Pubdate: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 Source: Naples Daily News (FL) Copyright: 2003 New York Times Contact: http://www.naplesnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/284 Author: Adam Cohen, NY Times News Service WHAT JEFFERSON WOULD THINK OF ADDICTION PROGRAM Guest editorial: BATON ROUGE, La. -- "Holy, Holy/Are You Lord God Almighty," a Christian rock band sings, as the crowd sways, palms in the air. The music stops, and a preacher with a microphone speaks. "God, you are bigger than any addiction! You are bigger than any crack cocaine, you are bigger than any beer, than any pornography!" It is Friday night at Healing Place Church, and Tonja Myles is presiding over one of the most controversial church services in America. It is a meeting of a "Christ-centered" addiction-treatment program, led by the woman who has become the face of the Bush administration's campaign to send tax dollars to faith-based social service providers. Myles was President Bush's special guest at the State of the Union address in January, when he asked Congress for $600 million over three years to finance vouchers for addiction programs, including religious ones. Faith-based social services are the latest missile the Bush administration has fired at the wall between church and state. Earlier this year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to allow tax dollars to be used to build churches, as long as part of the building is used for social services. I decided to head to Baton Rouge to see Myles' program firsthand. For airplane reading, I brought Thomas Jefferson's writings on religion, including his famous reply to the Danbury Baptist Association, which introduced the now-classic formulation of a "wall of separation" between church and state. Meeting the ebullient Myles, it is instantly clear why the Bush administration likes her. She is a natural communicator. Her arms waving, and her voice soaring, she compares her audience's bitterness and covetousness to cracks in her home, which recently allowed a mouse to get in. "You left a little bitty crack for the Devil to get in and destroy your life!" she cries out. "It's time that we seal up the cracks." Myles' turbulent personal history is well known -- sexual abuse, drug use and dealing, institutionalization and suicide attempts -- and she draws on it freely: "I went from the crack house to the White House!" When the time comes for audience participation, Myles grabs her microphone and dives in, exclaiming, "I'm fixin' to play Oprah!" The congregation's affection is evident, a striking thing given that Myles is a black woman preaching to a virtually all-white crowd. When the service ends, the congregation breaks into small groups to talk about their addictions. Myles has heard the talk of church and state, and is unconvinced. She echoes the Bush line: a Christ-centered approach is one option, and people should be allowed to choose. "It's like going into a steak restaurant," she says. "You know you're going to get steak." Backers of faith-based initiatives say that rules against state support for religion are a recent invention of activist judges. But when the Supreme Court handed down a landmark church-state case in 1947, it was careful to ground its decision in the words of our third president. Jefferson was hardly hostile to religion. In his first Inaugural Address, he called God "an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter." But when the Danbury Baptist Association, a Connecticut religious group, asked him to declare a national fast day, he refused, citing his conviction that "religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God," and his view of the First Amendment as "building a wall of separation between church and state." Jefferson saw freedom of conscience as paramount. "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful," he wrote in "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom." He also feared that if the churches were united with government, the result would be tyranny. The power of organized religion, Jefferson once wrote, "has been severely felt by mankind, and has filled the history of ten or twelve centuries with too many atrocities not to merit a proscription from meddling with government." Myles clearly cares about her flock. Her ministry could be effective -- even secular 12-step programs rely on submission to a higher power. And it certainly fills a need. There is a severe shortage of affordable addiction treatment nationwide. Still, Myles should not get government funds for the reasons Jefferson set forth. Using tax money to spread her religious views would violate the freedom of conscience of every taxpayer who does not share them. And if Myles' small program gets government funds, larger and more powerful religious groups will receive far more. As Jefferson observed, the combination of large-scale organized religion and the state would simply be too potent a force. Supporters of faith-based initiatives accuse opponents of being anti-religion. But it is the Bush administration that denigrates religion by presenting it as simply another "option," no different from secular choices like Alcoholics Anonymous or Weight Watchers. Jefferson insisted on the need for a wall between church and state not because he failed to appreciate religion, but because he understood its power all too well. - --- MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPFFlorida)