Faith and federal funding: Five years later

The Richmond Times Dispatch runs a special report this week on the state of the Bush faith-based funding initiative, or the removal of barriers to federal funding for religious services, five years in.

Its major finding? The share of federal grants to faith based groups keeps getting bigger, increasing by 10% from last year alone. Virginia's religious groups alone received more than $36 million in fiscal year 2005, up 92.63% from 2004. The figure well outpaces our Southern neighbors, but the Dispatch features a "snapshot" of faith-based spending across the Southeast.

These funding increases are, of course, not without their critics, and potentially with good reason.

A June report by the Government Accountability Office, the federal government's independent watchdog, found that agencies were not telling faith-based groups clearly enough not to turn away clients because of their religious beliefs or proselytize using federal funds. It also found that government agencies almost never did checks to make sure these things weren't happening.

The President and his faith-based initiatives White House advisors maintain that these groups provide essential services for their communities, but discomfort with the idea of state funded proselytizing persists, spurred on by the openness of federal money recipients like Janice Doherty, who runs a Bible-based addiction treatment center in North Carolina and told the Times-Dispatch about her work:

"To us, this is a ministry."