Cal Thomas: How Religious Organizations Exchange Their Message for a Bowl of Lentils

I like Cal Thomas because he makes his point concisely and clearly and because he so often injects profound biblical wisdom into his commentary, couched in simple common sense. And, well, I agree with him almost all the time too.

In his WTOP radio commentary today [MP3], he addressed Barak Obama's commitment to continuing and perhaps even expanding George Bush's funding initiatives that seek to engage faith communities, saying that he thought the idea was bad from the start and will only get worse under Obama.

Here's the core of his argument:

When government gets involve in religious organizations, it requires that the very power which changes lives be muted. And when religious organizations take government money, they eventually compromise their message in order to keep the money coming in. They come to rely more on government than on God.

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This faith-based business will ask that people put their trust in Caesar, not in God. It was a bad idea before, and it remains so now.