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Christian solace from Homeland Security

W. David Stephenson blogs that the Dept. of Homeland Security …

… has chosen “Victim Relief Ministries”which The Baptist Standard calls “an interdenominational nonprofit organization related to Texas Baptist Men” to “take the lead in mobilizing the country’s faith community in the event of a terrorist attack or mass-casualty crisis.

What is this all about???..

It’s actually unclear what it’s about. The article David’s blog is based on (note the “postnuke” in its url) may be exaggerating a tad, since “taking the lead” may just be puffery. On the other hand, the article says “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security enlisted the national organization to train volunteer victim-relief chaplains during sessions in southern California, Dallas and New York City.” If this strikes you as perfectly ok, ask yourself how you’d feel if the DHS had tapped any other religion to train the rest of the nation’s “volunteer relief chaplains.” I’m not outraged, just slightly more depressed, if such a thing were possible.

But I’m perked up by the inappropriately cheery headline on the page the article links to:

Announcing Association Name Change &
Introducing New Category –
Victim Counselor!

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3 Responses to “Christian solace from Homeland Security”

  1. Hi David –
    Just a comment about “Postnuke”. Postnuke (http://www.postnuke.com) is an open source content management system based on PHP. I use it for my site (http://www.vaughnthompson.com) and quite like it. I think you’ll hear more about it in the future.

    You run a great blog. Keep up the great work.

  2. Hah! Thanks for the clarification. I feel so pre-apocalyptic now. : )

  3. Actually, I listened to a local minister in Illinois talking about his experience training in what sounds just like that program (which has apparently existed for many years and was designed to deal with various emergencies) and then being called on to go to NYC after 9/11. Certainly there are times when having a set of ministers who know how the emergency relief system works but aren’t part of the government makes a lot of sense. So I’d give the Administration a pass on this. They can probably screw it up, but it sounds like a legitimate program that meets a real need.

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