Yesterday, President Bush spoke at a White House-sponsored conference on faith-based initiatives at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. According to President Bush, ten Federal agencies now have offices that promote faith-based initiatives. Since 2003, the Bush Administration has increased grants to faith-based organizations by 20%. Last year, 10.3% of all federal grants --those are grants coming out of Washington, those are not formula-based grants to states-–were awarded to faith-based organizations. That number is up from 8.1%. According to President Bush, that means about $2.0 billion in grants were awarded last year to religious charities....
President
Bush devoted much of the speech to anecdotal evidence—this program in
Washington, D.C, that program in Milwaukee, and still another program
in Los Angeles. He also described the involvement of a wide variety of
religious organizations. No doubt, many of these programs do good.
Unfortunately, President Bush’s philosophy poses long-term problems for his
faith-based initiatives. Toward the end of the speech, President Bush
said:
Anybody who accepts money from the federal government, any faith provider, cannot discriminate based on religion. It's an important concept for our fellow citizens to understand, that no one in need will ever be forced to choose a faith-based provider. That's an important concept for people to understand. What that means is if you're the Methodist church and you sponsor an alcohol treatment center, they can't say only Methodists, only Methodists who drink too much can come to our program. (Laughter.) All drunks are welcome, is what the sign ought to say. (Applause.) Welcome to be saved, so they become sober.
Mr. Bush has it right to a certain extent. There can’t be
discrimination in admission to faith-based programs. But equally
important, religious teaching cannot be a mandatory part of the
program. Does he mean that the “drunks” must accept Jesus into their
lives as part of the program? That certainly is the implication when
such a loaded term as “saved” is being used. Undoubtedly, Mr. Bush
would say he meant “saved from a life of alcoholism.” But Mr. Bush and
his speechwriters are not naïve when it comes to language. At a
minimum, the use of the term “saved” is clearly a “wink” to those in
the audience—at least many in the audience will take it that way. That
means more litigation of the type we discussed this past Monday.
Mr. Bush also got it backwards when he said:
And so today, after four years of work, we continue to confront this culture, culture of process instead of results, head on. And the goal is, over the next four years, to change the culture permanently so faith- and community-based organizations will be welcomed into the grant-making process of government. That's the goal.
Mr. Bush is arguing that the ends justify the means. If religion gets
the job done, so be it. The problem is that Mr. Bush isn’t dealing
with private money raised through houses of worship. He is dealing
with Federal money. This language encourages the unconstitutional
financing of religious teachings with Federal money. That’s a big
problem.
We certainly don’t discourage religious organizations from
providing social service programs. If they can do it without imposing
their religious teachings on participants, they should be entitled to
compete on equal grounds with secular organizations for that funding.
But government funds should not be used to finance religious
activities. This is not a trivial question of process, as the
President suggests. If religious organizations want to avoid costly
litigation, they should not treat the issue as a technical or trivial
one. There are too many people watching.
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