Faith-Based Funding Fiascos.

Although George W. Bush has alerted the public to a proposed new link between government and faith-based enterprises (a plan that has met with widespread criticism, including resistance from conservative religionists), most U.S. citizens aren't aware that their tax money is already being spent for a religion they perhaps don't profess. Tax money supports chaplaincies in the military and in other institutions.

For example, the combined annual budget of public and private funds for the Reverend Lloyd John Ogilvie, the Senate chaplain, is over $300,000, including thousands of dollars from a Christian nonprofit group. His post enables him not only to distribute his religious writings to the senators but to sell them in the Senate gift shop, according to David Rogers in the February 21, 2001, Wall Street Journal. Ogilvie's personal income from various sources is about $200,000.

Rogers says Ogilvie is "pushing the envelope of how his office is defined." He notes that the chaplain is proof of how the lines between church and state can be blurred, particularly if Bush's partnership between government and faith-based enterprises is adopted. Already Ogilvie does more than pray at the opening session of the Senate each day; he also conducts a luncheon series called "How to Be All You Were Meant to Be" on his interpretation of the Apostle Paul and the Colossians."

The blurring of the church-state line in this case also occurs in the chaplain receiving funds up to $30,000 from various enterprises, such as a Christian Ministries group in California whose mission is "the propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ." Ogilvie also distributes devotional books from his publishers, Servant Publications in Dearborn, Michigan, and Harvest House Publications in Eugene, Oregon.

Ogilvie's chief patron is Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who has arranged-action on other perquisites. For example, the Senate Chaplain's Office was located in the Senate Office Building, but Lott is credited for moving the office not only into the Capitol but into a historic corner of the third floor that was once the century-long home of the Senate Library. Ogilvie prays each day in succession for twenty senators and lists them and their spouses. Then he distributes prayer cards to each of the prayed-for senators. He affirms that this "has made a great difference in the personal relationships with senators."

Is this Senate chaplaincy unusual? Not at all. The government also pays for military, hospital, and prison chaplains and publishes religious materials such as hymn books. The chief of chaplains is, in addition to being a minister, priest, or rabbi, a military officer (usually a colonel or general in rank) subject to military control. It is an armed forces appointment and brings higher pay than other chaplains receive.

The chief of chaplains also serves as morale officer, citizenship instructor, and public relations officer. During the military campaign for peacetime conscription after World War II, a report issued May 13, 1947, stated:

   Upon the advice of the Legislative and Liaison Division, the office of
   Chief of Chaplains sent representatives from each of the Army areas and the
   Air Defense to the Experimental Unit for UMT [Universal Military Training]
   at Fort Knox, Kentucky.... The purpose of this meeting was to orientate the
   chaplains on the aims of UMT so that they may be properly prepared to
   represent this program to ministerial and denominational conventions as
   they take place in the United States this year.

Twenty years later during the war in Vietnam, I was invited in October 1967 to speak at the Third Army Annual Conference of Regular and Reserve Chaplains on "Moral Problems Raised for the Military Chaplains by Conscription." I discussed imperialism, the poverty experienced by the enlisted men and their families within the military, lack of freedom, the false motivation of anti-communism, among other issues. My closing statement was to encourage all chaplains to "use your influence to end conscription.... It is neither necessary nor desirable in a peacetime democracy."

It was a dramatic event with the chief and vice-chief of the Chaplains Corp present. Their hostile comments during the question period caused the presiding officer to cancel further questions and abruptly end the meeting. It was obvious that the Chaplains Corps had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the concept of the draft and that I had stepped over the ideological line.

When the U.S. Constitution was adopted it was understood as a "bill of powers" or a social contract. The Tenth Amendment asserts:

   The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor
   prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or
   to the people.

The Constitution gives to the federal government no power or authority to enlist or employ ministers, priests, or rabbis to hold religious services either for military personnel or for civilians employed by the government or otherwise under government care or appointed to any position "of public trust."

