Back in 2008, when Barack Obama announced plans to expand George W. Bush’s unconstitutional White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, through which churches are encouraged to take participate in electoral politics in the hopes that they’ll gain kickbacks of government grants, there were promises of reform. Those promises have not been kept. Obama has simply made the kickback program bigger, without reform. Government-funded religious programs still use taxpayer money to push particular religious beliefs on vulnerable people, and the programs still use public money to discriminate against employees.
There are those who say that Obama has no choice, that he has to give federal assistance to religious organizations in order to help people. However, that’s simply not the case. There are huge numbers of charitable organizations that don’t have any religious mission at all – and there are also plenty of government programs that work without any faith-based element to them.
There also exist charities run by non-theists who, believing in no supernatural source of redemption, are eager to make the world a better place through their own work and financial resources. These include, but aren’t limited to:
Foundation Beyond Belief
Humanist Charities
Atheists Helping the Homeless
Atheist Relief Fund
Earthward
International Humanist Ethical Union