Obama’s Faith Based Initiative Seems Fair to Me
July 1, 2008
I’ve always been a big proponent of the separation of church and state — but I’ve never had a huge problem with the idea of a faith-based initiative. For a number of reasons, I don’t see government as a natural solution for many social problems. Oftentimes, poverty and suffering are most directly alleviated by groups that are more closely knit with the communities they serve. In our society, those groups are often religious.
For a number of reasons — many of which are well outlined outlined in David Kuo’s thought-provoking Tempting Faith and in Michelle Goldberg’s chilling Kingdom Coming — President Bush’s take on government-church partnerships in the interest of alleviating real suffering was a non-starter. In a nutshell, the faith-based initiative under Bush was under-resourced and ineffective. In addition, the office discriminated in favor of Christian charities, and organizations that received government money were allowed to hire and fire based on religion, sexual orientation, and other protected factors.
But I’ve always thought that with proper guidelines in place — no proselytizing, no discrimination in hiring, and allocation of funds based on effectiveness rather than religious denomination — a faith-based initiative would be an effective strategy for helping the poor. It looks as though Senator Obama — who after all, once taught Constitutional law — has thought the issue through and is not afraid to propose radical solutions to radical problems.
It’s easy to be a high-minded idealist about secularism when your stomach and checking account are full, but what about for those who are desperate? Our society should rush aid to those who need it most in whatever form will get it to them most expediently. If that happens to be through a religious charity that’s fine by me, just as long as they obey the rules.
i agree. i think private charities are more effective and efficient than government programs. however, you are still going to run into issues telling private charities how to spend their privately-raised money. of course, if they take government money then i think by all means they should be playing by government rules. how will it be determined how a charity can operate if it has mixed amounts of private and government funding? what if secular intiatives paid for by the government run counter to the organizations principles? how will those issues be resolved? who will be held accountable to whom?
hopefully there can be a compromise between the two so that those private charities can continue to operate somewhat independently without being in the government’s pocket–which has the potential to turn it into a micro-government bureaucracy, which i think defeats the efficacy that characterizes various private charities in the first place. i’d be interested to know specifically what obama proposes in regards to the above questions. moreover, i wonder what new bureaucracy and costs will be incurred to create a system of oversight and discipline for the use of government dollars.
Deb: Until the Bush administration came along, there was a requirement that religious charities set up secular branches that would receive Federal funding. Private dollars could also be allocated to either the secular or religious branches of the organization. No public funding could be used to proselytize or to support an arm of the organization that discriminated in hiring.
Under Bush, that divide got eroded. It’s my hope that an Obama administration would resurrect that wall.
Yes, it creates a necessary evil in that charities have an additional legal hoop to jump through — but the Constitution demands that it be there.
[...] pretty annoyed with Barack Obama right now. His current plan to expand Faith-Biased initiatives, to me, shows a lack of seriousness about balancing the budget. I’m all for helping the poor, [...]