After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Fa..

After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based
Initiative
http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=179

Bill Berkowitz
February 19, 2007
After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based
Initiative
Unmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program
nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out
taxpayer money to religious groups

With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into
President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty
significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's
egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless
surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't
offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up
with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward.
There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although
it should be said that many in the religious community responded to
the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State
of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate
conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The other item that didn't get any State of the Union play is a
project that was once envisioned to be the centerpiece of the
president's domestic agenda: his faith-based initiative. As Joseph
Bottum, editor of the conservative publication First Things -- "The
Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life" -- pointed out, Bush
"didn't mention faith-based initiatives, which...[he] once claimed
would be his great legacy."

The president's faith-based initiative is facing several tough court
battles:

* In mid-February, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard
arguments in Americans United v. Prison Fellowship Ministries at the
Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse in St. Louis, Mo.
According to an Americans United press release, the organization,
representing a group of inmates, inmates' family members and
taxpayers, urged the appellate panel to affirm the June 2006 ruling by
Judge Robert W. Pratt that the "InnerChange Freedom Initiative" at
Newton Correctional Facility in Iowa is unconstitutional and violates
the separation of church and state. Judge Pratt "found that the
publicly funded religious program at Newton transgresses the First
Amendment ban on government support for religion.""No American should
be pressured by the government to conform to any particular religious
viewpoint," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of
Americans United. "Inmates should have access to effective
rehabilitation programs that prepare them for life outside prison, no
matter what religion they subscribe to. This case has major
implications for the Bush 'faith-based' initiative. Programs that are
pervaded with religion should not get public funds."
* Two and a half years after the Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom
from Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed its "federal lawsuit challenging
the creation of various faith-based offices at federal agencies. ...
"the case has landed at the Supreme Court -- in a curtailed form,"
Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) reported in
the February 2007 issue of Church & State.On February 28, when the
U.S. Supreme Court takes up oral arguments in "Hein [the current head
of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives] v.
Freedom From Religion Foundation," "the justices won't be deliberating
the constitutionality of the faith-based initiative. Rather they will
decide whether FFRF has the right to sue in the first place," Church &
State pointed out.According to Church & State, FFRF's "legal complaint
"asserted that the creation of faith-based offices violated the First
Amendment and that those offices spawned further violations by holding
a series of events aimed at helping religious groups win tax
support."FFRF's suit maintained that the Bush Administration sent
"messages to non-adherents of religious belief that they are
outsiders, not full members of the political community, and the
defendants send an accompanying message to adherents of religious
belief that they are insiders, favored members of the political
community."

Since January 2001, when the president proudly issued executive orders
that brought the White House Office on Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives into being, the faith-based initiative was touted as a
major priority for the Bush Administration. After years of trying to
sell different aspects of his faith-based initiative during State of
the Union addresses, it must have been disappointing to both religious
groups that are currently receiving government grants and those
interested in grabbing a piece of the pie to have been left out of
Bush's comments.

However, despite the above-mentioned and other legal actions by civil
liberties groups challenging various aspects of the faith-based
initiative, David Kuo's unsparing account of the politicization of the
initiative in his bestselling book "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of
Political Seduction," and the changes at the helm of the White House
Office, the president's faith-based is still managing to chug along.
Faith-based initiative still servicing religious groups

According to a comprehensive report by the National Journal's Paul
Singer and Brian Friel, the faith-based initiative is alive, and,
while not in need of life support, is not doing quite as well as the
administration might have hoped by year six.

"Under the public radar, federal, state, and local governments are
funding, training, and even helping to create religious social service
organizations," the National Journal reported in early January.

According to Singer and Friel, "thousands of small faith-based
organizations nationwide ... are using taxpayer dollars to provide
social services." While "the government has worked with religious
charities for generations," it has been both the Welfare Reform bill
in 1996 and the Bush Administration's Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives that "have spawned a new era of cooperation."

A "charitable choice" provision, allowing states to work with
faith-based and community charities in providing certain services to
the poor, was inserted into the Welfare Reform Act, by former then
Republican Senator (and President Bush's first Attorney General) John
Ashcroft -- and signed by President Bill Clinton.

Over the six years of existence, in lieu of comprehensive faith-based
legislation passed by Congress, the president has taken to using
executive orders to move things forward.

