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eNews for Faith-Based Organizations
January 11, 2011

Editor: Stanley Carlson-Thies
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in this issue
ECFA Heads New Commission On Church Accountability
Financially Stressed Governments Seek Funds from Nonprofits
Is the Administration's Partnership Talk Mostly Just Talk?
Crying Wolf
Imposing the Rules Without Giving the Gold
Notable Quotes
Worth Reading
Will You Support IRFA?
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ECFA Heads New Commission on Church Accountability
 
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The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability will head an independent national commission on accountability and policy issues concerning churches and other religious organizations, in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA).  Sen. Grassley has spearheaded various congressional investigations into financial abuses by nonprofit organizations.

Issues to be examined include "whether churches should file the same highly-detailed annual information return that other nonprofits must file (Form 990); whether legislation is needed to curb abuses of the clergy housing allowance exclusion; whether the current prohibition against political campaign intervention by churches and other nonprofits should be repealed or modified; and whether legislation is needed to clarify tax rules covering 'love offerings' received by some clergy."

ECFA was formed in 1979 in the aftermath of financial scandals involving several religious ministries in order to foster better self-regulation and accountability.

Details on the commission can be found on the ECFA's website
Financially Stressed Governments Seek Funds from Nonprofits
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A recent Wall Street Journal article notes that state and local governments increasingly are including nonprofit organizations when they collect new fees to bolster their unbalanced budgets.  Yet "[t]hat marks a sharp departure from long-standing tax exemptions mandated by state law or adopted on the theory that churches, schools and charitable organizations work alongside governments to provide services to the community."  Some cities are going so far as to assess the fees even on churches, casting aside the long constitutional tradition that because government is required to respect religion, while "the power to tax is the power to destroy," churches must be exempt from taxes.
Is the Administration's Partnership Talk Mostly Just Talk?
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To the surprise of most and the consternation of many, President Obama has maintained the network of federal faith-based offices and centers, even though it was started by President Bush.  When he announced on the campaign trail that he would do so, he said it was because the challenges facing our society "are simply too big for government to solve alone.  We need all hands on deck."  And to stress that collaborative intent, when he became President he renamed the White House faith-based office the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.  However, observers are wondering how mutual the partnerships are turning out to be. 

Some have complained of efforts to enlist faith-based and secular nonprofits in promoting controversial administration initiatives, such as the health care reform law.  That worry about politicization has now been joined by a concern that the federal government has reverted to its tendency to prefer large organizations--undoing the effort during the Bush and Clinton administrations to bring to the foreground the work of grassroots groups--and even that the federal government is overlooking nonprofit organizations entirely.  Rick Cohen, a columnist for The Nonprofit Quarterly, says this:  "A consistent pattern emerging in this administration is its tendency to overlook or deemphasize potential nonprofit design and implementation roles in federal programs.  Nonprofits tell me that they have to fight to get this administration to insert nonprofits into some programs where nonprofits would seem to logically fit."
Crying Wolf
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In late December an Australian court ruled that the foster-care services branch of Wesley Mission was free within the law not to accept into their program gay couples as foster parents.  The religious agency had rejected the application of a gay couple because their "lifestyle was not in keeping with the beliefs and values of Wesleyanism."  The court decision corresponds with the provision of the Australian Equal Opportunity Act that provides some freedom for religious organizations to follow their faith convictions in making some decisions involving sexuality and marital status.

Predictably, various commentators were incensed by the court decision. Cameron Murphy, president of the Council of Civil Liberties, said, "It's outrageous.  If a non-religious organisation did this they would be in breach of the law.  If they want to run a foster are agency they ought to be looking after the best interests of the child, not trying to push their religion on the community."  Another author wrote that the ruling "is clearly portentous for  . . . gay couples hoping to foster." 

And yet this ruling was only about the freedom of a religious foster care agency to maintain its faith-shaped standards; it was not a decree imposing those standards "on the community" in general.  Nor will the ruling result in gay couples being unable to become foster parents.  Hardly. As the Australian Gay Dads Alliance website proclaims,  "There has been a shortage of foster carers in many parts of Australia for years, so many agencies welcome single gay men and same-sex male couples as carers."  Oops.
Imposing the Rules Without Giving The Gold
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It's the nonprofits' version of the biblical Golden Rule:  whoever gives you the gold can require you to follow their rules.  There's truth to the quip--but faith-based organizations can be subjected to unjust rules even if they avoid government gold.  Developments in Quebec are a reminder of this harsh additional truth.

