By Fred Jackson and Jody Brown
March 12, 2001

(AgapePress) - A report today says the Bush Administration is taking a second look at its plan to fund religious groups to do various kinds of social work. The Washington Post says the move is the result of attacks from both liberals and some evangelicals.

The Faith-Based and Community Initiatives program was one of the first things Bush announced in the days after he took office. Criticism from liberal church-state separation groups was expected. But the opposition from well-known conservative voices such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and World magazine editor Marvin Olasky was not.

The Post says their concerns include a government requirement that programs segregate their religious and service message. In other words, church groups running such programs who also want to use the opportunity to share the gospel would not be eligible for the federal dollars. Olasky, who has also become a Bush advisor, says that by putting in these exclusion clauses, the government is guilty of religious discrimination.

"If the federal government puts out the welcome mat for some religious groups and tells others to 'opt out,' it is preferring one religious belief over another," Olasky told The Post. "This is exactly the type or religious discrimination that the First Amendment is designed to prevent."

That type of opposition has some supporters concerned, saying a "hiring discrimination" argument could solidify Democratic resistance in the Senate. But one alternative -- labeled "social vouchers" by Bush -- may provide a way to avoid church-state complications. Under that particular proposal, individual recipients of government vouchers would be able to choose between a government or church program.

Meanwhile, a successful and well-known Christian ministry that accepts a small percentage of its overall budget from a federal agency was recently criticized for sharing the gospel while reaching out to earthquake victims in Central America. Michael Barrick, editor of The Triad World, a weekly Christian newspaper in Greensboro, North Carolina, says the way Samaritan's Purse was treated by the U.S. Agency for International Development proves that Christian ministries devoted to sharing the gospel "have no business" taking government money.

© 2001 AgapePress all rights reserved.

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