Some people say that religious organizations care more about financial matters than helping people in  need. Here’s a tale that tells us the two realms aren’t mutually exclusive.

According to a story in the Washington Post, a national coalition of faith-based organizations is trying to  get the federal government to come up with a more streamlined approach for handling troubled mortgages. The goal: Keep more owners in their homes.

“Families are losing their homes and they’re on the street, and that’s just morally wrong,” the Post quoted  Mary Rabon, a member of the Kansas affiliate of PICO National Network, an alliance of 1,000 U.S. congregations based in Oakland, Calif.

PICO is short for People Improving Communities Through Organizing, and a couple hundred members gathered in D.C. recently to meet with federal officials and pray outside the Treasury Building.

According to the Post, the plan supported by PICO would stipulate that ”every bank that accepts taxpayer bailout money would be required to accept the same set of loan-modification procedures, setting payments to no more than 34 percent of borrowers’ incomes and, in some cases, reducing principles to reflect falling property values.”

Funding for the program would come from the $700 billion bailout fund.

Now, let’s see if their proposal has a prayer among lawmakers.

Amid all the chatter about whether to say “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Holidays” or “Dandy December” in the next few weeks comes this bit of news about what some people might consider a more meaningful contribution to the season.

High school students at Vanguard Church in Colorado Springs are leading a campaign to get every middle and high school student at the church to give up two Christmas presents this year and have the money go instead toward a project to build wells in developing nations.

Alan Briggs, pastor to the high schoolers, started researching the issue a few months ago and discovered that f2.5 million people worldwide die annually from water-borne illnesses. He hopes some of the $450 billion that Americans spend on Christmas gifts will be diverted to help address the problem, and as a role model, he and his wife won’t  exchange any material goods this holiday season.

“We believe we should be making sacrifices that hurt to help people who are hurting much worse than us,” he wrote  to us at The Gazette.

Religion reporter Mark Barna will be telling you more about their effort in a future story, but you can learn more about the project on the “I Dare You” video on YouTube (search for “I Dare You chiceaux.”). Maybe others will take Briggs and the students up on the dare. 

The question is bound to come up: Could Focus have taken the $500,000-plus donation it gave to support California’s anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 to spare some or all of the 200 or so employees who are losing their jobs?

This is something our reporter, Bill Reed, asked today (Nov. 17) at a press conference where Focus  announced it is laying off 149 people and not filling 53 vacant jobs. This comes on top of another 46 layoffs announced in October.

We were under the impression - erroneously, it turned out — that the $500,000 sent in support of Prop 8 came from Focus’ political arm, Focus on the Family Action. But Focus officials said today that money came out of Focus’ general budget, because of California campaign laws, and was budgeted for such activities, not payroll.

Even if that money had been reallocated to keep some employees on, Focus said donations are down and expected to get worse. For an organization that relies solely on donations, how far could that $500,000 have gone before layoffs had to kick in anyway? We’re not taking sides, defending or criticizing Focus or trying to answer the question; we’re just asking, and would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Buddhism began about 2,500 years ago, and while it has never caught on in America to the degree of Christianity, there are still millions of practicing Buddhists in the U.S.

The foundation of Buddhism are the four noble truths:

* Life is subject to suffering

* Suffering is caused by ignorance

* Suffering can be removed by nonattachment, or the elimination of desire.

* Happiness can be attained through the Middle Way teachings of Buddhism.

The Middle Way teachings are:

1. Right understanding

2. Right thought

3. Right speech

4. Right action

5. Right livelihood

6. Right effort

7. Right mindfulness

8. Right concentration

For an introduction to Buddhism and more on the Middle Way, click here and here.

They brought their billboards to Colorado. Now they’re bringing a lawsuit.

On Wednesday, the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation filed suit in state court in Denver, claiming Gov. Bill Ritter showed “governmental preference for religion in issuing National Day of Prayer proclamations” in connection with the National Day of Prayer Task Force.

Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said the governor feels confident there’s no merit to the suit.

“In previous challenges in other states and on the federal level, these complaints have been rejected, and we fully expect that if they persist with this, it will meet the same fate,” Dreyer said of the lawsuit.

“This is a proclamation,” he added. “It’s not an executive order, not a statute and doesn’t carry the force of law. It doesn’t violate the state constitution. Precedent is in our favor.”

