Religious Organizations

Valerie J. Munson's religious lawyering lands her somewhere between the sacred and the profane. Sacred: A rebellious former Episcopalian parish struggles to hang onto its church buildings in North Philadelphia. Munson will defend the parish, St. James the Less, in a suit brought against it in the summer by the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, which believes it owns the buildings. The profane? A pastor, transferred out of state, struggles to hang onto his flashy, late-model red Jaguar, leased in the name of his former church.

The Supreme Court, once again addressing the issue of separation of church and state, agreed yesterday to decide the constitutionality of a 1981 law that gives religious groups money to counsel teenagers on sex and pregnancy. The court will hear arguments this term on the Adolescent Family Life Act, a portion of which was found unconstitutional in April by a federal court. It allows religious organizations to use government funds for counseling and teaching adolescents on matters related to premarital sexual relations and teenage pregnancy.

PRESIDENT OBAMA speaks the language of faith fluently, but he also understands the Constitution. During the campaign, he promised to keep the line between church and state clean. But when Obama signed an executive order to create his administration's version of an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, all hell broke loose - at least among some civil libertarians. They charged that Obama had broken a campaign vow to prevent taxpayer-funded religious organizations from discrimination in hiring.

NEARLY EVERY misgiving about the Bush administration's signature "faith-based initiative" turned out to be prophetic: The program did indeed allow federal dollars to support religious discrimination in employment and in the provision of social services. Faith-based organizations did use government money to proselytize. Federal grants were targeted for their political usefulness to congressional Republicans. And religious organizations vying for a few thousand dollars in grants did in fact lower the volume of their moral critique of the government.

I'VE BEEN reading a lot about religious organizations being upset regarding the film of "The Da Vinci Code. " While I understand that many religious people feel they are defending their religious beliefs by speaking out, I wonder when they are going to realize that all they end up doing is giving this film (and others like it, past and future) untold free publicity. They will surely create a segment of the population who will see the movie simply because it's being branded as controversial.

THE MOST REASSURING thing about the constitutional swamp created by President Bush's "faith-based initiative" was its leadership: respected Penn professor John DiIulio. DiIulio's frustrating trek through this Washington bog has reaffirmed most of our misgivings about the notion that you can provide government money to religious organizations without compromising both government and religion. Now that DiIulio has resigned, citing commuter's exhaustion, a short history of his short tenure suggests that the devil really was in the details.

Congress should fix the welfare system, not add new flaws. But an obscure provision in a Senate Republican reform package would funnel public subsidies to churches to provide welfare benefits. Such church-and- state financial linkage is most likely unconstitutional and would actually harm religion. Sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and John Ashcroft of Missouri, this provision would radically change how religious organizations provide day care, hot meals and emergency shelter.

A request to use a house on Park Avenue as the headquarters for a religious organization has met with opposition from the Swarthmore Borough Planning Commission. At a regular commission meeting Wednesday night, the commission unanimously rejected the plan and recommended that the borough council deny the request. The plan - which was submitted by Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship - would allow that organization to use a house at 200 Park Ave. as an administrative office. Dwight Wagner, a real-estate broker with Jackson-Cross Co. Realtors in Philadelphia, said that Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship had reached an agreement of sale with Elinor and Woodrow Furst, owners of the property.

The "chastity law" caused the Supreme Court to split narrowly, 5-4, and neatly, conservatives against liberals. The liberals lost, but they were right. The conservatives won with judicial activism, disregarding a long line of precedents. And the case illustrates the problematic nature of the conservative aspiration to nurture religious involvement in public policy. In 1981, with conservatism ascendant, Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) to provide grants to various organizations for services and research concerning premarital adolescent sexual behavior.

WASHINGTON - Conservatives said Sunday that the flap surrounding President Obama's birth control mandate was far from over, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell saying he would push to overturn the requirement because it was another example of government meddling. While a senior White House official shrugged off such remarks, declaring the issue resolved and new legislation unlikely, the rhetoric from Republicans suggested the GOP would try to keep the debate alive in an election year to rally conservatives and seize on voter frustration with big government.

