John DiIulio Jr. hasn't been in charge of President Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives long enough for the ink to dry on his new business cards, and there's already the potential of a constitutional misstep.
Even before the "applications now being accepted" sign was officially posted on Tuesday, DiIulio was reportedly being pressured by members of the Anti-Defamation League to promise that Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam wouldn't get any government contracts for social programs.
Welcome to the dangerous intersection of special-interest groups, government and God.
On Feb. 12, officials with the ADL met with DiIulio and left the meeting "reassured that the president would not allow financing for the Nation of Islam's programs," according to The New York Times.
This is not good, folks. In fact, it could prove to be unconstitutional if a government official was doling out those kind of assurances.
The ADL is understandably no fan of Farrakhan's. His anti-Semitic teachings have earned him a well-deserved place of disdain within not only the Jewish community but among all people who find his brand of racist rhetoric despicable.
The ADL's inclusive mission statement — "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all people alike" — obviously doesn't extend to members of the Nation of Islam. Unfortunately for the league, there's a little piece of paper called the First Amendment that says the government doesn't get to decide which religion is legitimate.
Bush, however, was on the record during the campaign with the Austin American-Statesman as voicing his aversion to the idea of Farrakhan's followers getting any federal funding: "I don't see how we can allow public dollars to fund programs where spite and hate is the core message."
It isn't just the Nation of Islam that gives the president pause. During the campaign, Bush told the Times, "I have a problem with the teachings of Scientology being viewed on the same par as Judaism or Christianity."
See — right there, in black and white, is the big constitutional problem. Bush can hold whatever opinions he wants about the legitimacy of one religion vs. another. As president, however, he cannot let those personal opinions translate into preferential treatment of one religion over another.
The directors of faith-based and community initiatives who are stationed in the five Cabinet departments that will oversee the disbursement of federal funds for social services must be held to that same standard.
They can set up performance criteria for organizations applying for the funds. Groups may have to demonstrate proven track records in working with drug addicts, illiterate adults and welfare moms, show that they know how to manage budgets and the like.
But deciding who gets the green based on whether the religious doctrines of the sponsoring group are acceptable? No way this meets the First Amendment's establishment-and-free-exercise clauses.
Even Christian conservative Gordon Robertson, who co-hosts a religious broadcast with his father, Pat Robertson, questions the constitutionality of Bush's plan.
"I don't see how on a constitutional basis can you say, 'Well, this belief is OK, and this belief is not,"' Gordon Robertson told The Associated Press last week.
It is ironic that the ADL should be lobbying against another religious minority, as the Jews were the ones so worried about being marginalized during FDR's earmarking of New Deal dollars for social service purposes back in the 1930s.
The Nation of Islam's brand of Muslim teaching may not meet universal favor, and the Scientologists' beliefs about past and future lives may be suspect to those following traditional Judeo-Christian theology. That doesn't make them any less legitimate as religions under the definition established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965.
The court defined a religion as "a sincere and meaningful belief occupying in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualified for the exemption."
Bush's faith-based initiative, no matter how noble the mission, is not the path to smaller government, much less the path to enlightenment. But it may prove to be the road to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.