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Obama's Faith-Based Initiative Still on Shaky First Amendment Ground
In a widely publicized speech in July 2008, candidate Barack Obama pledged that "if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them--or against the people you hire--on the basis of their religion." President Obama has not kept that promise with his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which has continued Bush administration policies of allowing religious groups to receive huge amounts of federal money while proselytizing and continuing to hire only members of their own faith.
This month, on the first anniversary of Obama's executive order establishing his new faith-based office, an ad hoc group called the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination wrote a formal letter to the president asking him to make good on his campaign promises and overturn the Bush-era regulations. The Coalition includes a broad array of secular and religious organizations--among them Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Secular Coalition for America, the American Jewish Committee, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, B'nai B'rith International, and the United Sikhs. The letter urged the president to prohibit religious organizations from discrimination in hiring in federally funded social projects and ensure that those who turn to faith-based services are not subjected to unwanted proselytizing or religious activities as a condition of receiving aid.
This was an extremely mild letter, in view of the fact that these groups have waited patiently, and largely in silence, for more than a year and that the Obama administration could reverse the Bush rules today by executive order. In other words, the president does not need a law passed by a sluggish, dysfunctional Congress--as he does to reverse the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, was tougher in an article published in The Huffington Post. Responding to the president's assertion at the National Prayer Breakfast that his administration has "turned the (Bush) faith-based initiative around," Lynn replied, "That's news to me. In fact, from where I'm sitting, the core of Obama's faith-based initiative looks pretty much identical to the deeply problematic one created by President George W. Bush. A few tweaks on the margins don't amount to real change." (One of those tweaks, by the way, simply renamed the faith-based initiative the White House office on "Faith-Based And Neighborhood Partnerships.")
Lynn, who served on an early task force to make recommendations for new rules, found himself "on the other side from conservative religious activists who resisted even the most benign and reasonable rules that would safeguard the rights of taxpayers and the disadvantaged as well as help preserve the constitutional separation of church and state." One of those benign suggestions was that any public funds going to a house of worship for social services should be handled by a separately incorporated nonprofit so that there can be better government oversight of where the money goes. A 2006 report prepared by the General Accounting Office found a general lack of oversight of faith-based programs throughout the government. There's no reason to think that has changed under Obama. That the religious right would resist even a wishy-washy proposal requiring that federal money not be doled out directly from a church account demonstrates that these people are determined to garner more public dollars while hiding from public scrutiny.
The letter from the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination does not mention the makeup of Obama's current advisory council on faith-based projects, but that is a major problem in itself. The group, according to a list released by the White House press office in April, includes representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the right-wing evangelical organization World Vision, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America--all groups that have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding over the past decade. How is this not a serious conflict of interest? It's the precise equivalent of having drug and insurance company representatives sit on advisory committees about health-care reform. Oh, wait, that's the way business is always done in Washington. How reassuring it is to know that Big Religion behaves like Big Pharma and Big Banks.
I can understand why so many people who expected better of Obama have been largely silent until now about his failure to follow through on church-state separation issues. I am a strong Obama supporter and, frankly, I have been inclined to cut the administration a great deal of slack--given not only the huge economic problems the president inherited on the day he took office but the venomous, ignorant right-wing attacks he has been subjected to since Day 2. I know that any action to clean up Bush's faith-based swamp would be catnip to the Christian right and the tea partiers. But what more, really, can they do to Obama? They could add a 666--the mark of the devil--to the Hitler mustache on their posters. Bring it on.
I think that one of the biggest reasons for Obama's avoidance of these issues is not the opposition of the Republican right but of the Democratic religious left, to which he has shown far too much deference. There are many Democratic evangelical Obama supporters, like Rev. Jim Wallis--who is also on the White House advisory council on faith-based programs--who are economic liberals but who, like their evangelical counterparts on the right, want to see more religious involvement in government. Wallis is also opposed to abortion rights, and it doesn't sit well with me to see that he is a member of the advisory council while there is no representative from either a secular pro-choice group or a religion-based group such as Catholics for Choice. I am even more appalled that the president of the worldwide evangelical powerhouse World Vision, which does not even try to conceal the fact that it only hires Christians--its kind of Christians--for full-time jobs, is also on the advisory board.
One hopeful element in this situation is that the Coalition's letter represents a long overdue coming-together of secular and religious organizations committed to the separation of church and state. I was happy to see Baptist, Jewish, Methodist, Unitarian and Sikh signatures on this letter and I am only sorry that there were no libertarian Catholic and Muslim signers. I hope that this omission will be corrected in future efforts to highlight the importance of this issue. It is vital for the Obama administration to understand that there are plenty of religious Americans who are committed to the separation of church and state and whose faith is incompatible with feeding at the government trough.
