On Saturday, the New York Times published a commentary from Susan Jacoby, program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City and author of the best-seller The Age of American Unreason.  In “Keeping the Faith, Ignoring the History,” Jacoby discusses and dismantles the assumption that religious groups being provided taxpayer funds for (supposedly) social services is both constitutional and something that has always been, or should be done.  She questions, as I have consistently here on SDR, that the predominant controversy has been how religious groups use the money they receive, rather than whether religious groups should be given tax payer funds at all.

I’m not going to go into all of my arguments against tax payer funding of religious social services organizations again.  I know when to admit I’ve been beaten; Jacoby presents those and further arguments much better than I ever could.  Read her article and you will get more out of it than I can give you.

Excerpt:

It is truly dismaying that amid all the discussion about President Obama’s version of faith-based community initiatives, there has been such a widespread reluctance to question the basic assumption that government can spend money on religiously based enterprises without violating the First Amendment. The debate has instead focused on whether proselytizing or religious hiring discrimination should be permitted when church groups take public money. This shows how easy it is to institutionalize a bad idea based on unexamined assumptions about service to a greater good.