The Pervasive Influence of Religion on Social-Service Provision
1
Walker
Rebecca Walker
Professor Park-Ozee
Comm 1270-091
31 March 2017
The Pervasive Influence of Religion on Social-Service Provision
While the Supreme Court has been busy changing the applications of the free-exercise and establishment clauses, the American legislature and past presidential administrations have enacted public policy that blurs the line between church and state. These developments have contributed to the growing debate involving public-private partnerships, specifically religious ones. Following the 1996 Welfare Reform act, which set up charitable-choice provisions that provided eligibility and protections for religious organizations, the government began contracting out funds for social services. Quickly, the government increased the provision of these services to private for-profit, non-profit, and faith-based organizations. These provisions, along with the legal and legislative developments, have accommodated these faith-based groups by increasing their direct federal funding and creating exemptions for them from generally applicable laws.
According to Harvard Law Professor Martha Minow, state and federal governments are increasingly exploring privatization. Privatization efforts involve aiding outside organizations in performing public responsibilities and addressing public needs. Governments do this, in part, by outsourcing, subsidizing, and directly funding the provision of social services to churches and religious, nonprofit and for-profit organizations (1232). These public resources are then used to promote the involvement of religious organizations in public welfare that often incorporate religious practices or discrimination (1233).
According to the Hoover Institution’s article, “Why ‘Faith-Based’ Is Here to Stay” author Lew Daly argues that the government’s increased support for the Bush-era “faith-based initiative” was not only inevitable but also highly beneficial due to shared goals between government and religious institutions. Daly argues, if faith-based programs prove to be making a positive difference then current legal and legislative barriers separating religious activity from federal provision of social services could be seen as discriminatory and counterproductive (46).
However, direct funding of social services provided by religious institutions raises several serious concerns. According to David Saperstein, a Georgetown Law professor, “there exist many constitutional, policy, and moral constraints on direct funding of religious organizations that would make the inclusion of these [public-religious] partnerships…impossible or inadvisable” (1353). There’s an obvious dilemma involved with the privatization and outsourcing of public funds and provision of services to pervasively religious organizations. For one, direct funding departs from a very common sense conception of the First Amendment, a mandate designed to separate religion and state, by creating clear limits on the government endorsement and establishment of religion (Viteritti 36). Direct funding also compromises the independence and freedom of religious groups by requiring regulations that often jeopardize religious beliefs and practices. Using private actors jeopardizes the legitimacy of government action by encouraging profit over public values (Viteritti 36).
Along with increased direct funding, religious providers are also seeking exemptions from a myriad of laws. Emily Gill, a professor at Bradley University explores this pervasive issue in her speech, “Religious Conscience and Civil Authority: The Meaning of Toleration”. She argues, religious associations want not only a “share of public benefits” but also “exemptions from certain obligations”, and courts and legislatures are forced to articulate the grounds on which they extend or deny these cases for the activities of religious groups in specific areas (8).
Direct funding, as money from taxpayers, will go directly into the hands of pervasively sectarian groups, which have never shied away from discriminating in their hiring and distribution of services. Richard John Neuhaus, founder of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, argues that denial of employment based on discriminatory hiring practices is a secular harm and groups should be subject to political jurisdiction (131). The government is responsible, therefore, in making sure that individuals are not deprived of taxpayer funded services and other activities because of the religious mandates set by these faith-based organizations (132).
Susan Jacoby, the author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, argues for increased public-religious partnerships so long as public accountability or the protection of the legitimacy of the government is maintained. Public values, such as helping the poor or providing child-care, do not require a public monopoly over the actual delivery of services (Jacoby 5). For this reason, Jacoby advocates for public-private partnerships on the grounds that the government can’t do it all alone and insists they be coupled with standards for public accountability. However, with recent scandals revealing defects in the accountability of corporations and religious institutions, governments must set and enforce meaningful public standards for public services, even if delivered privately.
