May / June 1999

HOW THE LEE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD GOT RELIGION (AND TRIED TO HELP EVERYONE ELSE GET IT, TOO)

Martin Luther and Welfare Reform


As a result of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and its "charitable choice" provision, churches and their faith-based social service agencies are poised for what supporters refer to optimistically as a new era of partnership between church and state.1 Yet history is riddled with similar well-intended attempts at this type of partnership, which usually result in disaster for the churches. Even the great Reformer Martin Luther found his own carefully crafted partnership with the state no match for government officials with their own designs. His story, though five centuries old, remains eerily contemporary in its implications.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist Attempted to Show in His Jaffree Dissent That Sound Constitutional Doctrine Can't Be Built on "a Mistaken Understanding of Constitutional History." He's Right--And Few Things Prove His Point Better Than the "Mistaken Understanding of Constitutional History" in His Jaffree Dissent Itself.