The Case Against Charitable Choice.

Charitable choice was one of the issues of the 2000 elections upon which there was supposed agreement. Since Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. which includes a charitable choice provision, the concept is engraved in law. But is it really such a good idea?

Ethicist and church-state scholar Paul Simmons doesn't think so. He observes, "Those who advocate public support for clergy or religious enterprises have not come to terms with the corrupting and enervating effect of governmental protectionism. Efforts to protect lead to corruption and weakening of religion by the civil powers."

Marci A. Hamilton, professor of law at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law, also warns, "The next major church-state issue to become a source of conflict will likely be social service contracts based on the charitable choice provision of the welfare reform act. The potential constitutional problems have hardly been evaluated. When religion steps into the shoes of government, the civil rights of those receiving the funds become an issue. In order for the transmission of funds to be constitutional, the government will be required to place limits on how the funds are administered, including limitations on proselytization. Such limits, though, invite free exercise challenges from the churches. Government funding in any category implicating First Amendment values invites discord and litigation."

In the following two essays, written independently of each other, three humanists examine charitable choice and what it means for U.S. citizens. First, Elena Matsui and Joseph Chuman make their "Case Against Charitable Choice" from a civil liberties viewpoint. Then Lyse Hurd offers a look at the other side from a social service standpoint.

IT WILL TURN religion against religion. It will make religion a servant of the state. It will let our government play favorites among believers, and it will destroy the separation of church and state as we have known it.

A scenario concocted out of the Middle Ages? A nefarious plot by satanic evildoers? No, it's charitable choice and it's a very dangerous idea.

The Welfare Act of 1996 was passed by Congress to replace the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, a federal entitlement with block grants to be distributed by the states. Charitable choice is one provision of the new law, and it allows the federal government to contract with faith-based agencies serving single mothers with dependent children. It emerged from the notion that faith-based services can be more effective than secular ones.

More recently, Republican Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri (defeated in the 2000 elections by the late Mel Carnahan) introduced legislation to expand charitable choice to every current and future health and social service program that receives federal funds, including homeless and senior initiatives, juvenile services, substance-abuse treatment and prevention programs, and abstinence education. The aim of charitable choice is to divest the state of its social responsibilities. However, by involving faith-based organizations, the churches in effect become administrative arms of these government programs. The initiative was the signature issue of George W. Bush's effort to portray himself as a "compassionate conservative" as he campaigned last year for the presidency, and Al Gore, striving to outdo Bush as a "friend of religion," also spoke glowingly of charitable choice.

But any true friend of religion should be very wary of charitable choice for the threats it augurs for religious freedom. Scores of national religious organizations and hundreds of religious leaders across the religious spectrum--from conservative to liberal-advocate against charitable choice. Among them are the Baptist Joint Committee, representing eleven Baptist bodies; the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.; the American Jewish Committee; the conference of Seventh-day Adventists; the Church of the Brethren; various Roman Catholic organizations, the Friends, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

As humanists we oppose charitable choice for many reasons, the most important of which embraces matters of high principle and our passionate commitment to both religious freedom and the preservation of the secular state. We ask the thoughtful reader to consider the following consequences of charitable choice.

Proselytization will become rampant--at the taxpayer's expense. Today religiously affiliated service providers, such as Catholic Charities, receive significant federal funding. Yet these groups have independent boards, deliver services in primarily nonreligious settings, and minimize the religious component of their service to allow all to feel comfortable. Their function is understood as primarily charitable and not sectarian.

Charitable choice would tear down these safeguards. Money would be given directly to churches, and services could be dispensed in sanctuaries with religious iconography and symbols defining the environment. Although charitable choice bars federal funds to groups that are "pervasively sectarian" and specifies that money not be used for "sectarian worship, instruction, or proselytization," this buffer is implausible and wouldn't prohibit proselytizing with materials that have already been paid for.

Imagine having to watch a missionizing video on the tenets of a faith in which you don't believe accompanying your stay in a shelter or soup kitchen or before you may receive assistance for your needy child. Imagine the Christian Identity Movement preaching to blacks or Jews their messages of racist hate as an implied condition of receiving help. No person should ever be placed in the demeaning position of having to compromise his or her religious conscience in the face of neediness and dependence on others.

Moreover, who is to decide which religions are "pervasively sectarian" and which aren't? This ugly conundrum will engender endless litigation and coerce the courts to tread where they have wisely resisted going--right to the heart of religious doctrine. The judiciary will be forced to pass theological judgment and draw distinctions between one religion and another to determine which is government certifiable and which is not. Are courts competent to do this? Is this what we want?

Church will be set against church. Money corrupts And lots of money corrupts even more. Charitable choice will have houses of worship competing against each other for bountiful government contracts. Some will be selected by government and others will lose out. Churches will divert their energy and focus from their primary spiritual mission toward financial agendas.

Religion will become accountable to government. With federal funding comes oversight and control. Charitable choice transforms churches into agents of the state to which they will be accountable. If government regulation is lax, it invites the use of funds for narrowly sectarian purposes in support of the church. If oversight is rigorous, churches will routinely have to explain and defend their fiscal policies to government agents. It isn't hard to imagine government inspectors making surprise visits to churches and demanding to review their books. It was this type of subordination of religion to the state that the framers of the constitution feared most when they crafted the religious freedom clause of the First Amendment.

Employees and service workers will have no job protection. Under charitable choice, employees of churches that hire them will have no security, no federal protection, nor any redress. If they so choose, faith groups can refuse to hire applicants who don't share their beliefs. If religious doctrine prohibits drinking, dancing, divorce, or using birth control, employees can be summarily fired for any of these "offenses." If a person has a religious conversion out of the religion of her or his employer, or dissents on a matter of belief, she or he can be dismissed. Similarly, churches can hire or fire service providers for reasons of their own, including religious reasons.

Imagine, again, the employment practices of religious groups with bigoted messages, discriminating against others whom their religion counsels to hate--and all this at the expense of the taxpayer.

Religious providers will set their own standards. Charitable choice doesn't mandate educational, licensing, or certification criteria for treatment counselors. Churches are free to hire "experts" solely on their religious devotion and zeal and many will--regardless of the training required to carry on the skilled work that providing such services often demands.

Religion's prophetic voice will be muffled. We believe that religion, including humanistic religion, plays its most important social role when it stands outside the precincts of secular power and critiques the abuses of government from the plateau of higher moral ideals. Charitable choice would function to domesticate religion and render it harmless. It identifies religion with its service role and conveniently overlooks its crucial role in demanding justice. In short, will religion--dependent upon government funding--turn around to bite the hand that feeds it? It's hardly likely, and the moral voice of religion at its best will grow silent.

We live in a time of almost overwhelming religious resurgence. We're concerned that many people in the United States seem anxious about our nation's moral state and look upon religion as the unblemished source of moral values and social cohesion. With a certain blindness setting in, they might conclude that whatever promotes religion must be good.

However, our nation's founding fathers knew otherwise. Experience had taught them that the entanglement of religion with the state inevitably oppresses religious freedom and elevates the power of the state to dangerous proportions. Charitable choice creates this fretful partnership more pervasively than any initiative of the past fifty years.

The late Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black--perhaps the greatest champion of religious freedom the American people have ever had--once said, "A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion." It is a message we all forget at our peril.

Elena Matsui is a student at Teaneck High School in Teaneck, New Jersey, and Joseph Chuman is leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County in New Jersey. They can be e-mailed at jchuman@ mailoidt.net. This essay is adapted from an article that originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of the Record of Bergen County.