The White House is now pondering recommendations offered by its Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. I've written here before about inappropriate financial self-interest on the part of numerous members of that Council. However, what were the overall merits and demerits of the final report presented to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on March 9?
One major section provides 12 recommendations on how to strengthen the "legal and constitutional basis" of Obama's version of the "faith-based" initiative. When former President George W. Bush created this program in 2001, it lacked critical civil rights and civil liberties protections. The Council advises the Obama administration to make some of the changes that I have advocated for years, but the recommendations fail to include all the alterations necessary to bring the program into compliance with the Constitution.
When Obama was a candidate in the summer of 2008, he announced his vision for a dramatically revised "faith-based" initiative. And before Obama took office, Americans United and numerous other organizations presented his transition team with a concrete set of changes that could have solved all of the problems Bush had created.
Instead of moving on those changes, Obama created his Advisory Council, a body made up mostly of religious leaders. He tasked this entity with, among other things, looking at an array of legal and policy questions. In the meantime, the President did not change a single rule from the previous administration. This Bush-era regimen has since governed the distribution of billions in social service funding. In effect, the creation of the Council has had the effect, intended or otherwise, of perpetuating a deeply harmful status quo.
Many of the issues the Council tackled resulted in consensus recommendations that I support. First, the Council urged strengthening the rules requiring the separation of religion from government-funded programs. Any federally funded program must be separated in time or space from any religious activity in a facility. People being served have a right to refuse to attend any religious activity occurring there. The Council also asks the President to adopt separation rules that would be applied to all federally funded programs and to vast numbers of sub-grantees as well.
Second, the Council unanimously urged the President to strengthen protections for social service beneficiaries. The recommendations state that beneficiaries who attend publicly funded programs operated by faith-based organizations must have a right to an alternative religious or secular provider and must be informed of this right when they first enter the program.
Third, the Council urged the President to increase transparency and monitoring. Council members admitted that "it has not been easy for us to locate and access information" and documents. Imagine, then, how difficult it would be for an average citizen to find grant applications or documents. Thus, the Council requested that government agencies be required to post information, including the identification of recipient groups, on the internet. The Council acknowledged that the government has a "constitutional obligation to monitor and enforce church-state standards" in federally funded programs.
Posting information about who received grants and how the money will be used would make it easier for civil liberties activists to get a heads-up on grants that seem constitutionally or otherwise legally suspect. For example, a U.S. Government Accountability Office investigation indicated that many religiously oriented groups that got grants and contracts during the last administration flagrantly ignored prohibitions on using funds to promote their religious beliefs. (Some were reportedly surprised to learn they had any restrictions.) We have found groups using public funds to purchase Bibles and Jesus key chains, and some faith-based ministries take public funding for "secular" efforts while proudly proclaiming on their internet sites that they are Christ-focused 24/7.
To my disappointment, however, the Council failed to reach consensus on two major issues. By only a one-vote margin, the Council recommended that houses of worship that seek to receive federal funds must form separately incorporated entities to use them. (This could include setting up a tax-exempt 501(c)3 charity or other appropriate structure.) This is necessary to protect the autonomy and integrity of the religious institution as well as ensure that federal funds are not used for religious purposes.
Opponents claimed this would be too burdensome. Curiously, however, no evidence was actually offered that any groups that would decline federal aid if required to set up a secular arm.
Most troubling is that 16 Council members asserted that "the Administration should neither require nor encourage the removal of religious symbols where services subsidized by Federal grant or contract funds are provided." In the view of most scholars, the Constitution forbids government to send religious messages to beneficiaries participating in publicly funded programs through signs, symbols or iconography. Only nine Council, however, supported a standard mandating that such religious messages be removed, at least where "feasible."
Why is this such a big deal?
Frankly, the whole point of separating evangelism from secular services, such as serving meals and providing job training, is that rock-solid First Amendment doctrine forbids government entities to advance religion. What is a more potent promotion of any religious system than having the central symbols of that faith (a Christian cross, for example, or religious statements like "Jesus said, 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life'") on the walls of a soup kitchen or counseling center?
Many religious groups promote the idea that a single encounter with the core message of the faith can lead to spiritual conversion. Is someone seeking shelter going to have the courage to report that this faith-saturated environment makes her or her children feel unwelcome and very uncomfortable? And, in most parts of the country, how long will it take to even locate some alternative provider? In reality, her real choice may be whether to face the symbols of a faith not her own or go cold and hungry.
The Council report and the process for faith-based reform are now back in the President's hands. There should be no more studying, and no more delays. I hope that President Obama will act expeditiously to fulfill his campaign promises to place the faith-based office on sound footing.
