Tag Archives: Topic: Faith Based Initiative

Religion Clause: The Coalition Against Religious Discrimination (CARD) is a group of over 50 religious, civil rights and public policy organizations that has been encouraging the Obama administration to require all recipients of federal grants and contracts to observe a strict non-discrimination policy in hiring for positions funded with federal dollars.

Red County: What CARD wants is for Christian faith-based groups to be forced to hire atheists, should they apply, and Catholic or Orthodox Jewish groups to be forced to hire Muslims, Hindus, or Wicca Priestesses should they apply. CARD’s letter, and the request it makes of the President, is akin to the same God-hating logic we’ve seen groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State leverage inasmuch as CARD’s contention is that once a faith-based organization accepts federal money, they have to cash in their religious freedom.

Byron Johnson at Public Discourse: n sum, considering costs and benefits purely from an economic perspective, we can no longer afford to overlook faith-based approaches to crime reduction. Much can be achieved if we can overcome the last acceptable prejudices that continue to hinder building the partnerships and networks of support, both sacred and secular, needed to address successfully a number of our current crime-related problems.

Catholic League: Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains why he is opposed to funding faith-based programs under President Obama . . .

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: In 2002, President George W. Bush rolled back these protections by issuing a new order that allows religious organizations that receive government contracts to discriminate in hiring based on religion.

The Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) is currently debating whether to re-interpret federal law so as to allow discrimination, when awarding federal grants, against faith-based organizations who engage in such religious hiring preferences. The outcome of this debate will affect the ability of faith-based providers who engage in religious hiring preferences to compete with secular and other faith-based organizations for federal social service grants.

LifeNews: “In what one pro-life advocate says is a kickback for CHA, President Barack Obama appointed one of its legal leaders to a spot as a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Yesterday President Obama announced his intent to appoint twelve individuals to President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Apparently this groups replaces 15 members whose one-year terms are expiring.”

USCCB: “In a letter to Congress, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), outlined the ‘principles and priorities that will guide the public policy efforts’ of the Bishops’ Conference during the new legislature. The letter was mailed to all members of Congress on January 14.”

The Jewish Week: “Almost two years into the administration of President Barack Obama the faith based initiatives created by his predecessor are mostly still in place, and groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State are howling mad. But the reaction from Jewish groups has been muted, which leads to an intriguing question: is the decades-old church-state focus of Jewish “defense” organizations getting blurrier?”

Tiffany Stanley writing at The New Republic: “[W]hen Obama took office, the Democrats’ faith outreach began to fall by the wayside. Several of those who had led the religious aspects of the Obama campaign landed in the OFBNP, which is legally barred from electoral politics, and thus faith-based political outreach . . . At the same time, the national party began to strip down its religious outreach programs . . . Current DNC Chairman (and former missionary) Tim Kaine has made vague statements denying that he would allow faith outreach to falter, but evidence of the DNC’s clear commitment to faith-based coordination is hard to come by.”

Jennifer Rubin comments at The Washington Post: “You have to imagine that value voters lack core convictions — an obvious bit of cognative dissonance — to miss why it is that religious voters disapprove of the Democrats these days. It’s the agenda.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Sherman v. State of Illinois, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 131080 (Dec. 10, 2010), an Illinois federal magistrate judge concluded that activist Robert Sherman lacks standing to bring an Establishment Clause challenge to a $20,000 renovation grant for Bald Knob Cross.”

Christian Post: “Partnerships between the Washington, D.C., faith community and the city government, mired by scandals and neglect, will be restored in the New Year, Mayor-elect Vincent Gray promises.”

Politico: “But the stimulus is also the largest-scale embodiment of what was, not long ago, a conservative priority: directing tax dollars to “faith-based initiatives,” as President George W. Bush called them.”

Religion Clause: “On Tuesday, over 80 religious leaders and Obama administration officials gathered at the White House to receive a report from the newly formed Global Initiative for Faith, Health and Development.”

CitizenLink has audio.

The Oklahoman (RNS): “A day after ordering a host of changes to the White House’s faith-based office, President Obama is facing mounting criticism for keeping in place Bush-era policies that allow faith-based social service providers to hire and fire based on religion . . . At issue is whether religious groups that receive federal grants can hire and fire employees based on religious affiliation. The Bush administration supported that policy, but Obama campaigned against it. The White House said such questions will be handled on a case-by-case basis by the Justice Department.”

