Posted: 2/11/05

Faith groups question whether
Bush budget 'compassionate'

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—President Bush is proposing a $2.57 trillion federal budget for fiscal year 2006 that would substantially cut or eliminate many domestic social programs while creating or boosting funding for a handful of others that would be open to religious groups.

As presidents are required by law to do on the first Monday in February, Bush presented his proposal to Congress Feb. 7. It includes the elimination of, or significant cuts in, about 150 different domestic programs that Bush said either are not working or are redundant.

He referred to the budget proposal as “a disciplined budget” in remarks to the Detroit Economic Club. He noted that the budget increases spending on defense and homeland security while cutting spending on other domestic agencies and programs aside from entitlements such as Social Security.

“My budget reduces spending … on non-security discretionary programs by one percent, the most disciplined proposal since Ronald Reagan was in office,” he said.

The budget includes significant reductions in the budgets of the Department of Education as well as the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A major HUD program—the Community Development Block Grants—would be removed from that agency and folded into a new program in the Department of Commerce. However, funding for that program would be more than $1 billion lower than the previous year’s funding level for the block grants.

Bush’s proposal also includes significant increases in funding for some programs that are open to religious social-service providers, including programs that encourage sexual abstinence among teenagers and programs for mentoring the children of prisoners.

“When I look at the overall budget, and look at it in the context of previous submissions, I think it’s a compassionate budget, in light of tight budgetary times,” said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, in a conference call with reporters shortly after the budget was released.

“All budgets reflect priorities, as well as prioritizing programs that are effective,” he added. “And (we need) to look at ways in which we can meet the needs of the American people, especially those in need.”

But many supporters of government-funded social services disagreed.

“The president said this is a budget that sets priorities, and we just don’t agree with any of the priorities in there,” said Yonce Shelton, policy director for the Christian anti-poverty group Call to Renewal. “You know, what kind of values and priorities are ones that present a rosy picture of additional support and funding and ask faith-based groups to do more of that, but then at the same time they really are cutting support mechanisms that help support working families?”

Shelton pointed out Call to Renewal has long been a supporter of Bush’s faith-based plan to expand government’s ability to fund social services through religious groups, but the group has become increasingly critical of Bush for offering little new money for such programs.

“I think when you talk about cutting community programs, which on the other hand the administration is saying we’re trying to support with community and faith-based initiatives, you’ve got to question the integrity and honesty of that approach,” he said.

Shelton also noted that the budget proposal includes further cuts in Medicaid funding, which means cash-strapped states will have to absorb the expenses or cut some benefits of the program, which mainly helps poor and elderly people.

“Practically speaking, if you’re not helping low-income people with their healthcare, … in the long run, that’s just going to present more of a burden to society,” he said.

But Bush said many of the cuts were in programs that were ineffective or redundant.

“The important question that needs to be asked for all constituencies is whether or not the programs achieve a certain result,” Bush told reporters. “Have you set goals, and are those goals being met? And the poor and disadvantaged absolutely ought to be asking that question too. In other words, what is the goal of a particular program? And if that goal isn’t being met, the question ought to be asked, ‘Why isn’t the goal being met?’”

Bush’s budget is likely to face major hurdles in Congress, where many of the domestic programs scheduled for cuts enjoy strong support.

Several congressional Democrats lambasted the budget , including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who labeled it “immoral.” Meanwhile, key Republicans offered only tepid support, with at least three members of Congress’ Republican leadership issuing statements calling Bush’s proposal a “starting point” for the 2006 budget.

Posted: 2/11/05

Bill would allow charities receiving federal
funds to discriminate on basis of religion

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—For the second time in as many years, a House panel has approved a bill that would allow some government-funded charities to discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion.

On a party-line vote, a subpanel of the House Education and Workforce Committee approved the “Job Training Improvement Act.” The act reauthorizes a federal program that funds local organizations helping provide unemployed people with marketable job skills.

The committee’s 15 Democrats voted against the bill, while its 18 Republicans supported the legislation.

The proposal would remove protections for employees seeking jobs from religious social-service providers funded under the program. The 1964 Civil Rights Act already allows churches and synagogues to discriminate in hiring for most positions on the basis of religious principles. However, the courts have not definitively settled the issue of whether religious groups retain that right when hiring for a position wholly or partly funded by tax dollars.

