Two strong examples of faith-based, but not pervasively religious social service organizations, are Catholic Charities USA which was founded in 1910 and Lutheran Social Services which in 1998, logged in more than 634,542 hours of counseling and mental health services to people in need. In addition to the two models listed above, there are other ways in which religious institutions and the government can work together as partners. Indeed, in many instances they already do. Religious leaders serve on governmental task forces to help formulate effective ways for communities to attack social problems. Government offices provide information on programs run by houses of worship when clients need to be referred to social service programs.
Religious institutions play a role in government-run mentor and volunteer programs.
In all of these arrangements, the religious institutions maintain their unique identity while contributing to the community in a significant way. We must be clear, however, that we not confuse religious-governmental partnership in the above points with the entanglement that government funding of religion, as evidenced in the intent of charitable choice legislation, would provide. Charitable choice intentionally allows for an unprecedented entanglement of government and religion. Rather than abandon our nation's great tradition of separation of religion and government which has allowed religion to flourish in the United States, the government should continue to encourage the religious community to lead the nation in a spirit of volunteerism and civic participation that is simply unrivaled. We believe that charitable choice legislation raises serious concerns about the integrity of religious autonomy, the prophetic voice of faith, excessive government entanglement in the affairs of religious institutions, and the overarching temptation to abuse religion and manipulate faith to achieve political power.