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United States: Jim Towey is the White House Deputy Assistant to the President and Director, Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and about halfway down this Q and A, is asked Do you feel that Pagan faith based groups should be given the same considerations as any other group that seeks aid?
Now, personally, even though I've seen plenty of Pagans volunteering in the charity sector, I've never seen them form groups specifcally to push religion. And neither has Jim Towey, but he has a different reasoning. It's not because Pagans aren't obnoxiously religious about their charity work, it's because they're horrid, unloving people.
I haven't run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.
Jim Towey hosts Ask the White House - White House web site, 26th November 2003 (via Internet Infidels).
Posted in
Church and State
at 10:55. Last modified on September 28 2006 at 23:43.
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Can Pagans be generous, charitable, loving people? Most Pagans would say so, and most Americans would probably assume that this is true - but quite a few Christians would probably dispute that. This is their right, to be sure, but... [Read More]
Tracked on November 30, 2003 1:06 AM
Comments
1: Posted by: Jay Allen (Kensho Godchaser) | December 1, 2003 9:54 PM
I think Towey is just ignorant. He obviously thinks "pagans" means "non-Christian", as opposed to the Neo-Pagan spiritual movement, since he's under the impression that "pagans" proselytize. Anyone who knows anything about Paganism knows that isn't the case!
Still, a good example of why church and state shouldn't be intermingled. Someone with such an obvious pro-Christian bias should not be deciding what does and does not constitute a valid "faith".
2: Posted by: nomad | April 5, 2004 4:11 PM
Greetings, just a short not here. We of course know this Towey fellow to be ignorant to who we are, I posted a link to your article here on the home page of the Pagan Aid Alliance
http://www.paganaidalliance.org
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