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 n January 29th,
President Bush announced a new White House of faith-based initiatives.
Its stated purpose is to make
it easier for religious organizations to receive government funds
for programs designed to address persistent social ills — juvenile
crime, drug and alcohol addiction, illiteracy, and family breakdown.
The operative premise is that religious organizations may succeed
where other programs, the Great Society programs, have failed.
In the weeks since Bush's announcement of the new office, its detractors
on both the Left and the Right have been in a perpetual state of
fermentation. Although they advance different versions of the specific
liabilities of the Bush initiative — and the differences between
them are important — naysayers of the left-wing and right-wing
variety share one thing in common. Both fear that the Bush program
will lead religious groups toward dangerous temptations that will
be difficult if not impossible for them to resist.
On the Left, some have spoken as if the use of religious organizations
in the provision of social services will unleash a theological crusade.
But it is already the case that many religious charities receive
substantial sums of government money for such services. And since
this has not led to religious strife, discrimination, or persecution,
still other opponents point to a different nightmare scenario: Under
the new initiative, they say, recipients of these services may find
themselves called upon to hear or read a prayer, study the Bible,
or Qur'an, or to participate in some religious ceremony. If they
are disinclined to do so, or so this argument runs, they may find
themselves under great pressure and be unable to resist. In the
old phrase of Irish-Americans who once faced these kinds of moral
dilemmas, they may "take the soup" and abandon their convictions.
For the Right, both the temptations and its victims are different,
but the corruption is the same. The Right sees the churches and
other religious organizations as the ultimate victims; but the temptation
is the increased money that such
| “The
critics of faith-based programs seem to be saying that
we must accept the soft tyranny of low expectations.” |
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groups will now have at their disposal. The Rights fears that, in
return for new monies, religious organizations will be forced by
government fiat to do a great many things that they would not do
otherwise — i.e., hire people who don't belong to their faith
or tolerate a way of life of which their faith disapproves. Such
religious groups, fear the rightists, might thus be forced to constrain
themselves in ways that dilute their core principles.
It would be foolish to deny that these temptations, the temptations
of comfort and money, are real and present. But these kinds of objections
overlook one thing. Namely, both the recipient of social services
and the religious organizations which provide them are free to walk
away. The same freedom that exposes us to temptation also permits
us to resist it. Critics of faith-based programs on both the Left
and the Right assume, wrongly, that we will be unable to exercise
that freedom.
If this is so then it is a counsel of despair. It means that those
in need of social services are so far gone in their humanity that
they have no resources to draw upon to make independent choices.
It also means that our churches and religious institutions are extraordinarily
frail. This is still more worrisome as they come to embrace a larger
proportion of our population.
In a different but related context, President Bush has spoken of
the "soft bigotry of low expectations." The critics of faith-based
programs seem to be saying that we must accept the soft tyranny
of low expectations. But this view brooks a temptation in its own
right. It permits us the comfort of doing nothing, either for others
or ourselves.
It is surely permissible to pray that we not be led into temptations.
But until and unless that prayer is answered, our only honorable
course as free citizens is to face them and try to overcome them.
That seems to be what Bush has proposed not only through this program
but more generally in his inaugural address where he called for
a renewal of citizenship and its virtues. More prosaically, he has
said that he is interested in "what works." Presumably, if this
initiative doesn't work, he will abandon it. Only if it fails, will
we then be free, if that is the right word, to submit to the tyranny
of low expectations.
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