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Only a tiny fraction of black churches have received money to help the poor as a result of the Bush administration’s federal faith-based initiative, and most of those tend to be liberal in their theology and located in the Northeast.

These are among the findings of a first-of-its-kind survey of black churches by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank, released September 19.

A national watchdog group has filed its first lawsuit to halt a federal government faith-based grant—in this case, to a Washington state program that offers Bible-based marriage workshops.

According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, based in Washington, D.C., the government violated the Constitution when it awarded the “fundamentalist Christian” Northwest Marriage Institute two federal grants worth $97,750 last year.