Steven Waldman, editor in chief, president, and co‐founder of Belief.net argues that when there are constitutional or legislative limits on religious activity in government-funded programs, those churches that consider religious activity to be essential will feel forced to compromise their mission or ignore the rules” (Waldman iii). This also compounds the problem because the rules are set in place to prevent the mistreatment marginalized and non-religious groups. With government money come government rules, regulations, audits, monitoring, interference, and control, all of which inherently threaten religious autonomy (Waldman iii). On the opposite spectrum is something equally as alarming: direct funding of religious organizations with no monitoring. The inherent goal of the religious group will “exert significant pressure on those institutions to discriminate, proselytize, and fulfill their broad religious mandates” (Saperstein 1366).
With broad religious exemptions, those who work for religiously affiliated entities or for religiously devout individuals heading for-profit companies incur burdens that employees of other types of enterprises do not (Gill 3). Dr. Gill calls this “cafeteria styled accommodations”. If individuals or organizations can pick and choose what parts of the law they believe they can or cannot conscientiously support, citizens will not receive the health care they require. An orderly application of the law requires minimal rules such as to avoid harm to private, non-religious citizens’ interests (Gill 7).
According to Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, by granting religious institutions and businesses full governmental subsidies as well as exemptions from government regulations, we allowing these religious groups to “have their cake and eat it too” (Dershowitz 77). By giving exemptions from generally applicable laws, such as Title VII, designed to protect marginalized groups such as LGBTQ and the non-religious from discrimination, the government gives a controlling place to religion even when this impinges on the “conscientious claims and worldly interests” of private citizens. Provision of these services ought to stop once religious flourishing impinges upon the interests of others (Dershowitz 77). We may end up with less religious businesses, she argues, and less charity care if secular or religious organizations are excused free reign in their religious exemptions (Dershowitz 77).
With specific regard to the contraceptive mandate included in the Affordable Care Act, if the government must accommodate almost all religious practices, little rules or regulations are even possible, even if “religious practices are self-defined so broadly” that they prevent others from enjoying their lives (Gill 15). The government should not favor or disfavor religion at all through accommodations. I see these exemptions as excuses for more direct funding for pervasively sectarian organizations. With less exemptions, the distribution and provision of welfare services will reach the most amount of people and therefore will affect the most amount of good. Discrimination on the basis of religious liberty is still discrimination and generally applicable laws are set in place to prevent this from happening.
Direct funding and the increasing cases of religious exemptions only worsen the problem of discrimination and impede in the effective distribution of welfare services. These developments only hurt religious autonomy and prevent public values from being attained for the maximum number of people.
The only solution to avoiding these problems and clash of opposing values is to reject direct government funding of programs run by faith-based organizations and curtail the amount of religious exemptions provided to groups in the name of religious liberty influencing a great number of people negatively. Only this prohibition will allow for the robust protections of both religious and civil rights and advancement of vital public values and distribution of social services.
WORKS CITED
Daly, Lew “Why “Faith-Based” Is Here to Stay” Policy Review 157 (2008): 31-46. Print.
Dershowitz, Alan. America Declares Independence. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2003. p. 77.
Gill, Emily R. “Religious Conscience and Civil Authority: The Meaning of Toleration.” APSA 2014 Annual Meeting Paper (2014): 1-21. Print.
Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books. p 5-6.
Kramnick, Isaac, & Moore, R. Laurence. The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2005. p. 28‐29.
Minow, Martha. “Public and Private Partnerships: Accounting for the New Religion.” Harvard Law Review 116.1 (2003): 1229-1270. Print.
Neuhaus, Richard John. The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 1984. p. 131‐132.
Saperstein, David. “Public Accountability and Faith-Based Organizations: A Problem Best Avoided.” Harvard Law Review 116.5 (2003): 1353-1396. Print.
Viteritti, John P. The Last Freedom. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press. 2007. p. 36.
Waldman, Steve. Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. 2008. p. iii.
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