WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Bush's administration and a host of court rulings have indelibly altered the way that the federal government relates to religious charities, according to an analysis by experts on the subject.
“The heart — the core — of the faith-based and community initiative is a commitment to equal treatment of faith-based social-welfare providers,” said George Washington University professor Bob Tuttle at a Dec. 2 briefing in Washington. “Now, eight years into this, it doesn't seem like such a radical proposition.”
Tuttle and George Washington Law colleague Chip Lupu spoke to reporters at the release of their annual “State of the Law Report” for the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy. The non-partisan educational organization — a cooperative effort between the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Rockefeller Institute of Government — has been tracking Bush's effort to expand government funding for religious charities.
This year's report analyzed the cumulative changes in the status of such partnerships since Bush took office.
Tuttle said Bush's effort to boost government funding of religious groups has been largely successful. The success owes, he added, mainly to significant changes over the last 10-12 years in how the federal courts view direct government funding for ostensibly secular social services provided by churches and other deeply religious organizations.
“Because of the way that constitutional law developed in the 1970s and 1980s … religious organizations were frequently — not always, but frequently — excluded from government aid programs,” Tuttle said. “But in the 1990s, that began to change.”
Tuttle and Lupu's analysis found that, while the courts removed legal barriers to federal funding for religious groups, Bush and his lieutenants also removed many administrative and even cultural barriers that had existed within the executive-branch agencies that administer social-service programs.