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eNews for Faith-Based Organizations
February 2, 2009
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Obama Begins His Faith-Based Initiative
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The director of President Obama's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will be Joshua DuBois. DuBois previously served as the Obama campaign's director of outreach to religious communities, building extensive contacts across the wide range of America's faith communities. He maintained his leadership of the religion portfolio after the election, supervising the transition team that reviewed the Bush faith-based and community initiative and that consulted widely for recommendations for President Obama's initiative. (That team was co-directed by Fred Davie, President of Public/Private Ventures, which worked extensively on Bush administration faith-based projects such as mentoring children of prisoners and prisoner re-entry, and Mark Linton, who led the campaign's outreach to Catholics). DuBois oversaw a careful, wide-ranging, and detailed process that took seriously the goals and actions of the Bush administration's work.
Joshua DuBois takes up the post with good wishes from both critics and supporters of the faith-based initiative. The initiative now enters a third version or phrase, having begun during the Clinton administration with the passage of Charitable Choice four times and the creation of the HUD Center for Community and Interfaith Partnerships under Secretary Cuomo.
Congratulations to Joshua DuBois, and prayers for wisdom and strength in a key post that can do much good but is subject to severe and contradictory pressures.
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Eye on the Administration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It is not yet certain what the new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will do, nor how the Obama initiative will be structured in the White House and across federal departments. Some websites carrying information about the initiative during the Bush administration remain live but others, including the site of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, have been taken down, without any replacement yet. Unfortunately, that means that key resources are (for now), including the list of state faith-based/community initiative offices and liaisons.
One key issue on which there remains no certainty is whether the Obama administration will maintain the status quo on religious staffing when faith-based organizations receive federal funding or will instead drastically curtail this vital freedom. The Bush administration clarified that faith-based groups that receive federal funding retain their freedom to use religious criteria when selecting staff, unless the particular federal program involved has a specific ban on the practice. Only some federal programs have such a ban. When there is such a program-specific ban, the Bush administration guided faith-based groups to turn to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which permits the lifting of restrictions when they pose a substantial and unnecessary burden on religious exercise. (On the Bush policy and RFRA, see the guide by Esbeck, Carlson-Thies, and Sider.)
When he announced his commitment to an expanded faith-based initiative on July 1, 2008, Obama referred to the religious staffing freedom as religious discrimination and in the guidelines for his initiative said that he would ban the practice in every federal social service program, forbidding faith-based groups from staffing according to religion in services supported by federal funds.
However, later during the campaign and in the transition process, Obama officials indicated to various faith-based groups a desire not to disrupt current partnerships by precipitously changing the rules. Both advocates and critics of religious staffing have indicated that they were assured that policy would go their way.
Although the discussions are not public, private communications indicate that there is a fierce debate going on in the new administration about what stance to take on this issue. For a sobering look at what the Obama administration might do, see the Pew Forum's Q & A with constitutional law professor Ira Lupu.
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Eye on Congress
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It did not take long for the new Congress to show that it is not committed to a level playing field for faith-based organizations: the stimulus bills, whatever their other flaws and virtues, are biased against religious organizations. (The House bill, which has been adopted, and Senate bill, currently under consideration, differ in details.)
As Nathan Diament of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations points out, the bills exclude religious and other nongovernment schools from the billions of dollars proposed for "green" school modernization projects.
Worse, while the bills allocate extra billions of dollars for schooling for children with special needs, the specific wording of the bills would permit school districts not to use any of those dollars to help eligible children in nongovernment schools, even though the laws creating the special services require equitable treatment of nonpublic students.
A further problem may be looming. The House-passed version of the bill contains $100 million dollars for the Compassion Capital Fund-a big bump up in federal money to support private groups to provide culturally appropriate and faith-sensitive training to grassroots groups (both secular and religious) and to award very small grants to help those groups improve their services and management.
Critics of the faith-based initiative are seeking to get the Senate either to exclude from CCF funding groups they consider too religious or to eliminate the CCF program entirely.
The protest is misplaced. CCF is designed to improve the services that small groups provide to the public, and carries no requirement that the groups seek government funds. The groups are free under the law to offer religious activities along with their social services, as long as they don't fund the religion with government grants. They shouldn't be excluded from CCF just because they consider religion to be an important part of the privately funded services they offer to the community.