“Clarifies the principle that organizations engaging in explicitly religious activity must perform these activities outside of and separately in time and location from programs supported with Federal financial assistance, and that participation in any explicit religious activity must be voluntary”

Institution Religious Freedom Alliance: “On Nov. 18th the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the House Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing on ‘Faith-Based Initiatives: Recommendations of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Community Partnerships and Other Current Issues.’ The hearing begins at 10:30 am Eastern. Live video should be available at the committee website.”

Marci A. Hamilton writing at Patheos: “We face high unemployment, gigantic government overruns, and serious needs among citizens for meaningful and strong social services. If the federal government is going to subsidize social services, it has the obligation to demand the highest quality. And anyone working with those funds should have to be chosen based on credentials and experience, not religious identity. Any argument for a ‘bye’ just because a group is religious is just bad public policy.”

Joseph Knippenberg responds at First Things / First Thoughts: “There are at least four issues here that require more nuance than Professor Hamilton . . . provides. First, the conflict isn’t always between religious affiliation and professional credentials. Most faith-based social service organizations require some credential other than or in addition to faithful adherence to the organization’s mission.”

Baptist Press: “‘The government — and especially those who lead the faith-based initiative — ought to do everything they can to avoid the appearance and reality of politicizing the initiative,’ said Stanley Carlson-Thies, a former staff member with President Bush’s faith-based office.”

Christian Post: “It has been nearly seven months since the White House’s faith-based advisers concluded their work with the release of a report of recommendations. But no new advisory council members have been named and the critical question surrounding the reformation of the faith-based office has yet been resolved.”

Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives for President George W. Bush from 2002-2006, writing in the Wall Street Journal, “Pastors For ObamaCare?” [full text via Google News]: “[O]n Tuesday President Obama and his director of faith-based initiatives convened exactly such a meeting to try to control political damage from the unpopular health-care law . . . Tuesday’s call is no small disappointment to those of us who thought Mr. Obama deserved credit for keeping the faith-based initiatives office at the White House at a time when many fellow Democrats wanted him to put it in the Smithsonian.”

Michelle Boorstein writing at The Washington Post / On Faith: “I’ve been requesting access to even a few of these offices for more than six months, but am getting nowhere with the White House. And the people who run the offices aren’t allowed to say three words to a reporter.”

Religion Clause: “On June 18, thirty national organizations comprising the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination, sent a letter (full text) to the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee urging it to hold hearings on the current status of the Faith-Based Initiative.”

Religion and Ethics Newsweekly: “It’s graduation time at the Helping Up Mission, a nondenominational Christian ministry for poor and homeless men in Baltimore. On this day, several men are being recognized for reaching new stages of success in their recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Helping Up believes that spirituality plays a key role in the recovery process, and it wants those who work there to reflect its values. The ministry relies largely on private donations, but it has received some public funding as well, and that raises a difficult question: If the mission takes government money, should it still be allowed to only hire people who share its religious beliefs?”

AP: “The top officer for FEMA said one of the agency’s videographers was ‘absolutely wrong’ to ask Mississippi church volunteers not to wear religious T-shirts for a video about tornado cleanup . . . “He said, ‘We would like to ask you to change your shirt because we don’t want anything faith-based,’” Lott said Tuesday. Lott said she asked him why he didn’t want to feature faith groups.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The Obama administration has so far not announced an official position on whether it would continue the Bush Administration policy that allowed social-service groups receiving federal faith-based funding to apply religious criteria in hiring . . . ”

Wall Street Journal: “As an aide to President Bill Clinton, Elena Kagan appeared to favor letting stand a measure providing for new funding to religious groups, despite some constitutional objections from the Justice Department.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Council for Secular Humanism, Inc. v. McNeil, (FL App., April 27, 2010), a Florida appellate court in an Establishment Clause case, by a 7-7 vote, denied a motion for en banc review of a decision by a 3-judge panel. However the 3 judges did file an amended panel decision and certified to the state Supreme Court as a matter of great public importance the question of whether the ‘no aid’ provision in Florida’s constitution prohibits the state from contracting with religious organizations for the provision of faith based transitional housing for inmates . . . ”

ADF Attorney Gregory S. Baylor writing at speakupmovement.org: “The better solution would simply be not to have constitutional provisions that specially discriminate against religious schools in the funding context. It makes constitutional sense to deprive the government of the power to preferentially fund a particular religious school simply because it is religious, but it does not serve genuine religious freedom to categorically exclude religious schools from funding designed to serve legitimate governmental objectives — such as increasing the number of pharmacists in southeastern Kentucky (the purpose of the Kentucky General Assembly’s grant to the University of the Cumberlands).”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Wall of Separation: “The religious school subsidies were successfully challenged by the Fairness Alliance, the Jefferson County Teachers Association and two clergy. Forces defending the grant to UC included the Alliance Defense Fund and the Christian Legal Society.”

