Funding Of Hunger Program OK'd With Disclaimer

Earlier this week, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit to stop the city of Baltimore, Maryland from funding today’s Bags of Love outreach program designed to furnish food to the hungry in Baltimore. The program is sponsored by the United Baptist Missionary Convention as a lead-in to the National Baptist Convention's 2006 Congress on Christian Education that begins Monday. (See prior posting.) Now that UBMC has eliminated most of the overtly religious aspects of Bags of Love, the court has refused to interfere with the funding of the event, according to today’s Baltimore Sun. However the court did order organizers to read a statement to all participants before the food distribution began to make clear that there is no effort to use the event to proselytize.