Holy Fraud

A person I know attends a small church with about twenty members (total). The minister recently, during one of his two-hour long sermons, announced that all the church members were going to have to go to Chicago for a one-day training session on how to do counseling with alcoholics and drug users. After the one-day training, they will start counseling people with addiction problems at the church.

This looks like one more example of George Bush's "faith based" scam. The church members will, after one day of training, be able to counsel drug addicts; and then the church will bill the federal government for this high-quality counseling. I'm sure the guys in Chicago also submit a bill to the feds for the training of these counselors. All-in-all this is just one more example of the "faith based" scam that--thanks to the Boob-in-Chief in Washington--allows churches to raid the federal treasury with no accountability and no standards of care.

What's even more grotesque is that I know for a fact that this minister believes that all mental and emotional problems are the work of demons. He doesn't believe in mental illness or psychological counseling, so all this counseling is going to be people praying over alcoholics and drug addicts. These people are going to counsel the addicts to read the Bible and pray to Jesus.

Do they really need to go to Chicago to learn how to do that? Or is it all about getting the money?