Media Transparency

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Bill Berkowitz
February 18, 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:

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:"