“the Kentucky Supreme Court held that a $10 million state appropriation for construction of a pharmacy school at a Baptist college violates the provision in Kentucky’s Constituiton that prohibits public funding of ‘any church, sectarian or denominational school’ . . . ”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “Americans United for Separation of Church and State today called on the Obama administration to investigate ten earmarks for religious schools and ministries that raise constitutional issues about inappropriate public funding of religion. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and three other cabinet officers, Americans United urged the administration to examine the congressional earmarks and block the funding unless appropriate legal safeguards can be put in place . . . ”

Mark Rahdert, Forks Taken and Roads Not Taken: Standing to Challenge Faith-Based Spending (March 19, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1577742

“In Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc., the Supreme Court denied jurisdiction on the ground that the plaintiffs, as taxpayers, lacked standing to attack the constitutionality of alleged efforts to secure preferential federal funding for religious charitable organizations. In doing so, the Court split three ways on the proper scope and application of Flast v. Cohen, a Warren Court decision which allows taxpayer suits to challenge governmental spending allegedly in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. While the Court did not overrule Flast, its decision casts substantial doubt over Flast’s future. This article explores the implications of Hein, both as a standing decision and as a harbinger of future Establishment Clause developments. After evaluating the theoretical limitations of existing standing jurisprudence, the article turns to reciprocity theory as a medium for explaining Flast’s deviation from Frothingham v. Mellon’s general rule against taxpayer standing. The article demonstrates that Flast is based upon the constitutionally non-reciprocal character of spending in aid of religion. It further demonstrates that Hein’s departure from Flast redefines the concept of constitutional injury in establishment cases, both by treating faith-based funding as reciprocal and thus indistinguishable from other sorts of spending, and by denying the existence of intangible or psychic injury when religious preference in the implementation of such funding allegedly occurs. As a consequence, Hein signals a major shift in Supreme Court thinking about the substantive scope of the Establishment Clause.”

ACLU: “On Monday, a federal district court in Massachusetts ruled that an ACLU challenge to the government’s use of taxpayer dollars to impose religious doctrine on victims of human trafficking may go forward. The decision is a victory for women’s health and for the basic constitutional principle that federal dollars cannot be used to favor one religious perspective over all others . . . USCCB prohibits, based on its religious beliefs, grantees from using any of the federal funds to provide or refer for contraceptive or abortion services, We brought a lawsuit . . . ”

Christian Post: “After a year of work, the 25 members of the first Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships presented a report that included more than 60 recommendations for six issues: economic recovery and domestic poverty, fatherhood and healthy families, environment and climate change, inter-religious cooperation, global poverty and development, and reform of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.”

Citizen Link: “President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships presented policy recommendations to him today – notably missing: Any mention of the life issue.”

Dallas Morning News: “For 14 years, Lake Highlands United Methodist Church has brought Sunday morning worship to elderly residents of Audelia Manor, a public housing apartment complex in northeast Dallas. But now the Dallas Housing Authority has ordered the church to stop, arguing that the services violate church-state separation required by the U.S. Constitution.”

Todd Starnes: “A group of elderly residents at a Dallas public housing project have been ordered by the government to shut down their church.”

Washington Post: “Time is almost up for the Washington Catholic Archdiocese to figure out how the church will balance the new city measure legalizing same-sex marriage and the church’s desire to keep its many social service partnerships with the city while not recognizing such couples as married.”

Religion Link: “After months of work, President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships is about to send him dozens of proposals on revamping the White House’s faith-based program. The proposals will also set priorities for the office and will renew debate — and media coverage — of this controversial initiative.”

