Gore: Church Should Get Gov't Funds
By Sandra Sobieraj
Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA (AP) -- Treading on traditional Republican territory,
Vice President Al Gore said Monday that churches and other
faith-based organizations -- where ``the client is not a number,
but a child of God'' -- should receive government funds to help
cure social ills.
His proposal for ``a new partnership'' between church and state,
outlined in a presidential campaign speech at a downtown
Salvation Army, centered around the notion that ``politics and
morality are deeply interrelated.''
Lest there be any doubt, the Democratic presidential candidate
said three times that he believes in the separation of church and
state. And his language suggested a skittishness at opening a
war with civil libertarians.
Even as he said Americans must ``dare to embrace'' religious
programs, he stipulated that closer church-state relations should
be ``carefully tailored partnerships.''
On a campaign swing here and in Orlando, Fla, Gore picked up
$600,000 in donations.
He also met privately with five of the six students injured in last
week's school shooting in Conyers, Ga., as well as family
members of the shooting victims.
Places like The Salvation Army, Christ House, and Christian
Women's Job Corps have some of the most effective programs
dealing with addiction, mental illness and domestic violence,
Gore said.
``To the workers in these organizations, that client is not a
number but a child of God,'' he said.
``We should explore carefully tailored partnerships with our faith
community, so we can use the approaches that are working
best.''
His plan would essentially expand conservative Republican Sen.
John Ashcroft's ``charitable choice'' provision of the 1996 welfare
overhaul that allowed faith-based groups to operate
welfare-to-work programs with government money.
Gore was short on specifics -- communications director Laura
Quinn called it a ``broad idea'' at this point -- but he insisted no
government-funded program would ``promote a religious view or
try to force anyone to receive religion'' and secular alternatives
would be available.
But Terri Schroeder, a First Amendment legal analyst at The
American Civil Liberties Union, said Gore's plan raised troubling
questions.
``How can a religious institution counsel without proselytizing?
How can you provide juvenile services without some level of
coercion? How can we have any accountability for how our
money is spent given the traditional separation of church and
state,'' Schroeder asked.
For Gore, the political benefit of religious talk is twofold: It sneaks
some ground out from under Republicans who have long
dominated the morals debate; and, less overtly, may serve to
disassociate him from President Clinton's personal scandals.
``It's taken too long for candidate Gore to join Republicans in
recognizing the rightful role of churches and religious
organizations in solving society's most challenging and pressing
problems,'' Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican National
Committee said. At the same time, he welcomed Gore's
``change of heart.''
A senior policy adviser to Gore, Elaine Kamarck, told The
Boston Globe over the weekend, ``The Democratic Party is
going to take back God this time.''
Aboard Air Force Two on Monday, vice presidential spokesman
Chris Lehane shook his head at Kamarck's candor. He refused
to speak to the politics of Gore's new emphasis on spirituality
and rejected the notion that Republicans have cornered the
market on religious voters.
``I don't think God is partisan,'' Lehane said.
Beyond current-day political expedience, Gore can lay claim to a
religious and spiritual grounding. As a young man returning from
Vietnam, he studied at Vanderbilt's divinity school. And in his
1991 book, ``Earth in the Balance,'' Gore wrote of his ``deeply
personal'' relationship with Christ.
Still, said Lehane, the vice president has never been someone to
``wear God on his sleeve'' and doesn't plan to now that he's
running for president.
On other questions of church and state, the vice president
opposes organized prayer in public schools during the school
day, and he opposes using public dollars to send children to
parochial schools, Lehane said.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
