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PRESS RELEASE
July 10, 2001
Contact: Atheists United Office: 323-666-4258;
Stuart Bechman, Spokesperson: 805-522-4524
”CHARITABLE CHOICE" HURTS US ALL
STATEMENT TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
WASHINGTON, DC - We have heard claims for the past several years that America is embroiled in a "moral crisis."
We are here today to affirm that claim. Now, more than ever before, we believe that America is indeed in a "moral crisis."
Last year, we saw both major presidential candidates pandering to religious leaders by promising to open the public purse to them -- even further than has already been occurring. Both uncritically praised the positive benefits of religion in our communities and promised to give religious leaders unprecedented access to their administrations.
Certainly, some people find benefits in religion. Religion is powerful. Religion can provide a place of community, an organizing point for service projects, and perhaps even provide a simple ethical basis which some people need to safely function in our society.
But religion has its dark side. When religious groups discourage personal autonomy, when they condemn diversity, when they demand unwavering allegience and fealty, they become destructive.
Too often, we have read of people who were financially ruined by a religious leader or a devout follower. Too often, we have read of a religious person who abused family members or others in the name of their faith. Or who let their own child die from religiously-mandated neglect. Or who killed, even their own children, in the name of their religion. Too often, we learn of people who committed suicide because they could not deal with the guilt heaped upon them by their religious community for simply being human.
These are not stories from faraway countries. They happen right here, in the United States, every week. These are serious indictments of religion; yet they are regularly ignored by our local and national political leaders and by the press. Our culture refuses to hold religious groups and leaders accountable.
Yet even without the Constitutional separation of State and Church, before we open up our public purse to outside groups, we should expect our leaders to find strong evidence that potential recipients are deserving, willing, and capable of the mission they are asked to deliver.
But the label "religious" is no guarantee of anything.
There is no evidence that social service programs administered by churches are any more effective or successful than secular programs. But there is plenty of evidence that religious social service programs are at least as prone to abuse and mismanagement and failure as secular programs, and plenty to suggest that they deserve at least as much, if not more, government oversight as any secular program.
Charitable Choice will also inevitably change the nature of the receiving religious groups. Instead of being motivated by the underpinnings of their faith, their charity work will be motivated by the lure of the public trough. And their faith will be compromised as needed to keep the funds coming in. This is the wrong place from which faith groups should be defining their spiritual mission.
As atheist parents, we are as concerned about the values our children adopt as any Christian parent. As much as any Christian has the right to raise their children in the manner they choose, so do we expect the same rights to raise our children with our values. But Charitable Choice uses the power of government to give religion an unfair Upper Hand in imposing their values over our values on the ones we love.
Mr. President:
- Show us the evidence that religious groups do a better job than secular groups.
- Show us how the rights of our community will be respected by these grant recipients, how it avoids treating us as second-class citizens.
- And then show us how your program keeps the separation of State and Church intact.
Faith-Based Funding is wrong; in our view, it is immoral. It creates and promotes Religious Apartheid. Tax support of religion is a lose-lose-lose proposition. The government loses its religious neutrality and oversight; the religious groups lose their spiritual underpinnings; and the people lose their right to form, hold, and pass on their own values of conscience.
We urge our president and our Congress to avoid this Pandora's Box and instead work to provide services for all Americans, including those of us who value reason over faith.
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