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eNews for Faith-Based Organizations
June 15, 2010
Editor: Stanley Carlson-Thies
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Access Past Issues of the E-News
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An archive of current and past eNews for FBOs can be accessed HERE.
| Congressional Attack on Religious Hiring
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A recently introduced bill to reauthorize federal drug treatment programs includes language to ban from participation faith-based providers that take account of religion in hiring This is an attack on the SAMHSA Charitable Choice language that President Clinton signed into law in 2000. The bill would also undermine the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), also signed into law by President Clinton, in 1993. RFRA is Congress's own measure to ensure that the government respects religion when it acts.
The bill is HR 5466, co-sponsored by Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Rep. Gene Green (D-TX). The bill would reauthorize federal substance abuse treatment funding that is administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
The bill proposes to add to the Public Health Service Act, Title V, the requirement that every grantee and contractor must agree to "refrain from considering religion or any profession of faith when making any employment decision" about anyone who will be involved in providing the federally funded services. And this ban on religious hiring "applies notwithstanding any other provision of Federal law, including any exemption otherwise applicable" to a religious organization.
Congress passed two bills in 2000 adding Charitable Choice language to SAMHSA programs, and President Clinton signed both into law. The Charitable Choice language provides that faith-based organizations can receive federal funding without first suppressing their religious character, while requiring that no one be forced into religious activities.
Charitable Choice restates the freedom of faith-based organizations to hire on a religious basis, as recognized by the religious exemption of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, some of the SAMHSA funding is provided via programs that include a ban on religious hiring. Thus, when the Bush administration promulgated SAMHSA Charitable Choice regulations in 2004, it incorporated into the regulations a special procedure made possible by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. RFRA enables a religious organization to avoid complying with a generally applicable rule that would impose a substantial burden on its religious practice, if the government cannot show that it has a compelling interest in forcing the organization to comply despite the burden. In the case of SAMHSA, the regulations set out a method by which a faith-based provider that engages in religious hiring can assert its RFRA right to participate despite the religious hiring ban.
The language proposed by HR 5466 would ban religious hiring in all SAMHSA programs and also foreclose the RFRA alternative.
Rep. Kennedy has commented that the bill "acknowledges that many individuals receive their treatment and recovery services through faith- and community-based organizations." However, rather than maintain the Charitable Choice language that Congress put into the law so that those faith-based organizations can participate without sacrificing their religious identity, Kennedy wants the law to be more restrictive. His excuse? Religious hiring is "discrimination," he says, and by banning it he will create a "balance" between "civil rights protections" and "the critical need to expand access" to treatment services.
But under the Civil Rights Act, religious hiring by religious organizations is not discrimination--it is not banned but rather is protected. The Civil Rights Act already has the right balance: religious organizations can take account of religion when selecting their staff--after all, religion is a defining characteristic--but they cannot discriminate in employment on the basis of irrelevant characteristics, such as race, sex, and national origin.
Rather than "expanding access" to treatment services, this attack on religious freedom will restrict participation by faith-based organizations, leading to reduced choices for people seeking help for their addictions.
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CARD Attacks Charitable Choice Before Reading It
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Coalition Against Religious Discrimination has sent a letter asking Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) to strip Charitable Choice from the SAMHSA law that governs federal funding of substance abuse prevention and treatment services. Kennedy has already proposed to add to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) law a universal ban on religious hiring that would also weaken the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (see the story above, "Congressional Attack on Religious Hiring"). CARD says that is not enough damage to religious freedom. All of Charitable Choice has to be stripped out of the law, where it was put, deliberately, twice!, by Congress and President Clinton. And they justify this demand by claiming that the recommendations of the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships show that even Charitable Choice's defenders now see that it was a mistaken idea. Except that those recommendations don't contradict Charitable Choice. True, the Council recommended that federal programs should state that government grants and contracts cannot be used to pay for "explicitly religious activities"--but that phrase is only an attempt to clarify a restriction that has always been part of Charitable Choice. The Council said the government should make it clear that in those grant- and contract-funded programs a beneficiary need not take part in any way in those religious activities, and should ensure that beneficiaries get written notice of their religious freedom rights. This again is but a clarification of Charitable Choice itself. And, in fact, the SAMHSA Charitable Choice regulations both specify that all religious participation has to be voluntary and that the service provider must give to beneficiaries written notice of their rights--the regulations even include model language for such a notice! The Council also recommended that in every federal program, each beneficiary should be guaranteed access to an alternative provider if she or he objects to getting services from a faith-based provider--but that right to an alternative provider was first put into federal law by Charitable Choice itself, and the language the Council adopted is actually taken from the SAMHSA Charitable Choice rules! The CARD authors should have read both the Council's recommendations and the Charitable Choice laws and regulations more carefully before rushing their letter to Rep. Kennedy. |
