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 upporters
of President Bush's proposal to provide direct federal grants to
faith-based groups providing social services repeatedly attempt
to bolster their case by extolling the remarkable success of two
programs that happen to be ineligible for grants under the bill
approved by the House Judiciary Committee late last month. A new
subsection of the president's charitable-choice bill prohibits direct
grants to either the Teen Challenge drug-addiction treatment program,
or Prison Fellowship Ministries, unless they perform radical secularizing
surgery on how they operate.
Most recently,
Chuck Colson and the sainted Michael Novak, in a Weekly
Standard article, cite the impressive track records of these
two programs to persuade critics that the president's initiative
should be approved. But, both of these organizations run programs
that are so faith-infused, it's clear that they wouldn't qualify
for grants under the current terms of the president's legislation.
A few years ago, the program director of a Prison Fellowship program
at a prison outside of Houston explained, "We talk Jesus every
day, every minute, and we don't hide that fact at all." In
1998, then Governor Bush praised Teen Challenge as a "strong
Bible-based program," and approvingly cited it as one of those
"programs offering exclusively religious methods of treatment
— prayer, Bible study, spiritual nurture, moral guidance."
Once Teen Challenge
or Prison Fellowship accepts federal grants, none of those funds
could be spent on "sectarian instruction, worship, or proselytization,"
Should an organization offer such services, as these two groups
do, they must be "offered separate from the program [receiving
federal funds]." This latter modification would prohibit the
use of private funds to pay for the religious components of a program,
which the White House used to claim would be permissible.
Unless there
are some thoroughly secularized social services Teen Challenge and
Prison Fellowship are interested in providing, the administration's
grant initiative offers them no help. Just as their impressive results
in treating stubborn problems offer no help to those trying to win
support for the president's misguided initiative.
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