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Charitable choice

B. S. Raghavan

THAT is the name given to a programme by which the US President, Mr George Bush, sets much store and for which he is going all out to get financial allocation from the US Congress.

Right from the day he assumed office, Mr Bush has been passionately pleading for what he calls ``faith-based initiative'' which would expand the role of religious groups in providing social services with the help of government funding. He regards it as a means of imbuing those of diverse faiths with the values and tenets that help them bond with one another. If they are capable of doing good work, why deny them state funds simply because they are religious, he asks.

While practices and rituals of various religions may differ, their preachings have universal appeal and faith-based social services are, he feels, best-suited to serve as the stablest and strongest bedrock of human brotherhood and solidarity. The very si mplicity of the rationale has roused suspicion. Mr Bush himself has been taken by surprise that something that is so worthwhile and desirable should have generated a lot of controversy both within and outside the Congress. The critics of the programme at tack it on a number of grounds.

The very first is the clear separation of church and state mandated by the US Constitution and buttressed by a number of judgments of the Supreme Court. Secular sections of opinion are opposed to the programme on the ground that by making state funding a vailable to religious groups, although ostensibly for enhancing the scope of social and community activities, the government may unwittingly become a party to religious indoctrination. Prominent Democrats have explicitly raised the objection that faith-b ased providers of social and community services would proselytise members of the public and in effect use taxpayers' money to gain new converts. Further, it will be difficult for the government to arrive at a precise formula for funding that would strict ly conform to the criteria of impartiality, fairness, equity and good conscience. On the contrary, there are chances of the funds knowingly or unknowingly being used to bolster or pull down one or the other religious denomination.

The right-wing conservative Christian organisations have quite another kind of a problem with Mr Bush's initiative, although they are not the ones to cavil at the importance given to faith by government. Believing as they do in the purity and righteousne ss of the Christian religion as expounded in the Bible, they would only be delighted at the programme if it is limited to building the capacity and strengthening the influence of fundamentalist Christian outfits. Their fear is that non-traditional (read non-Christian) religions, eclectic or eccentric cults, and exotic sects might also manage to get the benefit of state funding, aggravating divisiveness and detracting from the supremacy of traditional Christianity.

On the other hand, Black churches, minority religious groups and those working to save inner cities and urban areas from decay see in Mr Bush's scheme a new source of funding and a new ray of hope for bridging the social divide by a variety of imaginativ e and innovative projects that would knit people in a spirit of togetherness and harmony. The White House has come forward to include provisions to ensure that faith-based organisations would keep government money in a separate account from their religio us activities and also impose restrictions preventing the use of government funds for religious instruction, worship or proselytisation. To what extent these conciliatory gestures would get round the opposition remains to be seen.