The "rules come with the gold" story broke just before Christmas.  A Quebec official announced that, starting in June, religious talk will be banned in every day care facility in the province that receives funding from the government.  The subsidy is very generous--$40 per day, with parents having to pay only $7 daily--so most day care is government-subsidized and thus subject to the new rules.

And those new rules?  No religious talk at all.  Religious symbols won't have to be stripped from walls, centers serving Muslim or Jewish children can maintain specialized diets, and Christian centers can even set up Nativity scenes next Christmas season.  But no explanation for any of this is allowed:  that would be a matter of "transmitting faith," of "teaching religion itself," and those will be forbidden, the Quebec official announced.  And just to make sure no such unsecular communication takes place, the province is tripling the number of daycare inspectors.  Any family and day care facility that regards all this to be the suppression of religion, not tolerance and fair treatment, can just walk away from the day care subsidy money, the official said. 

That is a particularly sharp reminder of the nonprofit "golden rule."  Government funds come with government rules.  And those rules might very well not respect the religious convictions and standards of a faith-based organization and those who appreciate its services. 

Of course, rules that wrongly limit religious freedom can be imposed by private funders as well.  And an earlier development in Quebec is a stark reminder that unjust rules can be imposed even though no government money accompanies those rules. 

The "rules without the gold" story began in 2008, when the Quebec Ministry of Education unveiled a new religious study program to be taught in almost every grade through high school.  The new ECR class is intended to foster respect for different religions and ethical systems.  Sounds good--except that respect for every view is to be taught by asserting that none of the views can claim exclusive truth. 

The religion-class requirement is under challenge in the courts--the only recourse families have.  For the obligation to teach religious equivalence has been imposed on every school--not only public schools but also private schools and even home schools.  No escaping the rule by refusing government fold.

In short:  protecting the religious freedom of institutions and individuals requires good government rules, whether or not government gold is involved.
Notable Quotes
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"Challenging the limited altruism of comfortable community has been one of the great achievements of the Western religions. I know the Jewish and Christian traditions best, and what I have in mind are the prescriptions of the Torah, the uncompromising preaching of the Prophets and the poetry of the Psalmist aimed specifically to discomfit those whose prosperity is founded on grinding the faces of the poor, on neglecting the stranger, and on driving away the outcast.  I have in mind too the teaching and example of Jesus Christ in associating with those who were marginal and despised, and in making one's willingness to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take in the stranger, and visit those who are in prison a condition of one's recognition of Him.  And it's not just scripture: it is the whole edifice of (say) Catholic natural law reasoning about need, and church doctrine on the perils of complacent and exclusive community.
 
"The claim that religion challenges community in this way may seem odd to those who are accustomed to thinking of religious groups as themselves self-satisfied communities of belief, condemning all outsiders as damned.  Certainly the exclusiveness of some of the communities I have been fulminating against has a tinge of religious self-righteousness.  And it cannot be denied that religion is often associated with inter-communal violence, as believers band together against non-believers.  Usually, however, in order to do that they have to ignore or sideline most of the teaching of their respective faiths, which insist in fairly uncompromising ways on the importance of not casting people out but rather taking care of outsiders, loving one's enemy, and responding positively to others' needs even at the risk of the conditions of one's own earthly comfort and solidarity."

Jeremy Waldron, New York University School of Law, "Secularism and the Limits of Community," Dec. 2010. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1722780
Worth Reading
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Stanley Carlson-Thies, "Welfare Responsibilities," a Dec. 31, 2010, Capital Commentary from the Center for Public Justice. http://www.capitalcommentary.org/welfare-reform/welfare-responsibilities

Patrick Parkinson, "Christian Concerns About an Australian Charter of Rights," Australian Journal of Human Rights, 15(2), 2010. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AJHR/2010/4.html

"The 2010 Elections:  What Do They Mean for Foundations and Nonprofits?"--transcript of the Nov. 9, 2010, Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal discussion. http://pcr.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=7571&pubType=PCR_Transcripts
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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.