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American Morning

Summit on Faith-Based Initiatives Continues

Aired April 25, 2001 - 11:19   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: On now, though, to the battle over the president's faith-based initiative, deciding if federal tax dollars should go to religious organizations. White House officials, lawmakers, and religious leaders are meeting for a second day at their faith-based summit.

CNN's Jeanne Meserve joins us now live from Washington with a look at that -- Jeanne.

JEAN MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Leon, joining me is the man being called the godfather of compassionate conservatism. Marvin Olasky authored "The Tragedy of American Compassion" and argues that government programs alone cannot transform lives, that faith has a part to play. An adviser to President Bush, he joins me from Austin where he teaches journalism at the University of Texas.

President Bush's decision to open his Office of Faith-Based Initiatives has unleashed a torrent of criticism from many quarters, and the most basic point of some of those critics is that government funding of faith-based programs would undermine core principle of government, namely the separation of church and state. What's your response to that?

MARVIN OLASKY, ACTON INSTITUTE: Well, it's not surprising there's a lot of discussion. Trying to get this going is a little bit like trying to land a plane on one wheel. It's very hard, but, as we've just seen, it's doable, amazingly enough.

This is a misinterpretation of the First Amendment that some of the critics are throwing out. The people who wrote the First Amendment in 1789 were concerned about what they had seen in their own lifetimes, that is just before the revolution, the British had established a particular denomination, the Anglican Church, as the official established church. You had to pay for it whether you liked it or not, whether you agreed with it or not, and that's what the First Amendment was all about, trying to make sure that something like that, where government would actually give preference to a particular religion would never happen again.

But it was never designed to be in any way a ban on religion or an attempt to keep religion away from any kind of public places.

MESERVE: What do you say to those who say that there is no empirical evidence that faith-based programs work or work any better than government programs?

OLASKY: Well, it's just not true. You see, there are three types of evidence. There's historical evidence, and I've gone back and looked at the records in the Library of Congress over the past couple of hundred years and...

MESERVE: But let's talk about the here and now.

OLASKY: Right. Getting to the...

MESERVE: Let's talk about the here and now.

OLASKY: Right. Getting to the here and now, I mean, you and I as reporters -- we go around. We talk with lots of people. If you hear the same story consistently from people all over the country in different situations, different places, then you begin to think there's something to it. So that...

MESERVE: But it's anecdotal, isn't it?

OLASKY: It's dismissed sometimes as anecdotal evidence, but it's still journalistic evidence. It's the type of stuff on which you base an informed analysis. That's the second type of evidence, and it's very strong indicating that faith-based programs work much better than government programs. There's a third type of...

MESERVE: Marvin Olasky, I'm afraid we have to wrap it up. We're all out of time.

OLASKY: OK.

MESERVE: Blame it on that plane with one wheel. Thanks so much for joining us today from Austin.

OLASKY: It was a great story.

MESERVE: Now back to Atlanta.

HARRIS: All right. Thanks, Jeanne. Appreciate that. We'll get back to you a little bit later on.

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