The state's Stem Cell Board agreed last week to compensate women who donate their eggs for research purposes.
In a majority vote last week, the Empire State Stem Cell Board (ESSCB) decided to pay women up to $10,000 who donate their eggs for embryonic stem cell research, making New York the first state to do so.
Composed of a funding committee and ethics committee, the ESSCB agreed June 11 to compensate women using taxpayer-backed grants "for the expense, time, burden and discomfort associated with the donation process — within specified limits — as is currently permitted when women donate oocytes for reproductive purposes in New York State," according to its statement. California and Massachusetts, leading states in embryonic stem cell research, have laws prohibiting the practice.
A day after the vote, Father Thomas Berg, a member of the ESSCB ethics committee, decried the decision in a National Review Online op-ed, noting the many health risks involved in egg donation, including most commonly ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can lead to loss of fertility and death.
Berg also warned in the article that such a lofty payment for eggs will attract low-income women who may not be aware of the health risks: "When looking at the prospect of $5,000 to $10,000, most low-income women are not going to care. That’s why paying women for eggs will necessarily lead to the undue inducement and consequent exploitation of women. A voluntary donor, by contrast, is much more likely to calmly weigh the pros and cons of donation, and only go through with it if she feels strongly that she is doing good."
Likewise, Jennifer Lahl, national director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network in California, told The Scientist, "[T]his is a harmful, dangerous procedure with risks, and why in the world would we take healthy, young girls who aren't patients and pump them full of hormones and subject them to a medical procedure that requires minor surgery?"
According to Jesse Reynolds at the California-based Center for Genetics and Society, the Regulatory Agency of the U.K. has already approved that women who give eggs for reproduction can receive a discount if they agree to donate some of the eggs for research. And last November, Singapore's Ministry of Health approved compensating women for loss of time and earnings while donating eggs for research.
Meanwhile, a member of former President Bush's Council on Bioethics announced this week that President Obama has disbanded the council for being “a philosophically leaning advisory group,” reported The New York Times, and that he would create a new bioethics commission. This March, 10 of the council's 18 members openly criticized Obama's decision to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Posted by Katelyn Beaty at June 18, 2009 | Comments (1)
Several Christian groups signed a letter this week to as the House to oppose a bill that would legalize online gambling in the U.S.
"The prevalence of gambling addiction is three to four times higher with Internet gambling versus noninternet gambling. ... online gambling represents a highly invasive and reckless form of taxation dependent on human exploitation," the statement says.
Signers included Focus on the Family Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Gary Bauer, president of American Values, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, and Tom McClusky of Family Research Council.
The government started enforcing the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act this week by seizing more than $30 million in assets. The signers also urge the House to oppose a bill that would give banks more time to comply with UIGEA.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at June 12, 2009 | Comments (2)
The president of the National Association of Evangelicals took a rare step into the immigration debate Tuesday, saying that the long waiting period for citizenship must be
shortened.
"There are inconsistencies and many outdated aspects of immigration laws, and I think they are therefore unjust and unfair," said Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.
The NAE consists of 79 different member denominations, which is one of the reasons Anderson said he is hesitant to make strong statements on immigration. The NAE is drafting a resolution on this issue, and Anderson said the first draft found support at a board meeting in March.
"There was a very positive response that this was an important issue, and I think that makes sense because so many of our evangelical denominations have significant growth through the Hispanic community, and the Hispanic community is increasingly a major part of the evangelical movement through the United States so of course we care about that," Anderson said.
Anderson, a megachurch pastor in Eden Prairie, Minn., acknowledged the economic challenges facing lawmakers, but said government leaders can begin with the most obvious issues -- one of them being the long waiting period to gain citizenship.
"Immigration policy in the United States has changed a lot of times throughout our history, and it is time for immigration policy to change again," Anderson said, "and in terms of what that means, it means fairness, it means family, and it means finances."
Don Golden, senior vice president of the NAE's Baltimore-based humanitarian arm, World Relief, said his agency has seen the consequences of a broken immigration system. Although he supports border security, Golden also said he supports further legal means of attaining citizenship, including an expedited family reunification policy.
