Following up on a campaign promise to unleash America’s “armies of compassion,” President Bush on Monday began unveiling a controversial initiative to funnel federal funds to religious organizations so they can run social services ranging from after-school care to drug treatment to job training.
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The proposal met immediate, forceful resistance from civil libertarians, who said it violated the separation of church and state mandated by the Constitution.
Supporters of the initiative, rooted in a growing movement to rethink welfare programs, argue that religion-based organizations are often the best-equipped to tackle the nation’s social ills. The proposal would not finance the religious activities of these organizations, just the social services they provide.
“Compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government,” Bush said Monday. “It is more than the calling of politicians, it is the calling of citizens. It is citizens who turn mean streets into good neighborhoods. It is citizens who turn cold cities into real communities.”
Bush will announce details of his proposal Tuesday, but he kicked off the process with an executive order creating a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to oversee the efforts to increase the role of religious-oriented groups in social services.
To head the office, Bush named John DiIulio, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has studied faith-based initiatives for years. A somewhat controversial academic, DiIulio is known for coining the term “super-predators” several years ago to describe a new breed of young, hardened criminal, a term some found dehumanizing.
Former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith also will advise the president. DiIulio is Catholic and Goldsmith is Jewish, and some say this may help Bush ward off charges that his initiative is a way of pandering to the Christian right.
The heart of Bush’s proposal will be to rewrite the rules for many federal grants. Many of those grants exclude religious groups under the long-standing principle that to do otherwise would violate separation of church and state. Bush wants to drop the exclusion of these groups.
It is not clear whether Bush’s plan would survive either congressional opposition or a legal challenge, but those on both sides said the courts have become far more tolerant of attempts to introduce religion into public life.
Administration officials were careful to use the term “faith-based” rather than “religious,” to emphasize that they meant not only churches but also social service organizations that have a religious component, such as religiously oriented drug treatment programs.
As part of his initiative, Bush also established faith-based centers in five federal departments–Justice, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, and Housing and Urban Development–“to ensure greater cooperation between the government and the independent sector.”
The creation of such offices suggests the sweeping nature of Bush’s plans, whose goal is make billions of dollars in federal spending available to faith-based groups.
Catholic, Protestant and Jewish organizations for years have received government funds for social welfare programs. But up to now, they have had to create separate, professional entities focused on social service rather than religion, such as Catholic Charities or Lutheran Social Services.
Bush also plans to propose rewriting the tax code to encourage charitable giving to religious and other charity groups. The 70 percent of taxpayers who do not itemize their tax returns would be allowed to deduct their charitable contributions under the proposal.
Opponents say giving faith-based groups public money to perform government functions is an obvious mixing of church and state. An inherent part of many organizations’ alcohol or drug treatment programs is the acceptance of certain religious tenets, these critics say, and Bush would essentially be giving them federal money to promote their faith.
“Churches exist to preach the gospel of their religion,” said Joseph Conn, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “I don’t think people have thought through how radical this plan is.”
Others noted that religious groups, such as the Nation of Islam, hold controversial views, so giving them money to run social services programs would be problematic. Yet picking and choosing among religious groups could be unconstitutional.
“Think about the fact that Bob Jones University just lifted its ban on interracial dating,” said Laura Murphy, Washington director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “They could have that ban because they are a private religious school. What happens when a Bob Jones-like institution gets federal dollars?”
Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer insisted that helping worthy spiritually oriented organizations would be a good thing. The system would not be coercive, he said, because no one would be forced to attend any program.
The president emphasized that his goal was to give faith-based groups the same opportunity to vie for federal dollars as other organizations.
“We will not fund the religious activities of any group, but when people of faith provide social services, we will not discriminate against them,” Bush said. “As long as there are secular alternatives, faith-based charities should be able to compete for funding on an equal basis and in a manner that does not cause them to sacrifice their mission.”
The idea of allowing faith-based groups to tackle difficult social problems is part of an “effective compassion” movement that began several years ago. Its central argument is that federal programs dealing with drugs, poverty, crime and other social ills have proven sadly inadequate, and that one of their failings has been shutting out religious organizations.
Faith-based organizations such as urban churches have had great success in empowering individuals to turn around their lives, the thinking goes, because often the void in an addict’s life is spiritual and cannot be addressed with a government program.
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Among the first manifestos of this movement was “The Tragedy of American Compassion,” written in 1995 by Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas professor who has consulted with Bush. In the mid-1990s, DiIulio and columnist Arianna Huffington were active in a group called the Center for Effective Compassion.
The idea of faith-based initiatives has long appealed to Bush. It fits in well with his “compassionate conservatism,” and it reflects his own experience: Bush has credited religion with turning around his life after a period when he admittedly was irresponsible and drank too much.
Congress has already taken a few tentative steps toward faith-based initiatives, notably with the “charitable choice” provision of the 1996 welfare reform law. That provision–sponsored by then-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), who is now Bush’s nominee for attorney general–allowed faith-based groups to compete for certain funds in order to help welfare recipients enter the workforce.