In what many see as a very controversial move, President George W. Bush announced the creation of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives nine days after his inauguration.
In line with the "compassionate conservative" platform he emphasized throughout his campaign, Bush explained in a late-January press conference, "A compassionate society is one which recognizes the great power of faith. We in government must not fear faith-based programs; we must welcome faith-based programs."
The new White House office will focus solely on helping religious or faith-based programs receive federal funding for the provision of vital life and social services to the needy.
The plan marks a strategic shift for the U.S. government, making private and faith-based charities the administration's first line of defense against social problems such as poverty, addiction and homelessness. University of Pennsylvania political science professor John J. DiIulio Jr. has been named the head of the new office, which reports directly to the President.
Bush's legislative plan concerning such charities allows religious groups to compete with secular organizations for federal dollars to pay for after-school programs, drug treatment counseling, meal assistance and other programs. In addition, the plan allows for broader tax deductions for Americans who make regular charitable donations.
The plan also hopes to issue an executive order directing five cabinet-level federal agencies to investigate how faith-based programs could effectively participate in a wide variety of government aid programs.
To build support for his new office, Bush met with leaders of a number of spiritual and charitable groups in January, and attended the National Prayer Breakfast -- a long-standing presidential tradition.
Despite the intent of the President's plans, some critics claimed Bush's wide-ranging proposal would violate the constitutional separation of church and state.
"We are strongly opposed to the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives ... especially to what is known as charitable choice," Rachel Joseph, a member of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Joseph emphasized her perception that the new office is unconstitutional in nature.
"For the purpose of the state and church, and the principle of separating the two with a decent distance, this is a very bad idea," she said.
Secular organizations, however, are not the only ones opposing Bush's recent moves. In fact, The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives came under fire last week from conservative religious leaders who ordinarily are Bush's greatest allies.
Most prominent religious leaders believe that the bigger danger is not religion intruding on government work, but government intruding on religion's.
Their concerns reflect long-held fears among conservative and evangelical Christians that by accepting government financing for endeavors from homeless shelters to job-training programs, religious programs invite government meddling in the transmission of their message and mission.
Only half the leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals said they were in favor of government financing for religious charities, according to a New York Times survey held last year.
"All of a sudden, some bureaucrat says, 'Well, we're going to give you tons of money, but you can't talk about your faith. You can't teach them the Torah, you can't talk about Jesus or what have you. At that point they have essentially killed the essence of that organization," ultraconservative Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson said in an interview with CNN this week.
The American Jewish Congress also expressed anger with Bush's new plans, but not for the religious reasons outlined by the Christian Coalition.
In a press release last month, the AJC said, "With his creation of a special White House office, President Bush runs the risk of undermining a basic doctrine of the First Amendment -- that the government may not fund religion or use religion as its surrogate."
When Bush was governor of Texas, he set a precedent for this type of state support for faith-based organizations with various legislative welfare experiments in his state.
In July of last year, though, Bush came under fire when a faith-based bill he pushed through crossed the line into evangelical Christian proselytizing.
A group of Christian churches in the Brenham area of Washington County, Texas used state tax dollars to buy bibles and urged the poor to build a relationship with Jesus, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Jewish Congress and the Texas Civil Rights Project.
The lawsuit was the nation's first constitutional challenge asserting that a faith-based welfare reform program violates the separation of church and state.
The lawsuit contends that by giving the religious organizations the funding necessary for their actions, the Texas Department of Human Services violated the Bill of Rights, the Texas Constitution and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the state's contract with the jobs program unconstitutional. It also asks the court to prohibit public support of the program in the future and to order the welfare program to return the money it received.
The American Jewish Congress said, "We agree that funding religious agencies to provide public services as long as the actual programs themselves remain secular in nature may be appropriate and useful."
It becomes quite another thing when religious teaching itself becomes the heart of the program. Bush aides said safeguards would be in place to make sure the religious groups do not use the money to proselytize.
But as Joseph claims, the main reason that the Americans United for Separation of Church and State have been opposing this programs is that "there are no safeguards ... these faith-based organizations are not playing by government rules. They discriminate and decide who they fire, hire or serve."
Bush attempted to separate the religious aspects of these programs from their mission for civil good in a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 30th. He said that "Government, of course, cannot fund and will not fund religious activities."
In an interview last year with "Christianity Today," Bush said faith-based programs succeed "because they change hearts. There are faith-based organizations in drug treatment that work so well because they convince a person to turn their life over to Christ."
Bush explained his position by relating his own personal experience with alcohol abuse. He said, "As has been reported, I quit drinking. The main reason I quit was because I accepted Jesus Christ into my life in 1986. Billy Graham planted a seed in my heart, and it grew. I believe in the power of faith."
Besides the obvious religious concerns in faith-based charities, Joseph brought another issue to The Dartmouth's attention: the accountability of an organization.
In Texas, Bush carried out a preliminary faith-based experiment where the laws exempted faith-based drug treatment programs from all state health and safety regulations. Counselors in religious treatment centers were able to skip the criminal background checks and hundreds of hours of training required of their state-licensed peers.
In 1995, the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse threatened to shut down Teen Challenge, a popular faith-based drug rehab program, for violating a variety of state regulations, including hiring unlicensed counselors.
Bush sided with Teen Challenge in this case and convened a task force, calling on faith-based providers to testify how they had turned lives around. His staff then wrote and promoted new legislation concerning faith-based care.
The legislative changes, which took effect in September 1997, allow churches, which once gave merely pastoral care, to advertise themselves as drug treatment programs simply by signing up with the state.
Since January, Bush has maintained that his faith-based approach would not be sectarian. He signed the executive order to create the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives flanked by a group of Christian ministers, two Jewish rabbis and a Muslim imam. He hailed the event as "a picture of the strength and diversity" of the country.
Members of a wide variety of religious groups are already preparing proposals for government finance to support the programs that Bush has said will be his focus: sexual abstinence, substance rehabilitation and literacy.
