Forward or Backward for Equal Treatment: Bush and Kerry on Social Policy Reform

by Stanley Carlson-Thies and Stephen Lazarus

Communities across America are now beginning to witness the impact of the Bush Administration's effort to end discrimination against faith-based organizations. Local programs once routinely dismissed as "too religious" or "pervasively sectarian" are today being welcomed to a seat at the table when government seeks partners to help provide publicly funded social services such as job training or after-school programs in communities of need. Christian and other faith-based programs are no longer asked to first abandon their religious character or mission as a condition for receiving public funds. Policy reforms such as Charitable Choice, enacted first in 1996, are changing the culture both inside and outside of government. Families receiving welfare benefits now have greater choice in services, including faith-based options, when seeking help. Government officials are now guided by new regulations that affirm the important principle of equal treatment for all faith communities and for those who make no claim of faith in public life.

What impact will Election 2004 have on these positive developments in social policy? Are today's equal-treatment reforms built on shifting political sands? What are the prospects for these policy reforms under a Kerry administration or a second Bush administration?

Recent History

A quick historical review can help answer these questions. The seeds of what is now called the faith-based initiative took root long before the Bush administration. A string of Supreme Court decisions over the last two decades has gradually undermined the "strict separationist" interpretation of the First Amendment that has been used for half a century to deny equal public treatment to faith-based organizations. In the streets, efforts by African-American ministers like Rev. Eugene Rivers in Boston and Rev. Herb Lusk in Philadelphia have attracted media and government attention as they have worked successfully with local authorities to fight gang violence and weed out crime and drugs from local neighborhoods.

In Washington, President Bill Clinton and Congress enacted Charitable Choice into law on four separate occasions, beginning with welfare reform in 1996. Clinton's vice-president, Al Gore, endorsed Charitable Choice in campaign 2000 as a "carefully tailored" policy to meet social needs in America. As part of his Faith-Based and Community Initiative, President Bush has since expanded Charitable Choice principles across a wide range of government programs to level the playing field for faith-based and smaller grassroots organizations. By using his executive authority to issue new regulations, the Bush administration's faith-based initiative is leaving its mark by requiring state and local officials to update their policies and practices to conform to new standards of equal treatment for social-service organizations regardless of their confessional basis. A new framework is slowly beginning to take hold.

The Kerry Campaign

Support for faith-based initiatives has not been confined to one political party. In a major speech in July to leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, John Kerry struck a chord not unlike that of Al Gore: "I know there are some who say the First Amendment means faith-based organizations can't help government. I think they are wrong. I want to offer support for your efforts, including financial support, in a way that supports our Constitution and civil rights laws and values the role of faith in inspiring countless acts of justice and mercy across our land."

The Kerry campaign later released a position statement pledging strong support for faith-based initiatives, announcing the candidate's intent to ensure that faith-based organizations can compete for funds, and promising, if elected, to launch a technical assistance and training program to assist faith-based and grassroots organizations. However, close observers of the politics of faith-based initiatives are not unanimously cheering Kerry's announcement. Reading between the lines, there is also a troubling note or two in Kerry's carefully chosen words of support.

The Kerry campaign's position stresses that its version of the faith-based initiative will "respect the line between religion and government," and "re-craft the [Bush administration's] Executive Order on Faith-Based Initiatives to ensure that it encompasses all constitutional and civil rights considerations . . . ." Exactly what this means is never made clear, nor has the Kerry campaign provided any further details. However, given recent congressional debates in which Democrats have opposed specific aspects of the president's plan, the campaign may be signaling its intent to restrict the religious expression of faith-based organizations and take away their existing freedom to use religious criteria in hiring staff members to run their programs. To many organizations, such changes would represent a seriously misguided attempt to remove the "faith" from the faith-based initiative and retreat to the old secularist approach that discriminates against religious organizations in public social policy.

And civil rights? That has been the main line of attack by Democrats against the faith-based initiative since Bush elevated it to a major domestic policy issue. To block passage of congressional bills—HR 7 and the CARE Act in particular—Democrats charged that the bills would promote discrimination by granting to a faith-based organization the freedom to hire only staff who are committed to the organization's faith-guided mission. Of course, that freedom was part of Charitable Choice, which John Kerry supported before Bush came along. That freedom is also protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a basic civil right for religious organizations. Most federal social-service programs don't require faith-based organizations to give up that right in order to partner with the government when serving the needy. Opponents of the faith-based initiative refuse to affirm this right that belongs to faith-based organizations even though they would not dream of telling a secular group like Planned Parenthood that it must hire staff without screening out pro-lifers or telling politicians they must not discriminate on the basis of political ideology when selecting their staffs.

Just what a Kerry administration would do in this regard may depend on the advisors he chooses, and on how much he responds to his party's "base"--much of which seems quite hostile to the faith-based initiative. If elected, Kerry should build positively on the principle of equal treatment for people of all faiths and no faith, and promote policies that safeguard the distinct religious missions of those organizations that choose to collaborate with government programs.

The Bush Approach

The Bush administration has been far more active in promoting reforms to create a level playing field for faith-based and community organizations than one would ever know from the media coverage. The administration established a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiative and ten centers in government agencies tasked with the responsibility to remove barriers faced by faith-based and community organizations. The administration followed through on its promise to overcome biases against programs run by "Methodists, Muslims, and Mormons." Moreover, federal agencies have embarked on outreach and technical assistance programs for organizations new to the experience of partnering with government.

While pledging to continue his support for faith-based organizations, President Bush has not yet revealed specific priorities for a second term. The reforms of the past four years are beginning to create equal opportunity, yet much remains to be done. Many state and local governments are reluctant to enact their own reforms or even to follow the new federal rules. Technical assistance offered through the federal Compassion Capital Fund still reaches only a small percentage of organizations seeking help nationwide. Many evangelical Christian organizations remain suspicious and undereducated about even the basics of the initiative.

The challenge for a second Bush administration is for the president to build on equal treatment and move to truly innovative social policy. Government needs to do a better job of tapping into the "power cells" of civil society in poor neighborhoods, that is, into organizations that help heal the drug addicted, house the homeless, repair broken marriages, and strengthen a community's resistance to crime and other social pathologies. The grassroots organizations that render these kinds of service don't always fit neatly into federal program categories or connect easily with large government bureaucracies, yet research suggests they serve as powerful resources helping to strengthen the fabric of society.

Forward Not Backward

A future administration must pay close attention to the inescapable religious freedom issues at stake in faith-based initiative. Additional steps should be taken to recognize and protect the legal right of faith-based organizations to staff and operate their programs in accordance with their religious convictions when they accept government's invitation to help out and serve the public. Equal treatment of social-service organizations in the future will depend on political leadership, on the favorable support of politicians, parties, and the people, and on a consistent interpretation of the First Amendment along these lines by the Supreme Court.

The transition out of an era of strict separationism towards a new framework is a slow, gradual process. But make no mistake. Critical issues are at stake in this election: will faith-based organizations receive equal treatment or only welcoming words and the erosion of their religious freedom? Will new appointments to the Supreme Court push forward a new paradigm for religious pluralism in public life or will they try to return to strict separationism? Pluralism and religious liberty for citizens as well as social-service organizations will only be secured by moving forward and not backward.

Stanley Carlson-Thies is director of social policy studies, and Stephen Lazarus is senior policy associate, at the Center for Public Justice.