Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 6 September 2001 — Page 8

The Muncie Times, September 6, 2001, page 8

WITNESS FOR JUSTICE

Columnist: Bush’s faith initiative would hoodwink blacks

On the surface of it, it sounds noble. Make federal government funds available to churches for much-needed social service work in communities. The Bush administration has used this plan to court the African American church community, which desperately needs funds to deal with the myriad of problems in our communities, some of which may well be due to the federal government’s own past action, which shredded the safety net for those most in need. But to really understand charitable choice, one must look below the surface. First, there is the question of funding. While the Bush administration initially promised many of the African American clergy new funding dollars for social pregrams, it has since backed away from this pledge. Indeed, the charitable choice initiative has no new dollars set aside for churches to do their programming. The same dollars which were in federal budgets previously are available now, only with more entities competing for them. Moreover, small congregations will now be competing with those large mutlimillion dollar churchrelated organizations which have in the past received government grants. And while we’re on the subject of funding, how will these new grant recipients be held fiscally accountable? Asa part of the separation of church and state inherent in our Constitution, the government does not have the right to audit

the books of a church to see how the church spends its money. If that rule were changed to allow for transparency of tax dollars, there would be an entanglement of church and state. On the other hand, one only has to remember back to the 1970’s government-funded CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) programs where community organizations all too often mixed government funds with private funds, resulting in imprisonment of a number of community leaders across the nation, to see the possibilities of funding traps. Then, there is the question of discrimination in hiring and service delivery. Currently, church-related nonprofit programs funded by tax dollars are not allowed to discriminate in hiring or in delivering services to clients. On the other hand, churches themselves were exempted the Civil Rights Act. Under the Bush plan, that exemption for churches would be allowed for all their programs. Thus, if a church did not want to hire an unmarried mother or a person of another race because of its religious beliefs, it would be perfectly legal. Indeed, just before the Congress passed the charitable choice legislation, a private agreement between some in the Bush administration and the Salvation Army that the Salvation Amry would not have to hire gay and lesbian people, came to fight.

While the administration backed off that agreement, it could easily make a similar one in the future. It is for this reason that the civil rights community has opposed charitable choice—once discrimination against any one group is allowed in employment or service delivery, it is too easy to deny this to others. It’s a slippery rope. The issue of separation of church and state is also an important one. Recently, that discussion too often has been characterized as taking prayer out of schools. But it is important to remember that this nation was founded on that separation, after our European ancestors suffered religious persecution by governments which required them to belong to state religions. We have an important legacy to protectthe right of all to believe and warship as conscience dictates. As our nation becomes increasingly religiously plural, this is even more imporant. Nor should a person be required to join a church or engage in worship in order to receive drug or alcohol treatment or to receive a meal to eat or a bed to sleep on. Then, there is the troubling back-tracking by the federal government on its responsibility for the poor and oppressed and its continuing effort to blame the poor and pass responsibility for them to non-profit organizations and churches. Churches do have a moral obligation to work with the poor. Indeed, Christ’s words

Bernice Powell Jackson

that he came to bring good news to the poor ring true even today. But we as churches must do so out of our Christian conviction, not out of an availability of government funds. Likewise, the government has the responsibility to address systemic reasons for povertyothe crisis of education in our cities which can’t be fixed merely by national testing standards; the lack of a living wage, affordable housing and universal health care, which threaten hundreds of thousands of families today. No church can address these basic human rights without the government playing a key role. Finally, there is the question of how a church can maintain its prophetic role if its dependent on government dollars for program. The prophetic role of the church is a sacred trust handed down from the Hebrew Ibstament days and alive in the 1960s civil rights movement. It must not be dismissed easily One possible conflict has

already been played out by the Bush administration’s picking and choosing representatives of the black church to meet with about charitable choice, while leaving out the National Congress of Black Churches, which represents the eight major African American denominations, or others who have been critical of the administration. In the consumer world, bait and switch tactics are used by businesses which get consumers into the store a lowpriced deal, only to have a higher-priced good really available. While charitable choice sounds good, the buyer must beware. Note: For more information on charitable choice, write the United Church of Christ, 110 Maryland Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 2002 Bernice Powell Jackson is the executive mirdster for the United Christ ofChirst’s Justice and Witness Ministries based in Cleveland, Ohio.

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