Obama’s ‘Faith’ Proposal Seen Fueling Anxiety

Some Jewish groups have grave reservations about whether Obama’s plan for an expanded faith-based program can be properly monitored. Getty Images

Some Jewish groups have grave reservations about whether Obama’s plan for an expanded faith-based program can be properly monitored. Getty Images

by James D. Besser
Washington Correspondent

Jewish activists who hoped Sen. Barack Obama would take a sledgehammer to President Bush’s controversial faith-based programs took a pounding themselves this week as the presumptive Democratic nominee moved to attract religious voters with a faith- based funding proposal that would be the “moral center” of his administration.

But the Obama plan, announced in a speech in Zanesville, Ohio, on Tuesday, rejects one particularly controversial element of Bush administration policy: supporting the right of faith-based charities that get government money to discriminate in hiring based on religion.

That did nothing to calm the fears of centrist Jewish and interfaith groups that continue to have deep reservations about the faith-based program. And anxiety is running high in some Jewish quarters more generally about the hot-button issue

of injecting religion into the presidential campaign.

The Anti-Defamation League, a staunch opponent of Bush’s extensive faith based efforts, reacted coolly to Obama’s plan to expand funding for churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious groups that provide health and human services, albeit with what the candidate promised would be greater transparency.

Abraham Foxman, the group’s national director, said that while Obama’s proposal represents an “improvement” over current Bush administration policy — especially in its explicit rejection of employment discrimination by groups taking federal money — the ADL has “grave reservations” about any proposal to expand faith-based funding.

The whole idea of funneling federal money to religious institutions is “bad policy,” Foxman said. “While the caveats from Sen. Obama sound good, it will take a great deal of monitoring to make sure this does not lead to violations,” such as proselytizing and discrimination in hiring.

And details were sparse in the campaign trail speech, he said. “What he announced was a philosophy and a general commitment — details to follow,” Foxman said.

Marc Stern, legal director for the American Jewish Congress and a top church-state expert, said it is unclear how far Obama’s opposition to discrimination in hiring might go, and warned that it might impose unacceptable burdens on Jewish agencies that have been receiving federal grants for years.

“Taken literally, what he said could mean that a federation that restricted hiring for executive positions [to Jews] could not take federal money, at least for [particular] programs,” he said. “It’s not as simple as it sounds.”

Other church-state advocates say that while Obama’s intentions may have been good, the new proposals will perpetuate the problems two former directors of Bush’s Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives say have turned the office into a haven for rank partisan politics, not “compassionate conservatism.”

Several Jewish church-state leaders said the Obama campaign did not consult with their groups when formulating his plan.

Political analysts cited several likely motives behind Obama’s venture into the treacherous waters of faith based politics, including shoring up support from white Catholics and inner-city African-American ministers and exploiting Sen. John McCain’s unexpected vulnerability with Evangelical voters, a key element of the GOP base.

In a deeply religious nation, Obama may be leaping ahead of McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, in the effort to bring religion to the fore in the presidential campaign, said California State University political scientist Raphael Sonenshein — which could ultimately bring him into conflict with Jewish church-state groups.

“What Obama said was that Bush’s faith-based program was a disaster, and he’s going to do a bigger and better one,” he said.

That’s part of what Sonenshein described as an emerging partisan role reversal on the hot issue of injecting religion into presidential campaigns.

“You have the unusual situation this year in which the Democratic candidate is more religiously oriented than the Republican one, especially when it comes to public comment about religion,” Sonenshein said.

Obama — a product of the emotionally charged African-American church environment, and fighting to prove his Christian credentials in the face of persistent rumors he is a secret Muslim — stands in sharp contrast to Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee who has always been reticent to speak of his personal religious views, Sonenshein said. The Democrat’s dramatic stand on faith-based programs could help him close the “God gap” faced by recent Democratic contenders.

“It’s no accident” that the two Democrats elected president in recent decades — Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter — were more overtly religious than most Democrats and more able to talk in the argot of the church, he said.

