Secularist movement has gone too far

Glenn Beck, thank you for helping women find God.

Beck, who defends the founding principles of freedom that made our country the envy of the world, learned about a new challenge facing Gospel Shelters for Women. The organization’s website says it helps “homeless, previously incarcerated women with programs of restoration through the Love of Jesus, Bible truths and self-discipline.”

Government recognizes the shelter’s value and has given it two annual $25,000 grants for years. Now it wants control.

The modern crusade to sanitize society of Christianity recently caught up with Gospel Shelters. As government plots to remove a Jesus statue from a Forest Service ski slope — because the statue might suddenly create a theocracy after 60 years of standing still — federal officials have decided that a gospel shelter should rid itself of gospel. They ordered the shelter’s director, Marilyn Vyzourek, to stop requiring Bible study. Never mind that the program’s success in salvaging broken lives of women depends entirely on helping them find God. Forget that no woman is forced to seek help at the shelter, which means it lacks ability to force religion on anyone. Government pours money into programs run by secularists and atheists, but it wants nothing more to do with traditional western faith.

Vyzourek refused to secularize her program, which cost her the grants. When Beck heard about it, he immediately chose to fund the program himself. He called Vyzourek, who had been praying for a solution, and pledged $55,000 that will more than make up for a year’s worth of lost federal funds. Glenn Beck, not the central government, will help these women without imposing controls.

It is reminiscent of the Colorado Springs, Colo., evangelicals who offered to pay for school breakfasts throughout Colorado after politicians complained they could no longer afford the program without new taxes. Politicians quickly found state money, once faced with the horrific prospect of Christians funding a social program that gives the state power and control and a facade of benevolence.

The race to secularize all government activity has gone too far. President Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the First Amendment and coiner of the phrase “separation of church and state,” regularly attended Baptist services in the House of Representatives only a short time after the First Amendment became law. Clearly he and other framers did not intend to scour government of religion when they set about protecting religion from government.

Gospel Shelters for Women is just the latest target in a aggressive secularist movement that our country has done without for most of 235 years.