Ask Auntie Pinko
June 12, 2003

Dear Auntie Pinko,

I'm a little confused about Bush's faith based initiative and whether I should, as a Christian and as a liberal, be for or against it. As I understand, it is simply about allowing religious organizations to compete for tax dollars. It would be very helpful to me if you could outline the major idea behind it and some pros and cons that you see in it.

Thank you very much,
Adele in America

Dear Adele

It seems pretty simple, doesn't it? Who could possibly question the good intentions behind an effort to let the many churches, synagogues, mosques and faith congregations doing wonderful services in our community access the same money that secular organizations can apply for?

And in principle, Auntie Pinko is entirely in favor of not discriminating against someone providing important charitable or social services, just because their program happens to be sponsored by a faith community. But as our conservative friends are so fond of pointing out, when you let the government start making rules about simple things, suddenly they grow all kinds of complex implications that may make you want to think twice. Or even three or four times.

First, let's start out with one basic fact, Adele: There are no laws on the books, and nothing in the Constitution, that prevent a Federal agency from granting money to any organization or program that promises to abide by all the existing rules and regulations that apply to their funding. INCLUDING organizations and programs based in faith communities.

In fact, many social, educational, cultural, and community service organizations based in faith communities already receive public dollars to support their work. So what is the fuss about?

The problem seems to arise in the phrase "abide by all the existing rules and regulations that apply to their funding." The overwhelming majority of the rules that apply to Federal funding for various services relate entirely to the technicalities of providing those services and reporting to the funding source. Things like: if you are providing certain kinds of health care services, they must be provided by qualified health care professionals with certain types of credentials. Or: you must tell us at specified intervals exactly how much of our money you have spent to serve how many people. Or: you must provide working conditions that comply with OSHA (Occupational Health & Safety Administration) guidelines.

These rules usually don't pose a special challenge to faith-based service providers, certainly no more so than to similar secular organizations or programs. But there are other rules that do pose problems for some faith-based providers. They mostly fall into two categories: personnel management practices, and keeping religious content out of services funded by Federal dollars.

Many faith-based organizations want to be free to hire employees whose beliefs are congruent with their faith. They might not demand all employees profess their particular sect (or even faith) but they would not hire someone who was gay, for instance. And some faith-based organizations do want their employees to profess, if not their own sect (it may be alright if you are a Sunni Muslim working in an organization sponsored by a Shi'a mosque, for example) at least the larger faith they hold (Islam). Or they might not wish to promote someone who differs from their precise beliefs to certain levels of management.

Federal rules against discrimination in personnel management currently prohibit Federal dollars from supporting organizations who want to exercise these choices. Many faith-based organizations would like special consideration to permit them to maintain these "faith-based" personnel management practices and still compete equally for Federal dollars with organizations that observe non-discrimination rules.

Now, Auntie Pinko has never run across a case where a program sponsored by a faith-based organization was denied funding because of the context, rather than the content, of the program. But faith-based providers do worry that the current restrictions on content are also applied to context - and might be interpreted in a way that would be prohibitively costly for them. For example, a program with no religious content, provided in a church basement that happens to be painted with religious murals, might be required to cover the murals during the hours the program operates. I haven't seen any reliable documentation of programs being denied funding on such grounds, but there are fears that such things unduly influence grantmaking decisions on the part of Federal funders.

And, finally, some religious organizations sincerely feel that programming with religious content can be as effective (or even more effective) in achieving outcome goals as programming without such content. A program to help the homeless, for instance, might include teaching prayer among other self-help tools. Under current Federal funding guidelines, such programs are denied funding. Indeed, so strongly do some people feel about the elimination of anything resembling "religious content" from publicly-funded services, that mandatory addiction treatment programs based on 12-Step models (which refer to a nonspecific "higher power") have been removed from publicly-funded prisons.

Now, I tend to agree with many who think that is carrying the separation of church and state a little too far. But, on the other hand, I also share the worry of those who think that prayer and the practice of faith rituals, in and of themselves, may not be able to guarantee sufficiently effective outcomes for the programs my tax dollars are intended to fund. And, unfortunately, there have been some highly publicized recent examples of programs in Texas where "faith based" youth service providers have perpetrated outright abuse under the cloak of theological justification.

Another concern - and one shared by many faith-based organizations - is how the definition of "faith-based" might be interpreted by funding agencies. There are many highly controversial faiths practiced in America, and how might rules to guarantee faith-based programs access to public funding prevent discrimination among various faiths? What if some faith looked at the list of which faith-based organizations received access to funds, and decided that their "share" was disproportionately small? Or some other faith's share was disproportionately large?

All of these questions are legitimately raised by Mr. Bush's stated intent to use legislation and/or rulemaking to enable faith-based organizations to compete for public funding. Is it any wonder that it is controversial? I hope that discussing them will help you make up your mind, Adele, and thank you for asking Auntie Pinko!

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