The battle over the White House initiative to channel more government financing to religious social service programs heated up yesterday, as several major labor unions joined the opposition and a coalition of conservative groups assured President Bush of their support.
Legislation to enact the initiative has already been introduced in the House and the Senate, and hearings are scheduled for later this month.
"We are going to fight this very hard," said Charles M. Loveless, director of legislation for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "It is going to pit religious, nonprofit and public agencies against each other and put government in the business of picking and choosing among religions."
The House bill includes a provision that would allow religious social service agencies that receive government financing to hire only employees who share their religious faith. The opponents, calling themselves the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination, include religious and civil rights groups, educational groups like the American Association of University Women and unions like the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union and the National Education Association.
As opponents mobilized, conservatives sought to mend fences with the White House. Relations were frayed recently after prominent Christian conservatives and Bush supporters, including Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, and the Rev. Jerry Falwell surprised the administration by publicly criticizing the initiative as a possible source of taxpayer financing for religious groups outside the mainstream.
Then John J. DiIulio Jr., director of the White House Office on Faith- Based and Community Initiatives, alienated some conservative leaders by saying in a speech that overtly evangelical social service programs would most likely be eligible not for direct government grants, but only for vouchers.
Yesterday, however, Mr. DiIulio shook hands with conservative leaders at a Washington news conference and accepted a statement of principles signed by representatives of 36 groups calling themselves the Coalition for Compassion. The statement largely echoed the principles set by the Bush initiative.
The signers, most of whom were not among the outspoken critics of the initiative, included the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Conservative Union, the Eagle Forum and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the evangelical World magazine. Mr. Olasky had initially advised the Bush campaign on the initiative, but in recent weeks had become an additional surprise critic.
Connie Marshner, director of governance for the Free Congress Foundation, who helped assemble the conservative coalition, said: "On the right, there was no unity. We're basically friends of the president, so why are we criticizing him in the press?"
Mr. Robertson and Mr. Falwell were not among the signers. Ms. Marshner said both men had been given the statement to look over, but their assistants voiced uncertainty whether they had seen it.
"The initiative's taken a lot of hits in the last month," said one signer, Gary L. Bauer, a former presidential candidate who is now president of the conservative organization American Values. "And I think in that process people began to lose sight of the fact that this is a dramatic proposal President Bush has made, and if it is adopted it will change the last 30 years of religion being kicked out of the public square."
Mr. Olasky and Ms. Marshner said they believed that Mr. DiIulio had retracted his former position on vouchers, as opposed to grants, for the most religious groups. But a spokeswoman for the White House said nothing had changed, adding that "in a situation where there's a pervasive religious presence, that's where vouchers could be used."