Faith-based initiative != discriminatory hiring

About those hotly debated hiring questions over the revamped White House Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Mark Silk writes:

If, in the usual democratic way, the federal government decides to fund certain programs for the general welfare; and if, because they share a commitment to those programs, certain religious institutions choose to act as secular agencies in carrying them out; then fine. But if they can foster their own purely religious goals via discriminatory hiring, then not so fine. Not only because the rest of us end up paying to support those goals. But also because our tax dollars will be out there tempting other religious institutions to change what they are.

Sounds right to us.

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Addendum from J. Brent Walker is executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty

Both an ordained minister and a member of the Supreme Court Bar, Walker wrote:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of, among other things, religion; but it grants an exemption to religious organizations, allowing them to favor adherents of their particular faith in hiring. While this exemption clearly applies when the religious organization is using the funds of the faithful, the administration should not allow religious organizations to use taxpayer funds to discriminate in hiring against a qualified person based on nothing more than religious beliefs.

Doing so would, as he said, be “an unfair advancement of religion that also turns back the clock on civil rights.”

The right and constitutional path for the Obama administration is clear.