Church and State Revisited

A Political Essay by Jeffrey E. Poehlmann

Originally published by 3rdparty.org on February 25, 2001

[Note: the President referred to in this essay is G. W. Bush, whose administration had been actively working to direct funds to religiously affiliated organizations and away from secular organizations that had been providing similar services.]

"Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." -- JAMES MADISON

God has never been elected to serve in Washington, but some feel He should be there anyway. By affixing his signature to an executive order to create the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, President G.W. Bush has offered his opening statement on the debate.

The President has tried to blunt the impression that his recent moves to infuse federal funds into faith-based organizations are an attempt to bridge the Constitutional gap between religion and politics. These initiatives, he says, are intended to encourage religious groups and charities to compete for billions of dollars the government spends on social services. Questions abound, however, regarding the implementation of this exploratory policy. Critics and supporters will be watching diligently as the eligibility criteria materializes to distribute and renew this funding.

The President has selected Professor John J. DiIulio from the University of Pennsylvania where he taught political science and is regarded as an expert on juvenile crime to head up the new office. Mr. DiIulio reportedly has a focus on provable results, that relies on empirical evidence. He sees faith-based social programs as but one tool of many to address a variety of issues. That mindset mirrors the President's stated goals to encourage private charities, as well as religious organizations, to provide more social services.

This comes right on the heels of a block President Bush established in opposition to funding organizations working abroad in a social service capacity if such groups so much as offered information about abortion or birth control -- actions to which the President is opposed for religious reasons.

According to President Bush's "Compassionate Conservative" agenda, the government itself should offer only a narrow range of social services directly. Instead, it should offer financing and support for at least a portion of work done by independent groups through both religious organizations and community charities. While a strong argument can be made for the positive and lasting effects that spiritual approaches can have during the course of rehabilitation or treatment, there is still the issue of whether our government should support and thereby endorse a particular religious approach.

This particular agenda has been popular among religious conservatives from a predominantly Christian background. From this broad group comes a noisy and loosely organized coalition that for years has attempted to bring their particular brand of religion directly into the folds of our government at many different levels. Often this is as an individual gesture, such as insisting on displaying a copy of the Ten Commandments in a courtroom where they could easily be misconstrued as legislated law to a jury. Or it could be a local movement to invoke school prayer, not merely in the form of encouraging students to take a moment for spiritual issues prior to the start of their school day, but as an organized period of time during the school schedule. It is out of this narrow focus that such idiocy as "zero tolerance" laws have arisen. These policies have not only proven themselves to be completely ineffective but are likely unconstitutional in their implementations.

Ironically, President Bush is himself working to remove the incentive for private charities through his determination to repeal the gift and estate taxes. While there may be many reasons that warrant changing the tax structure with regard to gifts and estates, removing these taxes runs counter to the best interests of independent charities. One of the primary incentives for forming private foundations is the resulting tax benefit. Add to this the extraordinary loss of tax revenue and one must consider how all government funding will be affected on both the State and Federal levels.

Dogma Plays a Significant Role

It is easy to see where the idea of having an existing charity handle certain social services might appear to offer a way to remove government funds from the picture. After all, if the government can close an agency, it is an almost certain savings. But the reality is this: if an organization is to function, no matter what banner it is under, there will have to be enough guaranteed funds to match its operating costs. If the government is going to essentially sub-contract its social services, there will have to be such a guarantee in place. And if the funds are guaranteed, then traditional funding sources for the organization may not become as necessary to the organization's operating costs and the resulting government savings decreases substantially.

Private organizations are entitled to close their doors for a multitude of reasons not associated with need or financing, often with little or no warning. Without a government organization in place to back it up, whatever social burden such an independent charity is carrying will simply fall unprotected and without immediate recourse. The purpose of government agencies, then, is not to provide all services but to provide stable services.

There must remain a distinct separation between Church and State in order to protect the religious freedoms in this country and to ensure that both religion and politics are able to maintain the best possible level of purity. There are very sound, distinct reasons that our Founding Fathers instituted such a separation. And there are strong arguments for why such separation must be diligently maintained.

Religious organizations cannot be controlled by the government, nor regulated by the federal government. They are free to discriminate internally with regard to whom help is given. Therefore, as they are protected from government intervention, they cannot possibly be trusted to assume the role of social guardian for the State. Additionally, Church based charities would be free to place religious requirements and stipulations upon when and where their help is given. It would be perfectly within the bounds of a Church based organization to require that a recipient of aid do some sort of work for the Church to "pay" for the assistance or counseling or whatever. This is, of course, not always the case. There are some successful examples of how a religious organization can run a charity without integrating religious practice as a part of that service.

Catholic Charities USA is an organization that is often held up as a shining example, offering services regardless of the recipient's religious or ethnic background. However, even in the best cases, it is evident that the underlying religious dogma does play a significant role in how the organization operates and what tact it takes in addressing issues. Dogmatic principals may not necessarily affect the services offered in a negative manner, but they do underscore the need for more aggressive monitoring of how federal funds would be used under the Bush plan. Furthermore, by offering funds to a Church-run charity, there is the indirect effect of financing other Church activities with monies that might otherwise have been diverted to charitable activities. In this way, the Federal Government would be supporting a specific Church or Religion, which is clearly un-Constitutional. This last point, of course, applies more to charities run by specific churches and less to those organized under a business model, the latter of which it could be argued have a Constitutional right to compete for Federal funds offered to independent charities.