"Earned legalization will allow our immigrant brothers and sisters to come out of the shadows toward restoration and full integration, lessening the fear many immigrants feel in communities across the nation," Golden said.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at April 1, 2009 | Comments (1)
The Vatican's highest doctrinal body on Friday condemned advanced infertility treatments and contraception technologies and reaffirmed its strong prohibition of embryonic stem
cell research.
The long-awaited document, "Dignitas personae" ("The dignity of a person"), was released by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI.
Church officials said the document was meant as an update to a 1987 statement under Pope John Paul II. While the two documents are complementary, the newer one covers 21st-centry medical advances that were not even on the horizon 20 years ago.
Like the 1987 document, the new 36-page statement condemns in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and all other techniques that involve "replacement of the conjugal act by a technical procedure."
Vatican officials know from long experience that their pronouncements on sexual and medical ethics are bound to generate controversy and resistance, and the response from the liberal wing of the U.S. church was swift and strong.
"There is little new in the statement, but it remains difficult to reconcile the Vatican's self-avowed pro-life approach with the rejection of in-vitro fertilization and embryo freezing, not to mention the condemnation of the potential of stem-cell research,'' said Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, which supports abortion rights and access to contraceptives.
Cardinal William Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was not present at a press conference to announce the release of the document.
At the press conference, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, acknowledged that the document would encounter a variety of reactions, including indifference, ridicule, and accusations of "dark obscurantism that impedes progress and free
research."
In the document, church officials attempted to cast ethical and scientific debates in starkly human terms. An embryo is referred to as a "human being in his or her embryonic state,'' not a cluster of cells that is subject to "manipulation'' or "utilitarian treatment'' in a laboratory.
Moreover, the Vatican strongly states that reproductive technologies that may appear to be life-giving or life-affirming, such as IVF for infertile couples or stem cell research from discarded embryos, are actually destructive to the most nascent of human lives.
The Vatican appeared to give its blessing to treatments like Viagra and other measures that "assist the conjugal act, either in order to facilitate its performance or in order to enable it to achieve its objective once it has been normally performed.''
But included on the Vatican's prohibited list:
-- Newer forms of birth control, including the "morning after" pill (which prevents implantation of a fertilized egg) and RU-486 (which eliminates an already implanted embryo). Both "fall within the sin of abortion and are gravely immoral." Those who seek or prescribe such methods "generally intend abortion,'' the document said.
-- Genetic testing of embryos before their implantation through IVF, which the Vatican called tantamount to abortion and an "expression of a eugenic mentality."
-- Research that uses stem cells derived from embryos because the removal of those cells "invariably causes the death of the embryo."
-- Fertility treatments that involve the creation of multiple embryos that may or may not be used in seeking pregnancy. The "number of embryos sacrificed, even in the most technically advanced centers of artificial fertilization, hovers above 80 percent," the document said.
Yet on the delicate question of what should happen to those unused embryos, the document offers few clear answers. So-called "prenatal adoptions,'' in which one couple would "adopt'' another couple's excess embryos, is unacceptable because it would involve unnatural procedures, the congregation concludes. The Bush administration has supported such efforts.
"Abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved," the document states, quoting a statement by John Paul II that "there seems to be no morally licit solution" to the problem.
The Rev. Robert A. Gahl Jr., an American who teaches ethics at Rome's Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, said the church is still debating the proper response to excess embryos.
His own proposal is to "release them from their frozen captivity," so that they can be cared for by their natural or adoptive parents until their natural deaths a few days after thawing.
Yet at the end of the day, Gahl said one of the document's most significant contributions is its definition of a human embryo as possessing the "dignity proper to a person."
"This is an even more forceful rejection of the arguments that (Vice President-elect Joe) Biden and (Speaker of the House Nancy) Pelosi were making this summer, that the church is undecided about the status of the fetus," Gahl said. "From now on, those sorts of opinions are off the map."
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at December 12, 2008 | Comments (4)
New Jersey should enact a law allowing gay marriage and waste no time passing it because the state's civil unions law fails to adequately protect same-sex couples, a report to be released Wednesday said.
