An exquisite black and white faith-based dilemma for Bush

When George Bush announced a quick follow-up to his campaign pledge to empower faith-based charities by allowing them access to state funding, it was the left which immediately cried "foul".

What about the constitutional separation of church and state, the obligation not to endow any religion, they demanded. But the tumult on the left has died down, in part silenced by the number of black communities where the idea found a ready echo, and the realisation that in constructing the programme in practice Mr Bush would be constrained by precisely that constitutional requirement.

Now they watch with growing amusement as an ideological, racial and class chasm has opened up in the ranks of precisely the groups intended to benefit.

The evangelical right, Mr Bush's natural constituency, has taken up cudgels against the administration, with the Rev Jerry Falwell declaiming against the possibility that funding might go to groups like the Nation of Islam and the Scientologists.

And other evangelicals, more significantly, have targeted the philosophy guiding the programme and are expressing concern about the man the President has brought in to head the embryonic Office of FaithBased and Community Initiatives, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist, Mr John DiIulio.

Put at its simplest, the issue is about whether faith saves or the faithful save. While black churches in the urban centres see the alleviation of poverty and social intervention with the marginalised as their Christian duty, no strings attached, the white evangelicals believe that it is precisely through bringing the fallen to Jesus that they rescue them, whether from alcoholism, drug dependence or their criminal ways.

Marvin Olaskyt, editor of the evangelical magazine World recently wrote of the faith-based programme Teen Challenge: "Its faith is that people stop being addicts when Christ fills the holes in their souls. It cannot separate counselling and evangelism: evangelism is its counselling."

But, while direct funding of the former is clearly constitutional and appeals to the black churches, funding of the latter is clearly not, and the evangelicals are pressing instead for indirect forms of subsidy which will not impinge on their approach. The critical question then is: Which way will DiIulio jump, and will his boss back him?

The New Republic describes him as the only member of the administration more committed to the policy than the man, an independent non-party thinker, who is quite capable of resigning on principle to campaign for the policy against its dilution by the very President who has given him a national stage for his ideas.

Mr Bush has brought a loose cannon on board.

DiIulio is a controversial figure whose warnings in 1995 about the emergence of a "super-predator" urban black criminal class were dismissed by many as racist. But his determination to see the black community organisations, specifically the churches, as the engines of their community's liberation from poverty began to strike a chord. At the University of Pennsylvania, he created the Center for Research on Religious and Urban Civil Society; his studies have titles like Living Faith: The Black Church Outreach Tradition. And since his appointment by the President, DiIulio has enraged the right by suggesting that "Bible-thumping" evangelicals do not care about the plight of urban blacks. In response, Louis Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, called for his resignation.

A prominent DiIulio ally, the Boston Pentecostal minister Eugene Rivers has warned against "flat-earth fundamentalists", and DiIulio himself, speaking to Jewish groups last month, was blunt in insisting that those who mixed their religion with their social services would be ineligible for government funds. "Bible-thumping doesn't cut it, folks," he said.

In early March he spoke to the National Association of Evangelicals, rebuking his largely white audience by pointing to the reality that, unlike white evangelicals, "urban African American and Latino faith communities have benevolent traditions and histories that make them generally more dedicated to community-serving missions." The black churches have rallied to him and in an "open letter to the nation" a group of their most prominent ministers has put down a significant marker: "We respectfully challenge and dissent from the sectarian and divisive rancour that has come from some public figures among religious conservatives. These individuals seek to deny faith-based groups in the black community the opportunity to enter into constructive, non-sectarian alliances with public institutions, in order to serve more effectively those in greatest need." For Mr Bush the dilemma is exquisite. If he placates the evangelicals, moneyed Republicans almost to a man and for whom the programme was undoubtedly originally conceived, he will be turning his back on his first pledge as President, to reconcile himself to the black community which voted overwhelmingly for his opponent.