Faith-Based Funding is Bad for Religion, Society

In 1811, Congress passed a bill to grant federal land to a Baptist church in what was then the Mississippi Territory. President James Madison, a founding father of the United States, vetoed the bill saying, “If the provision is to be the result of pious charity, would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.” Madison understood what purpose faith-based organizations hold in society and what function the government holds in society.

more insideThe Congress of 1811 saw the church’s role in serving the poor and educating children as a good thing, something that would help society and something worth putting federal funding behind. Madison saw the church conducting “pious charity,” a good deed, but voluntary. By giving the church federal funding, the government would have made the church a partner in “public and civil duty.” This, Madison said in his veto, would violate the establishment clause in the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

During the past 10 years, faith-based organizations have been eating up federal funds to do good works. These organizations do good works, as is their mission. And they are vital in the fight against poverty, crime, homelessness, and increasingly active in the peace and environmental movements. These works are voluntary, pious activities born out of a faith in God that says to them “Help the least among you.”

Except the help comes with a price.

This week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against a homeless shelter in Chicago for denying a lesbian woman a bed (the shelter had two available). The Rev. Bud Ogle, a Presbyterian pastor who founded the shelter, told the Chicago Tribune, “Some of our staff are less comfortable with homosexual, gay and lesbian folks than others are.” He said the staff member who denied the woman a bed on a cold November night last year was mistaken about the mission of the shelter. “Our policy as a ministry is to welcome every single person as a child of God,” he said.

Some religious organizations see lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people as sinners, and have long discriminated against them on the basis of freedom of religion. Once these groups feed from the public trough, however, that discrimination must end. The shelter received $150,000 a year from the city of Chicago. Anti-discrimination laws kicked in because the shelter took public money.

Minnesota’s faith-based organizations have received a good amount of faith-based funding according to research by the New York Times this month, and Minnesota’s anti-discrimination laws are stricter than Illinois’ laws.

Thus, the possibility exists that a faith-based organization in Minnesota will have to compromise its religious beliefs or it could become the target of a similar lawsuit. Churches are safer in their mission when they let volunteers and donors run the show, not the government. And the general public, gay or straight, religious or not, will know that their tax-dollars won’t go to groups that discriminate, and no one will get left out in the cold.