Obama's Vision of the Faith-Based Initiative Prefers "Progressive" Religion

Senator Barack Obama has indicated that he would not abolish the various "offices" and "task forces" within the executive branch dedicated to faith-based and community initiatives if he is elected president.

However, he also indicated that he would change the rules governing the partnerships between faith-based organizations and government. Most significantly, he would curtail the freedom of such religious groups to (1) preserve their religious character by drawing their personnel from among those who voluntarily share their religious commitments; and (2) engage in religious activities.

Some observers declared (incorrectly, in my view) that Sen. Obama's willingness to maintain the faith-based initiative at all was some sort of "Sister Souljah moment" in which he distanced himself from the secular left. These observers seemed surprised that a liberal Democrat was willing to allow any religious groups to participate in government-funded social service programs.

As I see it, and with all due respect, these observers misunderstand the mainstream liberal-left position on church-state relations. Very few on the left categorically oppose the participation of any religious group in a government-funded social service or education program. Instead, they favor the inclusion of a certain kind of religious group and the exclusion of another kind. More specifically, they tend to favor the inclusion of groups that do not integrate religion into their operations and do not draw their personnel from among co-religionists. (In constitutional jargon, such groups are "religiously affiliated.") On the other hand, under the liberal-left view of church-state relations, groups that do the opposite (i.e., integrate religion in their operations and engage in faith-based hiring) are generally ineligible. (Such groups are deemed "pervasively sectarian.") [All this is concededly a bit of an oversimplication, but the general thrust is accurate.]

Those who are surprised that Sen. Obama is willing to fund some religious groups are apparently unaware that the principal divide in American religion is not between religion and irreligion, but between "progressive" religion and "orthodox" religion. [Sociologist James Davison Hunter explores this reality in his indispensable book Culture Wars.] According to Hunter's thesis, evangelical Protestants have more in common with orthodox Jews than with liberal Protestants when it comes to cultural questions. [My own experience confirms this: the Center (part of the theologically orthodox Christian Legal Society) is more likely to be on an amicus brief with the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations than it is with the liberal United Church of Christ.]

"Progressive" religious organizations are less likely than "orthodox" ones to integrate religion into their operations or use religious criteria in choosing personnel. Therefore, progressive groups would be far freer than orthodox ones to participate in social service programs under Sen. Obama's proposed system. In other words, to put it bluntly, Sen. Obama would fund his cultural and religious friends while de-funding those with whom he tends to disagree.

The First Amendment (among other things) forbids government from preferring one religion over another. A set of rules that systematically prefer "progressive" religion over "orthodox" religion, in my opinion, is inconsistent with this fundamental First Amendment principle.

Prof. Douglas Laycock on the future of gay rights and religious liberties

The Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion recently posted complete transcripts of the talks delivered at its 25th anniversary conference, From Silver to Gold: The Next 25 Years of Law and Religion, held in October, 2007.

Here is an excerpt from Prof. Douglas Laycock's talk on The Future of Religious Liberty, A Conscripted Prophet’s Guesses About the Future of Religious Liberty in America. Prof. Laycock is Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. Here is his glimpse of the shape of things to come:

It was the gay rights movement that rallied the broader civil rights movement to kill the proposed Religious Liberty Protection Act. That was a case where the evangelicals were willing to put much more on the bargaining table, surrender much more than the gay rights side was. The evangelicals still lost. Gay rights said we want an absolute exception or we’ll kill the bill, and they killed the bill.

So there will be gay rights laws with absurdly narrow religious exemptions, perhaps eventually with no religious exemptions at all, and there will be conservative believers who impose [sic] enactment of those laws, who resist compliance, who seek exemptions. As the gay rights movement continues to make progress, we are likely to see more and more serious religious liberty issues arising out of its success.

AAUP Pulls an Imus on Evangelicals

American Association of University Professors (AAUP) president Cary Nelson is the soon-to-be-famous apologist for Academe, called upon to defend the Grove from charges that its husbandmen have been treating the ambassadors of the Kingdom rather shabbily. In a May 5th article by Washington post reporter Alan Cooperman, "Is There Disdain For Evangelicals In the Classroom?," Nelson answers to the finding in a recent survey by sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University that more than half the responding educators had high negative feelings toward Evangelicals. Nelson reassures us the poll results reflect not religious bias, but "political and cultural resistence" to Evangelicals. Based on precisely what about them? Two things, said Nelson -Evangelicals' "Republican Party activism" and "opposition to scientific objectivity." So thankfully, it's not about the Old Time Religion at all for the tutors of our children and the groomers of the next generation of leaders. It's just that Evangelicals tend to be active Republicans, and worse than that, they tend to be unscientific.

"The [gentleman] doth protest too much, methinks." Nelson, a English professor at the University of Illinois, surely knows the line comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and that it carries the Bard's gentle admonition to quit while you're behind. The devil is in the details, not the denial. Just ask Don Imus, who found himself out on the street after imperfectly executing the obligatory prostration before the Reverand Al Sharpton, declaring in frustration, "I can't get any place with you people." Like Imus, AAUP ought to pause anon to reflect upon the Bard's sage advice, stop protesting so much and start listening better.

Hat Tip to Constitutionally Correct