This means accepting the Council's good recommendations (which were agreed to by every Council member from the past president of the Southern Baptist Convention to the religious outreach director of the Human Rights Campaign) and toughening the ones I've addressed here.
We've seen lately that executive orders -- even on contentious issues -- can literally be written overnight. That's all it would take here.
" ... a U.S. Government Accountability Office investigation indicated that many religiously oriented groups that got grants and contracts during the last administration flagrantly ignored prohibitions on using funds to promote their religious beliefs. (Some were reportedly surprised to learn they had any restrictions.) We have found groups using public funds to purchase Bibles and Jesus key chains, and some faith-based ministries take public funding for "secular" efforts while proudly proclaiming on their internet sites that they are Christ-focused 24/7."
I want my RIGHTS back!!
This unaudited slick political payola slush fund is pumping life blood into the bodies of organizations which exists to rob people of their civil rights and liberties.
I've spent the past 6 months in active research looking at the statements from the 501c divisions of the Catholic cults of Jesus, The Evangelicals like Saddle Back Church of Rick Warren "Kill the Gays" in Uganda fame and of course the ever present LDS/Mormons who traditionally blur the lines as a normal course of business.
These Faith-Based Liars appear to intentionally misdirect funds to their own Hate Campaigns and provide services inflated in cost to nearly the $900 toilet seat level of the United States Military.
Per the author, " ... recommendations fail to include all the alterations necessary to bring the program into compliance with the Constitution."
Seems to me the president did no better job selecting members of the Advisory Council than he did with his first round administration appointments!
Why are no reporters asking Robert Gibbs and other WH staffers about this give away program? It's almost like there is something sacred about it!
And most of this money goes to smaller churches that work hard in their communities, trying to do good work. In poorer communities they are a lifeline, and in cities they help ease the burden on social services. I have my problems with a few things in how the programs are run, but condemning them all out of hand as rightwing fundamentalist Christians trying to impose on the rest of us is a totally inaccurate picture. And no- I am not a right wing fundamentalist. Not even close.
Of course there is the fact that churches have a hard time keeping religion out of their services anyway. That is one reason for the separation of church and state. You may not have a problem with it, but even having to bow your head for prayer before getting to eat at a soup kitchen is humiliating for a non-Christian or Christian not of that denomination. Most will do it to get to eat and have learned to keep their mouths closed as to their real beliefs. Perhaps that was one of the goals of faith based initiatives. I see this and experience it on my job. I am a social worker who is not a Christian and more and more required to have church as part of my life. My clients have to visit their children removed by the state at a Baptists Church!
But the majority of them were amazing. The Red Cross refused to continue services because they wanted to work out of St. Johns- a nice college building. The SA had no problem pitching a leaky tent in the middle of the road and going to work. They and the Southern Baptists do disaster relief all over the world and they do not proselytize when doing this work. And the bring world class people with them-many who ae not SA but are trained disaster responders.
If you can't trust a highly visible conservative organization such as Michael Steele's RNC with public funds (topless night club in LA) only a fool would trust the FBI organizations with these "hidden," secretive and unaccountable grants.
The conservatives could say, "Thank You, Your Highness Obama," instead they just say, "No!"
There was no obligation on Obama's part to keep this program.
Also, as Rev. Barry Lynn indicates in this article the President clearly understood there were some "Constitutional" problems with the Bush program, promised to change them and has failed to deliver on his promise.
Meanwhile, he receives no appreciation from conservatives for whom he became a hypocrite!
As for that house on C Street, it's Washington's version of the Vatican.
I am tired of my tax money going to pedophiles. I'm tired of it going to people who sit around all day claiming their god is real but no one else's is. That everyone else is a sinner. That if you don't listen to them you'll go to hell or whatever other kooky fantasy place they've come up. People - none of it is real!
Why we continue to accept people walking around claiming to know a fantasy being exists and that we need to listen to them is beyond me, but fine, let them believe whatever nonsense they want. Just don't continue to make me pay taxes to support it.
If you want to do charity work as a church, awesome, get the same tax break as nonprofits who do nothing but charity work, and get it *for your charity work*. But to pay you people to have a fantasy battle for 'souls', I just can't stand it. We pay churches to go out and convince people nonsense stories are true.
Believe whatever you want - on your own dime!
Shifting of child molesters from one parish to another - YOU PAID FOR THAT. Paying the child molesters, *while they were molesting children* - YOU PAID FOR THAT.
not another dime, for these thugs who blackmailed DC they wouldn't care for homeless people if gay marriage passed.
http://indieregister.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/stop-the-tax-free-gravy-train/
Did you know the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC was owned by the Vatican??
Read the article!
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=columns&page=links
Go fight!