Surprise! Faith-Based Organizations Value Faith!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Vital Connections research project recently posted a large number of reports and best-practices guides on maintaining strong ties between faith-based nonprofits and the faith communities that gave them birth. It turns out that, although faith is expressed in quite varied ways in the nonprofits of the various faith communities, faith is an important concern for them all. This is an especially striking finding given that the project looked not only at evangelical Christian, African-American, and Catholic groups but also Quaker, Mennonite, Mainline Protestant, and Jewish organizations. In some traditions, faith is overt (certain rituals, religious statements) but in others it is mainly "embedded" in organizational practices such as a style of decision-making or a preference for ecumenical collaboration. Interestingly, though, in order to keep the faith and the connection to the founding faith community alive, the service organizations typically regard it as important to recruit board members and staff largely from their respective faith communities. The organizations vary by how many board members and how many staff need to be from their own faith community, but most want at least some of their board members and staff to represent the founding faith. Even when there is no formal faith requirement for the board or staff, organizations often ensure compatibility by recruiting from their own faith community's networks or by requiring a commitment to the organization's operational philosophy and faith-shaped ethos. And when the faith is no longer manifest in the organization, the organization loses the enthusiastic support of its community, receiving fewer resources (funds, volunteers) and suffering weaker board members, leading to a downward spiral. So it turns out that faith is not only important to the service organizations and to the founding faith communities. When faith is attenuated in the organization and the organization's connection to its faith community is weakened, the organization is likely to decline, becoming less able to serve, less able to ride out economic bad times, less able to add its own resources (from donors and volunteers) to the money it may receive from government, foundations, or corporate donors. This isn't to say that faith is always a positive factor or that government and society must invariably defer to what faith groups claim are their rights. Rather, it just means that faith-based organizations are, in fact, based in faith, shaped by faith, connected to communities of believers. It does no one any good either to ignore that simple fact or to casually or determinedly suppress that faith dimension. Listen up, Congress! The Vital Connections website is here: http://www.faithandorganizations.umd.edu |
Sign up Now! Institutional Religious Freedom Class at July Civitas School
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stanley Carlson-Thies, IRFA's president, will teach a graduate class on institutional religious freedom for the Civitas School, in Washington DC, July 4-9. His class will be offered Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings. Students are invited to the Thursday evening Kuyper Lecture by Michael Gerson and to other Civitas School special events. For non-resident students taking only the religious freedom class, the fee has been reduced to $250. For more on the Civitas School and to register for the class, run, don't walk, to http://www.cpjustice.org/content/civitas-school-2010-graceful-politics. |
Martin Marty Misunderstands the Faith-Based Initiative
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In a recent column, Martin Marty, the prominent commentator on American religion, rehearses the findings from some recent research on congregations and social services and comes to the wrong conclusion. In "The Faith-Based Initiative and Congregational Change," Marty discusses research by religious sociologist Mark Chaves, who says that surveys show that, notwithstanding the faith-based initiative, congregations are no more involved in providing major social services now than they were a dozen years ago. Why the failure? Well, advocates of the initiative wrongly supposed that "congregation-based social services represent an alternative to the social welfare system." And they wrongly thought that congregations "represent a vast reservoir of volunteer labor." But are those mistaken suppositions actually at the heart of the faith-based initiative? True enough: Federal, state, and local officials have discovered that, for services that need volunteers (mentoring, disaster preparedness, disaster response), they must reach out more effectively to congregations. And they have discovered that congregations may be the best, or even almost the only, channel through which to reach some alienated or marginalized neighborhoods and individuals. But the faith-based initiative has not tried to substitute congregations for the social welfare system nor to replace social service staff with volunteers. If these had been the main emphases, there would not be all the battles over funding faith-based parachurch organizations and over the freedom of those faith-based nonprofits to engage in religious hiring of paid staff! Marty ends his column by scolding the "anti-government, anti-tax, anti-secular Bible-believers" for their vain utopian attempt to do away with the secular, government-run, social welfare system. He advises them to learn from Romans 13, which tells us that government is God's servant for our good and thus we must pay our taxes. As if calling the government to account when it attaches secularizing strings to its grants makes one a theocrat. As if seeking better ways for the government to engage and support civil society makes one anti-government. As if looking for more efficient and effective--more helpful--social services makes one anti-tax. Somehow Martin Marty and Mark Chaves seem to have missed the actual faith-based initiative. |
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For further information:
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e-mail: info@IRFAlliance.org
website: 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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