Furthermore, with regard to both faith based and independent charities, there would be some great level of difficulty involved with regard to policing to ensure consistently high standards are met across the board. While there is plenty of time to argue that government agencies do not offer high enough quality services, that ultimately turns into an argument regarding how best to ensure that higher quality is achieved and encourages internal reform rather than doing away with the system and replacing it with something at least equally as flawed and with a far greater learning curve.

Where would the criteria for funding draw the line in terms of the organizations that would be doing the social work? If a private charity that promotes birth control is the best organization for dealing with finding work for welfare mothers, is that charity going to be denied government funding in deference to a Christian charity that opposes birth control but has a weaker infrastructure and lesser welfare to work plan? Because the Bush Administration has already chosen to apply religious principles to policy decisions, is it warranted to fear that this would be the overriding principle with domestic policy as well?

Not all politicians that espouse a faith-based morality are going to try to force the teachings of a particular sect upon the nation, but we must still make a concerted effort to keep religious doctrine from influencing government policy and to keep government policy from endorsing any religious doctrine. The policy of "Charitable Choice" as it was pushed by former Senator, now Attorney General John Ashcroft, would allow religious groups funded by the federal government to maintain their religious identities, symbols and philosophies, and most importantly to choose only staff who agree with their religious beliefs.

"We will not fund the religious activities of any group, but when people of faith provide social services, we will not discriminate against them," the President said.

Yet what is to be done when the base faith for such organizations is directly opposed to some of those whom the organization is supposed to be helping? If terms of rehabilitation, for instance, an organization that opposes homosexuality as an integral part of its faith may be in a position where it would deny service to a gay man or make him deny his own sexual identity in order to gain the help he needs, potentially undermining the work that the organization is supposed to be providing this individual in the first place. Or take a woman in a domestic violence shelter who admits she was beaten because she had an affair, where an organization might well take the stance that, based on their faith, what she did deserved the beating she received. Taking a step back from the extreme, she could easily be made to feel guilty enough by the faithful members of the organization that she would feel less comfortable there than alone on the street, or be compelled to return to an abusive environment.

Uniform Criteria Required

Faith is a funny thing, and historically it has on occasion been directly responsible for making people less tolerant of others and very biased in the way in which they offer help. It is not uncommon today for people to discriminate based on their faith. Some politicians, for instance, would readily deny certain rights to people whom their "faith" deems unworthy simply because of a lifestyle choice that goes against the religious teachings that such politicians embrace. Same sex marriages are denied to homosexual couples, for instance, not for any legal or social reason but because there is strong religious opposition to the concept.

Even if the President's plan only allows for faith-based charities to compete for government grant money, there is still plenty to call into question with regard to the criteria that will be used to award such grant money. While I applaud President Bush for bringing together a diverse group of religious leaders to support his policy, including a Catholic nun, a Muslim imam and an Orthodox Jew to complement the usual contingent of Christian ministers, it is clearly an important move to appear as inclusive as possible.

But what if a faith-based organization is religiously linked to a terrorist organization, such as groups that bomb abortion clinics? If they share an ideological backbone, certainly questions will be raised about where the social services organization ends and the terrorist organization begins and what the level of connection is that is bridged by their shared dogma. Interestingly, seventeen religious groups in Texas that received government funding to assist in moving people off of welfare and into jobs as a result of a 1996 welfare overhaul signed by President Clinton and implemented by then Governor Bush are now being sued by the American Jewish Congress and the Texas Civil Rights Project as a challenge to the constitutionality of such "charitable choice."

According to the Associated Press (January 29, 2001), an estimated $10 billion on government-funded services such as after-school and charter school programs, domestic violence shelters and drug treatment would become available under Bush's plan to participation by religious providers.

While the Bush Administration has indicated it would ensure secular service providers are maintained to prevent forcing someone through the door of a religious organization to get help, this further raises the issue that if the government is going to have to fund a religiously unaffiliated organization to serve a particular need to cover a particular area why must it further spread out its resources by also funding a faith-based organization that is doing essentially the same work?

Government funding of services managed by faith-based organizations is not entirely out of step with the Constitution. It is how those services are implemented that threatens to cross the line between religion and politics. If a religious charity wants to provide child care, health services, family stipends or counseling with money obtained from the government, they should be allowed to do so -- provided the way they distribute those services doesn't stress, demand or rely on their religious practice, rituals or beliefs.

In an ideal world, where everyone agrees and lives in harmony, the separation of Church and State might not be necessary. This world we live in, however, is populated by individuals who have distinct beliefs with which they were raised or which they came to through experience. Few individuals share purely identical belief systems. This makes it rather dangerous to entrust social work to organizations that might try to impose their particular belief system upon others. Not only is this a violation of our individual rights, but it is a situation that might prevent the aid entrusted to a particular organization from being delivered per such organization's agreement with the government.

Other Resources

Interested in discovering more about this topic? Explore these links ...

• New Bush Office Seeks Closer Ties to Church Groups by Frank Bruni and Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, January 28, 2001

• Bush Fleshes Out Details of Proposal to Expand Aid to Religious Organizations by Marc Lacey with Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, January 31, 2001

• Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada

• Statement of Ethics and Beliefs Catholic Charities USA

• The United Way