"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority."[1]
These words of Martin Luther King, Jr. bring us face to face with the role of religion in society in general and with Charitable Choice, President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative, in particular. For the president it is the next step in welfare reform. But what is it?
Charitable Choice is a little-known provision of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act - which ended welfare as we know it.
Attorney General, then Missouri Senator, John Ashcroft, attached it as an amendment to make it easier for religious groups to apply for federal human services funds, but in a new twist, they would not have to leave their religion at the door. While government has previously funded faith-based services, there have been strict safeguards against religious activities. No money for these services could be commingled with funds for religious purposes.
Charitable Choice changes all that: proselytizing with government money is still forbidden, but groups can display religious symbols, use theological language, and utilize religious criteria in hiring and firing employees. Funds flow directly into the religious organization's budget. Though in these five years it has been little used, President Bush has made it a cornerstone of his domestic program. He intends to aid faith-based groups in "performing their commonplace miracles of renewal....In every instance when my administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based institutions, to charities and to community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives."[2]
Charitable Choice has been institutionalized through a White House agency for Faith Based and Community Initiatives to be headed by John J. DiIulio, Jr., a Roman Catholic and a University of Pennsylvania professor. Stephen Goldsmith, a Conservative Jew and former mayor of Indianapolis, will chair the advisory board.
This approach captivated Governor Bush when he met Marvin Olasky, author of Compassionate Conservatism, Bush's slogan. Olasky was a freshman at Yale in 1968 when Bush was a senior. He joined the Communist Party because it identified with the poor. In 1973 he converted and became an evangelical Christian. Olasky once dressed up as a beggar and went from shelter to shelter, but even religious shelters didn't give him what he wanted - a bible. Olasky has faulted Republicans for how they treat the poor: "pulling the knife out of the back of a person who was mugged and then leaving them on the street to bleed. You can't just say, 'You're fine - get up.' You have to spend a lot of time patching the guy up."[3]
Who could be against funneling federal dollars through religious organizations to help the poor? As it turns out, there are plenty of people. As one might expect, civil libertarians worry about separation of church and state as embodied in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof." Defending Charitable Choice against this criticism, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is quick to say: "I'd like to remind everyone that separation of church and state is not in the Constitution."[4] He's right. The words do not appear.
In a January press conference President Bush was asked how his policies and the First Amendment might conflict. "I appreciate that question because I, in the State of Texas, had heard a lot of discussion about a faith-based initiative eroding the important bridge between church and state."[5] Whether this was a slip of the tongue or an attack on Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state" metaphor, we cannot know.
As President, James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, whose 250th birthday anniversary was last Friday, noted the "essential distinction between civil and religious functions." His "Memorial and Remonstrance" was written in opposition to Patrick Henry's attempt to use tax funds to pay for "teachers of the Christian religion." Madison warned that "It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties."
Marvin Olasky points to the irresolvable dilemma this program presents: "It is a tightrope they (the Administration) may not be able to walk. Any time they say 'we're going to allow evangelism,' they will be shot at by the left. If they say, 'we're not going to allow evangelism,' they will be shot at by the right."[6]
Then there is the issue of religious favoritism. Who is to decide what is a religion? Last spring President Bush was asked if tax dollars would be distributed to the controversial Nation of Islam: "I don't see how we can allow public dollars to fund programs where spite and hate is the core of the message. Louis Farrakhan preaches hate."[7]
I don't like much of what Mr. Farrakhan preaches, either, but it leads me to wonder if Unitarian Universalism would be disqualified because we preach an unorthodox theology and are often accused of atheism and moral relativism. Pat Robertson says this program is a "Pandora's Box" because of all the groups that might apply. Even Jerry Falwell is worried about how religions are defined and selected. While he supports the faith-based initiative, he himself wouldn't accept any government money. He worries about groups might receive funding. For example, he said, "The Muslim faith teaches hate."[8] Jerry isn't one to mince words or bigotry and illustrates the danger of divisiveness among America's faith groups as they compete for federal dollars.
