I subscribe to Sojomail, a weekly e-zine put out by Sojourner's Magazine. Yesterday's edition was a satirical editorial by David Batstone, written to the Bush-Cheney Campaign. He was responding to a letter the campaign sent out to churches across the country. The letter encourages church letters to send their member directories to the campaign and then to have several political-awareness events in the run-up to the campaign. A full article about the letter appeared in the Washington Post on July 1. (You may have to register-free- to read the entire thing.)
The Post article is about concerns that churches could endanger their tax-exempt status by engaging in partisan politics. But the first thing that jumped out at me was "holy cow! A lot of churches could lose a lot of members if they were to mail their directories to a political campaign!" I doubt our little church would lose members over it, but I also doubt our heavily Democratic membership would relish being on the Republican contact lists!
Batstone takes a wonderfully sarcastic approach in his letter, telling the campaign that he not only mailed in the church directory, but he put stars next to the names of the people who gave more than $1,000 to the church last year. He says "We do not have an especially wealthy congregation, but as I reminded them last week in my sermon, if a poor widow can give a mite, so might we open our hearts and checkbooks to the burning Bush of Texas, whom God has led to Washington for our sakes." Here is his full column.
Today the Momster and I will go to the grocery store and to Target. We hope to take the kids to the beach tomorrow and come back Sunday. We're still trying to talk Cassie into coming with us. I will have a 4 day break from bus driver training. Monday I meet my trainer at 7 am to start learning bus parts. Mechanical parts.
I leave you with this, as usual: Benchcraft Furniture Bites!
7:48:08 AM 
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