Separation of Church and State, anyone?

I am strongly opposed to any shift away from the separation of church and state as it was intended. Which is to say, I think that the separation should remain (nay, be more so) clearly demarcated with no blurring of the lines. Giving federal funds to faith based groups is, to me, an evangelical right-wing conservative action, one that I think other liberals like myself abhorred when Bush proposed more of it. Luckily, he proposed such action but it never really took root--it was one of those things designed to appease his evangelical constituents but lacking any cognizable result. Unfortunately, Obama announced that he supports this program and intends to expand what Bush started. While Mr. Obama assures the American people that there will be checks on the system to ensure that the line between church and state doesn't become too blurred, I think that this is a truly awful stance. I thought that Obama was nominated to be the Democratic nominee. So why is he proposing that our federal government utilize religious groups to perform the work that would otherwise be performed by state run agencies? It is not just the addition of religious programs, it is giving the money that could otherwise go to existing state programs, to religious ones. If we didn't have state run programs, and it would be too onerous to create them, I might understand. But shifting activity from government to churches when we clearly have the programs in which this activity could be improved? That I have a problem with. A BIG problem.