The foundation is the same group that erected the “Imagine No Religion” billboard on North Academy Boulevard. If they want to have a prayer of winning their suit, they’d better make sure their legal documents are more accurate than their press release: It called the govenor “Jim” Ritter.

OK — the big question of the day: Does anyone care anymore about Ted Haggard and what he has to say? Is it really news, or more like driving by a car wreck and getting sucked into the spectacle?

The question comes up today because ABC News is reporting that Haggard spoke at a church in Morrison, Ill., recently about the scandal that ended his reign at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, which he founded. He left after reports surfaced that he had been involved with a male prostitute and dallied with meth.

Haggard said his behavior might have been related to a “sexual experience” he had when he was 7 years old, with a man who worked for his father.

“There I was, 50 years old, a conservative Republican, loving the word of God, an evangelical, born-again, spirit-filled, charismatic, all those things,” he told the congregation. “But some of the things that were buried in the depths of the sea from when I was in the second grade started to rage in my heart and mind.” He said he “sinned,”

 And so, do you care? Is this news? We’ve been scolded in the past for reporting on the post-New Life Haggard, saying that he’s no longer news. That we should let him be a private citizen operating under the media’s radar. But the man has a Web site — http://tedhaggard.com (or at least he did this morning; it now says the site is under construction). So just how private does he want to be? Just food for thought.

As you ponder these weighty questions, you can link to the ABC News report here.

There’s been a lot of talk about President-elect Barack Obama taking away Americans’ constitutional right to own guns. Many of those doing the talking are conservative Christians — all of which makes relevant an article by Chuck Baldwin that was first published in July and is once again making the rounds online.

Baldwin, one of the independent candidates for president this year (who also received almost no votes), cites biblical passages that he believes underscore the right of people to own weapons. “Even our Lord understood and validated the right of every person to arm themselves for personal self-defense,” he wrote in USA Tomorrow, a publication from the US Observer that was started this year as an antidote to the dreaded “mainstream media.”

Baldwin’s column starts off talking about the New Life Church shootings in Colorado Springs last December and how the gun-packing volunteer security officer Jeanne Assam saved dozens of lives by stopping shooter Matthew Murray. The biblical citations come later — and you can read it all right here.

Prayer is getting the credit for the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which reversed the state Supreme Court decision in June that legalized gay marriage.

On Monday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson gathered with 10,000 others at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium for a day of prayer and fasting in support of Prop 8. Some participants had fasted 39 days leading up to Monday, according to an article posted on citizenlink.com, the Web site of Focus on the Family Action, the lobbying arm of Focus. The event was broadcast live on God TV.

Polls suggested the measure would be defeated, but it was approved by 52.5 percent of the state’s voters on Tuesday. (Read the Los Angeles Times story on Proposition 8’s approval here.)

“We know God has gone before us,” Ron Prentice, executive director of the California Family Council, said in a news relase. “Tens of thousands of people were praying over the weekend … praying and fasting 40 days to give victory to California and protect marriage.”

Between Dec. 2007 and July, Focus on the Family gave $448,406 to support the initiative, making the Christian group the seventh highest monetary supporter of the amendment.

Also on Election Tuesday, measures in Florida and Arizona  passed that amend their constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Despite a concerted effort to capture the evangelical vote, President-elect Barack Obama did only marginally than Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry did against George W. Bush in 2004. Kerry received 21 percent of the evangelical vote, while Obama received 26 percent, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, citing early exit polls.

Obama also did better attracting Catholics, garnering 54 percent of the Catholic vote to Kerry’s 47 percent.

To find about more about the role religion played in this year’s election, see the full Pew Forum report here.

The divorce rate continues to soar, at least within the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches. The Associated Press reports that both denominations recently lost members to more conservative movements – splits that mirror what happened with Grace Episcopal Church and St. Stephens in Colorado Springs about two years ago.

On Sunday, two of the Fresno area’s two largest Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations voted Sunday to align with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Livonia, Mich. The reason, in part, was because of the possibility of gay leadership in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). The Fresno Bee reports that more than 100 churches have left Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) since leaders voted in July to drop a requirement that church officials live in “fidelity with the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.”