Rick and Tom, I obviously don’t agree with you on the
inappropriateness of a non-discrimination clause in hiring for
faith-based /community partnerships of the sort contemplated here.
Preliminary Matters
First, the question of what counts as unacceptable “discrimination”
is key, as several commentators have already pointed out. If what is at
stake is articulating the message of the religious group, describing
the intersection of the faith and the soup kitchen, that’s one thing
–it’s relevant to the job. If it’s actually working in the soup
kitchen, that’s something else. Am willing to give religious
organizations carte blanche in determining when and where faith is
relevant–no, not if they receive public funds.
Second, I think it needs to be emphasized that however they are
interpreted, the non-discrimination requirements only apply to this
program=—not to all aspects of a church’s life.. Ideally, the program
could be incorporated separately as a 501(c)(3); I suppose it need not
be if the accountants can keep the financial lines sufficiently
distinct.
Third, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the purpose of
this particular program is not primarily to make religious groups
flourish, but to partner with them in enacting limited purpose programs
demonstrated to make the community as a whole flourish –it’s a secular
purpose, with secular understood not as “anti-religious” but as not
encompassing other-worldly goals, means, or objectives.
Fourth, to the extent that it’s relevant, I think the analogy to
Planned Parenthood and environmental groups points against employment
discrimination, rather than justifying it. Planned Parenthood cares
that you support abortion rights; it doesn’t care about the underlying
philosophy or worldview that leads you to support abortion rights.
Anti-animal cruelty groups care that you don’t support cruelty to
animals; they don’t care whether you think animals matter because they
think, or because they feel, or because they are made in the image and
likeness of God. Environmental groups care that you care about the
environment, they don’t generally care whether it’s because you think
the world will go to hell in a handbasket if we don’t care about it, or
whether it’s because you think the environment is the world spirit. And
so a publicly sponsored Soup Kitchen centrally ought to care that its
workers believed the hungry should be fed, and not worry so much about
whether it is because of God’s command, the requirements of natural
law, or the demands of religious brotherhood.
Broader Context
It’s interesting to me that the debate is focused only on religious
discrimination in hiring–that’s where people like Rick and Tom see the
insult to religious groups. In fact, however, if you actually commit
yourself to the perspective of particular religions, discrimination in
services, as well as proselytizing, will likely be justified as well,
and possibly be seen as more justified than discrimination on the basis
of hiring.
Many religious groups believe that they have an obligation to give
preference to the members of their faith in performing works of
charity. Friends of mine who are scholars in Islam say, for example,
that the Muslim brotherhood takes priority in extending help to the
needy. One has a religiously based obligation to help one’s brothers
and sisters in the faith before one helps others. Moreover, there is a
strong strand in Thomistic thought about the appropriate priority in
alms-giving; it was used and can easily still be used, to justify
giving to other Catholics who are needy before giving to non-Catholics.
Moreover, it’s extremely consonant with the Christian tradition to
hold that the only way that one can improve one’s life is to be struck
by the grace of God. Proselytizing, in this view, is a way of preparing
the way for God’s grace, without which no one can hope to turn one’s
life around. In Thomistic thought, prayer is the highest form of
secondary causality. From a Catholic theological world view, a
monastery dedicated to praying for peace and justice may very well be
the most effective way to achieve peace and justice.
In contrast, the religious affiliation of those who cooperate in the
corporal works of mercy may be relatively unimportant to the mission.
One does not need to be a believer to distribute food, clothing, and
blankets to the needy. Rich religious believers –of all
stripes-regularly had their slaves and servants perform the actual
physical labor. In theological terms, one could see the ability to
perform the services involved in the corporal works of mercy are likely
“graces freely given,” not the graces that make us pleasing to God,
following St. Paul and St. Thomas.
Am I saying, then, that religious groups ought to be able evangelize
or to discriminate on the basis of services? Absolutely not. I am
saying however, that distinguishing between hiring to perform services,
on the one hand, and proselyting and distributing services, on the
other, may not make a whole lot of sense from many theological
perspectives. So merely keeping the focus on justifying discrimination
in hiring does not, in my view, constitute taking the religious
perspective seriously on its own terms.
