Leaders of some of the nation's largest Jewish organizations last night told the director of President Bush's plan to expand federal funding of social services provided by religious groups that the program could drastically undermine the constitutional separation of church and state with "sinful and tyrannical" results.
The director, John J. DiIulio Jr., defended the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, declaring that virtually no money would go to religious groups requiring beneficiaries to worship in any specific way. He said that in well-run religious social programs, "Bible-thumping doesn't cut it" and real person-to-person contact is the crucial ingredient for success.
DiIulio was well-received at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella organization representing 13 national and 123 local Jewish groups. But the program he directs was not.
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, received strong and spontaneous applause when he warned that if money goes to such groups as the Southern Baptist Convention, which has "targeted us for conversion," federal grants will "free up their money to come after us." He said using federal tax dollars this way would be "corrupting" and "sinful and tyrannical."
Lynn Lyss of the National Council of Jewish Women opened the questioning of DiIulio by citing a Texas church-run antidrug program that specifically sought to convert clients to believe in Jesus to cure their addictions. This program, she said, was able to receive money from Texas after then-Gov. George W. Bush lifted restrictions governing state grants to local programs.
Asked if such funding would be possible at the federal level, DiIulio said, "the answer to your question is a strong no."
Richard Foltin, legislative director and counsel for the American Jewish Committee, said it will be almost impossible under the White House initiative to avoid grants to religious leaders who "do have in mind the desire to oppress people and push people into religious activity they don't want to be involved in."
The Bush proposal also raises the possibility that groups that have voiced anti-Semitic views, such as the Nation of Islam, could receive government funds, said Hanna Rosenthal, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
"As a religious minority, we are greatly concerned about government programs that present a danger of people having to participate in religious activities by explicit or implicit pressure as a price of receiving social services," Foltin said earlier.
He said he and others are also "greatly concerned" that the government could award grants to organizations that discriminate in hiring practices by restricting jobs to the faith of the providing group, effectively "putting up a sign, 'No Jew Need Apply' or 'No Catholic Need Apply.' "
DiIulio has in past comments sought to minimize such fears by stressing the potential of religious social service groups to address unmet needs: "The spirit of this ought to be not, 'Let's get to the letter of the law,' but instead, 'Let's look at how we can get things done together,' " DiIulio declared a few weeks ago. "We could spend all our time disagreeing, and it will not put any bread on anybody's table. It's not going to put a mentor in any child's life."
Bush, when he issued an executive order creating the office, declared: "When we see social needs in America, my administration will look first to faith-based programs and community groups, which have proven their power to save and change lives."
In addition to the White House office, the Bush initiative requires five federal departments -- Justice, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development -- to set up "Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives."
The purpose of each of these centers, according to Bush's order, "will be to coordinate department efforts to eliminate regulatory, contracting, and other programmatic obstacles to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the provision of social services."
As part of his program, Bush said he intends "to create a compassionate capital fund, which will provide start-up funds for promising new programs serving people in need. . . . Government, of course, cannot fund, and will not fund, religious activities. But when people of faith provide social services, we will not discriminate against them."
It is just this expansion of federal grant-making activity into the religious domain that worries civil libertarian and Jewish groups.
"As a minority of 2 percent scattered increasingly throughout the countryside," said Marc Stern, assistant executive director of the American Jewish Congress, the prospect that some communities might only have "some Christian group running social services" and the danger "of religious discrimination in government-funded employment scares Jews."
In addition to the civil liberties and Jewish communities that are expressing concerns, a number of conservative groups and leaders are warning that government funding of religious charities threatens to weaken the independence and spiritual vitality of some of the most effective programs that have explicitly sought to use faith as a central part of dealing with such problems as addiction and violence.
Rosenthal yesterday voiced similar concerns, noting that in her past job as a regional director for the Department of Heath and Human Services, she saw some very successful religious programs fighting drugs in which "belief in God and accepting Jesus was a very important part of service delivery. In some cases, the programs may indeed be very good," but, she said, they should not be getting tax dollars.