BUSH'S FAITH-BASED PROGRAMS TO REMAINDavid Davenport
Sunday, July 6, 2008
One program many thought would not outlive the Bush presidency is his faith-based initiative. Seemingly fueled by his personal evangelical Christianity and enacted unilaterally by his first executive order as president, this has been a signature program of President Bush from the start, that is, allowing religious organizations to receive government funds to perform social services.
Imagine the surprise, then, when presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama announced that, as president, he would continue a faith-based initiatives program. Some on the right dismissed this as political posturing, an effort to appeal to regular churchgoing voters who turned out heavily for Bush, and who currently favor likely Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, 49 to 37 percent.
Others from
the left were dismayed that Obama would continue a policy they believe promotes government establishment of religion prohibited by the First Amendment. The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said, "This initiative has been a failure on all counts and ought to be shut down, not expanded."
In fact, Obama's support of faith-based programs reinforces that these programs are not merely short-term priorities of one president, but instead have become a new way of doing business.
The roots of faith-based initiatives can be traced back a decade earlier than Bush's executive order in 2001. President George H.W. Bush, building on Ronald Reagan's "devolution" of many social programs from Washington, D.C., to state and local governments, began his "thousand points of light" initiatives. Speaking of a "kinder, gentler" nation, Bush 41 used the bully pulpit of the presidency to recognize and encourage volunteer efforts, religious and otherwise, in local communities.
Next came President Bill Clinton's charitable choice initiatives. As part of welfare reform, job training and drug treatment programs, charitable choice allowed religious providers of these services to receive federal funding along with other nonreligious charities.
These charitable choice programs gave religious organizations a seat at the table of social service, at least in the specific areas covered by the legislation.
The Bush faith-based initiatives then broadened the involvement of faith-based charities in delivering social services. What had begun in three or four specific areas through charitable choice was expanded, with faith-based offices set up in 11 federal agencies to assist religious charities with government funding for their social work.
As in the charitable choice legislation, federal funding could be used only to provide services, not for the religious aspects of the nonprofit's work. But religious organizations now provide a vast array of government-funded services, from operating prisons (with lower recidivism rates) to dealing with gangs and providing shelter for the homeless.
Not well known but reported by the White House seventh-year report on the initiatives, is that,
by now, 35 states - 19 with governors who are Democrats and 16 who are Republicans - have adopted their own versions of faith-based initiatives, as have 70 municipal governments. As Obama points out, these religious organizations are generally local and closer to the need than the federal government, and this has led to some significant successes.
Although McCain has not yet spoken extensively on the topic, he has also supported faith-based initiatives, voting for them in the Senate and championing specific programs, such as charter schools.
McCain has said that he, too, would continue a faith-based initiatives program.
Of course, there is still plenty of disagreement about the details. Obama would not allow religious providers to discriminate in hiring based on their doctrines, a pill many of these groups could not swallow, and a policy neither Bush nor McCain would support.
But, in the end, it seems clear that
faith-based social services supported by government funding are here to stay. It is not just a Bush program, as many thought, but for nearly 20 years, through several presidents, and in most states and many cities,
it has quietly become part of the social service fabric.http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/05/INHM11JJET.DTL
