`Faith-based' fact: Uncle Sam's dollars, Uncle Sam's rules. (Editorials).

When the Rev. Kenneth Reed of the Evangelical Church of God in Christ in Syracuse, N.Y, received $70,000 in government money to help local officials keep tabs of welfare recipients, he soon learned there was a catch: No proselytizing would be allowed.

To Reed, it was no big deal. "Talk is cheap anyway," he told Religion News Service recently.

Across the country, members of the Sierra Vista Baptist Church in California are busy removing religious signs and posters from Sunday school classrooms. Why? The church has agreed to accept municipal funds to provide day-care services in a secular setting. The Rev. Ted Bisceglia notes that the church is normally "unashamedly evangelical" but added, "We're not doing this so we can bring Billy Graham in to teach to children every day."

For more than a year, Americans United has been warning people that "faith-based" initiatives could end up forcing taxpayers to subsidize religion. The flipside of that argument is that such aid could interfere with religion as well.

Houses of worship that want to be "unashamedly evangelical" are certain to run into problems when they take tax dollars. The separation of church and state must be respected. In government-funded programs, that means no proselytism or other religious activities.

Even some representatives of the Bush administration seem to recognize this fact. Last month Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said it outright: "We'll make it clear that you don't preach and proselytize on Uncle Sam's dollar."

So what's a house of worship to do? The answer is simple: There are a lot of worthy social ministries out there, but if churches, temples and mosques want to include a religious component, they should fund them privately. Swearing off government funds is the only way to maintain freedom from the government's leash.

Evangelical author and speaker Tony Campolo is known for his blunt style. Speaking to Baptist leaders in North Carolina last month, he made an observation about government-funded religion that all members of the clergy should bear in mind.

"Don't allow yourself to get sucked into all this faith-based stuff they're talking about," Campolo said. "I mean, you put government together with church programs [and it] is like mixing ice cream with horse manure. It's not going to hurt the manure, but it's going to raise havoc with the ice cream."