Defenders of Charitable Choice contend religious groups are more effective than secular groups. Mr. Bush, himself a born-again Christian, believes only such groups can transform people. And so we have inept and uncaring government bureaucrats contrasted with competent and caring Christians who work wonders. However, while religious groups have often done very good work, there is no evidence to support this claim. It is supposed to be obvious.
As Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen points out, "We are a churchy nation - far more than any other Western country. The Swedes, the Brits, even the Italians seldom go to church. Americans go regularly. Those nations have lower rates of violent crime and other social maladies, but so what? The efficacy of religion is considered proven, even if it is not. ... The government has faith in faith. Sometimes (faith) can do wonders. Other times it can topple the mighty Buddhas of Afghanistan."
There are some disturbing anecdotes about the way the program is progressing. Cynthia Parr, wife of Rabbi Jordan Parr, attended a meeting called by the mayor of Augusta, Georgia, one, Saturday morning in February to meet with Stephen Goldsmith. When she asked how he chose the invitees, the mayor said he had gone through the phone book under churches. It being Saturday morning, no rabbis could attend. "When I suggested that he had left out Synagogues," he replied, "Well I guess you're going to tell me I left out the Imams too." She concluded that, "Faith-based charities is a code word for Christian-based charities."
Not so. One official of the national Episcopal Church said that group was excluded from meetings on faith-based initiatives because the Church endorsed a woman's right to choose and ordained gay people to the priesthood. President Bush's private meeting with Roman Catholic bishops was overheard by press corps because of an open mike: "See, this faith-based initiative really ties into a larger cultural issue that we are working on. It begins to affect the life issue. When you're talking about welcoming people of faith to help people who are disadvantaged, the logical step is also those babies."[9]
Christianity Today (an evangelical magazine) asked Bush: "Won't this plan blur the line between church-state separation?" He replied: "That's the big question. I don't think it will. And the reason is that we're funding people and programs, not institutions. Some of my opponents worry about proselytization. I believe the power of the church is its capacity to change the heart, and we should not force the church to change its mission." I'm mystified. Is not proselytization about changing the heart?
One program he supports is the Dream Center for recovering addicts and ex-convicts: BADD: Born Again and Delivered Disciples which stresses Bible study and cold-turkey detoxification. It may be a great program, but should my tax money be funding it? Charitable Choice simply opens a can of church/state worms.
Then there is the argument that such government involvement with religious organizations will have a "chilling effect" on them. Strangely, this view comes from both right and left. Pat Robertson, Cal Thomas and Jerry Falwell, among others, fear that bureaucratic pressure from the government may serve to "water down" the evangelistic message of the churches. When churches have their books audited, when programs are evaluated, when guidelines are formulated by governmental agents, what will happen to the core of the message, which, after all, is what ostensibly makes faith-based programs so effective?
I agree. I would fear that if our church were to received federal funds, say for our School Partnership program, and I were to preach a sermon criticizing President Bush's school voucher plan, that our funds might be in jeopardy. Who pays the piper calls the tune; there are always strings attached - and I, for one, prefer freedom of religion to becoming a subcontractor for the state.
While we must admire Marvin Olasky's commitment to the poor, we can not end poverty by cloning him. His approach is to "fill the hole in the soul." Most religious groups have ministries to the disadvantaged supported by voluntary funds. Some use religious conversion as a tool; others of us find motivation in our faith, but do not proselytize. That is as it should be in a pluralistic nation. But when the government funnels funds to religious groups, we are on a slippery slope.
I'm with Martin Luther King, Jr. Religion cannot take on responsibility for delivering services to the 32.3 million poor. We can fill some of the holes in the safety net; we can bring a personal involvement to serving their needs. But we also need to bring a prophetic witness to the "principalities and powers" that breed poverty: an economic system that creates more inequality; a still-racist society; an oppressive political theology that denies women the right to determine their reproductive fate and preaches homophobia as God's will.
Faith-based initiatives assume all social problems are due to individual failings, and so people require religious conversion. But do congregations want to perpetuate an environment in which they do not have the time or energy to address the basic causes of poverty? If you only have a hammer - faith in faith - then you see every problem as a nail.
