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The U.S. Senate in April overwhelmingly approved a stripped-down version of President Bush's faith-based initiatives. Observers expect the bill to pass easily in the House with few changes.

The legislation is called the Charity Aid, Recovery, and Empowerment Act (CARE). It makes deductions easier for non-itemizing taxpayers, provides technical assistance grants to small charities, and money to state and local faith-based initiatives. CARE also provides money for group homes for young mothers and other social service agencies.

But lawmakers removed provisions that would have allowed faith-based groups to consider religious and moral criteria in hiring. They also dropped language that allowed organizations to use religious icons throughout their facilities or literature.

Jim Towey, director of Bush's Office of Faith-based Initiatives, says the President is not content. Towey told evangelicals gathered at the White House, "Bush is pushing ahead so that we can have a cross on the wall and can have voluntary prayer."

Administration officials told Christianity Today of a three-pronged strategy. The first step is to establish offices that improve faith-based organizations' access to the federal bureaucracy. In December the President announced an executive order creating such offices in two departments. Second is to provide more money for research and conferences promoting faith-based social services. Third is to use executive orders to remove restrictions.

Officials seek to foster support of faith-based initiatives throughout the government. One White House aide said, "It is a revolutionary march through the institutions."

But presidential orders prohibiting bureaucratic discrimination against faith-based social service providers cannot override existing laws.

In December Bush signed an executive order that allowed support for groups that hire using religious criteria (CT, March, p. 28). But Towey said the White House immediately ran into a thicket of previously unnoticed laws. For example, entrenched bureaucrats have interpreted civil rights language in an appropriations bill for public housing as prohibiting the display of religious symbols in meeting rooms set aside for the public. They say it also prohibits providing rooms for any group that discriminates against homosexuals in hiring.

"The President's executive order in December was to extend hiring rights," Towey said. "But there are tangled and contradictory laws in that area. There is embedded civil rights language in a number of laws."

Towey hopes to go after the laws one by one: "We are asking Congress to make the laws consistent."

Focus on the Family's James Dobson wonders how the administration will overcome opposition. "I am proud of what the President is doing," Dobson told CT. "But it is too bad that the Senate, and the House to some extent, haven't captured the vision."

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Recent coverage of the debate in the House includes:

Religious-charities bill stumbles in House | A top Republican signaled today that the House was effectively abandoning President Bush's drive to expand religious organizations' ability to receive federal money for social services (The New York Times)

House to vote on church programs | Bill would allow hiring based on beliefs (The Washington Post)

Also: Religious-hiring bill faces debate | Workforce Investment Act would permit religious groups that accept federal job-training funds to hire only workers who share their faith (The Washington Times)

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June 2003, Vol. 47, No. 6