The 1982 Workforce Investment Act, which set up the program, originally prohibited organizations receiving grants under it from discriminating on the basis of religion, race, gender and other categories. The new bill would remove those protections only for religious providers, and only on the basis of religion.

“If this bill passes… we will be repealing civil-rights protections that have been in effect for decades,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who offered an amendment to the bill that would restore the 1982 language on religious discrimination. It failed.

But freshman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said Scott’s amendment “in itself would discriminate against faith-based organizations.” She said religious groups “can’t be expected to sustain their religious mission without the ability to employ people who share the tenets of their faith.”

But several Democrats on the panel said Republican supporters of the proposal were trying to have their cake and eat it, too. Because the courts do not allow direct government funding of religious activity, they argued, religious charities should be able to hire qualified people of any faith for government-funded job-training services without compromising their religious mission.

“The question is whether, once they’ve received federal dollars, they should be able to discriminate in employment based on religion in the providing of non-religious services,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

“We all agree it is not lawful for these organizations to use federal dollars to promote particular religions,” he continued. “And therefore, at the same time, to argue that it is more effective for them to be able to discriminate on the basis of religion is nonsensical.”

But Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) noted his downtown church in Grand Rapids offers many ministries to the community that, while delivering services that have no explicitly religious components, nonetheless are done with a religious mission in mind.

“We want staff in total agreement with the mission of the church as we know it,” Ehlers said. “We would want (the program) to operate according to the philosophy of faith of the church.”

The issue has come to a head in the past few years, as President Bush has pushed for more federal funding of social services through churches and other religious charities. Though he failed to pass his “faith-based initiative” in its entirety through Congress, he has slowly implemented many parts of it via executive orders and other administrative actions.

Meanwhile, the House has done its part to aid piecemeal implementation of Bush’s plan, including adding similar employment-discrimination provisions to a number of bills funding social-service providers. But most of those attempts have been thwarted in the Senate.

In 2003, the House passed a bill similar to the Job Training Investment Act that included an identical provision on religious discrimination. However, it never passed the Senate.

The current bill is H.R. 27. It will likely be considered by the full House before the end of February.

Posted: 2/11/05

New York judge allows same-sex
marriage, says prohibition unconstitutional

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

NEW YORK (ABP)—A state judge has ordered New York City officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on an equal basis with heterosexual couples.

New York Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said a law the state attorney general has interpreted as prohibiting same-sex marriage violates the state’s constitution.

“Similar to opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples are entitled to the same fundamental right to follow their hearts and publicly commit to a lifetime partnership with the person of their choosing,” Ling-Cohan wrote in her 62-page opinion. “The recognition that this fundamental right applies equally to same-sex couples cannot legitimately be said to harm anyone.”

The judge ordered the city clerk in New York to stop his office’s practice of denying marriage licenses to gay couples. She also said gender-specific language in the state’s Domestic Relations Law, which officials had interpreted to ban gay couples from marrying each other, should be read as gender-neutral.

However, Ling-Cohan delayed implementation of her ruling for 30 days in case city officials choose to appeal it. And New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R), who personally supports gay marriage, nonetheless said the city will appeal.

City attorneys said they also will ask the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, to hear the case immediately, skipping an intermediate court. The city’s head attorney, Michael Cardozo, said officials are seeking the expedited ruling “so that a decision on this important issue can be reached as quickly as possible.”

Unlike in many states, the New York Supreme Court is a low-level trial court. There are two levels of appellate courts above it.

Although the judge’s decision interprets the state constitution, at this point the ruling affects only marriage licenses issued in New York City.

Attorneys for Lambda Legal, a gay-rights group, filed suit last year on behalf of five same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses by New York City officials. They contended the equal-protection and privacy provisions of the New York Constitution requires that marriage rights and responsibilities apply equally to homosexual and heterosexual people.

In her ruling, Ling-Cohan noted that one of the plaintiffs, Curtis Woolbright, is the son of an interracial heterosexual couple who moved to California in 1966 in order to marry legally. Many states had laws banning interracial marriage until a 1967 United States Supreme Court ruling declared them unconstitutional.

