The 10-Foot Pole
Barry Hankins March/April 2002 Early last year Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, received a call from a press agency. The caller wanted someone in the seminary's administration to go on record supporting President George W. Bush's plan to fund faith-based organizations (FBOs). The presumption of the caller was that since Southern Seminary was under the auspices of the conservative faction of the Southern Baptist Convention that now controls the SBC, the conservative leadership there would support the Republican program. Surprise, surprise! The caller was told politely that no one in the seminary administration supported such funding.The following evening, speaking informally to a group of scholars who had gathered at Southern for a conference, seminary president Al Mohler explained the administration's position: "When the church takes money from Caesar, the church is corrupted."
It has been popular in some quarters in the past two decades to see Mohler and the other Southern Baptist conservatives who now control the SBC as constituent members of the Religious Right and even the Republican Party. Oftentimes this indeed appears to be the case, and yet there are clear differences between SBC conservatives and moderates on a variety of church-state issues. The conservatives usually align themselves in the accommodationist camp, while moderates are more apt to be separationists.2 On the issue of Bush's plan to fund FBOs, however, it is becoming clear that if you scratch SBC conservatives just right, they're still pretty wary of government funding of religious enterprises. In fact, on the issue of FBOs there isn't that much difference between the conservative and moderate Southern Baptist spokespersons.
On the moderate side the Baptist Joint Committee (BJC) in Washington, D.C. ,represents and gives voice to the Southern Baptist separationist position on church-state and religious liberty issues. Prior to the conservative takeover of the SBC, the BJC received the bulk of its funding from the SBC even while representing several different Baptist bodies in the U.S. When the conservatives took over the denomination in the 1980s, one of their earliest significant moves was to completely defund the BJC, so sure were they that the agency did not represent their views.
James Dunn had been the executive director of the Joint Committee for more than two decades. He has now been replaced by Brent Walker. Both Dunn and Walker have spoken out recently against Bush's funding of FBOs. Writing in the BJC newsletter in February 2001, Walker listed five problems with the Bush plan:
1. It breaches the constitutional wall between church and state by funneling tax dollars to sectarian organizations. 2. It will result in excessive entanglement between church and state as the state seeks to regulate that which it funds. 3. It will dampen the prophetic role of religious groups as they find it ever more difficult to criticize the hand that feeds them. 4. It will endorse discrimination, as religious groups receiving the funding will be allowed to continue to discriminate in their hiring practices. 5. It will encourage an unhealthy rivalry among religious groups as they vie with each other for government largesse.
Derek Davis of Baylor University's J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies has argued many of these same points from a separationist perspective very similar to Walker's. The Dawson Institute under Davis's leadership has taken a keen interest in this issue, having hosted a conference in 1998 that resulted in an edited book entitled "Welfare Reform and Faith-based Organizations." The book contained chapters by those who support and those who oppose charitable-choice initiatives such as those that Bush is promoting.4
Davis's own view is that while the efforts to fund FBOs are laudable, springing from genuine social concern, funding will create serious problems in the long run. In addition to Walker's arguments on entanglement and regulation Davis also posits that as religion becomes aligned with government, the result will be a decline in religious fervor. "America has thrived in large part because of its deep religious commitments," he was quoted as saying in a January 2001 press release. "If these commitments decline, and I believe they will under these initiatives, then America will suffer and lose part of the secret to its success."5 Davis bases this view on his comparison of this country with Europe, where the church has long been aligned with government. Davis fears that eventually Americans will come to see state-funded FBOs as just another government program. As a result, the vitality that has derived from American-styled separation of church and state will be jeopardized.