PITTSBURGH - A college in Western Pennsylvania sued the federal government Tuesday, saying regulations that require employers to offer birth-control coverage that includes drugs that abort fertilized embryos are "directly at odds" with its religious values, including the Sixth Commandment. The Alliance Defense Fund filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court on behalf of Geneva College. The school in Beaver Falls is associated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America.

Those bitter clingers to religion continue to frustrate President Obama. Having decreed that faith-based organizations must violate their religious tenets by providing health insurance for abortion and sterilization, he seems surprised by the resulting uproar. Like Dian Fossey watching gorillas in the mist, Obama appears to be adjusting his pith helmet, peering through his binoculars, and wondering why the primates are agitated - and how he can stop their insufferable screeching about moral principles and religious freedom.

WASHINGTON - Conservatives said Sunday that the flap surrounding President Obama's birth control mandate was far from over, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell saying he would push to overturn the requirement because it was another example of government meddling. While a senior White House official shrugged off such remarks, declaring the issue resolved and new legislation unlikely, the rhetoric from Republicans suggested the GOP would try to keep the debate alive in an election year to rally conservatives and seize on voter frustration with big government.

PRESIDENT OBAMA speaks the language of faith fluently, but he also understands the Constitution. During the campaign, he promised to keep the line between church and state clean. But when Obama signed an executive order to create his administration's version of an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, all hell broke loose - at least among some civil libertarians. They charged that Obama had broken a campaign vow to prevent taxpayer-funded religious organizations from discrimination in hiring.

NEARLY EVERY misgiving about the Bush administration's signature "faith-based initiative" turned out to be prophetic: The program did indeed allow federal dollars to support religious discrimination in employment and in the provision of social services. Faith-based organizations did use government money to proselytize. Federal grants were targeted for their political usefulness to congressional Republicans. And religious organizations vying for a few thousand dollars in grants did in fact lower the volume of their moral critique of the government.

I'VE BEEN reading a lot about religious organizations being upset regarding the film of "The Da Vinci Code. " While I understand that many religious people feel they are defending their religious beliefs by speaking out, I wonder when they are going to realize that all they end up doing is giving this film (and others like it, past and future) untold free publicity. They will surely create a segment of the population who will see the movie simply because it's being branded as controversial.

The United States warned the Iraqi government yesterday not to allow militias affiliated with religious groups to control Iraq's security forces. The warning, in a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, was a clear reference to claims that members of the Badr Organization, a powerful Iranian-trained Shiite militia, ran an Interior Ministry jail where U.S. troops found as many as 173 starved and beaten prisoners Sunday. Most of the prisoners were believed to be from Iraq's Sunni minority.

The Pinelands Commission is examining its policy of charging a fee for reviewing construction plans in areas it oversees. The fee, which the commission began charging last April, is $200 or 1 percent of construction costs, whichever is more. It has spawned lawsuits by two South Jersey churches whose officials contend the fee is excessive and tantamount to a tax. Schools and other public buildings are exempt from the fee. Churches and private schools are not. Faith Presbyterian Church in Medford filed suit in late December after it learned the commission would charge $53,000 to review plans for a $5.3 million expansion project.

"FAITH without good works is dead," said St. James. To reach salvation, you not only need to talk the talk, but also walk the walk. The White House's "faith-based initiative" apparently is different. Even without adequate funding, it still makes for a sharp partisan tool to chip away at the separation of church and state. That's one insight from a recent online column (Beliefnet.com) by David Kuo, the former deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. "Over time, it became clearer that the White House didn't have to expend any political capital for pro-poor legislation," Kuo wrote.

Taking critics and supporters by surprise, President Bush signed an executive order in Philadelphia yesterday that bars federal agencies from discriminating against religious organizations when awarding social service money. The order - which circumvents Congress - directs all federal agencies to give equal consideration to both faith-based and secular organizations seeking grants. Bush's directive is aimed at ending what he says is an inconsistent array of policies that made many service providers reluctant to compete for federal money.