Head Start and Religion

A week ago, the federally-funded Head Start and Early Head Start programs for helping preschool children, infants, toddlers, and pregnant women were renewed for five more years by a House of Representatives vote of 365-48. That sounds good to me. Before this vote, there was a vote to remove language from the bill that prohibited any organizations that used Head Start funding from using religion as a factor in the employment of their staffs. This proposal was defeated, 195-222. So, any religious-based organization already in place either has to forgo its creed in hiring its own people in order to participate in Head Start or it has to forgo Head Start and go on its own.

Now I understand that, according to the U.S. Constitution, the State can make no law establishing a state religion or elevate one religion over another. But, if our elected representatives see a problem in our society, such as poverty, and use the power of the Federal government to seek remedies by passing laws, then they are extending the reach of the State into more and more areas of society that used to be the domain, at least partially, of religious concerns. Head Start should not be in competition with religious organizations that are seeking to help children in poor families break the cycles of their impoverishment and become more affluent and productive citizens. Perhaps our First Amendment is being a little too broadly interpreted regarding religion. After all, it was designed as a check against the power of the State to make religious policy. But rejecting an organization because of its religious policies is in itself an act of making religious policy. There is an important difference, at least how I see it, between acting without regard to religion and acting by excluding or prohibiting religion. The spirit of our Bill of Rights seems, to me, more in line with the former than with the latter.