Obama's Faith-Based Charity Plan: The Controversy Over Government Support of Religious Initiatives

Barack Obama thinks faith-based initiatives are a good thing; he just doesn't think President Bush funded them well enough. Faith-based initiatives - government aid to religious groups doing charity work - has created significant controversy over the relationship between church and state. While some see Obama's statements as little more than political pandering, it has revived an important discussion about the different positions on government and religion.

Church and State Views on the Left

On this issue, it's not very simple to set up a left vs. right dichotomy. Traditionally, it's thought that liberals want a strong, clear separation between church and state, and conservatives want religion - particularly Christian - to have a strong role in government. On this issue, those simple categories don't work. There are those on the left who oppose Obama's plans, to be sure. Rev. Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, was disappointed: "This initiative has been a failure on all counts and ought to be shut down, not expanded." For many, this is just too close a relationship between the two.

For others on the left, however, this is welcome news. Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, of the left-leaning Christian political blog "God's Politics," thinks that the idea is neither "right" nor "left," but "simply a good idea." It gets religious folks on board with the sort of social justice vision embraced by many on the left.

Church and State Views on the Right

One would expect the right to be fully in support of faith-based initiatives. Indeed, many are, seeing the plan as a good move toward getting faith involved in politics. Others are skeptical. It's a misunderstanding that all "conservatives" want religious involvement in government; some believe that once the two begin to intermingle, government will begin interfering with religion.

This fear was revisited in Obama's recent discussion of faith-based initiatives, because he made the very simple, but jarring statement that for the relationship between church and state in faith-based initiatives to be constitutional, religious charities could "not discrimminate...against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion" (Peter Steinfels, "Obama Sets Off a Debate on Ties Between Religion and Government," New York Times, July 5, 2008). If that stipulation were enacted, the state is would be telling the church whom it can and cannot employ for charity work. And as the church's identity and belief system is so central to its charity work, that becomes highly problematic.

Summarizing the Problem: Who's Influencing Whom?

There are those on both the left and right who think faith-based initiatives are a good idea. There is little disagreement between the two. But there are also those on the left and right who are against it, and they are against it for very different reasons. The left-opposition fears too much religious influence on the government. The right-opposition fears too much government influence in the church.

Jul 13, 2008 7:56 PM

revgeorge :

Good article, Travis. Count me as one who's neither on the right nor left but who is both a libertarian & a pastor from what's characterized as a conservative denomination. And count me against faith based initiatives no matter who proposes them.

From the Christian point of view, the church should stay as far away from the state as possible, albeit while its members still live peacable & quiet lives as citizens. But the state that's giving you money one day is also the one that could be throwing you to the lions the next day. The church has never done well when it gets intermingled with the state.

And Obama's statement that "religious charities could "not discrimminate...against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion" is one, asinine & two, disengenious. One, it's discrimination on his part against religious views that contradict his, & two, don't for an instance think this would be applied fairly. A Pro-Abortion group is never going to be denied money because they refused to hire a Pro-Life person. I doubt very much Obama would support a KKK member's right to be hired by any Black organization, either.

From the libertarian side, the government should get out of the charity business completely. It has no constitutional mandate. The politicians can only get money to help out some people by stealing it through taxes from other people, which isn't actually charity. And then the government wastes most of the money it steals & very little actually makes it to anybody who really needs it. The fiasco of government aid responses after Hurricane Katrina wasn't an aberration; it was SOP for government agencies.

Private agencies do much better jobs with less money & are actually accountable to their donors, so hopefully most groups that actually want to accomplish something will reject any government money & its multiplicty of strings to begin with.