Word: faithfulness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Having often bandied the phrase "compassionate conservatism," Texas Gov. George W. Bush finally gave the term meaning early this summer when he proposed a massive effort to support "faith-based institutions" as providers of social services. Bush announced that he would dedicate $8 billion of Federal money to these groups, saying that "in every instance when my Administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based institutions, to charities and to community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives...
Bush referred to groups as "faith-based institutions," perhaps because "religious charities" seems too close to "religious right," a voting segment that Bush would like to win without public wooing. But his choice of words cannot veil the fact that the proposal would represent a philosophical retreat, not only from the small-government rhetoric of the 1994 Republican Revolution, but also from the modern social compact that America has developed since the New Deal. Handing off some of the government's programs to religious charities would not only endanger the programs but would handicap the charities and abdicate social responsibility...
...blessing to a charitable institution, especially a religious one. Bush was quick to deal with the prospect of a mixing of church and state, adding that under his proposal the government would not discriminate "for or against Methodists or Mormons or Muslims, or good people with no faith at all," and said there would always be "secular alternatives" to religious programs...
...that approach changed in 1990, when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a Supreme Court decision that angered and frightened many religious people. In Employment Division v. Smith, Scalia said religious claims cannot be used to justify violating laws as long as those laws apply to everyone of every faith, neutrally. In the case at hand, Scalia wrote that Native Americans do not have the right to break antidrug laws even though peyote use is part of some Indian faiths...
Your article "Up From The Apes" was concise, well written and very scientific. It convinced me that it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in God. SCOTT STEVENS Two Rivers...