Kelley wrote:
>i can't stand the idea that Shrub wants to appoint a Secretary of
>Faith-Based Programs in order to dole out monies for 'charity' work.
>and yet, i see no reason why the left ought not use this against the
>kind of nonsense pumped out by compassionate conservativism.
>
>take the money and run with it and --voila!--with the right
>progressive religious organizations you have a space where you can
>bring people together on a regular basis, a place where people can
>be educated as to the conditions of the world around them, a place
>where they can build community with others and marshal the
>organizational resources that can be used to advance still other
>causes.
The religious themselves, however, don't think that they should be
asked to do the work that the government should be doing, _because
they can't_:
***** The New York Times
July 2, 2000, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 6; Page 22; Column 1; Magazine Desk
HEADLINE: The Vanity of Volunteerism
BYLINE: By Sara Mosle; Sara Mosle, a former editor for the magazine,
is writing a book about a school explosion during the East Texas oil
boom in the 1930's.
...For all the talk about children in this country, we do very little
for them -- or their families. What my kids really need, I can't
give them: better housing, less crowded schools, access to affordable
health care, a less punitive juvenile justice system, and for their
parents, better child care (so they can work without leaving their
kids unattended) and a living wage. Even the churches, in whose name
the claims of volunteering are often made, have begun to protest. In
February, a surprisingly large and diverse coalition of religious
leaders -- from the conservative National Association of Evangelicals
to the liberal United States Catholic Conference -- came together in
Washington to inaugurate a new group, Call to Renewal, to insist that
government do more to fight poverty. "Since welfare reform passed,
all these problems have been dumped at churches' feet," says the Rev.
Jim Wallis, one of the organization's founders. "But we can't do it
all."
As it stands, the government isn't even doing what it said it would.
One reason that hunger and homelessness are on the rise is that many
states, including New York, have prevented even the deserving working
poor from receiving basic benefits, like health care and food stamps,
to which they are legally entitled. Nationwide, a million people
have lost Medicaid benefits and are now uninsured. As a result, many
working families are worse off financially than they were under the
old system.... *****
Religious lefties are the least likely to think that replacing
government social programs by state-supported religious charities is
good for the poor.
***** The New York Times
October 17, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 22; Column 1; National Desk
HEADLINE: Religious Groups Slow to Accept Government Money to Help the Poor
BYLINE: By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS
With the government stepping out of the welfare business, Congress
turned to churches and other religious organizations to step in and
apply for government money to start programs to help poor people make
the transition from welfare to work.
But four years after Congress loosened the rules to make it easier
for religious groups to apply for federal financing for social
services, the initiative has gotten off to a slower start than many
advocates have expected.
Many church leaders said they were reluctant or simply unprepared to
submit to the rigorous guidelines required to become government
contractors. Others said they were unaware of the initiative. And
few states have become actively involved in the effort.
"Politicians or anyone else who thinks that there were thousands of
faith-based organizations raring to go, that doesn't make a whole lot
of sense to me. I don't see that," said Stanley W. Carlson-Thies, a
senior fellow at the Center for Public Justice, a nonprofit Christian
policy research group in Annapolis, Md., that has promoted church
programs....
When Congress passed the Welfare Reform Act in 1996, it included a
provision known as charitable choice, which signaled a shift in the
relationship between the government and religious groups.
Charitable choice allowed religious groups to receive government
money for social programs without requiring them to censor their
religious expression or give up their religious identity.
The money can be used for job search and job training programs, high
school equivalency courses, English-as-a-second-language classes,
nutrition and food-budgeting advice, drug-treatment and health
clinics, maternity homes for unwed mothers and abstinence education.
Critics warned that it amounted to using tax dollars to pay for
proselytizing, and partly because of concerns about violating the
separation of church and state, states have been slow to adopt the
program.
Both Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and Vice President Al Gore have
said that if elected president, they would push to expand the
approach.
A report released last month by the Center for Public Justice found
that 37 states had not implemented charitable choice rules that
require removing the restrictions on financing for religious groups.
Awarding grades for each state's performance, the center gave its
only A-plus to Texas for aggressively promoting charitable choice and
directing state agencies to appoint liaisons to religious groups. It
gave A's to Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin; B's to Arizona, Illinois,
Pennsylvania and Virginia; C's to Arkansas, California, Michigan and
North Carolina; and F's to other states, except Alabama, which did
not supply information.
Texas is also the only state where a program financed under
charitable choice has been accused of crossing the line into
religious indoctrination, said Marc D. Stern, a lawyer for the
American Jewish Congress, which promotes separation of church and
state.
In a lawsuit, the Congress and the Texas Civil Rights Project have
accused the Jobs Partnership of Washington County, Tex., which
received $8,000 from the State of Texas, of buying Bibles for
students, requiring them to study Scripture and teaching them, in its
own words, "to find employment through a relationship with Jesus
Christ."
The lawsuit, set for trial next year in Federal District Court in
Austin, Tex., claimed that a third of the program's students said on
evaluation forms that they had been pressured to join a church or
change their beliefs.... *****
So, on one hand, it the government regulates the operations of
state-supported religious charities too much, even conservative
Christians don't want to participate; on the other hand, if the
regulations are lax as in Texas, the problem of the infringement of
the freedom of conscience looms large.
Yoshie
