WASHINGTON, April 26 — President Bush's plan to expand government financing of religious groups' charitable work drew partisan attacks today at a House hearing that revealed the outline of coming battles over whether the legislation respects the constitutional guarantee of church-state separation.
In his first appearance before a Congressional committee, John J. DiIulio Jr., director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said he could not answer several crucial questions, among them whether the legislation would ban all proselytizing by groups that get federal funds and how much new money would be available.
Mr. DiIulio defended the "charitable choice" legislation, saying it was necessary to ensure that religious groups offering social services to the needy have the same right to apply for federal grants as secular organizations, without giving up their religious character.
"Merely because a faith-based social service delivery program receives Penny 1 of public funds," he said, "its leaders and volunteers need not remove religious iconography from their walls, need not refrain from parking their housing rehab lumber in churchyards, need not cease humming hymns while hammering nails."
But Democratic lawmakers at the hearing, held by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, challenged Mr. DiIulio's initial assertions that people who were helped by these federally financed programs would be spared attempts to convert them.
And when pressed by Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, to show that volunteers would be prohibited from praying or proselytizing, Mr. DiIulio demurred. Though he said that "there will be no funds for sectarian worship or proselytizing," he would not guarantee that volunteers, who would not be paid with federal money, would be barred from encouraging prayer or worship.
Another concern was whether the initiative would raise false hopes among struggling churches that more money would be available if the legislation passed.
"I don't want people I represent to be thinking and believing they're going to have additional money," said Representative Danny K. Davis, Democrat of Illinois.
Mr. DiIulio replied that the president was adding money to various social programs; the Office of Faith- Based and Community Initiatives itself does not distribute funds.
But the overarching fear among the Democratic lawmakers was that this effort to improve social services was a needless assault on hard-won civil rights and the separation of church and state.
Mr. Scott took strong issue with a provision in the bill that would allow religious groups to discriminate in favor of members of their own faith when hiring staff for their federally financed programs.
"Supporters of Charitable Choice have promised to invest needed resources in our inner cities," Mr. Scott said, "but it is insulting to suggest that we cannot get those investments unless we turn the clock back on our civil rights."