Faith-Based Initiatives: Overview.

Early in his first term, United States President George W. Bush established five organizations within cabinet-level departments in order to, as he put it, create a level playing-field for competing charities and remove what he saw as barriers to religious charities. Historically, because of the separation of church and state, faith-based non-profits were generally ineligible for federal funding. These Centers for Faith-Based & Community Initiatives were created in Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Education (ED), Labor (DOL), and Justice (DOJ) departments of the United States government, and were designed to support the outreach work performed by religious and community groups, particularly their work helping the poor, which Bush claimed was the most important domestic policy concern at the time.

Supporters of President Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiative believe that the philanthropic work performed by faith groups is hampered by official regulations and rules for acquiring funds. Bush asserted that the office is designed to give faith-based charities equal footing with secular charities, and denied that this gives faith-based charities an advantage. By making information about federal grants more readily available and easily understood, Bush claimed, organizations will be able to concentrate more on community outreach, and less on fund-raising. Further, proponents maintain that faith-based programs can be very effective for specific purposes. For instance, research has found that some faith-based prison programs are effective at reducing prison misconduct.

Critics of governmental support for faith-based initiatives believe that such support constitutes state endorsement of particular religions, thereby violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and breaking the “wall of separation” between church and state. Faith-based initiatives are also seen by many as a cover for Christian initiatives, since 98.3 percent of money granted to faith-based groups has gone to Christian groups. This, said critics, is contrary to the idea of a “level playing field.” More moderate critics do not question the objectives of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, but rather its effectiveness. Many feel that the power wielded by the office has corrupted what would otherwise be a noble organization, causing it to lose sight of its real objective.

Understanding the Discussion

Charitable Choice: A section of a 1996 welfare reform bill that allows religious charities the right to openly compete with secular charities for government funds. The clause does not allow money gained from this competition to be used for proselytizing or worshiping purposes, thus avoiding the implication that the government is funding religious practices. Charitable Choice does, however, allow organizations to display religious icons or to pray to a specific god in facilities that receive government funding.

Discretionary Grants: Monetary awards provided by the federal government, for which organizations must compete. Hence, they are also sometimes called “competitive grants.” Discretionary grants are restrictive in that the federal government has strict requirements for how the money is spent.

Establishment Clause: A section of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” In other words, the legislative branch of the government will refrain from making any laws dealing with religion. The practical result of this is that the United States, unlike many countries, has no state religion, and thus cannot coerce anyone to practice a particular religion. The Establishment Clause is usually cited by people who feel that a particular religion or religious organization is receiving special treatment or undue influence, and it often employed by those arguing against government funding of faith-based organizations.

Everson v. State Board: A 1947 Supreme Court case, in which the Court ruled that public funds could legally be used to reimburse parents for the cost of busing their children to religious schools, without violating the Establishment Clause. The ruling stated that the money was benefiting the students and their parents, rather than the schools, and thus did not constitute state support for the school nor the religion it taught. This was the first case in which judges interpreted the Establishment Clause as having objectives other than preventing a national religion. As a precedent, Everson v. State Board demonstrates that government support for people who belong to religious organizations, or for non-religious actions and activities carried out by religious organizations, does not amount to state support for that particular religion or religious group. In the faith-based initiatives debate, this precedent is used to illustrate that the funds granted to religious charities are used for non-religious purposes, and thus do not violate the Establishment Clause.

Faith-Based Organization: Any organization sponsored, supported, or organized by a religious organization or church, and operating under the same precepts as, and based on the teachings of, that religion or church.

Formula Grants: Monetary awards provided by the state and local governments, which have much looser restrictions than discretionary grants.

Free Exercise Clause: A section of the First Amendment, immediately following the Establishment Clause, which reads “or prohibiting the free expression thereof,” meaning that the government, in addition to refraining from religious sponsorship, also will refrain from religious prohibition. This clause is most often cited by people who feel they are being prevented from practicing their faith, and is often employed by people on the government's side in the current faith-based initiatives debate. The two clauses are often used to argue opposing points of view on issues of religion in the public square.

History

The Charitable Choice section of the 1996 welfare reform legislation was added just before the bill was passed. Most people were unaware of its existence because the last-minute addition meant there was no time for sufficient debate. In 1998 and 2001, Congress added Charitable Choice language to the Community Services Block Grant Program and to drug treatment and prevention programs, giving faith-based community service and outreach groups an advantage regarding funding. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's deciding opinion in a 2000 case that dealt with funding of secular programs in religious schools warned, however, that the government cannot grant funds that will be used for religious indoctrination.

One of President Bush's first acts after he took office in January 2001 was to establish, by executive order, the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, claiming that stopping the discrimination against faith-based initiatives, and, more importantly, against the services they provided to the poor, was the most important domestic policy issue. Bush, who had framed his presidential campaign with the concept of “compassionate conservatism,” promised to contribute $8 billion a year to support the poverty outreach programs carried out by faith-based groups. Once the office was established, however, its focus tended to be more on garnering political, rather than financial, support for faith-based initiatives.

