Pubdate: Sun, 28 Sep 2003
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2003 St. Petersburg Times
Contact:  http://www.sptimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419
Author: Robyn E. Blumner
Note: Headline from print edition

THE POLITICS OF CONVERSION

Despite diversions such as the war in Iraq, President Bush's efforts
to evangelize the provision of social services keeps chugging along.

Last week, the administration announced new rules making it easier for
overtly religious institutions to access $20-billion in federal social
service grants and another $8-billion in Housing and Urban Development
money. Tax dollars can now be used to construct and renovate houses of
worship as long as the funds are not used to build the principal room
used for prayer, such as the sanctuary or chapel.

The fungibility of money makes this caveat pretty much
worthless.

Soon too, hundreds of millions of federal dollars may be available for
drug and alcohol addicts to get on the road to recovery by being
reborn - the way President Bush wrestled his own alcohol monkey.
During his last State of the Union speech, the president called for
$600-million over three years in new substance-abuse treatment money,
and a somewhat pared down first-year allotment is currently before a
congressional conference committee. To make sure programs steeped in
prayer and proselytizing qualify for the money and sidle past
church-state separation requirements, Bush has called for the services
to be paid for with federal vouchers.

Bush's efforts suggest that up until now the government has not
enlisted religiously affiliated groups to provide social services. But
that is simply not true. The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities,
Jewish Welfare Federations and Lutheran Social Services are just some
of the many groups that have done a significant degree of social
service work under government contract. These groups tend to hire
licensed social workers recruited from all faith traditions, and they
utilize a science-based, therapeutic model without allowing
religiosity to infuse the help provided.

All to the good, right? Not from Bush's vantage. When he publicly
singles out a faith-based program for special recognition, inevitably
he highlights one that cares less about hiring certified counselors
and maintaining standard treatment protocols than about pounding
religion into a client's head.

During the State of the Union speech Bush's invited guests were Tonja
Myles of the "Set Free Indeed Program" at Healing Place Church in
Baton Rouge, La., and Henry Lozano of Teen Challenge California; both
programs use religious conversion as treatment.

One of Bush's favorite faith-based programs is the prison-based
InnerChange Freedom Initiative started by Charles Colson, the former
Watergate figure. Bush brought InnerChange into the Texas prison
system when he was governor and it now operates programs, paid for
with prison funds, in four states.

InnerChange is an intensive Bible-centered program, ostensibly open to
inmates of all religious persuasions, but every month inmates are
evaluated on whether they "demonstrate a belief in Jesus Christ."
Those inmates who fail to show the proper level of piety are removed
and lose the special freedoms and privileges dangled before inmates as
incentives to participate.

What underlies all this is a conservative evangelical worldview that
sees modern science, from Darwin on, as bad. According to Winnifred
Sullivan, senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Divinity
School, proponents of faith-based initiatives "want government funds
to go to the kinds of churches that regard conversion as part of your
rehabilitation. It's a critique of secular professional social service
standards."

The fight is theological, between religious providers who believe the
fruition of faith is to do good works and provide help to the needy in
a nonsectarian way, and evangelicals who reject tested treatment
therapies in favor of Bible thumping. This wouldn't be much of a
concern for the rest of us - both perspectives have a place in our
religiously free country - were it not for the fact that we are all
about to fund the latter approach.

Make no mistake, Bush's plan is to have taxpayers underwrite
conversion. Which makes him part missionary, but also part clever
politician, stacking his own party's deck. By directing
taxpayer-funded vouchers to religious schools and service
organizations, Bush is socially engineering an expanded Christian
Right. But whether young people are educated, addicts are cured, or
even if souls are saved, is secondary to the real prize: the
born-again voter. Polls show they are substantially more likely to
self-identify as Republican than Democrat. Imagine that.
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