In Tuesday’s speech Obama reaffirmed the idea that faith-based groups are “well-placed to offer help” to the nation’s neediest. “As I’ve said many times, I believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.”

But he sharply criticized the Bush administration’s approach to the issue, saying the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, created in 2001, “never fulfilled its promise. Support for social services to the poor and the needy have been consistently under-funded. Rather than promoting the cause of all faith-based organizations, former officials in the office have described how it was used to promote partisan interests.”

Obama called for a faith-based program that is a “real partnership — not a photo-op.” He pledged to recast the current faith based office as the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships” and make it “a critical part of my administration.”

That set off alarm bells among some Jewish and civil liberties groups that object to an executive branch office devoted to promoting funding for sectarian groups, but Obama laid out principles he said would avoid crossing any constitutional lines.

“If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion,” he said.

He added that “federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs.”

Many church-state groups have argued against direct grants, saying that it is difficult to prevent abuses when services and religious functions are housed under a single roof, within a single organization.

“You can say none of this money should be used for proselytizing, or that there shouldn’t be discrimination, but what does that mean for the little storefront agency, where there can be a subtle or even blatant form of discrimination, and where proselytizing does occur?” said Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister and president of the Interfaith Alliance, a group strongly opposed to Bush administration faith-based policies.

Gaddy, who praised some elements of Obama’s plan, called for a return to pre-2001 rules that required religious institutions getting federal money to create separate, 501c3 organizations to create a “firewall” between religious and social service functions.

Obama “gets it right, in terms of recognizing that there are constitutionally required safeguards for such programs,” said Richard Foltin, legislative director for the American Jewish Committee.

But he said his group wants to look closely to see what specific procedures Obama will propose to “ensure that funds are only used for purely secularly purposes. At this stage it’s not clear; simply putting money into houses of worship without structures in place to ensure these programs are discrete and separate from the religious functions of the organization, is a prescription for trouble.”

But the Orthodox Union, which has been a leading supporter of expanded faith-based funding by the government, took a positive tack on the Obama proposals.

Nathan Diament, the OU public policy director, said his group welcomed Obama’s call for more faith-based funding but added that the group would have been happier if the Democratic contender had not explicitly rejected taking religion into account when hiring for positions using government funds, something the OU and other religious groups see as vital to retaining the religious character of the groups offering services.

“Increased funding is something we’ve advocated for and are pleased to see,” Diament said. “But we have differences regarding the hiring rights issue.”

While Jewish groups on both sides of the faith-based debate criticized some elements of the Obama plan and praised others, what was perhaps more intriguing was the political dimension of the proposal. Why did Obama, whose political base is in the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, choose to speak out in support of programs supported mostly by religious and political conservatives?

“It’s pretty typical. Once nominated, Democratic candidates generally tack to the center-right, Republicans to the center-left,” said Benjamin Ginsberg, a Johns Hopkins political scientist.

Obama’s break with the Democratic mainstream on faith-based issues, he said, is in part meant to shore up support from influential African-American ministers who have been recipients of federal dollars under the Bush administration and don’t want to see them dry up under a Democratic presidency.

It may also be meant to improve his position with white Catholic groups and to “reassure religious voter in general that he’s with them,” Ginsberg said.

Other analysts say the presumptive Democratic nominee is challenging McCain on traditionally Republican turf in a number of areas — including Evangelical voters.

“Evangelicals, like many other groups, are less politically rooted this year,” said California State University political scientist Raphael Sonenshein. His support for expanded faith-based programs could help him win over significant handfuls of Evangelical voters.

“It’s a dicey game, because some of his base supporters already think he’s doing too much moving to the center,” he said. “But it’s probably a risk worth taking.”

Democrat activists say the faith-based thrust was also meant to keep McCain off balance and force him to devote more resources to the GOP religious base, where he already faces deep skepticism.

“He’s not giving the religious folk as much as they would like, but he’s giving them more than the skeptics want,” said University of Akron political scientist John Green. “It may work, but it may also create a lot of controversy.”