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Friday, Aug. 17, 2001

According to the report, prepared by offices of President Bush's Faith Based Initiative in five government agencies and the White House, "There is an overriding perception by federal officials that close collaboration with religious organizations is legally suspect."

John J. DiIulio Jr., director of the White House Faith Based office, issued the 25-page report at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. President Bush assigned DiIulio's office in January to try to eradicate barriers to giving religious groups a bigger share of the federal social service pie.

The report said that misconstrued interpretations of alleged constitutional "separation of church and state" - a phrase that appears nowhere in the Constitution - has led government officials to deny an "equal opportunity for religious service organizations" to share in what the federal government spends annually to provide social services.

Last month, President Bush won a narrow victory when the House of Representatives passed a faith-based bill, which included an amendment that would exempt religious social service organizations from state and local anti-discrimination laws. The laws often mandate, among other things, that organizations do not discriminate against homosexuals, which some religious groups object to.

But the House bill will have a rocky road in the Senate. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the main Republican advocate of a faith-based bill in the Senate, said he would drop the controversial House exemption. Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman said he would back a faith-based bill; he wants even more money in the bill for social services. Without Lieberman's backing, the bill would have no chance in a Senate controlled by Democrats.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an umbrella lobbying group that opposes the initiative, said the White House report "is just the latest step in the Bush administration's drive to unconstitutionally fund religion with tax dollars."

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said it Bush tries to "change federal regulations and fund religion, we will immediately file suit in federal court."

The White House report, titled "Unlevel Playing Field: Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based and Community Organizations in Federal Social Service Programs," drew a distinction between the treatment of "faith-based" organizations and "community-based" organizations. Community groups may be religious or secular.

The survey charged that the federal government is spending billions of dollars, but there is little follow-through to tell agencies which programs are successful and which are not. Most of the money is not spent directly by the federal agencies but through state and local offices and ultimately by private nonprofit providers of social services.

The report found that in many agencies a handful of large nonprofits receive most of the funding, and this tends to freeze out small groups. Other things like complex federal regulations, bureaucratic red tape and limited accessibility to information on what grants are available work against the community organizations.

But the report writers saved their harshest words for barriers they say unfairly bar religious groups from funding. They repeatedly found that ignorance about the laws and Supreme Court decisions, the Constitution and the agencies' own regulations often meant religious groups were barred.

They noted that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for instance, reported that no religious organization received any of the Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Programs $20 million funding in FY 2000. In fact, the report said, Habitat for Humanity International, which calls itself a "non-profit ecumenical Christian organization," won nearly half the money.

Most of the findings seemed similar to studies of the IRS and other large federal agencies, where obtuse and unclear rules burden the process and drive away potential social service groups. The pointed out, for instance, that Head Start programs are often located in houses of worship, that are "locally pressured to remove or cover up religious art, symbols, and other items, although there is no such requirement in the statute, regulations" or federal guidance.

DiIulio believes one of the hardest things to change would be the "culture" he found in some government agencies against encouraging religious social service organizations.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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