As I said however, these are secular programs–they are designed to
advance well-being on this earth, not in the next realm. /e are
conscripting people’s money ==the money of taxpayers of all faiths and
none — in order to fund these programs and partnerships. What can they
legitimately expect? I think they –we–have an interest in insuring our
funds are used both effectively (in a measurable way) and consonantly
with our values. Here, the no proselytizing and no discrimination in
provision of services rules become important. But in my view, so does
the no discrimination in hiring rule as well, for two reasons. First,
it has an impact on the efficient delivery of benefits. Why should a
taxpayer want to support a less qualified job counselor than a more
qualified job counselor, merely on the basis of religious belief?
Clearly, hostility to the beliefs of one’s clients would be a
legitimate factor in hiring. But does sharing those beliefs, in and of
itself, count as a qualification? Maybe it does. But I want to hear the
argument–. If it does, then religion is a BFOQ. Second, the job itself
is a substantial benefit–it confers participation and status in the
community. In many programs, much of the taxpayer generated money may
be dedicated to hiring personnel. So distributing jobs has to be done
in a way that’s consonant with the broader secular (again, not
anti-religious) thrust of the program.
Needless to say, and to say again, we need to define impermissible
discrimination carefully, to take into account cases where religious
belief is relevant as a bona fide job qualification. But I do not think
a blanket exception to the rule of anti-discrimination is either
required or a good idea here.
Part of this is a prudential judgment about where the dangers to the
common good are. The recent history of the faith based programs under
President Bush does not make religious believers as a class come out
looking as if they are the best judges of when and how religious belief
ought to be relevant. Another is the scandal–and I think that word is
not too strong –of evangelicals and conservative Catholics too(?) — in
the Justice Department considering faith as a job qualification when it
was clearly illegal to do so. Monica Gooding’s story is relevant, here
I think.
This recent history of religiously committed actors in the Bush
administration suggests that there is in fact, a very good reason to be
as worried about religious overreaching as secular overreaching in the
public square. We need to choose a judicious middle path.
So I think it is reasonable, particularly in light of these clear
abuses, for Americans to demand more accountability from religious
groups participating in faith based partnerships. I am, because of
them, far more comfortable going back to the pre-Bush regulations than
I would have been had they not occurred.
In this business and with pleasure one cannot not comment on the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life surveys. They are the most ambitious and expansive polls and draw the most public attention. Chancy as all opinion polls are, these Pew products provide at least some broad-brush understandings of the subject. In the nature of things, press releases lift out and slightly exaggerate evidences of trends in the face of so much continuity in American religion. For example, last winter we were told that there is much "switching" from one church community to another, which is true—but when historians checked in we also learned that there has long, perhaps always, been much of such.
This time the "key finding" is that Americans are very religious, but they are seldom dogmatic and often quite tolerant, improvising adaptations in their own belief systems right under the noses of church authorities. Let me point to one finding that does represent change from the way things were fifty years ago, when Protestant-Catholic gaps and conflicts still made news and were worrisome to many. (Then along came President John and Pope John and the Council and ecumenism and grass-roots changes.) My thesis or hypothesis is reconfirmed: Catholic growth (thanks to mainly Mexican immigration) and decline in clergy numbers aside, Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism are pretty much in the same boat sociologically—and increasingly, theologically.
The Pew people graph sixteen responses by the two communities to opinion questions. At most four percentage points separate Catholic numbers from Mainline Protestants on all but four issues. The only wide separation is on legal abortion, with only thirty-two percent of the M.P.s thinking it should almost always be illegal and, I am tempted to repeat, "only" forty-five percent of Catholics thinking the same. Minorities in both think that "homosexuality is a way of life that should be discouraged by society" but— hold on!—here thirty-four percent of mainline Protestants say so, and only thirty percent of Catholics. A waning issue?
We learn that far below one hundred percent agree with long-cherished and nurtured church teachings when we find that eighty-five percent of Mainliners and seventy-nine percent of Catholics agree that "many religions can lead to eternal life" and eighty-two percent of M.P.s and seventy-seven percent of Catholics agree that "there is more than one way to interpret the teachings of my religion." The news releases say that this proves that multi-religious America is "non-dogmatic" or, in terms of critics, that the adherents are wishy-washy and that they water down their faiths. (Evangelical figures suggest more firmness—fifty-seven and fifty-three percent—on these two indicators. Aren't they low? Leaders are impressed or depressed by this sagging among evangelical members.)
