Walking the Walk? Post-Bush Funding for Faith-Based Charities

For those who threw their support behind Barack Obama and his enlightened campaign promises, his tendency to compromise in office has been a disappointment. There is no denying that the ability to compromise is an invaluable tool, and perhaps it will be what gets him re-elected. However, it leaves some of those who voted for him based on a strongly held political belief wonder why they did. One such promise dealt with the issue of federal funding for faith-based charities. President Obama assured voters last year that while he supported government’s cooperation with religious charity, he would curtail funding to groups that proselytized or discriminated in hiring based on a candidate’s religious beliefs. Before the Bush years, most of these nonprofits who received federal grants simply assumed they could not do these things. However, President Bush issued a memo while in office, presumably to woo his conservative Christian supporters, that essentially permitted them. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State called it “flatly erroneous,” and “legally suspect.” Many groups and voters have urged the new president to remedy the situation.

This is similar to attempts on the part of the federal government to regulate education: they must use the power of the purse. The solution to the problem, if charities would rather be able to discriminate or proselytize, is to turn down federal funding.

On this issue, the President is cautious. He does have many arguably more important crises to deal with, which perhaps delay him from addressing the problem. However, it leads a politically educated observer, who has read Burke’s speech to the constituents of Bristol, to conclude that his judgment is simply in conflict with what those who influence him seem to want. Perhaps he is exercising trusteeship as his representative form of choice in this decision –his judgment to compromise may be a result of his wisdom and disengagement from the passions of the issue.