The final report of the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission says it gathered "overwhelming evidence" that the civil union law not only fails to provide the same protections as marriage, it also has created economic, medical and emotional hardships for gay couples.
The state panel concluded that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is as unjust as government imposing racial segregation laws against African-Americans.
"Separate treatment was wrong then and it is just as wrong now," said the report.
The 79-page report is the work of a 13-member panel created to evaluate the impact of the 2006 civil union law, which was supposed to provide the rights and responsibilities of marriage under another name. It will be forwarded to Gov. Jon Corzine and state lawmakers.
"The report is a sweeping indictment of the failure of the civil union law," said commission vice chairman Steven Goldstein, head of Garden State Equality, which is campaigning to legalize same-sex marriage. "The report asks Governor Corzine and the Legislature: Do you want equality or not? If so, there is only one way to go."
About 3,353 couples have entered into civil unions, according to Goldstein. He said his organization has received 1,502 complaints about civil unions.
Corzine could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. He has said previously he would sign a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, but wanted to deal with the issue after the November presidential election so a possible backlash would not be exploited by conservatives for political gain.
Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, a Democrat, said the report "should spark a renewed sense of purpose and urgency to overcoming one of society's last remaining barriers to full equality for all residents. As I have said many times before, same-sex marriage in New Jersey is only a matter of `when,' not `if."'
John Tomicki, president of the New Jersey Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage and a leading opponent of gay marriage, pledged to make it an issue in next year's state elections.
Massachusetts and Connecticut are the only states that issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. California did until last month, when voters approved a proposition outlawing same-sex marriage.
The commission's interim report in February found civil unions are "not clear to the general public" and confer "second-class status" on the couples who form them.
Three months ago, representatives of the state's Catholic bishops, the Knights of Columbus and other groups held a press conference to denounce the commission as biased, and demanded that it be scrapped and reconstituted.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at December 10, 2008 | Comments (1)
A state judge has ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal in Montana, the Associated Press reports.
"The patient's right to die with dignity includes protection of the patient's physician from liability under the state's homicide statutes," Judge Dorothy McCarter wrote in the ruling late Friday.
The state attorney general's office had argued that intentionally taking a life was illegal, and that the issue was the responsibility of the state Legislature.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Anders had argued the state has no evaluation process, safeguards or regulations to provide guidance or oversight for doctor-assisted suicide. The state also said it was premature to declare constitutional rights for a competent, terminally ill patient because the terms "competent" or "terminally ill" had yet to be defined.
Amy Beth Hanson writes, "McCarter's ruling makes Montana the third state after Oregon and Washington to allow doctor-assisted suicides. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide but did nothing to prevent states from legalizing the process."
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at December 8, 2008 | Comments (2)
Campaign coverage perpetuated a myth that the economy suddenly went south when Lehman brothers collapsed in October. For many people the effects of the weak economy had been felt long before that.
Here's the most striking example:
New government figures show that almost 700,000 children went hungry in the United States at some point in 2007, up more than 50 percent from the year before to mark the highest point since 1998. And that's even before this year's sharp economic downtown, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.
For those who need an economic reminder why society traditionally frowned on unmarried women having babies outside of wedlock, consider that the highest rates of "food insecurity" were families headed by single mothers.
In practical terms, what does this mean? 93% of those in this category said they were "eating less than they felt they should because there was not enough money for food" and 65% said they "had been hungry but did not eat because they could not afford enough food."
(Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at November 18, 2008 | Comments (7)
Its mixed news for Focus on the Family tonight. But in Focus's CitizenLink webcast, senior vice president Tom Minnery called it A tremendous night for the cause of righteousness on account of the success of the marriage ballot initiatives in 3 states.
In saying that the organization had expected those to be the bright spots this election night, co-host Stuart Shepard pointed out that there was little hope for Focuss presidential pick to win. They were sorry, Shepard said, to see Ohio go to Obama.