We need to be free to be prophetic. For example, this congregation supports the Southeast Ecumenical Ministry's food cupboard. During the Reagan Administration, when ketchup was declared a vegetable, the federal government also tried to reduce nutrition grants by the amount poor people received from private sources: for every dollar from private sources, the government would subtract a dollar from surplus food allotments. This meant people who had no other means of support could never better their lot. If we simply sought out more sources of food, we would be on a perpetual treadmill. The SEM ministers got together with other clergy and laity across the nation to pressure the federal government to rescind that regressive policy, which it finally did.
There is a larger question in the meaning of Charitable Choice with its close partnership of church and state. Among the western democracies we have the most defined separation of these two powers. In many European countries the state establishes religion; even providing tax money for recognized churches. However, those churches are basically empty Sunday mornings. American religion is the envy of the world; it flourishes, not despite our constitutional separation of church and state, but I think, in large part because of it. Our congregations are voluntary - people belong to them and support them voluntarily.
Some years ago I preached at one of our sister congregations near Frankfurt, Germany. They had a huge staff and many ministries paid for by this church tax. But the congregation numbered about 60, and I was told this was a good Sunday. Once we entangle the church and the state financially, we risk the independence, and I believe, the health of organized religion.
And stilling the prophetic voice is one of the dangers of Charitable Choice. There are no new dollars here, only different places for them to go. Some even suspect Charitable Choice is a Trojan Horse intent on absolving government of all responsibility for what the bible calls "the least of these."
What we do as a church in schools and food cupboards and homeless shelters is good. But it is also good that we speak out prophetically on the issues - the environment, the economy, homophobia, foreign affairs, racism and human rights. We cannot possibly meet all those needs through service. We struggle to maintain our ministries and should do more with them.
But we must also speak about our common responsibility as citizens for justice - for laws and policies and practices that are fair in the private and in the public arena. It is just as important to call for evaluation and reform of welfare reform as it is to deliver food to the SEM food cupboard.
After five years of welfare reform, we have dramatically reduced the welfare roles, but poverty has dropped only slightly - and that in time of an unprecedented economic boom. Now that the economy seems to be headed for trouble, what will become of poor people? Religious groups are not equipped, nor should they be expected to pick up the pieces of welfare reform gone astray. Our task is not only to patch the holes in the safety net where we may, but more important, to hold our government accountable.
The good news is that this promises to be a heated, but healthy debate, not only about church and state separation, but also about the role of religion in the public realm. I thank the president for lifting up the issue. The words of Martin Luther King resonate today as if he were here debating Charitable Choice with us. "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority."[10]
The "Parable of the River" is instructive. Once upon a time there was a small village on the edge of a river. The people there were good and life in the village was good. One day a villager noticed a baby floating down the river. The villager quickly swam out to save the baby from drowning. The next day this same villager noticed two babies in the river. He called for help, and both babies were rescued from the swift waters. And the following day four babies were seen caught in the turbulent current. And then eight, then more, and still more.
The villagers organized themselves quickly, setting up watch towers and training teams of swimmers who could resist the swift waters and rescue babies. Rescue squads were soon working 24 hours a day. And each day the number of helpless babies floating down the river increased. The villagers organized themselves efficiently. The rescue squads were now snatching many children each day. While not all the babies, now very numerous, could be saved, the villagers felt they were doing well to save as many as they could each day. Indeed, the village priest blessed them in their good work. And life in the village continued on that basis.
One day, however, someone raised the question, "But where are all these babies coming from? Who is throwing them into the river? Why? Let's organize a team to go upstream and see who's doing it." The seeming logic of the elders countered: "And if we go upstream who will operate the rescue operations? We need every concerned person here."
"But don't you see," cried the one lone voice," if we find out who is throwing them in, we can stop the problem and no babies will drown. By going upstream we can eliminate the cause of the problem."
"It is too risky," said the village elders.
And so the numbers of babies increase daily. Those saved increase, but those who drown increase even more.
Of course, we need to do our part in rescuing those babies floating down the river. But we also need to take the risk of raising our voices and asking why.
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