To further bolster support for faith-based initiatives, the Bush administration issued a report in August 2001 which found that grassroots organizations, both religious and secular, received little funding relative to their impact and goals, and that faith-based organizations in particular often had trouble receiving funding where similar secular groups did not. The report underscored the federal government's responsibility to examine and assess the efficacy of groups applying for federal aid, and to distribute funds accordingly. The report further found that a few large charities received the bulk of federal funding, while smaller groups, particularly local groups, faced insurmountable obstacles to securing necessary funds.

According to the report, from 1995 to 2000 the Labor Department's Senior Community Service Employment Program awarded its top ten grants to the same eleven organizations, while the HHS's Consolidated Health Centers program awarded its top ten grants to the same twelve organizations. The Labor Department's Women's Bureau has awarded a grant to the same organization every year since 1984. Though these organizations are ostensibly winning the grants year after year because of their superior performance, the report found that there was little or no investigation into their actual performance, and the awards had become almost routine.

Critics, both within and outside the religious community, have claimed, however, that the office was not actually intended to help the poor, but rather to give power to religious groups and religious officials. Though many agreed with the stated aims of the office, they felt that its actions were contrary to its purpose, and directly violated the Establishment Clause.

Prior to the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, faith-based aid groups could not preach or conduct religious services in the same location where the aid was distributed, to avoid the possibility that people opting out of the religious service would also be denied aid. Now, the only restriction is that the two operations cannot take place simultaneously, which many see as a blurring of the line between the two endeavors, especially when beneficiaries are led in prayer immediately before and immediately following the distribution of aid. Critics suggested that aid groups should be required to inform recipients that attendance at the religious activities was not required to receive aid, but the Bush administration opted to merely encourage that this information be offered.

Faith-Based Initiatives Today

Following the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, the amount of government money given to faith-based groups increased by nearly 10 percent. Food for the Hungry, a faith-based aid group operating in Kenya, received $7 million in government funding in 2001; in 2005, the group received $20 million. Conversely, the secular organization known as CARE, which has provided aid throughout the world for more than sixty years and, in turn, provides funding to both secular and faith-based aid groups, lost its $50 million funding contract from the US government, after pressure from conservative Christians such as former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) who alleged that the organization does not respect the religious values of faith-based groups. Essentially, the government decided that CARE violated the Free Exercise Clause, since, according to Santorum, their aid gave precedence to secular groups.

Many critics of faith-based initiatives, and of religion in general, feel that the “faith” aspect of faith-based initiatives is, at best, irrelevant to the charitable work they provide, and that many secular organizations such as CARE and Doctors Without Borders offer comparable service to the community without reliance on a particular religion. Indeed, some critics find that the emphasis on religion hinders the community outreach efforts of these organizations; if they are losing funding because of their faith-based status, say critics, they should drop the religious aspect of their organization and focus instead on the charitable programs and outreach.

A former official of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives claimed in late 2006 that the administration's general view of faith-based organizations had been apathetic and that very little of the proposed funds had actually been distributed to groups providing aid to the needy. Since the office was created without congressional approval, many critics also questioned its constitutionality.

During his presidential campaign in 2008, Barack Obama pledged to expand faith-based initiatives, a move that angered some of his democratic colleagues. In early February 2009, just weeks after taking office, Obama renamed the office, establishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to work with both secular and faith-based nonprofits. He selected Joshua DuBois, a twenty-six-year-old Pentecostal minister, to head the office. Some of the same groups that had criticized the Bush administration—the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way—expressed displeasure with Obama's announcement, claiming that this allows participating organizations to discriminate in hiring and firing based on religion.

In 2010, Obama issued an executive order requiring that agencies suggest alternatives for aid recipients who objected to faith-based organizations, and publish lists of recipient faith-based organizations. Under Obama, the focus shifted away from payment to faith-based organizations for social services rendered to one of expanding organizations' access to and influence on policymakers. The HHS Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, for instance, organized meetings and created publications for faith leaders. By 2012, offices for faith-based initiatives existed in a dozen federal agencies, although funding levels for such initiatives had peaked between 2003 and 2006 and declined after 2007.

Under Obama's successor, Donald Trump, the government gave greater latitude to faith-based organizations with its emphasis on religious liberty. In 2018, Trump renamed the White House office the Office of Faith and Opportunity Initiative; revoked the referral requirement; instituted a complaint procedure for any federal noncompliance with certain "religious-liberty principles" outlined by Attorney General Jeff Sessions; and instructed agencies to facilitate the participation of faith-based organizations in government activities. While some religious organizations were pleased, civil libertarians and LGBT advocates feared the order would sanction widespread discrimination, particularly in employment.

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