Wall Between Church and State Teeters Under Bush`s Faith Initiatives

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Wall Between Church and State Teeters Under Bush`s Faith Initiatives
By Tom Teepen, Syndicated Columnist
Cox Newspapers, Atlanta, GA

The nation will just have to take it on faith that President Bush`s one-man decision to start giving more tax money to religious charities won`t steamroll the wall separating church and state.

With a series of executive orders, the president has installed the faith-based initiative that was one of his campaign promises. In doing so, he at least undermined the historic principle that in most situations has wisely withheld public funding from religious activities, and he did so without legislative guidance or the safeguards that any enabling legislation presumably would include.

The president was unable to get his program through a chary Congress split among red hots, ice colds and would-be compromisers who couldn`t cobble together a majority for any program.

That legislative hesitation seems prudent, in part because federal law already permits substantial public funding for religious social work under reasonable restrictions. The overly picky requirements of the past were repealed several years ago. (Though the federal granting agencies didn`t always get the word.)

Despite that standing indulgence, the president declared that he was ending "discrimination against religious groups just because they are religious," a crude misreading of principled support for church-state separation and a cheap shot that plays to the victim mongering paranoia of the religious right, which absurdly claims Christians are borne down in this country under a crushing burden of discrimination.

In a passing nod to concerns about fudging church-state separation, the president ordered that religious charities receiving federal money will have to observe state and local anti-discrimination laws, disappointing groups such as the Salvation Army that have been lobbying to exclude gays and lesbians.

But worrisomely, Bush apparently would extend to their outreach charities the current legislative exemption that allows religious groups to hire just within their own faith for strictly religious programs. And although federal money would be denied direct proselytizing, grants may now go to charitable programs that operate in a clearly sectarian atmosphere.

The Bush administration has withdrawn U.S. support for international family-planning programs. It is working to limit school-based sex education to abstinence-only indoctrination. The coming congressional session seems likely to enact several restrictions on abortion, with sure White House concurrence if not public leadership. The president`s appointees to federal courts typically include misgivings about church-state separation in their qualifying conservative kits.

In his presidential run, Bush`s coziness with televangelists and so-called family-value organizations and symbolic gestures like his speech at Bob Jones University strongly implied that his presidency could accommodate the religious-right agenda.

At the time, that was widely shrugged off as just Republican theatrics, but the president is proving as good as his implication.