Here's a bit of good news. A federal judge ruled yesterday that Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries and the state of Iowa violated the Constitution by setting up a government-funded program to rehabilitate prison inmates by immersing them in Christianity.

Expect the usual howling about how they're being repressed from the evangelicals, but the facts are that the program was not only heavily Christian, but heavily slanted to Colson's flavor of evangelical Protestantism. The program was full of denigration of Catholicism, including asking Catholic participants not to read from their version of the Bible, to be wary of pronouncements of church officials such as bishops, cardinals, popes, and even included a Spiritual checklist of groups to be wary of. Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Unitarianism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, New Age, Buddhism, Bahaism and Native American faiths all made the roster.

This may not be what Bush really means when he talks about faith-based initiatives, but it's what the people who support him on the religious right mean. And there's no place in America for the government to be supporting this kind of program.

Tip o'the chapeau to No More Mister Nice Blog.