On Sun, 7 Jun 1998, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
<<snip>>
> One of the ways that neoliberal budget-cutters have and will try to use
> churches, evangelical or not, is to enlist them in their scheme of
> _privatization_ of social services: from 'welfare' to schooling.
> Neoliberals have and will look to churches and other places of worship and
> exhort them to provide food, shelter, ect. to the poor who are deemed
> 'undeserving' of social citizenship and entitlements to state aids that it
> entails. The best thing that the Religious Left can do in this context is
> to _refuse_ to be used in this drive for privatization. They must say to
> neoliberals, 'we will not be used as excuse for cutting social programs and
> public school funding.' They must refuse to be incorporated into the
> 'workfare'/legal slavery scheme in which churches and other 'non-profits'
> are made to play a role in providing places where 'workfare' workers are
> supposed to gain 'work experience' (as if people on welfare had never
> worked in their lives!). They must turn down a neoliberal invitation to
> benefit from 'school voucher' programs. Left clergy and lay leaders got to
> be in the forefront of this struggle _against privatization_. (Some of the
> best ones are, but the rest have yet to get anywhere near there.)
You're probably right about this, Yoshie, but I also think it would be really difficult for committed left christians to _do_ this i.e., not provide food, shelter, etc... It really goes against their most central beliefs. Gov't officials know that, of course, and their attempts to get churches to provide those things is really cynical when seen in this light.
I can certainly see church leaders protesting the privatization of social entitlements, but I find it hard to believe that they would stop offering these things in protest. Do you know otherwise? Or were you referring only to school vouchers?
Frances
In Berkeley Food Not Bombs cooked in the Franciscan kitchen for a year or so. It was kind of fun to watch the two groups (punks and monks??!!) get to know each other and let go of the misconceptions each group had of the other. FNB expected the Franciscans to be alot prissier then they were and the Franciscans expected the FNBers to be less articulate and meaner then they were. I don't think the FNBers ever really got used to the sight of a Franciscan in his robes, smoking a cigarette, though.