The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

Excerpted

(WashingtonPost.com) The national survey of 750 black churches by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that fewer than 3 percent are participating in the program, which funnels at least $2 billion a year in federal social services spending to religious organizations.

Black churches in the Northeast and those with self-identified progressive congregations and liberal theologies were most likely to be taking part in the program, a finding that surprised the researchers, who concluded that the White House has not used the program as a political tool as some critics have suspected.

…the survey found that, overall, liberal-leaning churches were more likely to apply for and receive the grants, even though they tend to view the program more skeptically than their conservative counterparts do. (more…)

I say that overall, this is very good news. As I have mentioned on this site many of times, Federal money does not need to go into the hands of the religious sector. There are many churches out there that generate a lot of money on their own–it is just that in many cases they lack the financial understanding on how to best invest it. Building multi-million dollar complexes that are only used once/twice a week is not a wise investment in my book. Think about this for a moment–if a church had to resell that property, do you think they would ever get back the full value? Probably not. Church buildings are designed for Church which means that whoever else bought that property, they would more than likely have to tear it down for their own purposes.