Bush Pushes Religion in Government

“Mayberry Machiavellis” was DiIulio’s term for the political staff, particularly Karl Rove, whom he describes as “the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political-adviser post near the Oval Office.” 

When Congress refused to pass additional faith-based initiatives in December 2002, Bush issued a set of executives orders to increase funding, weaken traditional barriers between government and religious activities, and build a huge network of religious groups across the country. Since then, federal agencies finalized new regulations, including providing legal, logistical, and technical assistance to religious groups seeking grants. The Bush administration sponsored 13 regional conferences and additional meetings across the country to lobby religious organizations to apply for $50 billion in federal grants. Such organizing produced an email list of 13,000 faith-based groups, which would prove useful during the 2004 election. 

In 2002, faith-based officials appeared at Republican-sponsored events in six states. They held an event in South Carolina for 300 Black ministers and OFBCI director Jim Towey made a 20-city tour, promoting the faith-based initiative. 

During the 2004 campaign, the New York Times reported that the Bush-Cheney campaign conducted “a brisk schedule for legions of Christian supporters,” asking “conservative churches and churchgoers to do everything they can to turn their churches into bases of support” for Bush’s election. 

When Bush visited the Vatican in June, he called on Catholic officials to push U.S. bishops to speak out on political issues that would support him in the election. A group of a dozen religious conservative lobbying groups are rallying support for changing the law to allow churches to campaign for political candidates. Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-NC) introduced the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act, co-sponsored by 108 Republicans, including Tom DeLay and Dick Armey (both of Texas), and 4 Democrats. 

In August the Rockefeller Institute of Government and the Pew Charitable Trust shed light on Bush’s activities with the report, “The Expanding Administrative Presidency: George W. Bush and the Faith-Based Initiative,” detailing inroads made by religion into government. The report concluded that Bush “weakened longstanding walls banning religious groups from mixing spiritual activities with their secular services” that “mark a major shift in the constitutional separation of church and state.” 

The most disturbing of these findings detailed how federally- funded religious groups are now allowed to: consider religion when hiring staff; convert government-forfeited property to religious purposes; use government funds to build and renovate structures used for both religious and social services; provide religious training for those with job-training vouchers who seek church jobs; and religious groups no longer need to certify that their programs exert “no religious influence.” After these changes in 2003, the Departments of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development reported that faith-based organizations increased their grants by 41 percent. Five federal agencies granted $1.17 billion to faith-based groups. 

W hen Congress refused to pass his proposals to lower the long-standing barriers against spreading the gospel in publicly funded social services programs, Bush used administrative rules to established faith-based offices in ten federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Agency for International Development, and the Department of Commerce. He increased funding for religious-sponsored programs and connected a vast network of religious groups. 

Such changes allow churches to discriminate based on religious beliefs and to use federal funds to renovate and build places of worship and to proselytize. In practical terms, religion is creeping into social services as never before.

Once considered a cult, Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church receive government grants to teach “healthy marriage” programs. Josephine Hauer, a Unification leader, works for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and told a seminar of religious leaders in Oakland, California, “I want to make this a marriage culture.” The seminar was sponsored by a $366,179 grant from HHS. 

Richard Panzer, another Unification leader, runs Free Teens USA, which received a $475,000 grant for after-school abstinence programs in New Jersey. David Capprara, former president of a group funded by Moon’s Washington Times Foundation, currently runs the U.S. Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees groups such as AmeriCorps Vista. 

Although he criticized the Faith-Based Initiative as “a Pandora’s box,” Pat Robertson, found- er of the right-wing Christian Coalition, received a $500,000 HHS grant for Operation Blessing, to support international food relief. Overall, funds to religious groups from the HHS increased 41 percent—from 483 to 680 programs— in 2003. Florida even has a faith-based prison—the first in the nation. 

According to Wilfred McClay, professor of history and humanities at the University of Tennessee, these are “a dramatic change” from past practices, although allowing religious organizations to compete for social welfare service funds is a continuation of Clinton’s welfare reform. McClay predicts that there will be “lots of rhetoric,” but not much legislative or executive action on the issue in the coming years. 

Tom Barry, policy director for the Interhemispheric Resource Center, traces religious involvement in government from Ronald Reagan, who based U.S. foreign policy on moral clarity combined with military might. Since then, a number of think tanks along with conservative and neo-conservative groups began framing foreign policy in moral terms. “These groups want to spread Judeo-Christian values around the world,” says Barry. “They support a national security policy based on preventive war to spread U.S. ethical and moral values as superior to other values.” 

Bush contributed to the so-called cultural war by rejecting the separation of church and state “in favor of rhetorical and policy initiatives that brought religion not only into the public sphere but also directly into government,” says Barry. Right-wing policy groups are infiltrating the UN, which the Christian right formerly criticized as secular, in order to reshape the agenda. Groups such as the Family Research Council and the American Life League seek UN status to oppose abortion, restrict women’s rights to birth control, and promote “traditional values.” 

While there is opposition to integrating government and religion within the religious community, Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, finds that Bush relies on an activist base of Republicans composed primarily of white faith- based evangelicals. 

Historically, religious leaders opposed government funding of religious groups primarily because of anti-Catholicism. “There was no way conservative Protestants wanted to underwrite a Catholic parochial education,” says Silk. “But after Protestants est- ablished their own schools to avoid integration, they changed.” 

Whether religious belief helps people overcome social problems remains to be seen, but Silk points out that many religious groups, such as Catholic Charities, made a success at becoming good secular social service providers. The friction begins when they proselytize and become political. “It’s tough when issues become identified in religious communities as matters of faith rather than public issues that need compromise,” Silk says. “There’s always a concern when religion creates an unbridgeable divide.”