David Waters writes at the Washington Post: “So now the Salvation Army has to sublimate its religious purpose to fulfill its religious purpose. Or does it? Aren’t there ways to ‘preach the gospel’ and ‘meet human needs’ without proselytizing? To act like Jesus rather than talk about him?”

Religion Clause Blog: “On Thursday, Joshua DuBois, Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships gave a speech (full text) at the Brookings Institute on the broad vision of the Office and its work over its first year . . . ”

Christian Post: “While trying to dismiss the image of a federal fund distributor passed down from the Bush administration, the current office is seeking to portray itself as a community organizer of sorts. DuBois says the office’s vision is to connect faith-based and neighborhood organizations to tackle specific community problems. In this sense, the office measures its success not on how much federal money goes into faith-based organizations, but on the impact of the partnerships between faith-based and neighborhood groups.”

ACLU: “In a settlement agreement announced today, New York City, Long Island and New York State government agencies have agreed to a system for monitoring The Salvation Army to ensure that it does not impose religion on recipients of its government-funded social services . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: “Last Thursday, the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships posted the votes by its Advisory Council on two contentious issues. The first is whether faith-based social service providers should be allowed to provide services in rooms that contain religious symbols . . . The second issue is whether the government should require houses of worship to form separate corporations to receive direct federal social service funds . . . ”

More than 20 left wing organizations have signed this letter posted on the Anti-Defamation League website. It begins: “On the one year anniversary of your Executive Order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the undersigned religious, education, civil rights, labor, and health organizations write to urge that you take additional actions to prevent government-funded religious discrimination and protect social service beneficiaries from unwelcome proselytizing . . . ”

Christian Post: “President Obama’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships will mark its first anniversary Friday, but it’s hard to determine whether the office has been successful or not.”

Stanley Carlson-Thies, Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, writing at Christianity Today: “If anything is a failure it isn’t the federal faith-based effort but rather the distorted interpretive scheme that regards ‘religion’ and ‘social services’ to be mutually exclusive, and thus assumes that greater involvement by pervasively sectarian organizations means hopped up participation by churches.”

“. . . one of the important debates on the phone conference was whether religious groups operating federally-funded programs out of their facilities need to cover up religious symbols during the times the funded services are being offered . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: “An interesting post at Call & Response blog yesterday by Duke University Prof. Mark Chaves, Director of the National Congregations Study, analyzes the actual impact of President George W. Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative on religious congregations . . . ”

Religion Clause Blog: “The Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal reports that the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday denied an en banc rehearing in Pedreira v. Kentucky Baptist Homes For Children, Inc.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In Council for Secular Humanism, Inc. v. McNeil, (FL Ct. App., Dec. 15, 2009), a Florida state appellate court held that plaintiffs stated a valid claim under the “no-aid” provision of Florida’s Constitution (Art. I, Sec. 3) when they challenged per diem payments by the state to two Christian ministries for prisoners placed in their faith-based substance abuse transitional housing programs . . . ”

How Appealing links to more coverage.

Religion Cluase Blog: Finally the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has a presence on the White House website.

Could Modern Faith-Based Prison Programs Have Survived Constitutional Scrutiny During Reconstruction?
Scott L. Tindle, 60 Ala. L. Rev. 1293 (2009)

“This Note will focus on the common understanding of the Establishment Clause during Reconstruction in the time surrounding the formation and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, I will try and discern if the modern version of faith-based prisons, currently being implemented throughout the country, would have been considered acceptable under the Establishment Clause at the time of the framing and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

New York Times editorial: “[President Obama] promised a vitally important change [to the faith-based initiative]: groups receiving federal money would no longer be allowed to hire employees on the basis of their religion . . . But Mr. Obama has not made good on the promise.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The Jewish Press reported yesterday that for the first time, some 14,000 young students from 50 yeshivas in New York City will be able to access tutoring services paid for by the No Child Left Behind Act’s Title I program.”

OneNewsNow: “The ACLU and numerous other organizations are asking the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder to withdraw a ruling allowing faith-based organizations that receive federal funds to hire people only from their own faith group.”

“Funding of private institutions or facilities based solely on their religious affiliation has never been prohibited under Kentucky law, which instead focuses on whether such appropriations serve a non-religious purpose, and in this case, they do.”

Contra Costa Times: “Responding to a demand that First Church of the Nazarene ban registered sex offenders or to stop receiving city money to host a youth facility there, the church’s pastor contended the ultimatum is an unconstitutional violation of his religious freedom.”

