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this earnest debate over government aid to faith-based social programs
has missed a fundamental point. We're warned by the Left that,
along with the soup,
beneficiaries
of faith-based charities will be spoon-fed morally unsavory and
politically dangerous doctrines; that the fusion of needed benefits
and unwanted proselytism will amount to coercion; that religious
charities will engage in hiring discrimination against spiritual
rivals or homosexuals; and that, however it is technically earmarked,
the money pouring into these charities will ultimately constitute
government support for religious activities. But all of this is
going on right now — big time. It's only the artificial distinction
between religion and the "secular" faith of the Left that prevents
us from seeing it. For years now, the government has been pouring
millions upon millions of dollars into programs run by left-wing
advocacy groups. These groups are every bit as interested as any
religion in promoting a particular moral orientation and worldview.
Conservatives and liberals alike have bought into the notion that
we face a choice between value-free programs that ignore the individual
and simply dole out material goods, and faith-based programs that
look to transform character by instilling morality. Certainly there
are food banks and soup kitchens that fit the model of a strictly
secular giveaway that makes neither moral nor behavioral demands
on its beneficiaries. (Ironically, many of these effectively secular
programs are run by churches.) But the government already gives
legal and financial support to a raft of coercive and morally fraught
leftist social programs that are religious in all but name. These
programs are designed to turn their beneficiaries into gender warriors
and militant multi-culturalists — whether they like it or not.
It's impossible to make sense of the faith-based-charity issue without
taking into account the cultural changes of the past 30 years.
Traditionally, government was small and community-based charities
— many of them religious — did the work of social welfare.
In those days, despite sectarian differences, there was widespread
national agreement on fundamental moral assumptions. Nowadays,
government is vast, while the country is culturally divided. That
means government is now effectively subsidizing one side of the
culture war in its fight against the other — all on the grounds
that only the Left is "secular."
This is the unspoken reason for the battle over faith-based charities.
Government has been subsidizing Gore Nation. Now Bush Nation wants
in. There are only two solutions: massive reductions in social
programs, so that neither cultural camp disproportionately benefits
from government support, or the rise of a religiously-based, government-funded
"compassionate conservatism." The old pattern of church/state separation
depended on the combination of small government and cultural consensus.
Attempts to go back to the old church/state model, without taking
account of our newly flourishing culture war, are naive and futile.
Superficially, the secular religion of the Left is about "rights."
But the eternal preaching about rights — and the miraculous
discovery of new ones — only disguises the essentially religious
nature of the enterprise. That's because we're being urged to embrace
our individual "rights" by identity groups that serve as de facto
religious affiliations
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Superficially, the secular religion of the Left is about
‘rights.’” |
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the culturally deracinated Left. Maybe that's why the individual
right to equal consideration has morphed into a "right" to preferential
group treatment. Today's leftist identity groups give nothing away
to the most orthodox of religions when it comes to claims of moral
superiority, the establishment of group boundaries and rivalries,
and the determination to impose a monolithic moral narrative on
the world. Fortunately, the "scary" side of traditional religion
is redeemed by the ethic of personal sacrifice so essential to the
success of faith-based charities. The new secular religions of
the Left, on the other hand, keep all the scary stuff, but unceremoniously
discard the ethic of personal sacrifice in favor of an ethic of
personal "liberation." Instead of a self-sacrificing God, the holy
warriors of the Left organize their crusades around images of mass-scale
oppression — real or invented. This interesting theological
difference may allow the religious warriors of the Left to avail
themselves of millions of dollars in federal subsidies, but it hardly
relieves concerns about the moral-ideological coercion implicit
in government support of liberal advocacy.
As
NRO reported last month, the coalition of groups mobilized to
block the Ashcroft nomination collectively receive literally tens
of millions in federal dollars every year to run various social
programs. Does anyone really believe that programs sponsored by
the Feminist Majority Foundation, the NAACP, the NOW Legal Defense
and Education Fund, and Planned Parenthood are morally neutral?
These groups are terrified that President Bush will divert a significant
portion of monies from their own social welfare programs into faith-based
charities that stress the importance of marriage in fighting illegitimacy
and poverty. This horrifies feminists because their own welfare
programs preach a pro-divorce, anti-family message that is part
and parcel of a larger worldview focused on the fundamentally oppressive
nature of our "patriarchal" society. We're not talking about religion
versus secularism here. Were talking rival faiths.
A feminist opponent of faith-based charities gave the game away
recently when she described her preferred alternative to religiously
inspired programs that strengthen the traditional family. Fearing
that traditionalist men are just a step away from being wife-abusers,
she argues that "men's belief systems must be rebuilt" to allow
them to accept women as equals. The result is millions of dollars
in morally coercive, government-funded feminist re-education, much
of which was documented last year in Christina Hoff Sommers's shocking
book, The
War Against Boys. These government-sponsored feminist programs
are far more dangerous than their overtly religious equivalents.
Precisely because they do not think of themselves as religious or
coercive, they make no provision for their "beneficiaries" to opt
out. And the tens of millions of government dollars pouring into
feminist coffers are all "fungible." That is, although they don't
pay directly for political activism and lobbying, they free up money
for just those purposes — no more or less so than would government
support for religious organizations indirectly facilitate proselytism.
But if you really want chapter and verse on government funding for
the secular religion of the Left, just consult the sensational final
chapter of Sally Satel's important new book, PC,
M.D. There, Satel describes government subsidized, "oppression-based"
therapies, as politically tendentious as they are scientifically
unsound. There's the "trauma movement," based on a feminist form
of psychotherapy that encourages women to "remember" questionable
instances of early abuse, the cure for which is unstinting political
opposition to our "patriarchal" society. And don't think concerns
about "hiring discrimination" allow male therapists to participate
in such programs. [Editor's note: For more on Satel's book, see
here.]
Then there's "multicultural counseling," which prescribes Afrocentrism
and political opposition to "institutional racism" as the cure for
drug-addiction. The sad part is that many of the addicts forced
by court order into "multicultural counseling" actually want to
obtain a GED, or learn an employable skill. Instead their government
obliges them to color in maps of Africa and celebrate Kwanza. How's
that for religious coercion? It's no longer merely a choice between
the disease model of addition and the sin model. The government
has already thrown its legal and financial weight behind the "oppression
model" — an explanation for disease as quasi-religious as Kwanza
itself. Far from ignoring the individual, oppression-based therapies
seek deep personal transformation. Of course, the attempt to transform
drug addicts into leftist political activists is a waste of time
when what they really need is a GED. But let's not pretend that
so-called secular government programs are uninterested in personal
transformation. Would that it were so.
Conservatives need to wake up on this one. Every debate over government
support for faith-based programs needs to be turned into a debate
on government funding for the quasi-religious advocacy groups that
make up the cultural Left. We can solve the problem by scaling
back government and de-funding the Left. But the public seems to
have rejected that option. In fact, learning that lesson is what
made George Bush president. Worries about church/state issue are
legitimate, but when it comes to the religion of the cultural Left,
we're already at the bottom of the slippery slope. So either pull
the Left's hand out of the till, or let the saints come marching
in.
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