Boston Globe Series: The Rights of Aid Recipients

The Boston Globe series on faith and foreign aid describes some ways in which evangelism abroad has been woven into government-subsidized activities or otherwise intertwined with governmental resources.  (Links to the full series may be found on this page of the Boston Globe website.)  In a previous post on this series, I've identified the following elements of this problem:

1) some weak safeguards against government-sponsored and government-subsidized religion;

2) a lack of enforcement of even those weak safeguards; and

3) outreach activities, including some performed by President Bush himself, that actually encourage religious providers to mix together religious messages and government resources.

In this post, I'd like to touch on another element the Bush administration has added to this troubling mix:

4) a refusal to require religious groups to notify aid recipients or potential aid recipients of their rights to avoid any active or passive participation in privately funded religious activities.

In 2004, USAID explicitly rejected the idea that the government should require religious organizations to provide notice to aid beneficiaries (or potential aid beneficiaries) that any participation in religious activities should be entirely voluntary on their part.  When it adopted its final rule on USAID funding and faith-based groups in October 2004, AID provided a document that set forth some comments from citizens and non-governmental groups on its proposed rules as well as its own reactions to those suggestions.  (When you click on the link in the preceding sentence, look on the right-hand column of the page where it says Final Rule: Participation by Religious Organizations in USAID to find a link to the rule.)  Here is USAID's summary of some comments on these issues and its response to the comments:

Nondiscrimination in Providing Assistance

Comment: One comment concerned the rule's requirement that program beneficiaries not be denied services based on religion or religious belief.  The commenter noted that this restriction could still permit passive compulsion, such as being required to hear proselytizing messages, or observe religious instruction or worship.  The commenter recommended that [the rules] provide specifically that services may not be denied to a beneficiary based on a "refusal to participate in religious practice[s]," and another commenter requested clarification that a provider could not discriminate on the basis of a lack of religious belief.  Additionally, a commenter proposed that the rule require participating religious organizations to provide notice to program beneficiaries that their receipt of social services is not conditioned upon participation in the provider's inherently religious activities.

USAID response:  We believe that the provision prohibiting faith-based organizations from requiring program beneficiaries to participate in religious activities suffices as written.  In addition, the prohibition on discrimination against beneficiaries "on the basis of religion or religious belief" is explicit enough to include beneficiaries who hold no religious belief.  These provisions are straightforward and require no further elaboration.

We also decline to require that religious organizations provide a notice to a beneficiary or potential beneficiary that participation in religious activities would be entirely on a voluntary basis.  Grantees are encouraged to take steps to ensure that clients and prospective clients have a clear understanding of the services offered by their organization and the strictly voluntary nature of any inherently religious activities, and thus the individual's right not to participate in any such activities, while still accepting or receiving services.  The requirement that participation be voluntary, however, is sufficient to address concerns about the religious freedom of program beneficiaries. 

I couldn't disagree more with AID.  Aid recipients are usually not the most empowered people in the world, and this is especially true of aid recipients outside the United States.  There is likely to be a real lack of understanding on the part of these aid recipients for all kinds of reasons.  Simply encouraging religious providers to educate beneficiaries is not enough, particularly given the fact that the administration is sending mixed messages in this area.  As Bob Tuttle says in the Boston Globe, it's scandalous that the administration has rejected this highly appropriate and necessary safeguard:

Robert Tuttle, a George Washington University law professor who has studied USAID policies, said he was dumbfounded that the agency chose not to require that aid recipients be told that they don't have to attend services: ``It is scandalous in the sense that if you really are interested in protecting the religious liberty of beneficiaries, then why not inform them of their rights?"

Scandalous, but not so surprising.  For example, the Bush administration has elsewhere rejected the idea that religious organizations should be required to give notice to beneficiaries of their right to an alternate secular provider if they object to obtaining services from a religious provider.   What justification has been offered for these actions?  The administration has voiced a concern about not singling out religious providers for different treatment, a concern that is obtuse in this context.  Meanwhile, the administration liberally singles out religious providers for special treatment to protect the religious character and identity of those providers.  So when the White House says it wants a "level playing field" for religious and non-religious social service providers, it actually wants a field that is level only on one side.

Requiring religious organizations to notify beneficiaries of their rights is a necessary and important step.  It certainly wouldn't solve all the problems addressed in the Boston Globe series, but for a nation with a proud tradition of religious liberty, it is the very least we can do.