On Faith: “Dozens of major religious groups and denominations are urging Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. to renounce a Bush-era memo that allows faith-based charities that receive federal funding to discriminate in hiring. Should religious charities that receive federal grant money be allowed to discriminate in hiring?”

Religion Clause Blog: “Yesterday’s Minnesota Independent features an investigative article on state funding of Minnesota Teen Challenge’s faith-based drug treatment centers.”

Eric G. Andersen, Religion and Social Welfare in the United States: The Case of Charitable Choice (September 1, 2009). The Review of Faith & International Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2009; U Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-37 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1441506

“It briefly describes the faith based initiatives or ‘Charitable Choice’ experiment currently underway in the United States that is testing and shaping the relationship between religious organizations and the state. The experiment’s goal is to invite overtly religious groups to partner with the government in the delivery of social services under conditions that allow the groups to retain, and act in, their religious character, while preventing the imposition of religious belief or practice on the recipients of those services. Charitable Choice is controversial.”

ACLU: “The American Civil Liberties Union joined a broad coalition of religious, civil rights and health organizations today in signing a letter urging Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to withdraw an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion approving of religious discrimination in hiring by religious groups receiving federal funds to carry out federal programs . . . The coalition letter to Attorney General Eric Holder is available online at: www.aclu.org/religion/gen/41040leg20090917.html”

Religion Clause Blog: “In St. Louis (MO), some are arguing that a new downtown grocery store, Culinaria (owned by the Schunck’s grocery chain), should be subject to church-state separation requirements because more than half of its funding came from government sources.”

Washington Post: “Civil liberties advocates have pressed Obama to keep the promise he made in July 2008 when he told an audience in Zanesville, Ohio: ‘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.’”

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway writing in the Wall Street Journal: “Now that Mr. Bush is gone, however, no one seems particularly worried about the entanglement of the federal government with religious organizations . . . Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, was a vocal critic of Mr. Bush’s faith-based office. Now, under Mr. Obama, he serves on the advisory council’s task force to improve the functioning of the office. Explaining his turnaround, he said he doesn’t view Mr. Obama’s office as partisan—the way Mr. Bush’s was.”

Bringing Down the Establishment: Faith-Based and Community Initiative Funding, Christianity, and Same-Sex Equality
Anthony M. Lise, 12 N.Y. City L. Rev. 129 (2009)

“Christian ideology is deeply embedded in our culture. Some, such as former President George W. Bush and those who adhere to his conception of Christianity, celebrate the marriage of Christianity and the law; however, that union violates a fundamental principle of American law–that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion[.]‘ However, because Christianity has become so instrumental in shaping the law, it is often difficult to distinguish religious interests from secular interests, or interests that favor an establishment of religion from those that do not. The inability to make such a distinction has rendered permissible both government funding of faith-based organizations and legally sanctioned discrimination against homosexuals.”

US News: “Although the news media has paid it little mind, the administration has quietly transformed the office from the one that George W. Bush launched in 2001 . . . ‘We’re moving from a sole focus on leveling the playing field,’ says Joshua DuBois, the office’s executive director, ‘to forming partnerships with faith-based and community groups to help solve specific policy challenges.’”

ACLU: “A federal appeals court ruled today that a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State challenging government funding of a religious group youth home in Kentucky can go forward.”

Proponents of homosexual behavior and the ACLU attempt to prevent faith based funding of KBH . . .

Americans United for Separation of Church and State: “Americans United for Separation of Church and State today challenged Illinois state government’s plan to distribute millions of dollars in state funds to religious organizations.”

Kathleen Parker writing in the Washington Post:

When George W. Bush introduced the concept of a faith-based office . . . you’d have thought Bush was trying to install a caliphate. Indeed, most newspaper stories focused on the blurring of church and state.

By contrast, when Obama upgraded and renamed the program . . . Few, if any, headlines questioned whether Obama might be using his faith-based office to advance liberal policies, whereas Bush was under persistent fire for allegedly pushing (horrors) a pro-life agenda.

Parker references the recent Pew Study: Media Coverage of the Faith-Based Initiative in the First Six Months of 2001 and 2009

Religion Clause Blog: “The Corporation for National & Community Service, a federal agency, yesterday announced that it has issued a new report titled Volunteering in America 2009 . . . ”