Gore Vows ‘New Partnership’ With Religious Groups

In his only major speech that focused on charities, Al Gore said he

wanted to create a “new partnership” between government and religious organizations.

As president, he said he would push to expand the amount of federal and corporate money available to churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious groups that provide social services.

“If you elect me president, the voices of faith-based organizations will be integral to the policies set forth in my administration,” said Mr. Gore in a May 1999 speech at the Atlanta chapter of the Salvation Army.

Describing his vision for a “politics of community,” Mr. Gore said he supports lowering the legal barriers that prevent religious groups from receiving government money to pay for social services. He said he would like to see the “charitable choice” provision, which was part of the 1996 welfare law, cover federal aid programs for drug treatment, homelessness, and youth-violence prevention.

The 1996 provision makes clear that organizations that receive federal welfare dollars can require their employees to be of a particular faith, and allows those groups to keep religious icons on their walls when providing social services paid for by the government. But it prohibits the use of government dollars for proselytizing or for subsidizing the costs of running worship services.

“I believe we should extend this carefully tailored approach to other vital services,” Mr. Gore said.

While the vice president emphasized the need for safeguards to prevent government endorsement of a particular religious view, Mr. Gore said religious groups should be able to receive government money “without having to alter the religious character that is so often the key to their effectiveness.”

Some observers questioned whether Mr. Gore’s speech was specifically designed to counter efforts by George W. Bush to make the issue of an expanded role for faith-based organizations his own.

During his term as Texas governor, Mr. Bush has promoted government partnerships with religious groups. In 1997 he signed several bills into law that applied the charitable-choice idea to state-run programs and institutions, such as prisons, and eased some of the administrative requirements for faith-based organizations — actions that Mr. Bush says he would like to take as president.

Mr. Bush also pledged, among other things, to appoint a White House official whose sole responsibility would be to make sure faith-based groups were able to participate — without being “secularized or slighted” — in providing social services.

Elaine C. Kamarck, a top adviser to the vice president who helped craft his position on faith-based groups, said Mr. Gore’s program is significantly different from that of the Texas governor.

“Al Gore sees faith-based groups as augmenting the essential programs that the government — the public sector — runs and funds,” says Ms. Kamarck, who directs a research program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. “So he sees this as an add-on. He does not see this as a replacement for government programs,” she says. “It’s pretty clear that Governor Bush thinks — and we believe unrealistically — that this could actually replace the government.”

Ms. Kamarck says that Mr. Gore would extend the involvement of faith-based groups in a more limited way than Mr. Bush. He would reserve extending the charitable-choice provision to the three types of federal programs — drug treatment, homelessness, and juvenile justice — “where religious groups have proven to make a unique difference, because in these areas there seems to be a particular rationale for faith.”

She adds: “The impression we get is that the Republicans think that you can replace all sorts of public systems with faith-based groups.”

But Mr. Gore’s idea is controversial. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a long-time critic of the charitable-choice law, responded to Mr. Gore’s speech by saying that the concept “is fatally flawed from a constitutional perspective.”

Even some of Mr. Gore’s natural allies are concerned. Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, said that his organization has sided with Mr. Gore “on the vast majority of issues” over the past two decades. “But this one is a profound disagreement. It’s a sharp disagreement. We are deeply disappointed in his position.”

Others question the depth of Mr. Gore’s commitment to promoting faith-based groups, noting that he has not talked much about the concept in the year since he delivered his Atlanta remarks.

“The vice president made what seemed like a throw-away speech that was more a response to something his pollsters were telling him,” said Arianna Huffington, a political commentator.

“We’ve had a lot of evidence of how Gore picks up on major issues and then drops them,” says Ms. Huffington. “I’m not suggesting he needs to talk about it in every speech, but if a president is going to really bring about fundamental reforms and new ways of approaching problems — whether it’s poverty relief through faith-based institutions, or ending political corruption through campaign-finance reform — he has to sustain his message to create a momentum and shift public opinion if necessary. And that is not happening.”

Adds Ms. Huffington: “So far all one can say is that he would focus on it as president if public opinion had shifted in that direction, a sort of panderer-in-chief. I don’t think he has anything against faith-based institutions, but he wouldn’t lead there.”

Some religious leaders say both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush still must prove that their presidential plans are truly focused on helping poor people.

Jim Wallis, editor of the Christian magazine Sojourners and leader of Call to Renewal, a coalition of religious groups, says the coalition has invited both presidential candidates to a September conference to explain how they would help the poor.

And Mr. Wallis and other non-profit leaders, as well as Ms. Huffington, are planning “shadow conventions” to be held at the sites of the Democratic and Republican conventions to focus attention on poverty and other key issues.

“Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush want to be our partners and our friends, and we’re saying fine, faith-based organizations have a lot to contribute,” says Mr. Wallis, whom Mr. Gore called last year for advice before giving his Atlanta speech.

“But we’re saying to both of them, if you want to be our partners, then you’ve got to put poor people on the political agenda, and we haven’t seen that yet.”