He encouraged Phil Burris of Citizens for Community Values in Ohio to vent a little about his frustrations with McCain; Burris obliged, saying they recommended McCain not out of excitement over his candidacy but out of fear of Obama.
Tony Perkins, who spoke with Minnery and Shepard soon after McCain conceded, encouraged listeners to put aside anger and bitterness. "This was not a rejection of conservative values," he said, but a rejection of Republicans who had abandoned conservative principles. "Clearly, our work is cut out for us."
Posted by Susan Wunderink at November 4, 2008 | Comments (31)
Little known fact: most of the impressive gains that George W. Bush made among Hispanics in 2004 were actually among Latino evangelicals. In other words, it was his appeal to evangelicals that did it as much as his appeal to Hispanics. They liked his conservative positions on abortion and gay marriage, and his evangelical faith.
But because the Republicans are now increasingly viewed as anti-immigrant, Democrats have a shot this year. According to Newsweek, these voters are taking a look at the Democrats broader social justice agenda but also still care about abortion.
(Originally posted at Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at September 10, 2008 | Comments (8)
According to Legal Times, they matter quite a bit in picking Supreme Court nominees and other judges. (Link via Melissa Rogers.)
Posted by Ted Olsen at September 8, 2008 | Comments (7)
Immigration remains a central issue for millions of Americans this election, but the issue was barely touched at either convention.
Eva Rodriguez, the National Hispanic Evangelical Womens president, said that many Hispanics are confused about this election. Rodriguez gave the closing prayer at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night.
How did you get invited to pray at the convention?
I know they were Googling names. I guess my name came up. I run the womens task of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference. They saw my videos and they also know my husband, Samuel Rodriguez. Hes been with McCain a few times and they know each other personally.
Did they ask you to change the prayer at all?
They did not. I sent it in a week prior so they knew what they were getting into.
Do you have any sense of how Hispanic evangelicals will vote this year?
I think were very confused this year. Out of all the elections, this has been a very difficult one to pick, because we have a brown person in the Democratic Party. You gotta be honest, it makes you proud. I think at the end of the day, you look at morals. Its awesome to have a brown person running. We always go back to morals.
Barack Obama doesnt have morals?
Well he does, but not to the extent that the Republican Party does Marriage between a man and a woman and abortion. Those are the two main issues that have been brought up. Of course, immigration, John McCain has fought for.
What kind of immigration policy are you looking for?
Were looking for something in between, but were not getting anything right now. Im very disappointed because here, they havent touched it. About 60 percent of the people in my congregation are immigrants. Our hope is that John McCain will continue on with immigration reform.
What do people think of Sarah Palins candidacy?
We are very excited, not only because shes a woman, but her religious beliefs are there. When it comes to morals and having a woman I think has been awesome awesome pick.
What do you think about the election so far?
I think immigration is going to be a big one. The Republican Party has to try to accommodate us a little bit. Were going to make the majority in a few years. They need to start thinking about us. Were going to be important, but in about eight years, were going to be extremely important. Were talking about down the road, the Republican Party is going to have to change, whether they like it or not. They need to listen to McCain a little bit more. Hispanics are growing, were moving up, were going to college, our kids are graduating. Our votes are going to count.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at September 5, 2008 | Comments (11)
I'd like to take a brief break from politics to talk about an actual issue of concern to many religious voters.
Both Republicans and Democrats this year devote extensive portions of their platforms toward helping to alleviate poverty in Africa. The new emphasis in the Republican Platform reflects both George W. Bush's significant work in this area and the seismic shift in the evangelical movement, emphasizing African poverty like never before. This has prompted conservative evangelicals to argue that they care just as much about poverty as liberals, who have been arguing aggressively that the Religious Right agenda misses the voluminous teachings by Jesus about the poor.
But when it comes to American poverty, there are still rather striking differences in the two parties' level of interest, at least judging from the platforms.
For one thing, the Democratic platform has a section called "poverty" and the Republicans doesn't.
