The title is shocking enough, but the content will even be more shocking.  One of the authors, Rusty Leonard is not only a good friend but he and his wife are founders of Ministry Watch.com.  If you are considering giving to a Christian oranization, you may want to check them out on  www.MinistryWatch.com first.  Rusty was interviewed on 20/20 recently in his capacity as founder of this organization.

Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name still smells the same. But some organizations who call themselves “Christian” smell fishy.

Take, for example, the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF).

On the one hand, Christian Children’s Fund, founded in 1938, is one of the nation’s oldest relief organizations. It is also one of the largest, with 2006 income exceeding $206-million, putting it in the same league with Compassion International (2006 income: $258-million). The group also has a reputation for financial efficiency. In many years, less than 20 percent of its income goes to fundraising and administrative costs. That makes it average or even slightly better than average among the 500 organizations in the MinistryWatch.com database.

That’s the good news. The other news is that, by its own admission, Christian Children’s Fund stopped being a Christian organization years ago. The group has no doctrinal statement, is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, and does not require any statement of faith for any staff or board members. Kristen Hongisto, a spokesperson for CCF, told EP News, “We do not call ourselves a ministry. We are not Bible-based. We are not a Christian organization except in the sense that we do good work.”

That admission might come as a surprise to the millions who see CCF’s heart-wrenching infomercials on The Inspiration Networks, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and Sky Angel.

It might come as even more of a surprise that CCF “partners” with “traditional healers” in Africa and Asia. CCF’s Hongisto defended the partnering strategy. “We work with local leaders who are on the ground in the areas we serve,” she said. “They know what’s best for the local population.”

But traditional healers are not the only health workers “on the ground,” and some of them are speaking out against traditional healers. Doctors for Life International (DFL), for example, has 1300 members, mostly in South Africa. The pro-life group said it is committed to “holistic healing,” but is troubled by the use of “occult powers in most of the therapeutic acts of traditional healers” and that “traditional healers make their diagnosis (and therapeutic combinations) with the aid of ‘spirits’ and under the control of the ‘spirits.’” Doctors for Life says traditional healers also prescribe herbal and other therapies that are either ineffective or have detrimental side effects. DFL has been involved in a decade-long fight to keep South Africa from elevating the status of traditional healers to that of other health professionals. In fact, the group has added traditional healing to its issues watch-list, a list that includes abortion, sex trafficking, pornography, prostitution, and pedophilia.

Equally troubling to Christians would be CCF’s involvement in what it calls “family planning” programs. CCF doesn’t define what it means by “family planning,” but the expression is sometimes a euphemism for abortion. Hongisto said the organization does not pay for abortions, but does pay salaries for doctors. Do these doctors perform abortions? “We operate in 31 countries,” she said. “We don’t condone abortion or directly pay for abortions. But I couldn’t guarantee you that doctors we support never perform abortions. We have no way of knowing that.” The same representative reiterated that the Christian Children’s Fund is not a Christian organization, “except in the sense that we do good work. We do not call ourselves a ministry. We are not Bible-based.”

So if CCF is not a Christian organization, why market themselves to Christian audiences? It could be for the same reason Willie Sutton said he robbed banks: “That’s where the money is.”

Indeed, the mainstream media generally ignore the fact that religious conservatives -- whether measured by amount of money given, percentage of income given, or hours volunteered -- are more generous than progressive liberals. Newtithing.org’s list of the ten most generous states includes five “Bible Belt” states (and Mormon-dominated Utah). Political “blue states” make up almost every state in the bottom half. The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research have both released recent studies confirming that conservatives and regular church-goers account for most of the charitable giving in America.

So that’s why CCF goes to Christians for money: they’re more likely to respond. Christians do respond, but should they? In fairness, it’s important to note that CCF does, more or less, what it says it is going to do. That is, the group does feed children. But many Christians watching Christian Children’s Fund pitches on Christian television might reasonably expect that CCF would care not just for physical needs, but spiritual needs as well. Clearly, the group does not. And by advertising mostly in Christian media (to the tune of $15-million a year), they virtually guarantee that such journalistic resources as these Christian outlets have – and they’re paltry, at best -- are not going to focus any serious investigations on the group’s work.

The bottom line? CCF does good work, but so do organizations such as Compassion International and Children’s Hunger Fund, who combine the same kinds of relief offered by CCF with spiritual nourishment that can make a permanent, even eternal, change in a victim’s plight.

So while it may be true that “a rose is a rose is a rose,” in the world of benevolence philanthropy, it takes a discerning Christian to smell the roses without getting stuck by the thorns.