The institutionalization of breaches of the First Amendment is not solely an atheist or a secularist issue. It is an issue for all Americans who understand that the dramatic erosion of the barriers between church and state during the past 20 years poses a threat to both religion and government. The 18th-century Baptists who joined with freethinkers and deists to ratify our godless constitution understood this. The ascendancy of groups that want to promote their religion with public money must stop. Mr. President, you are a constitutional lawyer. Act like one.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllThe rationale for government funding religious organizations always seemed specious to me.
I recognize that religious organizations do what used to be called charitable work in the form of providing "social services". So I get that RO's may legitimately parallel or duplicate government social services.
Also, for the sake of discussion, I don't dispute that in some cases, these non-goverment services are as good or better than government programs.
But as far as I can tell, the "faith-based" approach piously mandates that religious organizations take off their "preacher" hat and keep on their "social worker" hat in requesting and spending government funds. Thus, allegedly the government isn't promoting religion or violating the doctrine of the separation of church and state.
But if the government is paying for that "social worker" hat, and subsidizing the work, doesn't that free the RO from the financial burden of funding their own social work?
In a nutshell, if a church can undertake "good works" in accordance with its religious dictates, e.g. run a soup kitchen using "faith-based" government program money, doesn't that free up church finances to spend on religious matters?
Proponents would have one believe that government funding of faith-based social services is a win-win all around-- for the persons in need, the secular taxpayer, and the religious organizations.
But government indirectly promoting religious organizations by throwing supposedly "dedicated" funds into the collection basket seems just as wrong as the government paying for a new church furnace on the basis of controlling health care costs for citizens who might catch cold while attending services.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Obedient Servant: Very astute observations! I agree!
"In a nutshell, if a church can undertake "good works" in accordance with its religious dictates, e.g. run a soup kitchen using "faith-based" government program money, doesn't that free up church finances to spend on religious matters?" -- Yr Obd't Servant
To proselytize means to Soul Suck.
The Soul Suckers in the Here are going to be Suck Souled in the After,
Avoid this, for the cost is beyond belief.
I am a big fan of Susan Jacoby and her books such as Freethinkers and the Age of American Unreason. Unfortunately. Ms. Jacobs commits a grievous error when she admits that because she is a "strong Obama supporter" she is then willing "to cut the administration a great deal of slack...". It is extremely doubtful if the families who have seen their loved ones torn to pieces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen by Obama's bombs and those people in America who have seen their loved ones suffer because Obama has refused to advocate for universal health care are inclined to "cut the administration [and Obama] a great deal of slack."
I did not vote for Bush or Obama. I do not want my tax dollars going to any religious group, if I wanted some religious group to have my money I would give it to them directly. I also do not want my tax dollars going to the American Military Industrial Complex.
I DO WANT my tax dollars going to insure that every American citizen has comprehensive universal healthcare, and every American child has a comprehensive public education through college! That every American who is physically able has a well paying job! That every American should have affordable housing. And last but not least I want my tax dollars going to make sure that every American has safe drinking water, clean air to breathe and food that is safe to eat. That is what I want done with my tax dollars!
Sooo, we must pledge allegiance to the Multi-tenticaled Space Creature or else?
Pastafarian, Humbaba?
Why is anyone surprised by actions coming out of that permanently God-infested place named The White House?
At this point in time, to see Obama as anything other than a very worthy opponent to progressive values is to exhibit the kind of avoidance and to lack precisely the kind of needed independence Jacoby describes so well in this essay.
Like a magician pointing and yelling, "Look over THERE!" the concept of "faith-based initiatives" was proposed by Ronald Reagan while looting the savings and loan industry. His pov was that the intention of the "founding fathers" was not for the government to function as a Charitable Institution. "What would this country be," he firmly asked, "without this great land of ours?" Ron was genetically incapable of realizing that political and executive acts that result in the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands is charity to the human beings connected to those hands which, ha ha, are charitably going to, ha ha, float all boats.
In his wisdom Ronald decided that charity is 1) a matter of empathy with poor persons in trouble, 2) has its derivation in the belief in God, rather than the philosophy of the Golden Rule. Using the necessary hyphen, he could not conceive of "a-theist based initiatives" and their funding of social services so long as the needy recipients did not have to yell "THERE IS NO GOD" before getting their draft resumes critiqued. Principally, Reagan saw the voting booth value of hosing organized religion with federal dollars.
By now there has been a thirty year battle over the irrelevant question: "How must we be hosed?" For 30 years the distinction has been lost on me how F-BI differs psychologically from paying pedophiles to assist kids: quantitatively or qualitatively?
I contrast human exploitation of the helping relationship with the recently broadcast, amazing video clip that showed one dog working with all its might to drag another dog off a highway, after that helpless fellow creature had been struck by a car. Did you see that?