"More than $2 billion in federal funding -- and an un-tallied but
growing amount of state and local support -- is pouring into
church-affiliated organizations around the country annually." Singer
and Friel report. "In some cases, moreover, the government is
essentially creating faith-based organizations to provide such
value-laden services as 'healthy marriages' counseling and abstinence
education."

Over the past decade, and especially during the past five years,
federal, state, and local governments have embarked on a broad
campaign to recruit, train, and assist religious charities --
primarily Christian, but also a smattering of Jewish, Muslim, and
others -- to provide a broad array of social services, from mentoring
the children of prisoners to guiding the unemployed through job
training. Government officials are also using a variety of methods to
professionalize and stabilize the thousands of small, local sectarian
charities that operate across the country.

Taxpayers sponsor conferences to teach church-affiliated groups
how to write grant applications, and help them train volunteers, buy
vehicles, set up offices, and navigate the tax code. The government
even teaches church leaders how to create tax-exempt 501(c)(3)
organizations so that they can raise money more easily. Officials are
issuing newsletters to alert the faithful of federal and private
foundation grant opportunities. The federal government, in particular,
is building a national network of nonprofit "intermediary"
organizations that foster faith-based and community organizations, and
serve as their conduit for getting government money.

"For faith groups interested in government partnerships, and for
everyone interested in the issues of church and state, these are heady
times," Richard Nathan, director of the Albany, N.Y.-based Roundtable
on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, said at a December 5 conference
in Washington. "Whether and where the lines can be drawn to separate
religious activity from that which can be supported by public funds is
complicated, subtle, and very much, especially right now -- very much
in flux."

One of David Kuo's criticisms of the White House's faith-based
initiative was that it didn't follow through on its promise to provide
$8 billion to faith-based organizations. The White House, however,
claims that "faith-based organizations can now compete for about $20
billion a year in federally managed programs, and another $55 billion
or so in programs managed by state and local governments," according
to Singer and Friel.

The Department of Health and Human Services' Compassion Capital Fund
-- which has a $50 million annual budget -- has given "grants of up to
$2.5 million a year to a few dozen 'intermediary organizations,' which
in turn give smaller grants to faith-based and community groups to
help them grow," Singer and Friel reported. "HHS also provides up to
$50,000 directly to these groups to help them train volunteers, build
fundraising operations, improve management systems, and publicize
their services. According to Hein, from 2003 to 2005, the number of
grants to faith-based groups from five departments -- Education, HHS,
HUD, Justice and Labor -- jumped a total of 38 percent."

In addition, AmeriCorps and its parent agency, the Corporation for
National and Community Service, "send volunteers to help faith-based
and community organizations do things like learn better accounting
techniques or create lists of volunteers," Singer and Friel pointed
out. "The corporation, which is an independent federal agency,
estimates that in 2005, it awarded nearly $81 million, or 13 percent
of its competitive grant funds, to faith-based organizations, up from
$70.5 million the year before."

Greg Morris, director of HHS's Center for Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives, told the National Journal that "direct federal grants to
faith-based organizations represent 'a relatively small piece of
federal dollars that go out.'" He noted that "The biggest piece of the
pie is those formula block grants that go out from the federal
government to the states, and then there is wide latitude at the state
and local level to administrate those funds."

According to Singer and Friel, "This is where the initiative can
generate the most bang for its buck. For the faith-based centers in
the various federal departments, Morris said, 'the focus going forward
is on targeting the administrators of those programs at the state and
local level,' to make sure that they are not shutting faith-based
organizations out of competition for grants."

"Amid all of the activity," Singer and Friel wrote, "a basic question
has never been fully resolved: What are the limits for what
faith-based organizations can do with government money? Government
officials emphasize that they teach all tax-dollar recipients that the
money can pay only for secular services that are clearly separate from
religious activity. But sometimes that line is not so clear."

"Among the major issues that federal authorities are still grappling
with:"

* Secularization. Why should the government recruit a religious
group to provide services if the first condition of getting the
government money is that the services must not involve religion? Why
should a faith-based organization take the money on this condition?
* Size. Because much of this government money goes for general
"capacity-building" for sectarian organizations' charitable programs,
is the government also paying to expand recipients' capacity for
overtly religious programs?
* Effectiveness. Are religiously inspired groups better, or worse,
than secular groups at providing social services? Devout providers say
that their faith matters, but does it make a measurable difference in
outcomes?

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You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote

"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"

That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.

It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.

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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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