President Bush Wrong on Charitable Choice

President Bush, in his State of the Union address, argued forcefully for continuing charitable choice, his faith-based initiative, which sanctions the funneling of taxpayer dollars directly to houses of worship providing social services.

AJC cares deeply about both religious liberty and the provision of effective social services. But we have long raised concerns about the advisability and constitutionality of charitable choice. By allowing government funds to flow to pervasively religious entities, charitable choice unwisely opens the door to government advancement of religion, support for employment discrimination, and a general weakening of religious autonomy.

During the last few years various Cabinet departments and agencies continued to implement administratively key elements of the president’s faith-based initiative. Similarly, congressional supporters of the President’s program sought to include charitable choice provisions in a number of legislative proposals authorizing federally-funded social services programs, or to strip out of the law current provisions deemed inconsistent with charitable choice. In particular, some in Congress tried to eliminate bars against employment discrimination on the basis of religion insofar as those restrictions apply to religious organizations. AJC has argued that it is inappropriate to allow religious institutions to discriminate in the hiring of employees whose salaries are paid with public dollars.

We should remember that the history of social services in this country actually began with religious institutions. The partnership between religiously-affiliated institutions and government in the provision of those services is a venerable one. Charitable choice, however, has expanded this to permit houses of worship, and other pervasively religious institutions, to receive taxpayer dollars for the provision of social services.

And, charitable choice poses an additional concern: When institutions with a thoroughly religious environment provide social services, recipients of those services may feel compelled to take part in religious activities as a price of receiving help. It is important to emphasize that the recipients of services provided under charitable choice are often in extremis. They may not clearly understand their options and their rights, and, even if they do understand, they may be reluctant to take steps that might delay or obstruct their receipt of badly needed services. All this opens the door to publicly funded programs in which recipients of social services may be coerced to take part in religious activities as a price of receiving help.

The faith-based initiative also presents the potential for fostering divisiveness among various faith groups as they compete for public funding, a potential that will only multiply as government officials charged with determining with whom to contract are placed in the role of deciding which religion “works better” in dealing with the social problems public programs are addressing.

Finally, it is hard to see how the faith-based initiative will not ultimately lead to an undermining of the very mission of religious institutions. With government dollars comes government oversight. Faith-based organizations inevitably will be held accountable for the use of the dollars they receive just as any other recipient of government funds would be. While the President clearly feels otherwise, this intrusion into the affairs of churches and other pervasively religious organizations is exactly the type of entanglement of religion and state against which the Constitution guards.

Jeffrey Sinensky is director of AJC’s Domestic Policy Department.