Ronald Reagan did not loot the savings and loan industry. He and the Democratic controlled Congress changed laws to benefit the industry by loosening regulations including raising the insured CD amount to $100,000 from $40,000 and then they looted us to pay for the disaster by covering over $200 billion in FSLIC insured CD's in S&L's that failed.
I miss the free ball point pens for opening an S & L account.
The self-serving use of the word "faith" is becoming as annoying as the use of the word "freedom" was under Reagan. (Remember how the Taliban were our friends and were brave FFFFFreedom FFFFFighters?)
Tiger Woods blames his indiscretions on lapsing in his Buddhist faith. Give me a break. Who cares. Just fix it for the sake of your wife and children. Oh I forgot, the real target of this dialogue are the corporate sponsors.
Hillary Clinton, an opportunist and political animal for many years, talks about her faith as she sells weapons all over the world and beats the war drum against Iran.
Obama uses that word as a stalling tactic for having a totally inadequate plan for the ordinary people of the United States. The plan seems to be to erode rights and allow joblessness and homelessness to grow.
They all attend public "prayer breakfasts" as they sponsor the use of flechettes, white phosphorous, depleted uranium on civilian populations. Behind the scenes they engineer the ultimate pardon of those who have been found culpable for promoting torture of other human beings. Republican and Democrat alike, they allow hunger, untreated illness, homelessness and joblessness to grow.
In my experience, people who have any depth to their faith usually shut up about it and illustrate it through the way they live their lives.
Joe
jclinetelle: Thanks for your straightforward, and hard-hitting, response to Susan Jacoby's article. I agree with you. The hypocrisy of people like Hillary Clinton, et. al., is so apparent! The other day, when I heard her ramping up the rhetoric toward an attack on Iran, I couldn't help but think -- Here we go again! This time, though, it's the Democrats beating the drums. As for human rights abuses -- I can't even go there -- it's the pot calling the kettle black.
For anyone interested -- Susan Jacoby's books, BTW, are worth reading -- especially her book on the Freethinkers and her more recent book, The American Age of Unreason. I agree with Erroll.
As for the "prayer breakfasts," I heard several of our elected officials pass those meetings off as "networking opportunities." The "prayer breakfasts" have connections to "The Family" and to the "C-Street House." These people believe that they are "the chosen ones," by God, and that they are above the law, regardless of what they do. For additional insight into "The Family," Jeff Sharlet's book illuminates their activities and their beliefs as well.
A few years ago, Esther Kaplan penned a book, titled, With God On Their Side. Her research is meticulous, and she illustrates, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the pervasiveness of religious principles in various government agencies, and how deeply embedded religion is in all aspects of our government. Although the book was written during the Bush years, Obama is continuing to fund the same "faith-based" initiatives.
In addition, I recommend the Kevin Phillips book, American Theocracy.
I remember when I first read that Hillary Clinton attended the same "prayer meetings" that George Allen (Virginia senator) attended. My eyebrows were raised!
This is not just a Republican issue -- the Democrats, too, are mired in the Christianization of this country.
Thanks for the book recommendations. I always find your posts very thoughtful, so I will look up the books. By the way, some of my best friends are still cutting the Obama administration a lot of slack. They simply cannot face how hemmed in we are.
Joe
Sioux Rose
JOE: Great post! These hypocrits need to be exposed for the sham "religulous" types that they are. The damage they do in the name of their deity is greater than what the legendary fires of hell can purify away.
Susan's books are all interesting and informative reading. We read to gather information and in the process often learn, which is a pursuit of knowledge, whether we agree with the author or not. Another interesting author is Karen Anderson (google her for more information)who researches and writes on the history of all religions. She maintains that all religions are based on one fact and that is the idea that we should all treat each other as we wish to be treated. Pretty basic stuff. She also maintains that what is lacking in the world, not necessarily a religious based void, or a specific government void, but a human based void is Compassion, which she describes as 'walking in another's shoes.' No matter what religion orientation or non-relisious orientation one has it is the understanding of Compassion and the application of it that is imperative to to securing a sustainable future for humanity.
"She also maintains that what is lacking in the world, not necessarily a religious based void, or a specific government void, but a human based void is Compassion, which she describes as 'walking in another's shoes.'"
I think there are many, many millions of people who embody the kind of compassion you describe. Many of them church-goers and self-professed progressives, all snug in the satisfaction at the idea that they care for the Other. And they do.
But that's not to be confused with real love.
So what's lacking is justice.
Or more specifically, people who are willing to fight for it.
And the reason people are not willing to fight for justice is lack of independence (which this essay describes and illustrates so well) from power in today's society.
If love is defined by justice, then civic morality is defined by independence.