According to Giving USA, which monitors philanthropic giving, a record $175 billion was donated in 1998, but most didn't go to the poor. About 90% went to religious organizations and life enhancement groups (arts, universities). Contributions to human services represented only 9.2% of all giving.
According to the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel, the largest single benefactor of charitable giving in 1998 was religion, receiving 43.6% of the money.
The National Republican Congress-ional Committee, an arm of the party funding U.S. House races, gave what the Scripps Howard News Service called a "seismic" contribution of $250,000 to the National Right to Life Committee.
Normally, lobbies fund politicians, not the other way around. "Many of the party's most stalwart loyalists," according to the news service, were shocked when the news was made public in late December.
The ACLU, on behalf of plaintiff Carl Silverman, a Foundation member, settled a dispute with a minor league baseball team in January over the team's illegal practice of discounting tickets for church-goers.
The Hagerstown Suns, Maryland, will offer the discount to families bringing bulletins from civic or nonprofit groups, as well as to those bearing church bulletins. The claim with Maryland Commission on Human Relations was filed in 1998 against the Civil Rights Act violation.
The public school system in Davis, California, adopted a policy in December barring its schools from sending home solicitations from the Boy Scouts because the group excludes atheists and gays. Parents argued that groups that discriminate should not be given special privileges, including access to student folders, bulletin boards, and parent-teacher association newsletters.
A 25-year sentence for first-degree murder handed down on Jan. 13 to David Mayer, El Cajon, for starving his toddler son to death does not end the community's horror over the short life of Zechariah. Mayer, diagnosed as deluded and "hyper-religious," had said "God does not like fat babies."
Zechariah, nearly 3, died a grotesquely emaciated 19 pounds last January, in his food-filled family apartment. An uncle said Mayer was so absorbed in prayer he did not see his son was starving, and called consuming belief a hallmark of the family's Baptist traditions.
Physicians, neighbors, jurors and detectives told the San Diego Union-Tribune the case haunts them. Some mentioned how the starved toddler would have smelled his parents cooking. Others are haunted by the fact that the child never crawled or walked, that his diaper rash became ulcerated, and that he was left in lonely pain in his crib in a dark room.
The U.S. Supreme Court in January let stand a decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the closing of public schools in Maryland on Good Friday. The Associated Press erroneously put a report over the national wire claiming that Wisconsin was one of several states with Good Friday holidays. The Freedom From Religion Foundation won a federal lawsuit in 1996 overturning a Wisconsin Good Friday holiday.
The justices rejected an appeal without comment, from retired Maryland teacher Judith Koenick, who said the law "sends the message to nonChristians that the state finds Good Friday, and thus Christianity, to be a religion worth honoring while their religion or nonreligion is not of equal importance. That message is particularly significant in this case because it is being sent to schoolchildren." A similar challenge out of Indiana is still before the high court.
Oliver found "the program has the effect of advancing religion through government-supported religious indoctrination." Cleveland's program, beginning in 1996, provided scholarships worth 90% of a private school's tuition (up to $2,500) for low-income students. More than 3,500 students participated, most attending religious schools. The strong ruling is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
President Clinton released guidelines on Dec. 18 promoting "partnerships" between religious institutions and public schools, expanding on guidelines first released through the Department of Education in 1995 on religion in public schools.
". . . I have never believed the Constitution required our schools to be religion-free zones. . ." said Clinton.
Education Secretary Richard W. Riley sent a letter to every principal with a series of pamphlets, including guidelines for school officials on the limits of religious volunteerism. Although the guidelines repeat earlier injunctions against proselytizing, they contain mixed messages encouraging "partnerships." Tax dollars were apparently spent to enclose materials by the First Amendment Center encouraging the teaching of religion in public schools.
A "Clergy in the Schools" program in Beaumont, Texas, similar to what Clinton promoted, was found unconstitutional by a federal district court.
Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker issued an opinion on Nov. 23 to the Georgia State Board of Education warning that bible teaching in public schools might not withstand judicial scrutiny. Georgia's Board of Education on Dec. 9 voted to reject paying for a curriculum produced by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, an overtly Christian organization.
Board Chair Otis Brumby said, "the net effect of our approval would likely be minimal in terms of student enrollment but massive in terms of costly litigation."
In Florida, where a court had ruled against use of the bible curriculum in Lee County, 14 other counties are unconstitutionally preaching "bible as history," according to People for the American Way Foundation. Some 2,600 students have taken Christian-fundamentalist slanted classes in Clay, Columbia, Escambia, Gulf, Hillsborough, Indian River, Levy, Madison, Marion, Okaloosa, Polk, Santa Rosa, Taylor and Walton counties.
A cross is a cross is a cross . . . whether put up by churches or the Ku Klux Klan, but Cincinnati-area churches smugly filled Fountain Square with their crosses last December, squeezing out the KKK. The Christian-based hate group won a federal ruling in 1997 that it could temporarily put up a 10-foot-tall cross on the city property over the holidays. The city policy is first-come, first-served.
The Federal Communications Commission made a determination in December that religious broadcasters holding noncommercial licenses must devote 50% of their regularly scheduled airtime to educational programs. Programming "primarily devoted to religious exhortation, proselytizing or statements of personally held religious views and beliefs generally would not qualify as 'general educational' programming," the FCC ruled. A footnote added that church services normally would not qualify as "educational."
According to the FCC, about 373 TV stations hold educational reserve licenses nationwide, with about 20 of them religious broadcasters.
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