This prompted quite a chuckle from me. An Agape Press article about a court ruling that a Christian prison ministry could not receive tax dollars without violating the establishment clause began with this:
Evidently it matters not that a well-known and highly successful prison ministry believes one of its premier programs is constitutional and well within the guidelines of the First Amendment, or that statistics bear out the effectiveness of the program.
You have to love the incredulous tone. Of course it matters not that the ministry thinks its program is constitutional; what matters is whether it actually is constitutional. Nor does it matter whether the program works or not. The case was not about whether the program was effective, it was about whether it was constitutional, and that's determined by the judge, not by the director of the program.
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Barry Lynn was on Faux News debating this with one of the spewing heads over there. The best that the Fox rep could come up with was to attack Barry Lynn for trying to take away a program in the prison system that was "actually rehabilitating" the prisoners and then insinuated Lynn must therefore be pro-crime at at the least anti-rehabilitation. At no point did he get into any meaningful discussion about the constitutionality of the program.
I always felt "agape" was a suitable descriptor of that Web page.
I think I heard about this on the radio. Participation is strictly voluntary, but prisoners who participate are given extra privileges. I wonder if the agape people would also stare open-mouthed if the religious program were conducted by Wiccans.
If the state was funding a wiccan program, the agape people would be threatening the governor's life.
In regards to: If you think it, it's constitutional.
I think this is the evangelicals understanding of freedom of religion. That if the act is based on religion, it is automatically constitutional. Instead of the actual interpretation.
What's more, the program Agape claims was effective was, once the bullshitting and numerical chicanery weas factored in, shown to be anything but. Mark Kleinman went to town on it in Slate a few years ago.
Crap. Here's the link: http://www.slate.com/id/2086617/
They are fundamentalist Xians in politics, and therefore liars. State the facts and ignore them afterwards except to repeat the facts: only their fellow liars and slaves believe anything they say about anything for any reason.
They are "evil" in the only form I recognise it, and one should avoid the "tar baby" they offer as far as possible.
What the hell (pardon the pun) does the word "agape" mean, in the context of their title?
Agape is one of the greek words for love, and so is often used in the greek text of the New Testament.
So they're calling themselves "Love Press," and publishing hateful ignorant rubbish under a title more appropriate for a porn site? There's a non-sequitur that'll make Baby Jesus cry...
It's pronounced "Ah-GAHP-a" (hard "a" at the end like in "ate", the middle syllable is prounounced like "cop" only with a "g" instead of a "c"), not "Ah-GAPE" (rhymes with "grape").
As Ed said, it's a Greek term for true, deep, abiding, eternal love. They had several different words for different kinds of words, this was the most enduring and universal.
See http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=agape for an audio guide to the pronunciation.