San Francisco has put a pause on its annual Heart of the City Combined Charities Campaign after questions about whether city employees’ donations should flow to Christian nonprofits that support biblical views on human sexuality, according to articles in La crónica de San Francisco y The San Francisco Standard.
The city operates its own local version of the combined charity campaigns. It is similar to those of the federal government and many private companies. The Heart of the City resource guide lists hundreds of nonprofits, even though the Heart of the City campaign, scheduled to run from Oct. 1 to Dec. 2, has been put on hold over concerns about groups that advocate and organize in favor of biblical norms for human sexuality.
Employees can choose among the hundreds of individual charities, or they can give to five groupings of charities. The Creating Healthier Communities grouping includes more than 100 charities, four of which have generated controversy: Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom and American Family Association.
These four organizations have at various times been classified as “hate groups” by Southern Poverty Law Center.
Some in San Francisco were concerned that city employees who supported the Creating Healthier Communities grouping of charities would funnel donations to these groups without realizing they were doing so.
Your tax-deductible gift helps our journalists report the truth and hold Christian leaders and organizations accountable. Give a gift of $30 or more to The Roys Report this month, and you will receive a copy of “Hurt and Healed by the Church” by Ryan George. To donate, haga clic aquí.
A fifth Christian organization, Samaritan’s Purse, is led by Franklin Graham. Graham’s dueling statements on the Samaritan’s Purse website highlight both the ministry’s service to people with HIV/AIDS and Graham’s concern for Christians who face persecution for their faith and moral opposition to homosexuality.
One city supervisor said it was wrong for the city to promote these groups. “It seems like a real screw-up,” said District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who is gay and represents the city’s gay-friendly Castro district.
No one has raised any objections to the many other Christian ministries that appear in the Heart of the City campaign’s resource guide, including American Bible Society, Baptist World Alliance, Blessings International, Campus Crusade for Christ’s Great Commission Foundation, Care Net, Christian Military Fellowship, Christian World Outreach, Crista Ministries, Engineering Ministries International, Food for The Hungry, Home School Legal Defense Association, International Justice Mission, JAARS, Mercy Ships, Military Community Youth Ministries, Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, Officers’ Christian Fellowship, Prison Fellowship, The Navigators, Voice of the Martyrs and YWAM Ships Kona.
San Francisco’s City Combined Charities Campaign has raised $5 million in donations since 2018 and had already raised $50,000 for the Creating Healthier Communities group of charities. In comparison, Focus had an income of $137 million last year.
One city employee told The Standard: “Focus on the Family is one of the most anti-LGBTQ organizations in the country. There should be no place for them in a city-sanctioned charity program.”
It’s not clear when or if this year’s campaign will resume.
Este artículo apareció originalmente en MinisterioReloj.
Steve Rabey es un autor y periodista veterano que ha publicado más de 50 libros y 2000 artículos sobre religión, espiritualidad y cultura. Fue instructor en los seminarios Fuller y Denver y en la Academia de la Fuerza Aérea de EE. UU.
Spanish 
English
2 Respuestas
Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom and American Family Association.
Let’s be honest. These groups are more political than Christian.
The fact that so many other Christian groups are funded kind of disproves the title.
Everything is political, if you were honest.