{"id":1220,"date":"2009-02-06T17:52:32","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T17:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo.php"},"modified":"2009-02-06T17:52:32","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T17:52:32","slug":"senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo","title":{"rendered":"Senate Rejects Stimulus Aid for Religious Buildings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Senate defeated an amendment to the economic stimulus bill Thursday (Feb. 5) that would have allowed federal funding for renovations at college buildings that are used for religious activity.<br \/>\nSen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., proposed the amendment after voicing criticism of a stimulus provision that says funds for colleges and universities could not be used for modernization or renovation of buildings where &#8220;sectarian instruction&#8221; or &#8220;religious worship&#8221; occur.<br \/>\n&#8220;This is a direct attack on students of faith, and I&#8217;m outraged Democrats are using an economic stimulus bill to promote discrimination,&#8221; DeMint said after the 54-43 vote defeating the amendment.<br \/>\nChurch-state groups, however, welcomed the vote.<br \/>\n&#8220;The Senate has voted to reaffirm an important American principle &#8212; that religious groups should pay their own way and not expect funding from the taxpayer,&#8221; said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.<br \/>\nConservative Christian groups, meanwhile, agreed with DeMint. Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice said the provision &#8220;has nothing to do with economic stimulus and everything to do with religious discrimination.&#8221;<br \/>\nAndrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, called the vote &#8220;a significant defeat to our First Amendment&#8217;s guarantee of religious freedom and free speech.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>By Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service.All rights reserved.No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Senate defeated an amendment to the economic stimulus bill Thursday (Feb. 5) that would have allowed federal funding for renovations at college buildings that are used for religious activity. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., proposed the amendment after voicing criticism of a stimulus provision that says funds for colleges and universities could&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Senate Rejects Stimulus Aid for Religious Buildings<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Senate Rejects Stimulus Aid for Religious Buildings\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Senate defeated an amendment to the economic stimulus bill Thursday (Feb. 5) that would have allowed federal funding for renovations at college buildings that are used for religious activity. 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Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., proposed the amendment after voicing criticism of a stimulus provision that says funds for colleges and universities could&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-02-06T17:52:32+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo","name":"Senate Rejects Stimulus Aid for Religious Buildings","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-06T17:52:32+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-06T17:52:32+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/senate-rejects-stimulus-aid-fo#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Senate Rejects Stimulus Aid for Religious Buildings"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}