White House Aide Angers Pagans (washingtonpost.com)

Pagans Help the Poor:

Reader MB sends this story along and asks for some commentary. The story is of the director of the White House's "Faith Based" programs, who was asked if pagan groups could get Federal money for charity efforts. His reply was that he hadn't heard of any such groups:

I haven't run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work, and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.

It turns out there have been quite a few Pagans for the Poor:

In the past three years, Pagan Pride groups have collected 74,000 pounds of food and donated $51,000 to homeless shelters, interfaith food banks, the American Red Cross and other charities, according to the Indianapolis-based International Pagan Pride Project.

In Chicago, pagans support a battered women's shelter. In Massachusetts, they have given $20,000 for children with AIDS.

$51,000 is a pittance compared to what Christian groups donate to charity each year, it is true; but then again, the numbers of people who are professed pagans is quite small. The estimate in the Post story is 300,000, which is just about one tenth of one percent of the US population.

This, of course, points the way forward here. There's no reason to ban Pagan groups, as there aren't going to be very many of them because there aren't very many Pagans. There's no reason they shouldn't participate in charity, as long as they're held to the same standards as everyone else--a good one is the one cited, i.e., that the money can't go to promote ideology.

Of course, that's the problem with the Faith-based program anyway: no one trusts their neighbors not to preach while they feed the hungry and soothe the sick. The sick are still suffering, though, and the hungry are not fed. I should rather take the risk that some preaching might get done, than prefer that the ills should continue with no better treatment than that which the government can provide. If we have learned anything, it is that the government is the worst choice for caring for the poor. Anyone does it better.