“The challenges to laws banning whites and non-whites from marriage demonstrate that the fundamental right to marry the person of one’s choice may not be denied based on longstanding and deeply held traditional beliefs about appropriate marital partners,” Ling-Cohan wrote.

Quoting an 1871 Indiana ruling upholding such a law, she added, “Although anti-miscegenation (mixed-race marriage) laws were first enacted in colonial days, such laws were still common into the 1960s and upheld in case after case based on tradition rooted in perceived ‘natural’ law. For example, the Indiana Supreme Court relied on the ‘undeniable fact’ that the ‘distribution of men by race and color is as visible in the providential arrangement of the earth as that of heat and cold.’”

Ling-Cohan was elected to her position in 2002, after having earned nominations from both Democrats and Republicans. Her district covers an area of lower Manhattan. The case is Hernandez et al. vs. Robles.

Posted: 2/11/05

CYBERCOLUMN:
Giving honor … where honor is due

By Jeanie Miley

Sometimes, a movie expresses things I have been thinking but haven’t had the courage to say. Such was the case for me as I was watching In Good Company on a cold February afternoon.

The movie made me think about the contrast between cultures that respect and value the wisdom gained over a lifetime and those that don’t. And every time I start down this line of thought, my mind takes me back to the story of the boy Jesus astounding the learned in the synagogue when he was only 12.

We who love the stories of Jesus enjoy the story of the precocious young Jesus, discussing Important Things with the rabbis and scholars. And we who are parents take comfort in the anxiety of his earthly parents, who, for a time, didn’t know where he was.

I find it increasingly fascinating that instead of taking the boy Jesus back to Jerusalem and installing him in a position of power, he was, instead, taken home for long years of training and tempering, of preparation and waiting until he was mature enough for his ministry. While I have fretted and longed to know what went on in Jesus’ life in those years between his impressive show of knowledge in Jerusalem and his launching of his ministry, I think that the silence about those years does, perhaps, speak volumes.

The truth is that sometimes, wisdom does, indeed, come out of the mouths of babes, and anyone who has been around at least one block knows that it is a foolish thing to ignore the input and influence of the young. Sometimes, a child can see and say what an adult cannot, and there are times and places that yearn for the fresh winds of the Spirit that only the young can bring. More than once, I’ve been brought to a place of breathless awe by the words of an innocent child.

However, my culture worships youth and youthfulness, and the truth is that while we may give lip service to the dangers of having “too much, too soon,” we keep on giving responsibility to people who have not earned it, expensive toys to children who may or may not have the maturity to handle them and positions of power to those who have not learned the hard and necessary lessons in the trenches of life.

In our culture, untrained and inexperienced adolescents challenge and question leaders and teachers with decades of training and experience behind them. We throw out traditions that have had meaning and purpose for generations, we are so desperate to placate and pacify the young. We are so scared of “losing” the next generation that we are often afraid to speak up and speak out to them about their choices. Parents are often so scared of “losing” a child that they avoid setting boundaries and limits, thereby failing to protect the young from themselves. We work so hard to identify with the young that we often stoop to their level of maturity, rather than insisting that they rise to ours.

Jesus’ heavenly father must have known that he needed the long years of preparation before he was given his gigantic mission, and I like to imagine what his earthly parents must have had to say to him in those years to help him mature into the adult Jesus who turned the world upside down.

“Why are the parents allowing their children to decide where they go to church?” my daughter demanded of me, back when she was 15. “Don’t they know that is too much pressure for a kid?”

Like I said: Out of the mouths of babes.

Jeanie Miley is an author and columnist and a retreat and workshop leader. She is married to Martus Miley, pastor of River Oaks Baptist Church in Houston, and they have three adult daughters. Got feedback? Write her at Writer2530@aol.com.

Posted: 2/08/05

BaptistWay Bible Series for Feb. 13

Church discipline, forgiveness flow together

Matthew 18:15-35

By Todd Still

Truett Seminary, Waco

Last week, we commenced our study of Jesus' fourth discourse in Matthew's Gospel by considering the Master's instruction on who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, namely, children (18:1-5). Additionally, we reflected upon the fact that Jesus holds his disciples responsible for the spiritual well-being of the so-called “little ones,” likely recent converts and/or immature believers. Even as the heavenly Father is extremely concerned that no “little ones” are lost, so also Jesus' followers should take extreme measures, if necessary, to ensure the spiritual maturation of such persons (vv. 6-14).