Moreover, it is specifically forbidden to choose personnel for any government post on the basis of their religion or to use religious qualifications for employment. Article VI of the Constitution states: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Nevertheless, although there are more than 200 religious denominations in the United States, chaplains are selected from only a few and those bodies are asked to endorse or assign chaplains.

For many years the armed forces recruited their own chaplains by sending agents into selected theological schools to recruit students before they graduated or were even approved by their denomination for ordination.

The establishment clause of the First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Yet this order has been and still is steadily violated by state and federal subsidies of religion through chaplains' salaries, the establishment of chapels, promotion of religious personnel to various ranks, publication of religious materials, and a religious-military chain of command.

Why, then, do various chaplaincies pass constitutional muster?

The chief reason is the "free exercise" clause also contained in the First Amendment. According to Justice William Brennan in Abington School District v. Schempp (374 U.S. 203 at 297-298, 1963):

   Since government has deprived such persons [as those in the armed forces]
   of the opportunity to practice their faith at places of their choice ...
   the government may, in order to avoid infringing the free exercise
   guaranteed, provide substitutes where it requires such persons to be.

This argument is spurious if only a few denominations are represented by chaplains, and most civilian and military personnel have access to religious services and counselors in cities and towns near their bases. Even the navy doesn't provide chaplains for every small vessel but only for larger ones.

There are also state constitutions with restrictions on the use of public money that wouldn't only prevent government chaplaincy but prevent Bush's attempt to aid faith-based organizations. For example, nothing could be more explicit than the Missouri Constitution, which states in Section 7:

   No money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or
   indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination of religion, or in
   aid of any priest, preacher, minister, or teacher thereof."

The public treasury is a more restrictive term than state money and should prevent federal grants to states for religious indoctrination. Some other states--such as Louisiana, Illinois, Utah, and Oklahoma--have similar constitutional restrictions.

However, the federal government has, in fact, provided money to faith-based organizations in the past. And on occasion this has led to an entanglement in which the demands of a government agency have taken over or compromised the mission of the religion accepting or administering the government funds.

A good illustration of this occurred during the Vietnam War. Catholic Relief Services, which was properly forbidden to discriminate or proselytize, nevertheless became in effect a government agent. The National Catholic Reporter, which does excellent investigative reporting, revealed that "up to 90% of CRS' budget [came] from the U.S. government in the form of relief supplies and cash grants" and that "U.S. Army personnel worked in CRS offices." CRS also "used the CIA's Air America for staff travel and the shipment of goods." Moreover, CRS supplied "7,000 tons of food and clothes monthly to 150,000 Vietnamese civilians in the Popular Forces and to their 550,000 dependents" at the request of General Westmoreland "to supplement the wages of the Popular Forces--militiamen who defended hamlets and villages with American guns under Vietnamese and American military advisors."

According to the Reporter, "Catholic Relief Services also supplied the military with commodities for their Civic Action Teams." There were even allegations of CRS providing military intelligence to the U.S. Army.

Conversely, with the possibilities for blurring the aims of government and religion, does anyone doubt that some right-wing, faith-based organizations--such as the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and others too numerous to mention--might use government money to aid their own political mission while ostensibly serving a government or social need?

Once religious groups become government agents will any government agency oversee their work, audit their books, or otherwise make sure that there is no political or religious indoctrination of recipients of aid and no partisan or other discrimination by the organization? Almost certainly there will be no such supervision. The history of government laxity with Catholic Relief Services and with military and other chaplaincies doesn't provide a good precedent.

Will the public treasury be open to every one of the thousands of faith-based organizations? How will the government choose? Will it select a non-theistic faith-based group? Or will it prefer a theistic faith-based political group, a faith-based militant "right to life," anti-Semitic, or Aryan group?

When the government gets in the business of selecting out of thousands of groups, it is inevitably going to have priorities and exclusions resulting in competition and resentment. There will certainly then be a "religious test" for the government's largess. And who will pass?

John M. Swomley has a Ph.D. in political science and international affairs from the University of Colorado; is professor emeritus of social ethics at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri; and has authored numerous articles and books.