Liberal Attraction to the "Faith-Based Initiative"

Dalliance with the idea of supporting Bush's faith-based initiative has arisen once more, this time by Steve Shiffrin on the new collective blog Left2Right. I posted on this issue in mid-November when it came up on MyDD and Pandagon. . My first post was a fairly lengthy analysis of the implementation of this program including the government's involvement in religion. I venture to guess that those on the left who are dallying with the idea of supporting the faith-based initiative will likely have a change of heart once they learn what it looks like in practice. You'll find all the details here.

Today, in light of my new commitment to embrace and promote the founding values of the Constitution, I'd like to consider Bush's faith-based initiative in that light. My challenge to those who like the concept of supporting religious charities is to understand what the faith-based initiative looks like in practice, how it truly blurs the line separating church and state, how it enables the government to weaken the Establishment Clause in the first amendment to the Constitution. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from "passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another." (Cornell's Legal Information Institute).

The Supreme Court first addressed the establishment clause in 1947 with a case over whether or not it was constitutional for a state to reimburse parents for the costs of transporting their kids to parochial schools. The court determined that the reimbursement was constitutional but made it clear that if the state had been reimbursing the schools directly, it would have violated the Establishment Clause. (Prof. Doug Linder, University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School)

Wouldn't that suggest that direct payments to religious organizations for delivery of social services also violates the Establishment Clause? Providing vouchers to individuals to use for services from religious groups would not and I'd suggest that this is the appropriate model for supporting religious charities. Certainly, that kind of model would eliminate much of what I find objectionable in the faith-based initiatives program. And the government's focus would then be on the citizen's that need help instead of the religious groups offering it.

The focus on the religious groups, the direct funding of them by the government creates the real risk of the the government expressing a preference for one religion over another. This has already happened with the faith-based initiative as can be seen in quote from a 02/21/01 article in the New York Times (free link not available) :

Bush has said that he does not view all religions to be on par with one another, but he says he is more interested in results than in the process. He "has told religious leaders that his program will allow them greater leeway to integrate their teachings into their community service and still be eligible for federal aid." Bush reportedly will not allow funding of programs offered by groups such as the Nation of Islam, where, as he says, "spite and hate is the core of the message."

The issue here isn't whether or not Bush's opinion of the Nation of Islam is correct. It's that he's clearly preferring one religious group over another. In my opinion, and I'm no lawyer, that seems to be a clear violation of the first amendment to the Constitution. And the reason it matters is that we as a nation are committed to ensuring that each of us has the right and the freedom to practice our own faith, that government doesn't have the right to get involved in our churches, synagogues or mosques. That a government endorsement of a specific religion is an affront to us, to the core value that we are guaranteed religious freedom free from the meddling of the government.

There's a way to make it possible for individuals to get the assistance they need from religious charities. (Hint: It's all about who gets the money directly from the government). There's a way that doesn't weaken our Constitution, that preserves the strength of the First Amendment's protection that the government won't establish or endorse a religion, that preserves the core values of this nation. Unfortunately, Bush's faith-based initiative isn't it.

End note: While I'm on the topic, can we all agree that buying into the semantics of the Bush administration does us no good? This is federal funding for religious charities, it's not a "faith-based imitative". Calling it what it is makes it that much more likely any criticism of the program won't be maligned as an attack on faith or on people who are living out their faith by helping others. It will be much more clear that we're talking about funding religious groups. Which is, after all, the real topic at hand.

UPDATE: Continued liberal dalliance with supporting federal funding of religious charities can be found on Matt Yglesias's site here and here, and by Jesse at Pandagon. A counter argument can be found at Majikthise.

CORRECTION: Jesse at Pandagon notes in the comments that I've misread him,that he's disagreeing with Yglesias. In my anxiety that we'll support a program that I think insidiously blurs the line between church and state and provides a tool for the Pubs to reward their religious supporters, I read too quickly and assumed that Ezra and Jesse were on the same page. I stand corrected. If I read him correctly, he's saying that the rules under which religious organizations have qualified for funds for years don't need to be fixed - they've been working just fine. My apologies for the misread.

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I think you took the exact opposite meaning from my post that it had - as you can tell by the first paragraph, it was an argument against Yglesias' post, not an acceptance of it. In fact, if you read the Majikthise post, she notes that I'm making a point similar to hers.

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