Ruling on religion (II).

Sanctioning Religion? Politics, Law, and Faith-Based Public Services Edited by David K. Ryden & Jeffrey Polet (Lynne Rienner, 2005, 235pp) 1-588263-436, $22.50

RYDEN AND POLET'S ANTHOLogy of the legal and practical ramifications of the US administration's faith-based initiative to provide social services includes an overview of the political and constitutional context as well as eight case studies of actual faith-based programs. As with any anthology, this one includes a number of authors who reflect different perspectives and come from a variety of professional backgrounds.

There is an inherent constitutional problem in funding faith-based organizations: nondiscriminatory service provision for the beneficiaries and the protection of the religious identity and character of the providers. As Joyce Keyes-Williams, one of the essayists in this volume, notes, "This is no small task, given the natural tension between these twin demands."

While the book includes a variety of viewpoints, it is by no means an evenhanded study. The editors clearly favor government-subsidized faith-based charities and believe that aid is constitutional. They have skewed the debate to promote an accommodationist view.

In their historical review, they claim that anti-Catholicism was the primary reason for the Establishment Clause's vitality, especially in the historical bans on aid to religious schools found in three-fourths of state constitutions. About the Blaine Amendment they write, "Blaine's anti-Catholicism is well established, and his pillory of the Democrats as the party of 'Rum, Romanism and Rebellion' may have cost him the 1884 presidential race." As I argued elsewhere, Blaine was personally free of anti-Catholic bias, based on his letters and diaries, and once made a personal visit to the Vatican, though he was a Republican politician at a time when religious antagonism was politically useful. It was a Presbyterian minister, Rev. Samuel Burchard, who coined the offensive slogan that Blaine was slow in denouncing. This attempt to label separationists as being anti-Catholic is historically untenable and ignores other strands of thought which argue that the no-aid principle protects religion from state intrusion and preserves freedom of conscience.

THE EDITORS ARGUE THAT OFFICIAL disdain toward religion by an omnicompetent government is harming religion and creating "state-ordained secularism." They also claim, "The primary agents of socialization in this culture--the media, the schools, social service agencies--are willfully secular in orientation" and, therefore, "religion seems to have been excluded from the full benefits of public life." As a citizen of this same culture, I do not see this hostility. The opposite may be closer to the truth. Religious enterprises are thriving in the US, at least in comparison with other Western democracies, and religious influence in political and cultural life is expanding.

The book, though flawed, does contain much pertinent information relevant to the debate over the constitutionality and practicality of faith-based social services.

ALBERT J. MENENDEZ is research director for Americans for Religious Liberty and editor of Voice of Reason.