This could be serious: Separation of Church and State - 1/25/08

[Smartmarriages]

I don't know what to make of this one.  I'm not a grant recipient so wasn't
on the call. Some of you must have been.  Others of you have programs and
will probably wonder about their status.  I wonder if there is an official
list of which programs are being disallowed?  The writer asks for reactions.
I imagine there will be some. Please send to the address given, but I admit
I'm curious and I wouldn't mind being copied.  Let me know if your email is
for sharing with the listserv, or not.  - diane



Dear Diane,

I am an employee of one of the Federal Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grants
(HMDG) issued and administered by the Office of Family Assistance (OFA).  I
am, however, writing you this email as a private citizen.  Earlier this
week, OFA organized a conference call for all HMDG and Fatherhood grant
recipients to discuss revisions to OFA¹s policies regarding the separation
of church and state.  I was shocked at the reinterpretation of these
provisions that OFA is now proposing that we operate under, and I wanted to
alert the SM newslist because I believe that these revised interpretations,
if allowed to stand, could have serious negative repercussions on the entire
Marriage Education movement.

After describing the new guidelines, the presenters went on to discuss the
implications of these new guidelines for nine of the most popular Marriage
Education and Fatherhood curricula.  While I admit that I'm not familiar
with most of the curricula discussed, I do happen to own copies of two of
the curricula which have chapters that OFA is specifically ³prohibiting
grantees from incorporating in their Federally-funded projects.²  These are
chapter 6 of David Olson¹s highly popular ³Empowering Couples² program
entitled ³Spiritual Beliefs² and chapter 9 of Dave and Claudia Arp¹s very
popular ³10 Great Dates Program² entitled ³Developing Spiritual Intimacy².
By the way, the content of these two chapters is very similar to chapter 12
of PREP¹s book ³Fighting for Your Marriage² entitled ³Sacred Places: Core
Beliefs and Spiritual Intimacy², so I will include that chapter in this
discussion since I believe that the same objections that OFA has voiced
about the first two programs would also apply to the PREP program, which is
arguably the most widely used marriage education program in the country.

Federal guidelines to ensure the separation of church and state are
contained in a federal document known as "45 CFR Part 87².  The most
relevant provision of that document states:

"Organizations that receive direct financial assistance from the Department
may not engage in inherently religious activities, such as worship,
religious instruction, or proselytization, as part of the programs or
services funded with direct financial assistance from the department."

Let me say that I fully support the concept of separation of church and
state and in that context am very comfortable with the above provision
forbidding the use of federal dollars for worship, religious instruction, or
proselytization.  Now, to be honest, the first time I heard that word
proselytization, I didn't exactly know what it meant so I had to look it up
in the dictionary.  I discovered that it comes from the verb ³proselytize²
which, according to www.dictionary.com has the following four very similar
meanings:

1)      To convert or attempt to convert as a proselyte; recruit.

2)      To induce someone to convert to one's own religious faith.

3)      To induce someone to join one's own political party or to espouse
one's doctrine

4)      To convert (a person) from one belief, doctrine, cause, or faith to
another.

(note ­ the reason that the four definitions seem almost identical is
because the three dictionaries that dictionary.com uses as source documents
all pretty much agree on the definition of this word.)

So, once I understood what was forbidden under 45 CFR Part 87 (³inherently
religious activities such as worship, religious instruction or
proselytization²), I carefully read each word in each of those three
chapters looking for any examples of any of those three things.  And you
know what I found?  Nothing!  Zilch!  Nada! There were no prayers included,
no biblical references, no references to any church founders such as Jesus,
Moses, Mohammed, or Joseph Smith.  In fact, I would challenge the readers of
two of those chapters to even identify, based solely upon the contents of
the chapter, whether the authors of those chapters happened to be Catholic,
Protestant, Jewish, Morman, Islamic, or New Age.  And that clearly indicates
that the authors could not be guilty of attempting to proselytize someone
with this material ­ because how can someone be attempting to ³induce
someone to convert to one's own religious faith² if they don¹t even mention
what faith they have?  (Of the three chapters, the only one which discloses
it¹s authors¹ faith perspective is PREP ­ when it discloses that one of the
authors is Christian and the other two are Jewish ­ but I could find no
evidence in the chapter that any of the authors was trying to convert the
readers to join his/her religion, since no information about any of those
religions was contained in the chapter.)

So, then, why is OFA objecting to these chapters?