Yes, the half-empty glass approach finds evidence of superficiality in figures like these. Yet, in the halffull view, so many citizens do care about their teachings' way of leading to eternal life that they must be doing some improvising. They don't stop believing, but they do stop persecuting or degrading or snubbing. In the depth of the beliefs of most of the religions the main and final theme is "shalom" or "reconciliation" or "peace" or other positives. The problems have come in when their adherents have obscured such messages by turning exclusive and absolutist, taking on the presumed business of the loving and judging God to whom they witness, by putting their main energies into ruling others out. They are sending dogmatists, exegetes, rule-book- and score-book-keepers back to the books to come up with reinterpretations that encourage faithfulness but discourage sending "others" to hell.
[I started to excerpt this, but I couldn't decide what to omit:]
New York Times
July 6, 2008
The Truth Commission
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
When a distinguished
American military commander accuses the United States of committing war
crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way
forward.
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current
administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired
major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful
new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. “The
only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered
the use of torture will be held to account.”
The first step of accountability isn’t prosecutions. Rather, we need
a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and
national cleansing.
That was what South Africa did after apartheid, with its Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, and it is what the United States did with
the Kerner Commission on race and the 1980s commission that examined
the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Today, we need a similar Truth Commission, with subpoena power, to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11.
We already know that the United States government has kept Nelson
Mandela on a terrorism watch list and that the U.S. military taught
interrogation techniques borrowed verbatim from records of Chinese
methods used to break American prisoners in the Korean War — even
though we knew that these torture techniques produced false confessions.
It’s a national disgrace that more than 100 inmates have died in
American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo. After two Afghan
inmates were beaten to death by American soldiers, the American
military investigator found that one of the men’s legs had been
“pulpified.”
Moreover, many of the people we tortured were innocent: the
administration was as incompetent as it was immoral. The McClatchy
newspaper group has just published a devastating series on torture and
other abuses, and it quotes Thomas White, the former Army secretary, as
saying that it was clear from the moment Guantánamo opened that
one-third of the inmates didn’t belong there.
McClatchy says that one inmate, Mohammed Akhtiar, was known as
pro-American to everybody but the American soldiers who battered him.
Some of his militant fellow inmates spit on him, beat him and called
him “infidel,” all because of his anti-Taliban record.
These abuses happened partly because, for several years after 9/11,
many of our national institutions didn’t do their jobs. The Democratic
Party rolled over rather than serving as loyal opposition. We in the
press were often lap dogs rather than watchdogs, and we let the public
down.
Yet there were heroes, including civil liberties groups and lawyers
for detainees. Some judges bucked the mood, and a few conservatives
inside the administration spoke out forcefully. The Times’s Eric
Lichtblau writes in his terrific new book, “Bush’s Law,” that the
Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, James Ziglar,
pushed back against plans for door-to-door sweeps of Arab-American
neighborhoods.
The book recounts that in one meeting, Mr. Ziglar bluntly declared,
“We do have this thing called the Constitution,” adding that such
sweeps would be illegal and “I’m not going to be part of it.”
Among those I admire most are the military lawyers who risked their
careers, defied the Pentagon and antagonized their drinking buddies —
all for the sake of Muslim terror suspects in circumstances where the
evidence was often ambiguous. At a time when we as a nation took the
expedient path, these military officers took the honorable one, and
they deserve medals for their courage.
The Truth Commission investigating these issues ideally would be a
non-partisan group heavily weighted with respected military and
security officials, including generals, admirals and top intelligence
figures. Such backgrounds would give their findings credibility across
the political spectrum — and I don’t think they would pull punches. The
military and intelligence officials I know are as appalled by our
abuses as any other group, in part because they realize that if our
people waterboard, then our people will also be waterboarded.
Both Barack Obama and John McCain should commit to impaneling a
Truth Commission early in the next administration. This commission
would issue a report to help us absorb the lessons of our failings, the
better to avoid them during the next crisis.
