, but I'm from the Bible-belt, and have seen the power of true Christian faith first hand. So I have mixed emotions when I read this:

More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.

The office’s primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book.

Entitled “Tempting Faith,” the book is not scheduled for release until Oct. 16, but MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” has obtained a copy.

“Tempting Faith’s” author is David Kuo, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003. A self-described conservative Christian, Kuo’s previous experience includes work for prominent conservatives including former Education Secretary and federal drug czar Bill Bennett and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Kuo, who has complained publicly in the past about the funding shortfalls, goes several steps further in his new book.

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”

“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.

More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.

Nineteen out of the 20 targeted races were won by Republicans, Kuo reports. The outreach was so extensive and so powerful in motivating not just conservative evangelicals, but also traditionally Democratic minorities, that Kuo attributes Bush’s 2004 Ohio victory “at least partially … to the conferences we had launched two years before.”

With the exception of one reporter from the Washington Post, Kuo says the media were oblivious to the political nature and impact of his office’s events, in part because so much of the debate centered on issues of separation of church and state.

In fact, the Bush administration often promoted the faith-based agenda by claiming that existing government regulations were too restrictive on religious organizations seeking to serve the public.

Substantiating that claim proved difficult, Kuo says. “Finding these examples became a huge priority.… If President Bush was making the world a better place for faith-based groups, we had to show it was really a bad place to begin with. But, in fact, it wasn’t that bad at all.”

In fact, when Bush asks Kuo how much money was being spent on “compassion” social programs, Kuo claims he discovered the amount was $20 million a year less than during the Clinton Administration.

The money that was appropriated and disbursed, however, often served a political agenda, Kuo claims, with organizations friendly to the administration often winning grants.

More pointedly, Kuo quotes an unnamed member of the review panel charged with rating grant applications as saying she stopped looking at applications from “those non-Christian groups,” as did many of her colleagues.

“Tempting Faith” contains several other controversial claims about Kuo’s office, the Bush White House and even the 1994 Republican revolution in Congress.

Calls and e-mails to the White House have not been returned.

My first reaction was, "What did you expect? These are politicians!"

It's truly amazing that after all of the disapointments evangelicals have sufferred at the hands of politicians, their leaders still haven't figured it out:

James Dobson, Charles W. Colson and other stalwarts of the conservative Christian movement defended the Bush administration and questioned the timing of the book's publication, a month before the midterm elections. Some suggested that Kuo had betrayed the White House.

Or maybe they have:

As a candidate for Senator in Louisiana, a state legislator named Tony Perkins received about ten percent of the statewide vote. As a Washington lobbyist, Tony Perkins is a celebrity. To the 1,000 or so pastors and activists attending the Family Research Council’s Washington Briefing this weekend, he is responsible for carrying their voice into the inner sanctums of the White House. As such, to leaders of these state groups, he has enhanced their personal brand.

So he received star treatment: rounds of applause, a harried young entourage, and even a walk-and-talk with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl, who, with camera crew and producers, were filming a segment on “values voters.”

"Celebrity", "inner sanctums of the White House", "enhanced their personal brand", and "star treatment" aren't exactly what I would call attributes of Christian living, but they are certainly desirable for a politician, which is what these "religious leaders" have become.

Christians need to wake up and realize that salvation doesn't come from the political process. Jesus didn't teach his followers to put their faith in government. Why follow people who believe such things?

Jesus said, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Saving sinners is not the government's duty, and saving democracy is not the church's.