Government Funding for Religious Organisations

On 19 April, Scott Stephens published a blog on the ABC Ethics & Religion Web-site in which he advocates that Churches should say no to government funding. It is a well-reasoned argument in many ways, but I think it makes a significant omission, resulting in what could be a travesty of justice.

Religious organisations, particularly but not only Christian religious organisations, have a very long history of engagement in the Community Sector, delivering a wide range of social, welfare and community development services that benefit the whole community, not just the members of the particular religious community.

At all three levels of government in Australia there is a general principle that denies funding to religious and political organisations for activities that are either intended exclusively for their members and/or are intended to promulgate their particular religious or political views. It is an interesting paradox, in my view that a sporting club is not ineligible for government funding in the grounds that the services are only available to the members of the sporting club.

I think I generally support that principle.

However, there is a debate in the public and political sphere right now about whether or not Government Funding should be given at all to religious bodies. The focus is particularly on the National School Chaplaincy Program but the outcome of this debate has much wider ramifications than just the NSCP.

Secularists on the one hand want the public domain to be religion-free and any use of public funds to achieve outcomes of religious organisations is illegitimate, and the Religious "exceptionalists" (as Scott Stephens describes them) believe they are entitled.

I believe that both extremes in this debate are wrong: the "secularists" because they assume that once religion is removed from public-political life, and consigned to interiority (where they assume it belongs, if anywhere), the secular space that is left will be neutral, benign and inherently just; and the Christian "exceptionalists" because they think that God's providential care of the world can be mediated through political coercion, and because they do not believe that being on the payroll of the State is hazardous to the soul of Christianity itself.

I agree that both are wrong. The removal of the religious from public political life not only fails to create a neutral and benign space, it creates a space that does not reflect the nature of society. And the government funding can indeed be much more than providential because of the political obligations that are so often attached to such funding.

But to conclude, as Scott does, that religious bodies should deny themselves access to government funding, while perhaps noble and perhaps also a strategy that keeps the church in total control of its destiny, cuts across another important principle of contemporary democratic societies - the principle of equity and access.

I am unable to identify a source that would be specific about this, but a very significant part of the Community Sector is in the hands of religious organisations - Anglicare, the Salvation Army, even generic organisations like Mission Australia and World Vision which began out of a religious vision. These organisations make both a significant and valued contribution to the whole community. If Governments decided that they should no longer fund them because of their religious basis or heritage, it would amount to a scandalous example of discrimination on the basis of religion.

The dichotomy is wrong - the secular and religious. Indeed, if it were a valid dichotomy, the removal one from the public space would give the other an inappropriate advantage. the two live together, and indeed must live together giving each other the respect they deserve as each making valued and significant contributions to the welfare of the whole community.

What do you think?