As for what to do with Guantánamo itself, the best suggestion comes
from an obscure medical journal, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. It
suggests that the prison camp would be an ideal research facility for
tropical diseases that afflict so many of the world’s people. An
excellent suggestion: the U.S. should close the prison and turn it into
a research base to fight the diseases of global poverty, and maybe then
we could eventually say the word “Guantánamo” without pangs of shame.
Sometimes I see something of interest on a topic of interest to MOJ readers. One such topic: Obama's faith-based initiative proposal. And when I do, I sometimes call the attention of MOJ readers to what I see. Yesterday I linked to what David Skeel had to say about Obama's proposal (here). Today I linked to what Cathy Kaveny had to say (here). If I thought that *I* had something of interest to say, I would say it. But sometimes my highest, best service is not to say anything myself--because I have nothing of particular interest to say--but just to call the attention of MOJ readers to what someone else has to say. Now, Tom Berg, by contrast, does have something--indeed, many things--of interest to say about Obama's proposal, but because he has said them here, at MOJ, there was no need for me to link to what Tom has said. I notice, by the way, that Tom has posted a comment at dotCommonweal in response to Cathy's post. [UPDATE: Rick too has posted a comment at dotCommonweal.]
Walking down the catwalk in front of the great and the good in New York is
a far cry from using your hands to clean up human excrement for a living.
But this week a group of such women - known in India as scavengers - have
been doing just that. They have been attending a United Nations conference here
and doing some modelling at the same time.
In all, 36 scavengers from India have been invited by the UN to attend a
conference to mark the UN's International Year of Sanitation.
The women were brought up from early childhood for the demeaning work.
Scavengers are invariably from the lower-caste, "untouchable" (Dalit)
community. They carry the human excrement in pots on their heads. They can also
be found clearing rubbish from the streets and open drains outside homes.
'Humilitation'
Usha Chomar is one of these women. Walking along the corridors of the UN
headquarters, she was ecstatic by the respect and honour showered on her by
dignitaries and the movers and shakers of the world.
Thirty-year-old Chomar gave up scavenging in 2003. She says she finally feels
like a human being. "I have always done the work of scavenging and have faced
humiliation all my life.
"So I had never imagined that I would ever have been honoured like this. I am
very happy at last to be treated like a normal person."
The women got the opportunity to hit the catwalk during a fashion show called
Mission Sanitation where they appeared alongside top models from India and other
countries. Some of the designer clothes worn by the models were embroidered by
the women .
The ceremony was especially poignant for Usha Chomar, because she was
unofficially crowned as princess of sanitation workers.
Among the various organisations taking part in the activities was the India
non-governmental organisation, Sulabh International, which was invited by the UN
to work with other groups around the world in the struggle to provide better
sanitation.
"This is the dream coming true of Indian independence hero Gandhiji (Mahatma
Gandhi)," said Bindeshwar Pathak, the head of Sulabh International.
"In India scavengers have been looked down upon for centuries. But those who
have abandoned that work are... being treated with respect which they deserve. I
am over the moon with happiness."
Huge task
Usha Chomar said that she hoped that other disadvantaged women could derive
inspiration from her story. "I tell all scavenging women that it is not
impossible for them to change their lives and command just as much respect as
any other human being."
Official statistics in India say that there are still around 340,000
scavengers working in villages and small towns.
The UN aims to reduce by half the number of people without basic sanitation
by 2015.
But in India alone they face a huge task.
It's estimated that around 700 million Indians do not have access to safe and
hygienic toilets.
Experts say that scavenging in India is most prevalent in the states of Uttar
Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
They warn that because they work in such nasty conditions, many suffer from
acute health problems. They say that the stench that goes with the job forces
many scavengers to hold their breath for long periods of time, which in turn
causes respiratory problems.
The Indian government banned manual scavenging in 1993, but the law is not
widely implemented.
I just received the item below by e-mail--and thought that some MOJ readers, supporters of McCain as well as supporters of Obama, would be interested in seeing it ... BOTH for its content AND for what its content signifies about the controversy among us Catholics over who to support in the general election.
Dear Michael,
The November elections are just around the corner, and as in years past the
Catholic vote will be crucial in determining who our nation's next generation of
leaders will be. The religious far right is already hard at work making its case
that faithful Catholics must vote according to a narrow partisan agenda - an
agenda that leaves little concern for war, poverty, the environment, health
care, and a host of other essential life issues.
