Holy Government Handouts, Batman!

Rachel Joy Larris

July 20, 2006

So a new  GAO report  about Bush’s famous faith-based initiatives shows that the programs perform exactly as expected—it just hands bundles of cash to churches and doesn’t ask what they do with the money. This sort of reminds me of a scene from “The Simpsons” where Ned Flanders goes to feed the homeless singing a little tune:

Here comes sandwiches, here comes sandwiches/Right down Boozy Bum Lane/ Good ol' Ned's got cheese and bread/And a side order of shame.

This is sort of the problem with leaving what should be society’s secular duties—taking care of the less fortunate—and putting them solely into the hands of the church. You don’t know what they are giving out besides bread. Certainly churches can do missionary as well as charity work—just not on the government dime. Certain important lines tend to be crossed when the government just allows religious groups to run public-needs programs without oversight. Like, for example, in  prisoner counseling.

In 2001 when Bush started touting his plan to give money to faith-based groups, “a level-playing field ” was the mantra he chanted. The theory was that religious groups shouldn’t be “discriminated against” when they apply for grants. They would be treated just like every other group applying for money—except for when they would be treated differently, like when they are allowed to practice discriminatory hiring. (Bill Berkowitz  at Working for Change has a pretty good summary of the history of the program—including the many scandals in setting it up, like John DiIulio quitting and bad-mouthing the administration and the memo to the Salvation Army trying to entice their support). Bush's plan emphasized was that churches wouldn’t be using the money to proselytize; they just needed “extra” funds to continue the non-proselytizing work they do.

Except that, according to the GAO, because the federal government didn’t want to describe what “inherently religious activities” are proscribed, there’s been a lot of confusion as to what is, and isn’t, permitted by groups receiving federal funds.

While officials in all 26 [faith-based offices] that we visited told us that they understood that federal funds could not be used for inherently religious activities, 4 of the 13 [faith-based offices] that offered voluntary religious activities—such as prayer or worship—did not appear to understand the requirement to separate these activities in time or location from their program services funded with federal funds. For example, one official told us that she discusses religious issues while providing federally funded services if requested by a participant and no other participants object, and a few told us that they pray with beneficiaries during program time if requested by the beneficiary….

In addition, an official from another FBO said that he began each program session, which provided services to children, with a nonsectarian prayer that at times included a brief reading from the Bible.

Even if these examples by the GAO don’t sound particularly bad, the real problem is that no one is monitoring whether faith-based groups that receive funds are crossing the line between service and proselytizing. The GAO found that the groups applying for federal grants didn’t self-identify as “faith-based” and there wasn’t even a clear definition of what a “faith-based” group was.  Not to mention many states don’t even audit every faith-based group—because some aren’t receiving enough funds to warrant scrutiny.

However, many faith-based and community organizations may not be covered ... because they do not expend $500,000 or more in federal funds in a given year.

Another problem with the faith-based initiatives program is that the GAO doesn’t know is what the religions are of the groups applying for these grants. It would be interesting to see if they are primarily (or entirely) given out to Christian groups, or even evangelicals in particular. According to Esther Kaplan, in 2004 the then-director of the White House's office on faith-based and community iniatives, Jim Towey, admitted that " no direct federal grants from his program had gone to a non-Christian religious group " 

Without oversight, it's impossible to know whether religious favoritism is at play—but if so, it would imply that the very nature of the program is an perhaps unintentional endorsement of religion.