DiIulio: No funds for proselytizers

Christian Century, March 21, 2001

The director of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives says religious social service programs should have equal opportunities for federal dollars, but those that proselytize cannot get direct government funding.

"The indivisibly conversion-centered program that cannot separate out and privately fired its inherently religious activities can still receive government support, but only via individual vouchers," John DiIulio told the National Association of Evangelicals March 7 in Dallas at the group's annual meeting.

DiIulio cited the example in current law of a parolee who receives a state approved list of drug treatment programs, including everything from secular programs to those that feature proselytism. "If the adult freely chooses to use his or her public voucher to receive services through a proselytizing program, ... then, provided that ample and equivalent secular alternatives are available to him or her, no constitutional or legal lines are crossed," he said.

DiIulio's speech, at the end of the convention attended by about 500 evangelical leaders, came two days after the NAE board approved a resolution affirming charitable choice, the provision in 1996 welfare reform legislation that fosters government funding of faith-based social services. But the NAE opposed governmental distinctions between programs of varied religious emphasis.

"We oppose drawing lines between religiously affiliated social service providers which may have essentially secular programs and `pervasively sectarian' providers that administer social welfare programs with an overt religious dimension," the NAE resolution reads.

Marvin Olasky, editor of the conservative Christian magazine World and a Bush adviser, said he objected to the apparent White House position that would decline direct funding of faith-based programs that include an overt religious component.

"Any sort of program where you discriminate against particular religious groups and you prefer other religious groups, that seems to me to be, as I understand the Constitution, ... unconstitutional," Olasky said in an interview after DiIulio's speech. "As long as there's a secular alternative, I don't think you run into church-state problems," he said, agreeing with DiIulio. However, he added, "The church-state problems occur when you prefer one religious point of view over another."

In general terms, the NAE supports charitable choice "not only as effective public policy, but as a sound expression of faithful Christian discipleship." At the NAE's closing banquet, Tim Goeglein, deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, read a letter from Bush commending the group for supporting charitable choice.

DiIulio said his office will not disburse grants but rather will work to make sure religious groups have equal access to federal programs. The office will release more detailed information on its interpretation of charitable choice in coming weeks, he said. The report would be "suitable for frontline Samaritans, average citizens and agitated lawyers," he added.

Because of controversy about church-state problems, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the lead sponsor of Bush's faith-based initiatives, said key Republicans want to wait several months to a year to act on the legislation, the Washington Post reported March 14.

Numerous critics--from liberals to conservatives--have opposed the plans of DiIulio's office. Church-state separationists worry that the efforts will commingle government and religion in unconstitutional ways. Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, who calls taxpayer funding of some nontraditional religious groups "intolerable," has offered a different approach.

Writing in the March 5 issue of USA Today, Robertson suggested the government should give dollar-for-dollar tax credits to donors who support government-approved, faith-based projects instead of giving money directly to faith-based organizations. "I think the idea of tax-crediting benefits, having as he called it an approved registry or list, does not actually solve the problems that he himself raises," said DiIulio, when asked about Robertson's proposals.

Among other public figures and religious leaders expressing their views on the faith-based programs were the following:

* Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Orthodox Jew and Democratic Party vice presidential nominee who had called for a larger place for faith in public life, enthusiastically endorsed Bush's plans. "Too often people assume faith-based initiatives inevitably mean entanglement, establishment and at the worst, theocracy," said Lieberman, speaking March i at the unveiling of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. "Of course, that need not be the case." To some observers' surprise, Lieberman said even controversial groups like the Nation of Islam should be given access to government funds: "If the Nation of Islam established a separate corporation, ... then I would say there is not a basis to deny them [funds]."

* Fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell, in remarks that several U.S. Islamic groups said should be retracted, asserted in an interview on Beliefnet.com that Islam is intolerant of other religions and that Muslims "should be out the door before they knock" and ask for federal funds for social programs. "I think there's dear evidence that the Islam religion, wherever it has majority control, ... doesn't even allow people of other faiths to express themselves or evangelize or to exist in their presence," Falwell said. "I think that when persons are clearly bigoted toward other persons in the human family, they should be disqualified from funds."