To be fair, the Republican Party position has always been that a growing economy, individual initiative and a thriving charitable sector were the most important cures to poverty. So they would argue that the platform planks on tax cuts and energy production would count as anti-poverty measures. Still, it must be said that the Democratic Party platform committee appears to have spent a great deal more time thinking through the implications of policies specifically for the poor. Certainly they've spilled a lot more ink on the subject, devoting about four times as many words to the topic.
For now, I offer no assessment of the quality of their proposals, and note that the volume of words doesn't equate to effectiveness. But I wanted to merely lay out what they had to say. If religious voters are serious about poverty becoming part of the Christian agenda, they need to look at how the parties approach the topic.
Here are excerpts from the two party's platforms related to poverty:
The Republican Party Platform
GOOD PARENTING -- "Republicans recognize the importance of having in the home a father and a mother who are married. The two-parent family still provides the best environment of stability, discipline, responsibility, and character. Children in homes without fathers are more likely to commit a crime, drop out of school, become violent, become teen parents, use illegal drugs, become mired in poverty, or have emotional or behavioral problems. We support the courageous efforts of single-parent families to provide a stable home for their children."
JOB TRAINING -- "Government can play an important role in addressing economic dislocations by modernizing its re-training and unemployment assistance programs."
FAITH-BASED PROGRAMS - - "Bureaucracy is no longer a credible approach to helping those in need. This is especially true in light of alternatives such as faith-based organizations, which tend to have a greater degree of success than others in dealing with problems such as substance abuse and domestic violence. To accomplish their missions, those groups must be able to rely upon people who share their faith; their hiring must not be subjected to government regulation and mandates."
HEALTH CARE FOR THE POOR - "Our Medicaid obligations will consume $5 trillion over the next ten years. Medicaid now accounts for 20-25 percent of state budgets and threatens to overwhelm state governments for the indefinite future. We can do better
while spending less. A first step is to give Medicaid recipients more health care options. Several states have allowed beneficiaries to buy regular health insurance with their Medicaid dollars. This removes the Medicaid "stamp" from people's foreheads, provides beneficiaries with better access to doctors, and saves taxpayers' money. We must ensure that taxpayer money is focused on caring for U.S. citizens and other individuals in our country legally.
The Democratic Party Platform
POVERTY IN GENERAL -
"Poverty
"When Bobby Kennedy saw the shacks and poverty along the Mississippi Delta, he asked, "How can a country like this allow it?" Forty years later, we're still asking that question. The most American answer we can give is: "We won't allow it." One in eight Americans lives in poverty today all across our country, in our cities, in our suburbs, and in our rural communities.
"Most of these people work but still can't pay the bills. Nearly thirteen million of the poor are children. We can't allow this kind of suffering and hopelessness to exist in our country. It's not who we are. Working together, we can cut poverty in half within ten years. We will provide all our children a world-class education, from early childhood through college. We will develop innovative transitional job programs that place unemployed people into temporary jobs and train them for permanent ones. To help workers share in our country's productivity, we'll expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, and raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation. The majority of adults in poverty are women, and to combat poverty we must work for fair pay, support for mothers, and policies that promote responsible fatherhood. We'll start letting our unions do what they do best again--organize and lift up our workers.
"We'll make sure that every American has affordable health care that stays with them no matter what happens. We will assist American Indian communities, since 10 of the 20 poorest counties in the United States are on Indian lands. We'll bring businesses back to our inner-cities, increase the supply of affordable housing, and establish "promise neighborhoods" that provide comprehensive services in areas of concentrated poverty. These will be based on proven models, such as the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City, which seeks to engage all residents with tangible goals such as attendance at parenting schools, retention of meaningful employment, college for every participating student, and strong physical and mental health outcomes for children.
"The Democratic Party believes that the fight against poverty must be national priority. Eradicating poverty will require the sustained commitment of the President of the United States, and we believe that the White House must offer leadership and resources to advance this agenda."
FINANCIAL SUPPORT -- "We recognize that women are the majority of adults who make the minimum wage, and are particularly hard-hit by recession and poverty; we will protect Social Security, increase the minimum wage, and expand programs to combat poverty and improve education so that parents and children can lift themselves out of poverty....
