WASHINGTON (ABP) — An independent government study has found that federal programs providing grants to religious organizations do not sufficiently safeguard the separation of church and state.
The determination echoes analysis by experts in the field and critics of President Bush's attempts to expand the government's ability to fund social services through churches and other deeply religious groups.
The Government Accountability Office study, released July 18, found that some federal agencies were unclear in their instructions to religious grantees under the program. The study also found that some grantees failed to adhere to the standards administration officials have said they would meet to ensure that federal funds are not used for “inherently religious” activities and that few of the federal and state agencies administering the grants provided sufficient guidance to their own regulators to ensure compliance with such standards for faith-based grantees.
In addition, GAO researchers said the offices of faith-based and community initiatives that Bush has set up in the White House and in several cabinet-level agencies do not have effective ways to study whether the program is effective — one of the main points supporters of the faith-based initiative have asserted in pushing it.
“[L]ittle information is available to assess progress toward another long-term goal of improving participant outcomes because outcome-based evaluations for many pilot programs have not begun,” the report said.
Supporters of strict church-state separation have long criticized the Bush administration for failing to ensure that religious grantees do not use federal funds in ways that violate the First Amendment's ban on government support for religion.
“While officials in all 26 FBOs [faith-based organizations receiving federal grants] that we visited said that they understood that federal funds cannot be used for inherently religious activities, a few FBOs described activities that appeared to violate this safeguard,” the report noted. “Four of the 13 FBOs that provided voluntary religious activities did not separate in time or location some religious activities from federally funded program services.”
In addition, it found that only a few of the federal programs studied provided organizations receiving grants with specific information on protecting the religious freedom of the clients they serve. Similarly, only a handful of the programs studied provided grantees with guidance on permissible hiring practices under the program.
The government study's conclusions echoed ones earlier asserted by a non-partisan organization studying the faith-based initiative. Since 2002, legal scholars from the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy have advised the Bush administration that religious grantees should have clearer guidance on how to use government funds without violating the Constitution.
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