Faith-Based Chief Cites ‘Culture War’

The head of the White House’s faith-based initiatives program said Tuesday that a “culture war” was dividing the Bush administration and its critics who challenge the constitutionality of mixing church and state.

“It’s true that much attention is being placed on the war in Iraq, but there’s also another war that’s going on,” said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, during a conference promoting the funding of religious groups engaged in social service activities. “It’s a culture war that really gets to the heart of the questions about what is the role of faith in the public square.”

Towey, who has worked for Democrats and Republicans and was a lawyer for Mother Teresa of Calcutta, warned that when faith was driven out of that public square, “you almost wind up creating a godless orthodoxy.”

His remarks came shortly after President Bush delivered an emotional 40-minute address to the gathering of 2,000 religious leaders and social service workers in which he pledged to increase the money available to faith-based organizations.

Bush had just signed an order establishing faith-based offices in three more parts of the executive branch -- the Department of Commerce, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs -- bringing to 10 the federal agencies that house offices devoted entirely to helping religious organizations tap into government grants.

“I told ... the people in my government, rather than fear faith programs, welcome them,” Bush said. “They’re changing America. They do a better job than government can do.”

The renewed focus on faith-based initiatives comes as the president continues to highlight what he calls his “compassion agenda” -- one that political experts say will be key in mobilizing millions of Christian evangelicals and other religious conservatives to back him over his presumed Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. Bush met last week with nine editors and writers for religious publications and is to meet Thursday in Colorado with James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a Christian-based advocacy group. Towey’s remarks, blunt given the White House’s efforts to promote faith-based programs while carefully emphasizing respect for basic church-state separation, underscored what both sides say is a growing tension in the debate over interpretation of the 1st Amendment.

That divide is reflected in recent opinion polls, which show that frequent churchgoers are far more likely to support Bush while people who consider themselves secular are far more likely to back Kerry.

In his speech, Towey singled out Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, citing the group’s protest against a Wisconsin city for its funding of a Salvation Army homeless shelter.

But the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based organization, and other critics charge that the White House initiative is designed to curry favor with evangelicals and other voters considered part of the Republican base.

Lynn said Tuesday that the administration’s support for allowing religious groups that receive government money to make hiring decisions based on religion was tantamount to state-sponsored discrimination.

“He’s right, there is a culture war in America,” Lynn said, referring to Towey.

“But his army is battling for discriminatory hiring and government-funded religion, and my army is fighting for voluntary aid to the poor in churches and in secular groups, and an end to bigotry.”

The initiatives have sparked contention in Congress, where lawmakers’ doubts over religious organizations’ hiring practices have led Bush to put his program into place largely through executive orders and administrative rulemaking.