New York City Orders Churches to Stop Sheltering Homeless People
This is just unbelievable. New York City has told twenty two churches that they may no longer shelter homeless people.
Let me write that again in case you thought that you misread it.
New York City has told twenty two churches that they may no longer shelter homeless people.
City officials have ordered 22 New York churches to stop providing beds to homeless people.
With temperatures well below freezing early Saturday, the churches must obey a city rule requiring faith-based shelters to be open at least five days a week — or not at all.
Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, a nonprofit that serves as a link with the city, said he had to tell the churches they no longer qualify.
He said hundreds of people now won’t have a place to sleep.
I am not sure how the separation of church and state, that Thomas Jefferson wrote about to the Danbury Baptists in 1802 which was somehow subsequently interpreted into the constitution, would allow the state to tell a church that they can no longer help the homeless. But that is what they have done.
Perhaps the government is jealous because somebody else is able to help those that can’t help themselves. The government wants to be the sole provider of those who are less fortunate. That is what the big government nanny state is all about, government control through government dependency. They view the church as providing something that the government wants the people to rely on them for and they feel threatened. So they must stop the church from providing shelter to the homeless so that these people will have to look toward Big Brother for help.
Where these people go for help really should be of no concern to the government if they truly believed in helping them but they don’t. They only want them dependent on the government to insure building a voter base. I find this disgusting.
They care more about potential votes than the actual welfare of the people.
America's Watchtower 
I had to do a double take on this because I found it unbelievable. From this article from the Canadian Press, it looks like it is a contractual dispute.
“The city’s emergency shelter network contract requires sites to operate at least five nights a week. The 22 churches have limited resources, since they operate their homeless beds using mostly volunteers.”
I imagine that if those churches started working together, they can muster up the volunteers to be able to reopen about some of the sites and be in compliance with the contract.
LikeLike
Well, you hit it right on the head with
“The government wants to be the sole provider of those who are less fortunate. That is what the big government nanny state is all about, government control through government dependency”
HOORAY for our budding Socialist society!
For years, I have been outraged at the misinterpretation of Separation of Church and State. This concept was meant to protect our Religious rights, not infringe upon them. The left has somehow turned the freedom OF Religion into freedom FROM Religion. If one is not religious, fine, that’s their choice.
The first amendment makes it pretty clear “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Clearly meant to keep the government out of religion. I am not suggesting that state sponsored religion should rule either, we’ve seen where that goes. It just ends up corrupting the religion through man’s selfishness and greed. But, if a man purges himself of all religious and moral values, he is left with an empty shell that rules by selfishness and greed.
Unless you believe in altruism, and I see no evidence of that in today’s politics.
LikeLike
The left loves to site the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” part of the consitution and they love to forget the “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” part of the constitution.
LikeLike
So, are the churches exempt from contracts? If the church entered a contract that says they will provide beds at least 5 days a week but are not able to because of the lack of volunteers, they should be allowed to stay open because they are a church?
There is no conspiracy here. There is nothing saying in any of the articles that I read that the churches cannot pool their resources together and open some of the sites back up.
The right seems to act all uppity when their rights get violated in respects to their practice of religion but then turn around and do the same exact thing to atheists and pagans. Maybe if both sides learned to tolerate the opposition’s view point the world would be a better place.
LikeLike