Religion and Government

I think faith-based initiatives are a thinly-veiled attempt at pushing the religious values of the current government onto people who are perhaps more gullible than average. It's advertising plain and simple. Joe-Shmoe will associate people with certain (presumably we're talking Evangelicals) religious values as being wonderfully kind and helpful, thus gaining their undying support in the future. Since I don't have much confidence in a person's ability to make important decisions without those decisions being coloured in some way by their religious values, I think that the boundary between "church and state" should remain clearly defined.

I won't deny that some of these programs do help a lot of people, but I am suspicious of the motives of those who initiate some of these programs. An example of such would be the abstinence program in Africa to retard the progress of AIDS in the continent. It's not a very practical solution, as following the same train of thought you might as well ask them to avoid drought and famine by drinking and eating less.

Jam it back in, in the dark.