The central policy initiative he proposes is the creation of an office devoted to ending government discrimination against religious groups in the distribution of federal funds to faith-based helping groups. In other words, he wants church-based initiatives to be able to apply for government funding to support their work.
And end of the long period of government discrimination against faith-based help is, in itself, a good thing. Government refusal to recognize the primary role of religious institutions in the history of American charity and social improvement has long been the chief impediment to the success of our national struggle against such social evils as the breakdown of marriage and the consequent moral endangerment of generations of children. The President should be praised for declaring the end to such discrimination, and for attempting to reverse the damage.
With a president in the White House committed to empowering their activities, it is a time of promise and opportunity for faith-based helping initiatives. It is also, everyone agrees, a time of danger. But about the danger there is disagreement. I want to consider briefly one danger I consider utterly phony, and one that I consider all too real.
First, the phony danger. We are told that the use of government funds to support faith-based helping activities is contrary to the “Constitutional separation of church and state.” If there were such a barrier in the Constitution, its breach would indeed be dangerous. Fortunately, and for good reason, there is no mention in the Constitution of the separation of church and state. What the Constitution guarantees is that there shall be no interference by the national government with the free exercise of religion.
The free exercise of religion does not mean simply the freedom to believe what we choose, but to apply the principles of conscience and religion to life – to live according to what we believe. Particularly in the context of ethically driven religious faith, such as Christianity, this is essential. Christianity requires in its adherents the love that seeks to change and transform the world in light of the power of Divine Love. Such efforts are the exercise of religion, and they are what faith is all about.
When the Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, it precisely means the right to preach, and to teach, and to work, and to extend in loving fashion the overflowing fruits of grace. This includes preeminently, of course, the realm of what is called “welfare” – in which we reach out to help people, to feed and clothe them, not just with a view to making the body stronger, but with a view to opening the eyes of the spirit to the truth of God’s love.
Participants in faith-based institutions should dismiss the “Constitutional separation of church and state” as the invented phrase it is, and insist that the real words in the Constitution be respected. In the free exercise of religion they should brook no interference from government power that would seek to limit in coercive ways their ability to act on those obligations which their conscience is shaped to believe they have.
Failure to insist on such truly free religious exercise, in fact, is the real danger we face. We must be vigilant against the danger that even under the Bush initiative faith-based institutions will be offered federal contracts, but only on terms that do not respect the crucial role of faith in the efficacy of those institutions. The institutions of faith cannot become the instruments of government. They can be instruments of help. They can be instruments of renewal. They can be instruments of self-government. But they cannot become instruments of government, without being destroyed. Believers must be free to act as such with clarity and independence, according to their true purpose, not bribed to redefine their activities in order that they get government help on terms which destroy that purpose.
Members of communities of faith, as such, have the constitutional right not to be discriminated against in the practice of that faith, especially when that practice seeks the aid and comfort of their fellow citizens. If government respects this, then the spiritual and moral energy that can be harnessed to do so much good in the lives of needy individuals will, in fact, produce that result, and we will not be disappointed.
If believers fail to insist on this respect for the integrity of their mission, then what ought to be a great opportunity for hope and renewal will instead become an opportunity for the corruption of the church, and the addiction of faith-based institutions to a materialistic government structure that poisons the churches even as, in the past, it poisoned the vital institutions of social life like the family.
This is a moment of great opportunity. It is also a moment of great peril. In such moments we need to understand that the first rule of faith is to do nothing without prayer. We should all pray that the heroic thousands of men and women whose faith has moved them to spend themselves in helping initiatives will have the wisdom and discernment to move forward in a way that reaches for the rose, but avoids the thorn. We should pray that they may truly offer help on terms that overflow with the richness of God’s love and grace, lest they become part of that vast movement in this world today that seeks to deny Him, and His existence, and His will.
(Dr. Keyes recently founded and serves as chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles. To visit their website click here.)