Because, suddenly, and apparently to ³avoid offending anyone² and to
³minimize the risk of lawsuits², OFA has decided to ³expand² their
definition of ³inherently religious activities² far beyond what is included
in 45 CFR Part 87 to now include the following provision (which is clearly
NOT included in 45 CFR Part 87):

³This means that each grantee has a responsibility to ensure that curricula
used in its federally funded program is neutral with respect to religion.
Such materials should not promote, endorse, or favor religious beliefs over
non-religious beliefs, nor should they disparage religious beliefs in any
way.  Further, the materials should not express a judgment with regard to
religious and nonreligious beliefs, or seek to change the religious and
non-religious beliefs of participants.  Religious materials that are
privately funded may be used in sessions that are separate in time or
location from the federally funded sessions as long as participation is
Voluntary.²

The net effect of this new interpretation is that, based upon the verbal
instructions we were given in the conference call earlier this week, we can
not even bring up topics of religion or spirituality in any Federally-funded
programs.   In fact, we were specifically instructed, on the phone call, NOT
to even quote statistics which relate in any way as to whether issues of
religion or spirituality have been shown to have any impact on couples¹
marriages. 

I have the following problems with this proposed ³new interpretation² of 45
CFR Part 87:

1) It is totally unfair to the couples that we serve in our Marriage
Education programs.  Multiple studies show that depending upon how religious
differences and similarities are handled, these religious similarities
and/or differences have the potential to act as either bonders or conflict
points within a marriage.  Our couples need to know this, and need to have
an opportunity to discuss their own religious similarities and/or
differences in a safe environment, such as is provided in Marriage Education
programs.  I completely agree that there should not be any pressure placed
upon anyone to change their religious beliefs in any Marriage Education
program, but to pretend that the issue of religion is not an important issue
within marriages is to act irresponsibly to our couples.  What's next?  To
avoid offending infertile couples, we won't allow participants to discuss
problems they might have with children?  Or to avoid offending participants
that either have no money or have a lot of money, the topic area of
³finances² will be struck from our curricula?  And by all means, since many
people are uncomfortable when topics of sex and sexuality are discussed,
will that topic also be banned within ME programs?

2)  This shift has tremendous potential to undermine the tremendous
progress which the Marriage Education movement has made within the faith
community.  It is my estimate that over 90% of the Marriage Education
programs that are currently conducted throughout the United States are being
conducted at faith-based organizations.  To now inform these establishments
that they cannot even discuss the topics of religion or spirituality will be
a slap in their faces, and will be highly offensive to these very key
members of the Marriage Education movement.  I find it ironic that in OFA's
attempt to avoid potentially offending a few people, they have chosen a
course of action that will offend the very people that they and we most need
to have in support of this initiative.

3)  In my opinion, this is a direct violation of what our Founding
Fathers intended when they established the principle of separation of church
and state.  Last night I re read the Constitution, probably for the first
time in since my seventh grade civics class.  As I understand it, the
concept of "separation of church and state² comes from the 1st Amendment of
the Constitution which reads:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The reason our
Founding Fathers put in that "establishment clause" was to protect against
any sort of state-established religion such as they had escaped from in
England and to protect everyone from persecution based upon their religious
beliefs or practices.  It was clearly meant to encourage and expand
religious practice, not to restrict it.

4) It clearly does not meet OFA¹s stated objective of ³trying to avoid
lawsuits².  In fact, I believe that OFA has a much greater probability of
being sued by any one (or multiple) of a number of Religious Right
organizations if they continue with their proposed expanded interpretations
of the 45 CFR Part 87 than they were previously facing from whomever it is
that they are reacting to when they came up with these proposed changes.

For all of the above reasons, I hope that OFA reconsiders the guidance they
provided all of the grantees in this matter, and comes up with a different
set of guidelines that will meet their objectives while allowing us to
provide the best possible Marriage Education programs to the couples we are
privileged to work with ­ in a way that does not negatively impact the
relationships with our faith-based associates that we have worked so long
and hard to nurture.

As I think about what is going on here, it seems to me that OFA is feeling
the pressure to bow to the same types of interest groups that are lobbying
to have the phrase ³In God We Trust² taken off our currency and the phrase
³One Nation Under God² taken out of the pledge of allegiance.  I, for one,
do not believe that we should let these extremists dictate what materials we
should or should not include in our Marriage Education programs.  Let¹s face
it ­ they were successful in removing God from our classrooms; let¹s not let
them remove God from our marriages!

I would be interested in receiving feedback from other members of this
newslist ­ in particular, other employees of Healthy Marriage or Responsible
Fatherhood grantees ­ to see whether they agree or disagree with my views on
these topics.  In addition, I would be interested in hearing from any ME
researchers that have any data on any of these topics that they would care
to share.  I will fully and absolutely respect any requests for
confidentiality from anyone who emails me on this topic.  In order to help
with this, I have set up a ³confidential email address² which I will use
only for this purpose, which is ³KeepGodInMarriage at yahoo.com².

"K."

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