This week's lesson covers the remainder of the fourth discourse. We will overview Jesus' teaching on the restitution of a believer overtaken by a transgression (vv. 15-20). Furthermore, we will examine Jesus' parabolic response to Peter's question regarding the limits of forgiveness (vv. 21-34). These passages offer practical and radical counsel regarding Christian relationships.

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Although verse 15 begins hypothetically (“if”), sin amongst and against believers is a sad and sobering reality. More frequently than we Christians would care to admit, we transgress against God and one another. When a believer sins (against another church member and by extension the entire congregation), what course of action should be taken?

Verses 15-17 set forth a pattern for reconciliation between fellow Christians. Should a brother or sister sin (against you), the onus of responsibility falls upon the aggrieved party. Earlier in Matthew, believers are admonished to seek reconciliation with the brother or sister who has something against them before giving their offering (5:23-24). Elsewhere, Paul enjoins the Romans “If it is possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all” (12:18).

In the first instance, the offended is to seek out the offender in private and to point out to him or to her the error of his or of her way. If this person should listen to the admonition of a fellow Christian, then restitution will result (18:15). In the event that reconciliatory efforts on a one-to-one basis fail, then the person seeking to affect restored relations is instructed to take another believer or two along.

This enables individuals not directly involved to serve as witnesses (v. 16). Deuteronomy 19:15 states: “A single person shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.”

If the erring member should refuse to listen to a small band of believers, then the entire church is to get involved. Should even the admonition of the congregation be rebuffed, then the insider is to be treated as an outsider, that is, as a Gentile and a tax collector (v. 17). The disciplinary action of the congregation against a wayward member is to be viewed as authoritative (vv. 18-19) and in keeping with the presence of Jesus in their midst (v. 20).

Most contemporary Christian assemblies are wary of church discipline. This is understandable, for the practice is notoriously susceptible to abuse. This fact notwithstanding, Christian communities should take sin, as qualified as such in the Scriptures, seriously and act restoratively toward those caught in sin's ugly snare (Galatians 6:1).

Contrary to popular opinion, in some instances the most compassionate step a Christian or a church can take is to help a believer remove the speck from his or her eye, acknowledging all the while the log they have just removed from their own (Matthew 7:1-5). However, any and all action taken against another believer by a congregation should be done in a spirit of gentleness, remembering all the while that the very people with whom Jesus mixed and mingled during his earthly ministry were tax collectors and sinners (9:10-12; 11:19).

The spirit of forgiveness and mercy that marked Jesus' ministry and should characterize those who seek to follow in his steps is poignantly illustrated by Jesus in his memorable parable of the unforgiving servant (vv. 23-35). In response to Peter's question if he should forgive another believer who has sinned against him up to seven times (a number in Scripture that signals completeness), Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times (or, as some manuscripts read, seventy times seven)” (vv. 21-22). In essence, Jesus is saying to Peter (and to us) that believers who tally up the wrongs done to them by others are barking up the wrong spiritual tree.

To illustrate this point, Jesus tells a story of a slave, easily likened to a Christ-follower, who owed a king, a thinly veiled allusion to God, an insurmountable, indeed an unimaginable, debt (some 150,000 years of labor). In response to the slave's desperate plea for leniency and his foolish promise he would pay the debt entirely if the king would but have patience with him, the king is moved with pity and forgives the debt entirely.

Subsequently, this slave moves to extract a comparatively paltry sum (one hundred days' wages) from a fellow slave. When the king gets wind of such, he summons the “wicked slave” and asks him if he should not have been merciful since he himself had been shown mercy (5:7). Having previously been spared from a grisly judgment, this slave was now to be subjected to the same.

In driving home the primary point of this parable, Jesus warns his disciples, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (18:35).

When we pray collectively, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” we should mean it. It would be the height of spiritual hypocrisy and tragedy if we who have been forgiven much did not also forgive much. In the final analysis, none of us want to experience God's judgment. We would be wise to relate to others in a merciful manner, mindful of the fact that we, too, are sinners.

Discussion question

Why has church discipline fallen out of use?

Is it still practical to employ? If not, what system would work better?