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Misinterpreting the Past/Faulty Guidance for the Future
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Last Monday, in USA Today's "On Religion" column, law professor Jonathan Turley published an attack on the Bush faith-based initiative and on President Obama's promise to expand that initiative.
The On Religion column is subtitled "Illuminating the national conversation," but Turley's comments did the opposite, in my view.
Consider: Barack Obama has an obvious and deep passion to lift up the poor and distressed. Success, as he insists, requires an "all hands on deck" effort. Many of the groups that serve the needy are faith-based. Thus, like Bush, Obama believes the government should partner with the most effective community groups, religious or secular; remove barriers that make it hard for various groups to work with government; and help grassroots groups, faith-based and non-religious, improve their services, even if they don't seek federal funds. And, like Bush, he believes that the needy sometimes can be uniquely helped by grassroots groups, both religious and secular-as in the Obama plan to partner with those groups to offer expanded summer educational programs for kids at risk of academic backsliding.
That's the Obama faith-based initiative. Yet somehow Professor Turley regards it to represent a triumph of pragmatism, putting programs (fighting poverty) over principle (church-state separation), betraying progressivism, the Constitution, and Democratic values.
He'd be right only if adhering to principle requires imposing secularism everywhere the government touches, excluding excellent programs merely because they are inspired by faith, and making religion a uniquely disqualifying characteristic that overrides effectiveness, efficiency, community reputation, and client choice.
Turley would do better if he looked at what has actually been happening instead of parroting the Bush initiative's critics. He claims that Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives "gave billions of dollars" to religious groups, when the government's funds actually go out through a competitive process administered by civil servants, and indeed, most federal money goes to state and local governments, far from the White House, before being awarded to secular or faith-based private groups. Turley even missed the fact that the 12 offices he claims Obama will create in order to expand the Bush initiative already exist-Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in major federal departments to improve the effectiveness of federal spending by ensuring that an anti-religious bias is replaced by a focus on results and program innovation.
Turley's own words undermine his outrage. The money that has gone to religious organizations was awarded so that they could "carry out a variety of public projects." And the funds were used to do "good work . . . in areas ranging from drug rehabilitation to disaster relief." Indeed. Scan the final report of the Bush initiative to learn about the on-the-ground good works. Or listen to a "blue" state witness, Dr. Thomas Kirk, head of Connecticut's mental health department, who wants his state to mimic the successful principles of Bush's Access to Recovery voucher-based drug treatment program.
It's Professor Turley who wants to substitute program for principle: a program of resolute secularism in place of adhering to the constitutional principle that government must respect the free exercise of religion and treat people of all faiths and no faith equally. He should listen to his colleague at George Washington Law School, Ira Lupu, who pointed out that the Bush initiative compelled the federal government to catch up to the Supreme Court's requirement to stop excluding faith-based organizations from government programs.
There is a good reason to worry about President Obama's commitment to principle, but that worry is the opposite of Turley's. Many faith-based groups that have for years helped the federal government serve the poor, sick, and needy at home and overseas are worried that President Obama will follow through on a rash campaign promise to impose a draconian and unprecedented restriction on their freedom to ensure that their staff reflect the organizations' faith convictions. In the past some federal programs have restricted religious hiring but most never have. If a universal requirement to treat religion as irrelevant when hiring becomes the new federal rule, many groups will reluctantly have to part company with the government, unable to partner in service because they wouldn't be able to maintain their religious identity and values.
For the sake of needy families, individuals, and communities, we must all hope that President Obama indeed expands the faith-based initiative, rather than distorting it into a mechanism to undermine the faith-based organizations that make such vital contributions to the common good.
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A Renamed eNewsletter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This e-newsletter began as the CPRF E-News of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom. Its new name marks the move of my work to champion faith-based organizations from the Center for Public Justice to the new Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance. The Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom continues, with IRFA as its new host. A new CPRF electronic newsletter will focus on CPRF's mission to be the voice about faith-based organizations' freedoms to Congress, the administration, and the media. |
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For further information:
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e-mail: info@irfAlliance.org
website (in construction): www.irfAlliance.org
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What is IRFA?
The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance works to safeguard the religious identity, faith-based standards and practices, and faith-shaped services of faith-based organizations across the range of service sectors and religions, enabling them to make their distinctive and best contributions to the common good.
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