Last Tuesday, presidential candidate Barack Obama attempted to reclaim the partnership between government and faith-based agencies, which he no doubt witnessed in his days as a community organizer, but six little words ignited an explosion he may not have anticipated.
Peter Steinfels in the New York Times writes:
He was two-thirds of the way through his remarks when he inserted the six words with the potential to put his whole effort at risk. Speaking “as someone who used to teach constitutional law,” he spelled out “a few basic principles” to reassure listeners that such partnerships between religious groups and the government would not endanger the separation of church and state.
“First,” he said, “if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion.”
That little phrase between the dashes — “or against the people you hire” — ignited a political explosion. “Fraud,” declared Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. “What Obama wants,” Mr. Donohue said, is “to secularize the religious workplace.” In its newsletter, the conservative Family Research Council called Mr. Obama’s position “a body blow to religious groups that apply for federal funds.” No less heated reactions came from the other end of the political spectrum, where the Obama proposal was denounced not for that short phrase but for what liberals saw as an abandonment of their principles and part of a suspicious move toward the center.
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post writes:
In suggesting that the faith-based policy be mended but not ended, Obama starts with the right reforms. “There was a lot of political and partisan decision making in the office,” he told me. He wants his faith-based agency “working with everybody,” and clear measures, applied equally, to guarantee “high standards” in both secular and religious programs.
Under Bush, he said, “you took resources from some programs and gave them to others without clear criteria for why the funds were shifted.” Obama would emphasize using large groups such as Catholic Charities “to train smaller organizations that are doing good work” in the ways of applying for and administering government funds.
There is a cosmetic quality to some of the changes Obama proposes, including his desire to rename the office as the “Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” Still, his use of the word “partnerships” points in the right direction by stressing that support for religious groups can’t be an excuse for government backing out of its responsibilities.
Bush’s effort was plagued by a liberal-conservative battle over hiring discrimination within faith-based programs, particularly on the question of sexual orientation. Obama would keep the religious exemption from federal civil rights laws for congregations but apply them to specific programs sponsored by the congregations that accepted federal money. There is no federal law against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. But there are some local laws, and Obama says that religious groups taking federal funds would have to abide by these.
“I realize this is going to be a sensitive issue in some circumstances — in very narrow circumstances, I think,” Obama said.
Culture warriors who would prefer a fight rather than a consensus on how to do well by those who do good may be eager to battle on this narrow issue. But this would be a case of misplaced priorities. With his faith-based proposal, at least, Obama is living up to his promise to cut through partisanship and ideology.
Since everything in a campaign is seen through a political lens, Obama’s plan is being read as part of his effort to reach religious voters. Obama replies that he has a long history of working with religious organizations, which is true, but he makes no bones about trying to win new allies.
Read: NYT: Obama Sets Off a Debate on Ties Between Religion and Government.
See also WaPo: Obama’s faith-based reform.