USING TAX DOLLARS FOR CHURCHES

President Bush punched a dangerous hole in the wall between church and
state earlier this month by signing an executive order that eases the way
for religious groups to receive federal funds to run social services
programs. The president's unilateral order, which wrongly cut Congress out
of the loop, lets faith-based organizations use tax dollars to win converts
and gives them a green light to discriminate in employment. It should be
struck down by the courts.

The Bush administration's faith-based initiative has long been high on the
wish list of religious conservatives. It allows churches, synagogues,
mosques and other religious entities to qualify for tax dollars to finance
programs for the poor and emergency relief, and it lets them provide those
services in an expressly, even coercively, religious setting. While the
initiative in theory bars federal subsidies for religious activities
themselves, it clearly permits praying, proselytizing, religious counseling
and other sectarian activities to be part of a program receiving federal funds.

President Bush's initiative runs counter to decades of First Amendment law,
which holds that government dollars cannot be used to promote religion. The
White House claims money will not be used to directly support religious
activities. But by financing religious people who provide social services
in a way that includes religion, the program will be doing just that.

The faith-based initiative is also unconstitutional, and fundamentally
unfair, because it allows tax dollars to be used in programs that
discriminate in hiring. Churches will be able to hire only Christians for
jobs paid for with federal funds, and synagogues and mosques could
similarly refuse to hire nonbelievers. And taxpayer-financed religious
programs can, by citing their religious beliefs, refuse to hire gay men and
lesbians.

We are already starting to see the troubling ways in which faith-based
initiatives allow tax dollars to be used. In Georgia, a Jewish man is suing
the United Methodist Children's Home, which receives significant federal
financing, for refusing to hire him as a therapist because of his religion.
In Wisconsin, a federal judge earlier this year ordered a prison program to
stop using direct government funds for a drug and alcohol addiction program
that used Christian spirituality as part of its treatment.

It is ironic that President Bush is working to tear down the separation of
church and state at home, given the battles he is waging abroad. It is
clearer today than ever that one of America's greatest strengths is that we
are a nation in which people are free to practice any faith or no faith,
and the government keeps out of the religious realm. This is a tradition
that has served America well since its founding. There is no reason to
tamper with it now.

By putting his faith-based initiative into effect as an executive order,
President Bush did an end run around Congress, where it was facing
significant opposition. But the judiciary will not be as easy to avoid.
When the order faces a constitutional challenge, as it inevitably will, the
courts must not hesitate to rule it unconstitutional.