The Faith-Based Initiative: Both Cause of Contention and the Solution to an Impasse?

In early November, 2007, The Forward, a national Jewish weekly newspaper, published a surprising story. The Coalition Against Religious Discrimination, a seventy-member alliance of groups opposed to the Bush administration's faith-based initiative for allegedly fostering religious job-discrimination, had asked a congressional committee to investigate the initiative on the grounds that it "may have been utilized to serve partisan political goals; may violate federal regulations, laws and the constitution; and may lack proper monitoring. " However, only a few of the major Jewish public-policy groups, in the coalition had signed the letter. Most of the abstentions were not due to policy disagreements. Yet, the article noted that some opponents of the Bush initiative had become worried that a backlash against its supposed excesses might clamp down too far. Just what kind of changes would be excessive? An absolute ban on hiring on the basis of religion when an organization receives government money, for one. in the pithy words of Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, "[J]ust because United Jewish Communities gets some government grant, that doesn't mean the Pope has the right to be the head. " (1) So much for the simplistic public narrative that presumes an absolutist and universal Jewish demand for a rigorous secularism everywhere the government touches--the imagined flip side of the dark suspicion that, since evangelicals, those crusaders determined to spread the gospel incessantly, generally supported the Bush initiative, the initiative must somehow have been an engine to impose Christianity. If these are caricatures, then what were the Jewish and evangelical positions, and what motivated those stances? If Jewish organizations are not rigidly committed to secularism wherever the government goes, and if the determined aim of evangelicals is not the imposition of their faith on others, might there be a way to connect government to faith-based social services that can appeal to both sides? Might the faith-based initiative be a bridge between Jews and evangelicals? Presidential candidate, now President, Barack Obama's promise to maintain and expand the faith-based initiative makes these questions all the more important. As of this writing, just days after his inauguration, the exact character of the Obama version of the initiative is not clear. During the campaign, for instance, Obama said that he would prohibit faith-based organizations that operate social-service programs with federal funds from hiring according to religion in those programs--a dramatic reversal of the Bush administration's efforts to clarify and expand the freedom of religious groups to engage in religious staffing when partnering with the government to provide services. (2) Yet, discussions between religious leaders and the Obama campaign suggested second thoughts about such a drastic shift in policy. (3) Whatever the final decision on this and other sensitive matters, it is clear that the Obama administration will maintain a strong emphasis on expanding government collaboration with faith-based organizations. This topic of intense discussion between Jewish and evangelical leaders and organizations during the Bush administration is not about to disappear. (In this essay, unless otherwise specified, the phrase "faith-based initiative" refers to the Bush initiative and to the similar principles of the Charitable Choice provisions adopted into law several times during the Clinton administration.) The Impasse The Bush faith-based initiative, with its stress on safeguarding the religious freedom of faith-based social-service organizations, has not been, of course, the only recent domestic-policy quarrel separating Jewish from evangelical groups. (4) However, this dispute stands out because of its duration, the heat of the arguments, and a number of court challenges. Yet, the faith-based initiative has from the start been a matter of discussion, not only opposition, between these two groups. …