Whats Wrong With the Faith-Based Initiative?
The genius of the American constitutional system is its recognition that mixing church and state damages both religion and democracy. George W. Bush and John Ashcroft apparently never learned that constitutional lesson. They are the architects of an unprecedented proposal to funnel billions of tax dollars to religious institutions to deliver social services. While touted as a compassionate program, the faith-based initiative has its roots in this country’s abandonment of collective responsibility for the poor. Tucked into the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the 1996 law dismantling the social safety net in the name “ending welfare as we know it,” was a provision known as the Ashcroft Amendment or charitable choice. 42 U.S.C. Section 640a. It threatens to end the separation of church and state as we know it, by funding pervasively religious institutions. Charitable choice requires the government to award contracts for certain social services to religious
