White House report sees burdens on religious servers
___By Jeff Huett
___Associated Baptist Press
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--Faith-based and community providers of social services face "burdensome" restrictions and receive "very little" federal support, concludes a White House report released Aug. 16 at the Brookings Institution.
___The 25-page survey, titled "Unlevel Playing Field," makes no specific policy recommendations but lists 15 barriers that faith-based and community organizations reportedly face in seeking and receiving federal funds. The report finds a "widespread" bias against these organizations and concludes that the federal government often "ignores" them despite their "vast, varied and vital community-serving roles."
___An executive order signed by President George W. Bush in January mandated the report, which presented the results of an audit of five cabinet departments to identify barriers to the participation of faith-based groups in the delivery of social services. Included in the audit were the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor and Justice.
___John Bridgeland, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the report "shows systematically that government has been hostile to the participation of faith-based and community-based organizations when it ought to have been neutral."
___Melissa Rogers, executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said while that may be the view of the White House, "there's a very important other side to the debate."
___"In some respects the field is not level," she said. "That, to some, is not a problem ... because their feeling is that to treat religion differently ... would actually be consistent in honoring the religious-liberty principles."
___Of the 15 barriers cited, six were listed as obstacles to faith-based organizations seeking federal support. The remaining were referred to as barriers to small and community-based organizations.
___John DiIulio, who recently resigned as head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said there is no question that non-profit organizations play a large role in the delivery of social services. However, he said, an explanation for the wide funding gap between large providers and grassroots organizations long has been debated. Current charitable-choice provisions that were enacted as a late addition to 1996 welfare-reform legislation have "not been vigorously or well implemented by those charged with implementing it," he said.
___The report claims the government has focused much more on the "prohibition" of governmental establishment of religion than the "honoring the protection" of religious liberty when it comes to doling out federal aid to social-service providers.
___But Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee, said that what the administration calls "barriers" to government funding for faith-based groups he sees as safeguards needed for the groups' own protection.
___"Barriers, like bureaucratic red tape and unnecessary regulations, should be eliminated," Walker said. "Much of what the White House calls barriers are really guardrails keeping faith-based, government-funded programs from falling into a constitutional ditch."
___Darren Walker, chief operating officer for the Harlem, N.Y.,-based Abyssinian Development Corp., underscored that point in a panel discussion held by the Pew Forum a day after the report's release.
___He said the organization had not encountered any restrictive conditions as a result of the group's religious orientation or affiliation with a Christian organization. However, he said there were general restrictions articulated very well in the report. In particular, the restriction in some grant programs that qualifying organizations must be separate 501 (c)(3) entities are appropriate, he said, because "it protects and undergirds the integrity and autonomy of the religious institution that is ... doing the work."
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