Faith and the Government

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof," so says the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Together these phrases make up what is known as the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The phrase, "the separation of church and state," is often bandied about with little knowledge to where it comes from, so I thought it relevant to preface it here. The idea of church-state separation did not originate in the United States or other secular governments in the West, but has strong historical roots in the Anabaptist stream of the Protestant Reformation (Luther, Calvin, and the Roman Catholic church favored what could be called church-state governments). With that prior introduction, I wish to engage a few church-state issues in the news recently.

First, Barack Obama surprised many when he decided to enter the religious foray with his rhetoric on the Bush Faith-Based Initiatives. Yet, Obama hopes to change the Initiatives in one very critical way. Here's a pertinent quote from the article:

"But Mr. Obama’s plan pointedly departed from the Bush administration’s stance on one fundamental issue: whether religious organizations that get federal money for social services can take faith into account in their hiring. Mr. Bush has said yes. Mr. Obama said no."

In other words, Obama would make churches, parachurches, and other faith-groups that do significant amounts of social work subject to "fair" hiring practices if it accepts government money. If it is a Christian group that has fed the poor for years but accepts government money to help it run, then Obama's plan would require those organizations to hire people of other faiths or no faith at all.

I know I'm delving into the political sphere here, and that can be tricky. So I just want to make some observations. 1) The government wants to help poor people. 2) Churches and other faith organizations are already doing this, and generally do so on the basis of their religious convictions. 3) So on the basis of the first two, Barack Obama's plan doesn't seem to make sense, because it leaves him with two options. EITHER non-profits maintain their religious integrity and don't accept federal dollars which means that poor people are not helped as much OR non-profits actually lose their Faith-Based intention altogether and accept federal dollars to aid the poor. In Obama's plan, "Faith-Based Initiatives" are a contradiction in terms. All of that rhetoric aside, I am neither endorsing his plan or challenging its integrity. I am merely trying to illuminate exactly what it is and is not.

The second issue involves a court ruling. The 10th Circuit Colorado Court of Appeals ruled this past Wednesday that Colorado Christian University can receive state aid for student scholarships (AP article here and Inside Higher Ed article here). There are certainly practical issues at hand- CCU wants to make it easier for kids to afford their college. There are certainly theological issues at hand- what is the proper distinction between church and state? And there are certain governmental and philosophical issues at hand- should the taxpayers bankroll explicity evangelical teaching? Here is an excerpt of how the court ruled:

“The sole function and purpose of the challenged provisions of Colorado law is to exclude some but not all religious institutions on the basis of the stated criteria,” the court ruled. “Employing those criteria, the state defendants have decided to allow students at Regis University, a Roman Catholic institution run by the Society of Jesus, and the University of Denver, a Methodist institution, to receive state scholarships, but not students at CCU or Naropa University, a Buddhist institution. This is discrimination.”

In other words, based on the First Amendment, the government isn't establishing a religion but it has been discriminating the free exercise of it based upon who it has given scholarships to. The Free Exercise clause is the same reason why churches and other non-profits are tax-exempt.

What are some of the issues at stake? There are plenty of colleges with religious labels that don't teach their true doctrine- I've noticed this at Baptist, Wesleyan, Covenant, etc. colleges all over the country (including DU cited above). Even if their institutional teaching isn't explicity religious, they are still a religious institution. And if one religious institution gets federal or state dollars for student financial aid, then all religious institutions must receive similar aid based upon the Free Exercise clause as the court properly ruled.

Another issue is that the government generally doesn't understand the difference between an established religion and entrenched worldviews. Students go off to major universities every year and get indoctrinated into political liberalism, philophical naturalism, and postmodernism. Why should a Christian worldview be distinct from these? The issue of what tax dollars support does make the issue murky, but then why should my tax dollars support completely abhorrent thinking with which I disagree? Many may retort on the basis of the first amendment, to which I would argue the very same thing with respect to Christian colleges.