That's why we're thrilled to announce the publication of A Nation for
All: How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America from the
Politics of Division, by Catholics United director Chris Korzen and
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good director Alexia Kelley. For a limited
time, you can receive a copy of A Nation for All autographed by both
Chris and Alexia with your $60 donation to Catholics United. For $100, we'll
send you two copies.
In A Nation for All, Chris and Alexia demonstrate how the values at
the core of our faith - loving our neighbors, concern for the poor, and building
a society that prioritizes the health and well-being of everyone, not just the
few - can help put an end to the partisanship and acrimony that have prevented
progress on the important issues of our day.
A Nation for All is unique in that it directly challenges recent
efforts by members of the far right and the Republican Party to coerce Catholics
into supporting candidates who work against the common good. We show how the
Catholic faith cannot be reduced to "litmus tests" or formulas designed to force
the hands of Catholic voters, and confront the notion that denying Communion to
candidates and voters is a legitimate and effective means of advancing the
common good.
By making a $60 or $100 donation to Catholics United, you not only receive
your own autographed books, you help support the important work that Catholics
United will be doing in the coming months. In addition to serving as an
effective counterbalance to the far right's own plans to advance an anti-common
good agenda, we'll be reminding all people of faith that America works best when
we work together.
Over at The Immanent Frame, there is an interesting post this morning: Promoting Marriage and Christianity in America. To read the entire post, click here. The author, Melanie Heath, "is assistant professor of sociology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her forthcoming book, One Marriage Under God: Defense of Marriage Actions in Middle America, will be published by New York University Press."
Here are some excerpts:
Following the recent California Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, National Public Radio offered a report
on “the coming storm” between two “titanic” legal principles: “equal
treatment for same-sex couples” and “the freedom to exercise religious
beliefs.” The report gave several examples of this “collision,” which
opponents cite as proof that same-sex marriage is a threat to religious
liberty. The idea of an impending collision may overstate the intensity
of impending legal conflicts, especially since cases of this nature
have been fought for several decades following the emergence of laws
prohibiting discrimination in housing, employment and education for
non-heterosexuals. Still, the current portrayal of this conflict does
foreground the complex relationship of marriage, religion, and the
state to promote one form of marriage (white, heterosexual,
monogamous). It is same-sex marriage’s (and polygamy’s) challenge to
this interrelationship that provokes such anxiety among religious
conservatives.
Posts by Stephanie Coontz and Tey Meadow and Judith Stacey
reveal the multilayered and complex history of marriage and
Christianity in Europe and America, and its culmination in what Coontz
remarks was an “untraditional” shift by the state to make marriage a privileged
status that is attached to a large number of social and economic
benefits (and constraints). In this vein, I will turn my attention to
the less-known marriage promotion movement in the United States, in
order to shed further light on how state and religion work together to
define and protect the boundaries of marriage, and what this movement
might mean for the future of marriage equality.
. . .
While religious conservatives balk at their loss of religious liberty
under an increasingly wide array of antidiscrimination laws in relation
to non-heterosexuals, it is significant that government marriage
promotion policies combine religion and science to extend the
privileged status of marriage to white, middle-class, heterosexual
couples. This analysis speaks to the demands that social justice will
require of the movement for marriage equality. Even as the battle
against “separate but equal” recognition of same-sex couples gains
legal footing, those fighting for marriage equality must take into
consideration the consequences of the movement on other forms of social
inequality. On the one hand, as states move in the direction of
Massachusetts and California, it will become more difficult for
government, politics, and religion to unite in an effort to promote heterosexual
marriage as the superior family form. On the other, as Meadow and
Stacey argue in their post, it does not offer justice to those outside
the boundary of marriage who are barred from accessing its
socioeconomic benefits, whether straight or gay. Thus, there are good
reasons to expand the fight for marriage equality to consider the
option offered in the California Supreme Court decision, for the state
to eliminate the term “marriage” altogether
and allow religious and secular communities to offer their own
“definition.” This solution will not eliminate legal conflicts over
antidiscrimination and religious liberty, but it might provide for a
more just world.
on July 7th, 2008 at 9:46 am