A New Round in the Contest Over Government and Religion

Second Quarter 2001 

by James W. Skillen

Judging by the reaction of many lobby groups and commentators, two of President George W. Bush's initiatives pose a threat to American social health and stability. The danger critics fear is government's support of the public expression of faith in God. Richard Cohen (Washington Post, March 6) likens government's partnership with faith-based social service efforts to the Buddha-statue smashings by Afghanistan's Taliban leaders. He speaks of "faith run amok," says we have "something of a state religion" in the United States, and mocks the 61 percent of Americans who say they "believe religion can solve almost any problem."

Thankfully, not all Americans share these convictions. In fact, a growing number believes that the poor deserve choices and that religious efforts may help heal inner-city wounds and inspire learning. Eugene Rivers, leader of Boston's Ten-Point Coalition, which ministers in the streets to those who have lost hope, says, "A generation of black males is drowning in its own blood. Today, some forty years after the beginning of the civil rights movement, younger black Americans are growing up unqualified, even for slavery. . . . By bringing together the best of secular and faith-based programs, we can build communities where hope is a permanent legacy, where every succeeding generation builds on the dreams and hard work of the one before. . . . Only as the poor are empowered to do for themselves as a result of the power of God in their lives will they be able to make that change" (in Community Works, ed. E.J. Dionne, Jr., Brookings Institution Press, 1998).

Opposition to government's backing of faith-based social-service organizations and religious schooling has very deep roots in this country. Many Americans believe that government programs and funds must be non-religious or secular. Regardless of whether faith-based organizations and schools can help restore our most needy neighbors, government should not touch or fund such efforts, they believe, because government's terrain must be kept clear of religion. No matter how great the pragmatic successes of faith-based groups, there is no reason, in the minds of critics, for government to offer such groups the same treatment it gives to self-declared secular groups. Moreover, the very thing that makes faith-based efforts succeed, as some see it, is that such efforts are not restricted by any secular-government strings. These opinions are a matter of principle—a matter of faith—for those who hold them. It is essential, therefore, to confront faith with faith, worldview with worldview. The dogma of public secularism must be met with a principled argument that counters mistaken assumptions.

Sacred/Secular in Education and Social Service

One American legal fact has strong roots: parents bear primary authority to raise and oversee the education of their minor children. The 75th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Pierce v. Society of Sisters case (1925), celebrated last year, reminds us that children are not "mere creatures of the State." Any public effort to fund and mandate the education of children may not altogether obliterate parental primacy in education. That is the law of the land and also a fundamental human right, according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

The principle of parental primacy in the education of children goes hand in hand with another fundamental U.S. and UN right, namely, freedom of religion. Parents, and their families, must be allowed to live by their faith. And if parents want to educate their children in accord with their religious convictions, they must be allowed to do so. Stephen Carter, in his latest book, God's Name in Vain (Basic Books, 2000), says, "If we do not protect the space for the religious teaching of children, we are not really protecting religious freedom at all."

Nevertheless, regardless of what these simple statements of legal fact say, they do not speak the whole truth about the American Way of Life in the realm of education. The supposedly equal right of every parent to choose appropriate education for his or her child is not actually upheld by government. Religious freedom in education is not fully supported by the law of the land. Bigoted discrimination is built into American education law. The larger truth is that in the United States we live a contradiction. Poor parents, who cannot afford to pay for schooling that accords with their moral and religious convictions, must obey a government order to send their children to schools they do not want.

Until very recently, the same held true for social-service delivery. Not all non-profit organizations were equally free to practice their faith when serving those eligible to receive public support. Many faith-based organizations had to substitute private funds for the public funds that people were eligible to receive, because government would only partner with secular delivery services. The fact is that as government became more and more involved in serving the poor in the latter half of the 20th century, it did so with an aim that directly contradicted the constitutional principle of religious freedom. Self-professed religious organizations were denied access to the freedom and legal treatment that was accorded to organizations that agreed to act in a secular fashion.

These two discriminations in education and social service are part of the same American story, and both are indeed being challenged by President Bush's advocacy of a small educational voucher experiment and his new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The next four years are likely to witness a protracted, heated conflict over education and welfare policy, and it is important to understand the reason why.

As Old as America

From the earliest days of the American republic, many leaders such as Thomas Jefferson looked ahead to a day when the country would be united in a moral harmony that would include an agreement to keep religious differences tucked away in private. Early in the 19th century, a movement to promote common schools picked up steam. The motivation was to help mold all Americans into the kind of civic-moral harmony that Jefferson envisioned. The origin of our current disputes can be found in the reaction of the largely Protestant population in that era to the first great waves of Catholic immigration into cities like Boston and New York in the 1840s. The fact of religious bigotry is undeniable. In New York, for example, where there was a degree of public funding for local schools, most such schools were morally and religiously Protestant in character. When the Catholics asked for a proportionate share of that funding for their schools, the Protestant majority went into action to pass laws mandating that all public funding should henceforth be directed only to "nonsectarian" schools. In other words, public tax funds, collected from all, would now be monopolized by the majority and used only for the schools approved by them. The majority was, of course, constituted by those who believed that their own views were nonsectarian and that Catholics were the "sectarians." Catholics were being clubbed into the status of second-class citizens.

Note carefully what happened. A view of life considered by the majority to lie outside the mainstream was declared to be non-public and sectarian. It did not deserve the same public support that was given to the self-declared nonsectarians. The minority—mostly Catholic—would have to sustain its schools, if it chose to set them up, with its own private resources. Parents who held so-called sectarian views would not be treated the same as parents who identified themselves with the nonsectarian majority. The sectarians were not allowed to educate their children at public expense, as were those who chose schools run by and funded by the anti-Catholic majority.

