The Faith-Based Blitz

What a difference a few months make.

Last fall, a host of Jewish groups were sharply opposing various “charitable choice” plans favored by religious conservatives.

But with a Republican in the White House and an emerging bipartisan consensus on turning some of the nation’s welfare burden over to faith-based charities, some Jewish groups this week were grasping for something positive to say about the concept, while preparing to battle the details.

On Monday President George W. Bush unveiled the most ambitious faith-based initiative yet, which includes executive orders intended to make it easier for religious groups to get government money for everything from job counseling to drug rehabilitation without jumping through church-state hoops.

That pushed the fight over charitable choice into a “different phase,” requiring different tactics, according to Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a group that has energetically fought charitable-choice plans in the past.

“You have a coming together of the parties who are ready to find a way to implement this, so you have to choose your words differently,” Foxman said.

Core positions have not changed, Foxman said, but the political realities of the debate have.
The rollout of the administration’s faith-based package was handled with a deftness that surprised and disconcerted opponents.

On Monday, Bush issued executive orders designed to make it easier for religious groups to compete for federal dollars and ordered the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Justice Department to set up their own offices to do the same.

Bush also created a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and introduced its first director — University of Pennsylvania political science professor John J. Dilulio Jr, a Democrat regarded as a moderate by many Jewish leaders.

Former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith was widely expected to get the job, but he declined; instead, he will head up the Corporation for National Service, which will oversee the new White House office.

Bush also sent a legislative package to Congress designed to encourage charitable giving and begin the process of funneling more government money to religious service providers.

Ultimately, the price tag could exceed $10 billion, government sources say.

Most major Jewish groups that have battled a succession of charitable-choice proposals since 1996 responded with statements offering cautious praise for faith-based services while laying out their church-state red lines.

But privately, most Jewish leaders agreed that those red lines will be crossed the moment Congress takes up the Bush initiatives.

Marc Stern, legal director for the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress), said that his group will not be “uniformly hostile” to the president’s program. But he made it clear the AJCongress — which is suing Texas over a jobs program under that state’s charitable-choice law that mandates Bible readings — really wants less charitable choice, not more.

“Nobody objects to groups that are affiliated or nominally religious getting government money,” he said.

“The objection is to programs that are in content, outlook and reality religious, in which religion is inextricably part of the program, directs the program and is part of the message delivered by the program.”

Religious indoctrination is fine, Stern said, if it takes place “wholly at private expense. But that’s apparently what the president disagrees with.”

On the other hand, Orthodox groups, which have been among the strongest backers of charitable-choice plans, say the restrictions that Bush wants to overturn discriminate against religious service providers.
Abba Cohen, Washington director for Agudath Israel of America, said that current law requires religious groups to strip away every vestige of religious observance and belief from the services they provide, thereby rendering them less effective.

“Now groups have to ‘sanitize’ their programs; they have to spin them off to affiliated corporations or secularize them,” he said. “But part of the essence of the success of religious groups in addressing problems has been the religious character of the organizations. So you’re taking away one of the key elements that have made faith-based programs work in the past.”

Charitable-choice programs began to take off with provisions in the 1996 welfare reform law, Cohen said. But a real turning point came during the 2000 presidential election, when the concept of expanding access to federal money for religious groups was embraced by both major candidates.

Jewish organizations have been providing essential services using government money “for a long time,” said Nathan Diament, director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute for Public Affairs. “But we would clearly benefit from a system that allows our Jewish social service agencies to be more overtly Jewish. And society as a whole will benefit when religious agencies serving all segments of the population can express their religious values.”

But the United Jewish Communities (UJC), which pioneered extensive partnerships between government and faith-based programs, is adamantly opposed to charitable-choice provisions.

“We think the current system does work,” said Diana Aviv, UJC’s vice president for public policy. “In our case the partnership has been very successful over the years. We believe that those who want to use religious content as a way of helping people should do that, but not with government money. In our own community, we raise private dollars for them to do that.”

Other Jewish officials say that charitable-choice plans, by allowing services to be more overtly sectarian, will inevitably blur the line between religious functions like proselytization and basic services, and open the door to civil rights abuses.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the plan a prescription for “government-funded discrimination in employment and services.” Under the plan, an Orthodox soup kitchen that gets federal money could refuse to hire women, the group argued.

In fact, Jewish groups that oppose charitable choice will focus heavily on the discrimination argument as the Bush plan moves through Congress.

This week the ADL laid out a handful of priorities, including preventing religious discrimination in the hiring and firing of people who provide services in faith-based service organizations and making sure secular alternatives are available.

The ADL also urged Congress to “ensure the development of proper firewalls between government-funded services and the core religious activities of a religious organization, so that taxpayer dollars are not channeled into other religious activities of sectarian organizations.”

Other observers say this really means that many Jewish groups will oppose most of the details of the new initiative while praising its goals.

“What we’d really like is to go back to where we were before 1996, when there were pretty thick firewalls, and when religious groups had to set up separate entities to get government money,” said an official with a major Jewish group here. “But to be honest, it would be foolish to make that argument in today’s environment. Charitable choice is going to happen; the only sensible strategy for us is to find ways to limit the damage.”

But John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, gave the administration high marks for charting a moderate course through the charitable-choice rapids.

“If religious groups want to be of service to needy people, they should be happy with the Bush proposals,” he said, “But if they see this as part of evangelizing and proselytizing — and many of them do — they will be pretty disappointed.”