In my last post I wrote about Obama’s plans to overhaul Bush’s “Faith-Based Initiative” program should Obama be elected president. As mentioned in that post, Obama would put rules in place to ensure that federal tax-payer money used by religious organizations can only be used for secular programs. Furthermore, it would prohibit proselytizing and religious discrimination in any program that makes use of federal funds.

I said that, on paper, this sounds fine with me. However, one of the two potential problems that I listed was that I find it hard to believe that any religious organization would be willing to agree to such restriction. Essentially, this plan would only fund “faith-based” programs provided that those programs remove the “faith” part! Take, for example, the Heritage Foundation’s (a conservative think tank) recent statement regarding Obama’s proposal:

But even worse, Obama’s plan says that when a faith-based organization takes federal dollars, it would lose its ability to preserve its faith-based character through maintaining hiring standards consistent with its mission. It could be forced to hire an atheist. In other words, it would strike at the heart of the faith-based initiative.

Well, regardless of the merits or the demerits of hiring an atheist, I understand the point they are trying to make here. Obama’s plan requires that a faith-based organization shed its faith-based character whenever using federal money. Unlike the Heritage Foundation, I agree that government tax-payer money should not be used to fund religious activities and I am skeptical that religion is an essential part of any social service.

This statement by the Heritage Foundation seems to confirm my suspicion that “faith-based” groups or organizations that favor the funding of “faith-based” social programs will not easily buy into the church-state separation principles underlying the proposal. That means in practice this plan seems like it will not only be less than satisfactory but will require a greater amount of supervision to ensure that “faith-based” groups who do accept federal money along with these restrictions are playing nicely with it.

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