Citing these same concerns, a group of 14 Baptist leaders signed a statement in early spring 2001 registering their resistance to Bush's funding plan. The signers were brought together by the BJC and included several from the moderate wing of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dunn and Walker were joined by former Southern Baptist Convention president Jimmy Allen, former Christian Life Commission executive director Foy Valentine, former Southern Baptist Sunday School Board director Grady Cothen, former Women's Missionary Union director Dellanna O'Brien, and Stan Hastey, of the Alliance of Baptists, an organization of more liberal former Southern Baptists. Along with a few non-Southern Baptists, some of them African-American Baptists, the list of signees reads like a who's who of moderate former SBC leaders. In addition to opposing the funding of FBOs for the reasons articulated by Walker and Davis, this group also opposed Bush's creation of the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, initially headed by social science scholar John Dilulio. "It is one thing for the White House to set up a liaison office to ensure that religious groups are apprised of events that affect them," the document read in part. "It is quite another to set up a high level agency to take an active lead in spearheading and shaping policy that could harm religion."6
Such Baptist opposition to funding for FBOs would be expected from the separationist moderates of the old SBC, but as the example of Mohler shows, this opposition transcends the usual moderate-conservative divide in the denomination. While not as vehemently opposed to Bush's funding plan as Walker, Davis, or Dunn, Richard Land of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission issued a fairly stern warning for those FBOs planning to capitalize on government funding. Land usually finds himself on the opposite side of establishment clause issues from the BJC. In fact, it was the conservative SBC's debunking of the BJC that led to the development of an ERLC presence in Washington to represent the new SBC in a much more conservative way than the BJC had.
Land's position, nevertheless, like that of the moderates, included a stern warning about government regulation. He softened this warning somewhat by pointing out that Bush would not always be president. The clear implication was that while Bush might do no harm to FBOs, a less conservative and less religion-friendly administration (i.e., a Democratic president) could pose real problems for FBOs in the future.
The clear difference between Land and the moderates was his belief that the Bush plan was constitutional. This being the case, he argued, each religious organization was going to have to carefully consider whether or not to be involved. "As for me and my house:' Land said, "I would not touch the money with the proverbial 10-foot pole?'7 He then listed conditions he would like to see in place to make the funding of FBOs more safe.
Of the prominent Southern Baptists and former Southern Baptists who have spoken out about FBOs, the most hopeful is Mary Knox, the editor of the moderate Texas Baptist Standard. Knox usually finds himself lined up with moderates against the likes of Land and Mohler, but on this issue he cited the example of the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, which has contracted with the state of Kentucky for many years. Recently this organization was faced with the decision to either drop its prohibition against hiring homosexuals or forfeit state funds. Knox hopes that the Bush plan will allow government funds to continue to flow to such agencies while still protecting their right to be sectarian. He summed up his view as "let's find a way."
The one thread that ties all these Southern Baptists and former Southern Baptists together is a genuine concern for religious liberty, which in the case of FBOs manifests itself on the issue of government regulation. None of these southern leaders is anywhere near as enthusiastic in support for Bush's plan as is Ronald Sider, the northern Baptist activist and head of Evangelicals for Social Action, or many African-American Baptists whose churches run large inner-city FBOs. Clearly, while the moderates who formerly led the SBC and the conservatives presently in charge have very significant differences on some church-state issues, they all blanch when government money starts flowing to religious organizations. At the least they want assurances that the money will not be used to promote religion, that no religious group will be discriminated against, and that government regulation will not become the heavy hand that significantly limits religious liberty.
When this article was placed the faith-based initiative was taking a back seat to post-September 11 war efforts. HR7 had passed handily and was
still awaiting Senate passage. It seems certain to pass in some form. How the new initiative will fit into the wartime dynamic with overtones of religious extremism remains to be seen—Editor.
I was one of those present at the meeting at Southern Seminary. Mohier told of the press phone calls while speaking at the conterence, then elaborated on his own views in an informal conversation at a reception following the meeting.
'For the differences between SBC conservatives and moderates see Barry Hankins, "Principle, Perception, and Position:
Why Southern Baptist Conservatives Differ From Moderates on Church-State Issues[ Journal of Church and State 40 (Spring 1998): 343-370.
Brent walker, "Buyer's Remorse Likely for Those Who
Embrace 'Charitable Choice?" Report From the Capital, Feb.
2001, p. 3. For James Dunn's views see Repart From the
Capita1 Feb. 21, 2001, p. 3.
'Derek Davis and Barry Hankins, eds., Welfare Reform and Faith-based Organizations (Waco, Tex.: J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, Baylor University, t999).
Press Release, J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, Jan. 30, 200t.
Kenny Byrd, "Baptist Leaders Issue Statement on Faithbased Plan?' Associated Baptist Press, April 6, 2001.
Richard Land, "Constitutionally Safe, Religiously Dangerous?" Beliefnet, April 6, 200t, p. 1.
Mary Knox, "Faith-based Ministries: Let's Find a Way?' Cooperative Baptist Fellowship—wwwcbfonline.org, Mar.
28, 2001.