It was out of this spirit and from this movement that an organization arose called Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Today it calls itself simply Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. This change of name tells a story. Over about a one-hundred-year period, anti-Catholic bigotry evolved into a general opposition to any support of religion in public life. What was once a "non-sectarian" Protestantism became a secular "nonsectarianism." Today, any group or community, whether Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or Muslim, which insists on a public role and equal public treatment for its religious way of life, is considered sectarian and should thus be locked out of public funding for its schools and social-service organizations. People who live by faiths other than the dominant secular faith are allowed to enter the public square, but only if they leave their religious convictions behind. Even back in the 19th century, Catholics were allowed, even encouraged, to send their children to the free public schools. But to do so, Catholic parents had to agree to accept a non-Catholic (often anti-Catholic) education for their children.

One can easily see that those who declare themselves to be nonsectarian have not actually made themselves so. For many Christians, Muslims, and Jews, the self-named nonsectarian secularist is, in fact, a sectarian who wants to be able to live publicly by his or her faith and to monopolize the public square. But this means a regime that no longer gives equal, neutral treatment to all citizens. Instead, it gives privilege to one ideology over others, excluding from public benefits and opportunities all who do not agree to participate on secular terms.

Resolving a False Dilemma

What we need today is a new point of view on government and religion, the kind of view that is reflected in the positions of Eugene Rivers, Stephen Carter, and President Bush. In a society of many faiths, including the faith of secularism, the only way to treat every-one fairly is to give equal treatment to all faiths, to all schools, and to all social-service organizations. That is what the principles of Charitable Choice began to do in 1996 when they were written into the federal welfare-reform law. Instead of insisting that religious groups must remain private and unfunded while all public funds are channeled to organizations that agree to act in a nonsectarian-secular fashion, Charitable Choice mandated that organizations of any faith, whether secular or explicitly religious, should be allowed to participate on equal terms in the public square. This is what President Bush intends to advance and expand through the new White House office. This is what Eugene Rivers and Stephen Carter are calling for—not special privileges for religious groups, not the establishment of religion in general or any religion in particular, but simply equal treatment for all in the public square.

In contrast to the President's faith-based initiative, his very small voucher option in his education proposal barely begins to do justice to the parental authority of all parents in the education of their children. But in that case, the president is up against much more entrenched opposition to any fundamental change in the governance of schooling. The small element of lever-age in the Bush education plan—to give parents in failing schools (after three full years of failure) a small voucher of $1500 to spend on private schooling—is the only element that emphasizes the primacy of parental authority in the education of children. However, $1500 is not enough to make a difference for most poor parents. Nor should the freedom of parents to choose be a privilege only for those suffering in failing schools. What about the poor family whose children are locked into an almost failing school that they have to attend?

Conclusion

On the grounds of both parental responsibility for minor children and religious freedom, justice demands equal treatment of all citizens in their choice of schools and in their giving and receiving of welfare and other social services. We may be a long way from the day when all parents will be able to choose schooling for their children without financial or religious discrimination. However, we may be closer to the day when faith-based service organizations are allowed to partner with government on an equal footing with secular organizations in the delivery of welfare and other public services. In both cases, the battle now upon us is taking place at the deepest level of worldviews and interpretations of constitutional principle. It is a battle over the legitimacy of equal public treatment of all faiths—both traditional and secular. Protestants owe an apology to the Catholics and Jews whom they excluded from public privilege in the 19th century. Today, those who have insisted on a privilege for secularist principles in the public square owe an apology (by way of legal reform) to people who do not share their faith. Nothing less will be adequate if Americans are serious about leaving no child behind in the classroom and about meeting the needs of inner-city young people who have lost hope and given themselves over to guns and drugs and gangs.

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God's Name in Public

Stephen Carter writes in his book, God's Name in Vain: "The religious voice is destroyed when religion yields to the temptation to be important, to shape the outcome of elections, to fit snugly into the culture, to make filling the seats on the Sabbath day the highest goal. And without the religious voice, our politics will be nothing—which means, in a democracy, that our nation will be nothing." He goes on to say, "The biblical tradition of prophetic witness, being forceful in criticism of the sovereign but doing it from without rather than from within, still seems to me to represent religious activism at its best."

This distinction between "without" and "within" strikes me as a faulty contrast. Of course, the truth spoken by a prophetic voice is important; that is why any self-promotion of the voice that speaks it is wrong. Filling church seats should not be the goal of true faith; but a full house of willing worshippers is not insignificant. Carter affirms the value of religious words launched from "without" but is suspicious about actions taken "within." But this contrast tends to reduce religion to a purely outside affair, a critical stance.

What, after all, is the religious person to do when God calls him or her to serve as a public official, to run for election, or to serve as a judge. These are inside jobs that require wisdom and sound judgment. They require what the Bible describes as the mature work of seeking righteousness and justice. Carter's dichotomy seems to require secularism for politics even though he wants the religious voice to hound secular officials.

Rejecting this dualism, we should recognize that all dimensions of life should be lived in obedience to God: there is a time and a place for prophecy, but also for wisdom, priestly service, and public justice. It is not "unreligious" to want to "shape the outcome of elections." The greater temptation may be to want to become a prophet. There is a biblical, obedient way to perform any service God may call us to do. —JWS