It is intriguing to try to follow President Bush’s reasoning, although sometimes you could get whiplash from the U-turns.
For example, he’s getting a lot of heat from critics who say his proposals to fund “religiously affiliated” programs may violate constitutional separations between church and state. Oh, no, Bush argues. He says safeguards can be installed to make sure public money goes only to the purpose that the government intends.
Wasn’t that the argument population-control groups made when Bush earlier objected to federal funds they were receiving for their birth-control work overseas?
In his first executive order, Bush canceled federal funding to international population-control agencies if the agencies’ idea of population control includes abortions or even abortion counseling.
It did not matter to him that none of the federal money was being used to pay for abortions. It did not even matter to him that federal law bans the use of federal money for abortions.
No, the mere fact that an agency is engaged in any way with abortions or abortion counseling was enough for Bush to deny it federal funding, even for such benign purposes as providing safe contraceptives to village women in some Third World country.
With this, Bush was expressing what lawyers and policymakers call the “money is fungible” argument. By its logic, any money that goes to an agency for one purpose frees up money that the agency can spend elsewhere.
Unless, we now learn, that agency is “faith-based,” which is the politically correct way to say religiously affiliated. Now that Bush wants to channel taxpayers funds to programs he likes, he is saying that we no longer have reason to worry that federal money might somehow slip over that constitutional line between church and state.
The government “cannot fund and will not fund religious activities,” Bush said Tuesday. “But when people of religious faith provide social services, we will not discriminate against them.”
Oh? Judging by his record, discrimination “against” religious groups should be the least of their worries.
For example, while Bush was governor of Texas his state gave $8,000 to a church-run jobs program that required Bible study, according to a suit by the American Jewish Congress and the Texas Civil Rights Project.
The program, called the Jobs Partnership of Washington County, described itself as teaching participants to “find employment through a relationship with Jesus Christ.” It bought Bibles for them and, in evaluation forms, a third of the students said they had been pressured to join a church or change their beliefs.
Quite the opposite of discriminating against religious groups, Bush hinted, as he established a White House office for faith-based and community groups, that they will receive preference. “When we see social needs in America,” he said, “my administration will look first to faith-based programs and community groups, which have proven their power to save and change lives.”
Look first? Does that mean faith-based groups will receive some sort of favorable consideration compared to secular groups?
Which should make religious leaders wonder which faiths will receive the favorable consideration and which will not.
Which also leads me to believe we probably are seeing only the beginning of yet another stormy chapter in America’s endless arguments over church and state separation.
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Don’t get me wrong. I come not to condemn Bush’s proposal, but to praise it, at least in principle.
I agree with him that we should not ignore the amazing success that many faith-based organizations have had in helping the poorest of the poor to help themselves.
I have seen some faith-based programs help prison inmates sober up, turn their lives around and avoid returning to jail. I have marveled at the success of ministers like the Rev. Eugene Rivers, who stood with Bush and other clergy at the signing ceremony for the new initiative. Rivers’ public-private partnership helped drastically reduce youth murders in Boston in the mid-1990s.
We can protect constitutional freedoms without denying ourselves the advantages of programs that work where others have not. The Constitution has not prevented federal funds from being used to assist, for example, religiously affiliated hospitals, universities, day-care centers and housing programs. The U.S. Supreme Court even has upheld federal aid to religiously affiliated private schools in certain circumstances, such as helping students with special needs.
The line between church and state is not absolute, but it must be drawn fairly, justly and without discrimination for or against any particular faith. That’s not easy. Neither are the problems faith-based social service groups are trying to solve. But, in both cases, the effort is worth it, if we don’t create more problems than we solve.
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