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION - "Since businesses can only function when workers can get to their place of employment, we will invest in public transportation including rail, expand transportation options for low-income communities..."
LOW INCOME HEALTH CARE - "Improving maternal health also improves children's health, so we will provide access to home visits by medical professionals to low-income expectant first-time mothers...."
"We support providing Medicaid coverage to more low-income
HIV-positive Americans...."
"We must end health care disparities among minorities, American Indians, women, and low-income people through better research and better funded community-based health centers. We will make our health care system culturally sensitive and accessible to those who speak different languages. We will support programs that diversify the health are workforce to ensure culturally effective care. We will also address the social determinants that fuel health disparities, and empower the communities most impacted by providing them the resources and technical assistance to be their own agents of wellness. We will speed up and improve reimbursements by the Indian Health
Service......"
UNIONS - "We know that when unions are allowed to do their job of making sure that workers get their fair share, they pull people out of poverty and create a stronger middle class...."
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION FOR THE POOR - "We will make quality, affordable early childhood care and education available to every American child from the day he or she is born. Our Children's First Agenda, including increases in Head Start and Early Head Start, and investments in high-quality Pre-K, will improve quality and provide learning and support to families with children ages zero to five. Our Presidential Early Learning Council will coordinate these efforts."
POOR CHILDREN -- "We will make an unprecedented national investment to guarantee that every child has access to high-quality early education, including investments in Pre-K, Head Start, and Early Head Start, and we will help pay for child care. We will ensure that every child has health insurance, invest in playgrounds to promote healthy and active lifestyles, and protect children from lead poisoning in their homes and toys. Improving maternal health also improves children's health, so we will provide access to home visits by medical professionals to low-income expectant first-time mothers. We must protect our most vulnerable children, by supporting and supplementing our struggling foster care system, enhancing adoption programs for all caring parents, and protecting children from violence and neglect....."
PARENTING - "We know that there is no program and no policy that can substitute for parents who are involved in their children's education from day one-who make sure their children are in school on time, help them with their homework, and attend those parent-teacher conferences; who are willing to turn off the TV once in a while, put away the video games, and read to their children. Responsibility for our children's education has to start at home. We have to set high standards for them, and spend time with them, and love them. We have to hold ourselves accountable...."
"Too many fathers are missing-missing from too many lives and too many homes. Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to commit crime, drop out of school, abuse drugs, and end up in prison. We need more fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to understand that what makes a man is not the ability to have a child-it's the courage to raise one. We will support fathers by providing transitional training to get jobs, removing tax penalties on married families, and expanding maternity and paternity leave. We will reward those who are responsibly supporting their children by giving them a tax credit and we will crack down on men who avoid child support payments and ensure those payments go directly to families instead of bureaucracies...."
LOW INCOME HOUSING - "We will support affordable rental housing, which is now more critical than ever. We will implement the newly created Affordable Housing Trust Fund to ensure that it can start to support the development and preservation of affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods throughout the country, restore cuts to public housing operating subsidies, and fully fund the Community Development Block Grant program. We will work with local jurisdictions on the problem of vacant and abandoned housing in our communities. We will work to end housing discrimination and to ensure equal housing opportunity. We will combat homelessness and target homelessness among veterans in particular by expanding proven programs and launching innovative preventive services...."
URBAN POLICY - "We look forward to greater partnership with urban America. We will strengthen federal commitment to cities, including by creating a new White House Office on Urban Policy and fully funding the Community Development Block Grant. We support community-based initiatives, such as micro-loans, business assistance centers, community economic development corporations, and community development financial institutions....."
FAITH BASED - "To face today's challenges-from saving our planet to ending poverty--we need all hands on deck. Faith-based groups are not a replacement for government or secular non-profit programs; rather, they are yet another sector working to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We will empower grassroots faith-based and community groups to help meet challenges like poverty, ex-offender reentry, and illiteracy....
This article is cross-posted from Steve Waldman's blog at Beliefnet.
Posted by Sarah Pulliam at September 4, 2008 | Comments (7)
