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Blowing Up The Bedrock

T

he Bush administration and some of its
Republican supporters in Congress are on a
dangerously wrong track in their efforts to
bring more religion into government and more govern-
ment into religion.
Their plans would weaken both government and
religion and, even worse, erode the basic separation of
the_ two that made America a model for democracy
around the world.
Examples of the new push for religion in govern-
ment abound. In recent weeks, the Bush campaign
team started a drive to find 1,600 "friendly congrega-
tions" that would distribute campaign material to vot-
ers in Pennsylvania, one of the hotly contested states
for the November election. And the presi-
dent — lacking legislation he had sought for
his "faith-based initiative" — signed an exec-
utive order requiring the Department of
Commerce, the Small Business Administration and the
Department of Veterans Affairs to create offices where
religious organizations can get help in winning govern-
ment grants.
Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of
Faith,-Based and- Community Initiatives, told a confer-
ence promoting the funding of religious groups
engaged in social service activities that "a culture war"
is under way about "the role of faith in the public
square." He warned that when faith was driven out of
that public square, "you almost wind up creating a
godless orthodoxy."
At the same time, a California Republican, U.S.
Rep. Bill Thomas, amended a bill on corporate taxes to
let religious Organizations endorse some political candi-
dates without endangering their tax-exempt status.
And Bush himself, visiting the pope in Rome, report-
edly asked the Vatican to encourage Roman Catholic
bishops in America to be more outspokenly against gay
marriage. The president is backing a constitutional

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amendment to forbid such mar-
riages, taking a position that he
expects will pay political benefits in
November.
Bush has, of course, made no
secret of his born-again Christianity
or of his desire to root policy on
moral and 'religious tenets. And both
political parties have looked for sup-
port from religious groups, with the
Republicans concentrating on the
Christian right and the Democrats
on predominantly black churches.
Religious institutions have often
helped shape policy, as
they did in their opposi-
tion to the Vietnam War,
for example.
But in the past, both the religions
and the political parties observed a
careful line, heeding the constitu-
tional prohibition against establish-
ing any set of beliefs as an official
state religion. The new initiatives
cross the line both in their partisan-
ship and in their invocation of one
religion, Christianity, as the guiding
force.
[NEWS
Despite Towey's warning, the real
danger is not a godless orthodoxy but the headlong
race toward a Christian orthodoxy. The Christian
majority is real enough and could impose its will on
the rest of the country — Jewish, Muslim, secular,
Buddhist — just as Islam imposes its laws, Sharia, on
the Arab. states. As American Jews are well aware, reli-
gious orthodoxy in Israel frequently stifles needed
social policy.
The genius of America has
its respect for reli-
gious diversity and its commitment to keeping nation-

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al policy based on secular fact-finding rather than per-
sonal dogma.
It is heartening that the Congress has, so far, resisted
the White House efforts to funnel even more money
into church-run programs and that the Thomas
amendment seems 'unlikely to be enacted. But it is dis-
tressing that the White House and its supporters
appear so willing to throw away a basic principle of
church-state separation that has served the nation so
well. ❑

Confronting The Bloody Stain

T

Allan Gale is associate director of the Bloomfield

Township-based Jewish Community Council of
Metropolitan Detroit.

6/18
2004

22

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NEWS

EDIT ORIAL

here is a humanitarian crisis in Africa, in the
Sudan that, in the memory of the fate of
Europe's Jews in World War II, demands the
attention of the Jewish community.
The Darfur region, located in the northwest part of
the country, is home to a large population of black
farmers. This region has been the site of a yearlong
ethnic cleansing effort by Sudanese Arab militias,
known as the Janjaweed.
These groups have been uprooting farmers and
destroying villages through the systematic use of rape,
murder, razing of structures and crops and forced dis-
placement.
One million people have been displaced. And there
are reports that approximately 1,000 individuals are
being killed each week, many by forced starvation (a
result of the deliberate denial of access to relief organi-

cAv

President Bush needs to clearly and pub-
licly state that the violence in the Darfur
region is ethnic cleansing. Such a declaration
zations). An immense, internally displaced pop-
will solidi& national and international sup-
ulation has been created.
port for an intervention to stop the violence
This violence, many observers believe, is pri-
and send in human rights investigators. In
marily motivated by race; but there are eco-
the Sudan Peace Act of 2002, Congress
nomic and political considerations as well. The
declared that the Sudanese government had
attackers are attempting to "Arabize" the area
ALLAN
by eliminating the presence of all black
committed acts of genocide. The U.S.
GALE
Africans.
Commission on International Religious
The Janjaweed operate with the support of
Freedom found evidence of genocidal atroci-
Community
the Sudanese government, which claims that it
ties against civilian populations there.
Perspective
Let us act together quickly, so that this new
is acting to suppress an insurrection in the
century does not carry the bloody stains of the previ-
region.
ous one .
This situation has become even more urgent now
because of the onset of the rainy season (June-
September). If intervention does not take place imme-
The Jewish community can provide aid to the victims of
the violence by contributing to the American Jewish Joint
diately, seasonal conditions will make it impossible to
Distribution Committee's:Jewish Coalition for Sudan
truck in relief or aid workers for several months; it is
Relief (Box 321, 847A Second Avenue, New York, NY
estimated that close to half a million people may per-
. 10017, or online, vvvvw.jdc.org/jcdr_donate_form.html
ish as a result.
Also, the Jewish Federation ofMetropolitan Detroit's
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and President
Annual Campaign helps fiend the JDC
Bush must act. Both must show leadership on this
issue.

❑