Government Funding and Religious Transformation

Marty Lederman has offered his analysis of why the Bureau of Prisons' "residential multi-faith restorative justice program" is, in his words, "blatantly unconstitutional."  An excerpt:

The very purpose of the program, acknowledged by BOP, is "to facilitate personal transformation." (See page 1 of Attachment II, here.) Indeed, one of the ten program goals is "spiritual development" (see page 3 of that attachment). These are constitutionally illegitimate state interests. The government is required to be neutral -- agnostic, really -- on questions of transformation and spiritual development. BOP suggests that its interest in spiritual development of inmates is in the broader service of trying to "reduce recidivism through promoting the virtues of productive work, respect for others, self-worth, responsibility, and accountability." Those are, of course, legitimate state goals. But the government cannot specifically aim at religious transformation as a means of accomplishing those secular ends. As Madison explained in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, employing religion "as an engine of Civil policy" is forbidden, not least because it is "an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation." What is more, I think there's something profoundly disturbing -- whether or not it's constitutional -- in the federal government advancing the view that the virtues of productive work, respect for others, self-worth, responsibility, and accountability are correlated with religious transformation or faith.

I don't know enough to quibble with Lederman's overall conclusion about the constitutionality of the program, but assuming that the government does not stake out a normative position that religious transformation should be the preferred path to virtue, why should the government be precluded from recognizing that there is, for many individuals, a correlation as a matter of fact between religious transformation and socially desirable virtues?

Rob