How an expert on church-state partnerships feels about the future
This article was first published in the State of Faith newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Monday night.
I spent most of last week reflecting on the relationship between church and state.
I know what you're thinking: That's probably a pretty typical week for a religious freedom nerd.
But it really isn't, at least not for this religious freedom nerd. Most weeks I'm too busy writing about religion data, marathon runners, reality TV and the pope to spend much time wrestling with the First Amendment.
But last week was different. Last week, I wrote multiple stories about the nation's first religious charter school and spent 30 minutes on the phone with the man who, over the past 10 years, taught me most of what I know about church-state funding partnerships, Stanley Carlson-Thies.
Stanley Carlson-Thies is founder of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance and, until his retirement in 2025, the organizer of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. | Center for Public Justice
Although Stanley would have been a good source for my charter school coverage, I was actually talking to him about his recent retirement and what he learned from working at the intersection of religion and government for more than three decades.
I assumed he'd be frustrated to leave full-time work at a time when the funding landscape is rapidly and radically changing. He reminded me that change doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Here's a look at our conversation.
Kelsey Dallas: How did you come to work on church-state partnerships?
Stanley Carlson-Thies: It took me forever to finish my PhD, which is from the University of Toronto. It's on changes in Dutch politics from the mid-19th century into the early 20th century, a period when some Reformed Christians and Catholics were working together to create more space for public expression of faith in politics.
As I was finishing my PhD, I did some writing on welfare and economic policy in Canada, which included looking at how to better represent religious voices on Canadian radio and TV. It got me thinking about the government-religion interface.
Then, we moved back to the states and I worked at two Christian colleges. I was at Dordt University in Iowa when Jim Skillen, then the president of the Center for Public Justice, asked me in 1992 to join CPJ and direct a study on Christian thinking about poverty and welfare. At the time, Washington was really focused on welfare reform.
During that study, it became so evident so quickly how important faith-based organizations and houses of worship were for people in need. But it was also clear that religious organizations were running into legal challenges when they tried to partner with the government.
I wanted to dig deeper into how the U.S. government related to faith-based organizations that were serving the public, so I applied for funding for what was called the Religious Social Sector Project. Through that project, I met Carl Esbeck, who championed church-state partnerships during Congress' work on welfare reform.
When Congress overhauled the federal welfare system in 1996, every state had to rethink its approach to welfare. There were hundreds of questions, but nobody was really studying the religion part.
I dove into that and published a report showing that most states weren't following the law when it came to partnerships with faith-based organizations. It got some states to change their policies.
Through that work, I met George W. Bush, who was then the governor of Texas and really interested in creating a level playing field for faith-based organizations in social services work. I got to advise him a tiny bit during his campaign for president and, when he was elected, helped build his White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives.
That experience in the White House working under a president who was very committed to this topic helped me recognize how slow the government is to make changes even when there's support for the change. After about 15 months, I asked to move back to the Center for Public Justice and focus on advocacy work again.
Kelsey: How has the government's relationship to religion changed since you started researching the welfare system in the 1990s?
Stanley: There was more interaction between religious organizations and the government in 1992 than people realize, but the government was essentially only giving funding to religious organizations that weren't acting religious.
Since then, the Supreme Court has really changed how it applies the First Amendment to the funding context. It went from saying the government had to be as careful as possible not to partner with sectarian organizations to now saying the government may not exclude an organization just because it's religious or because it teaches religion.
We went from exclusion to full acceptance. That's a big change, and federal rules have had to be updated again and again to try to create a level playing field for all types of private organizations.
But that push toward acceptance has been complicated recently by tension over LGBTQ issues. When religious exclusion happens today, it's often because rules have been put in place saying organizations that partner with the government have to have certain progressive views on LGBTQ issues.
The organizations say that's not fair because their stance on LGBTQ issues stems from their religion, but there are officials out there who say it's discrimination.
There's no solution yet for that. Policies on LGBTQ acceptance changed from Obama to Trump then from Trump to Biden and now from Biden to Trump.
Kelsey: Your retirement comes at a time when the Trump administration is radically rethinking government funding programs. How are you feeling about the future?
Stanley: The Trump administration has created uncertainly around the future of grant funding, which has created a whole new set of issues for faith-based organizations.
They know they can participate in government funding programs, but they don't know if the funding programs are going to evaporate.
From the beginning, myself and many others told religious organizations to be careful about how much money they took from any particular source, including the government. But now you see how reliant many groups became on government contracts. And part of that reliance involved letting the government dictate how programs were run, instead of being driven by creative ideas and spiritual values.
It's a fraught time and a genuinely difficult time for many faith-based organizations, but I believe some good might come out of reform, since some funding relationships had become too static.
I wish we could have taken a smoother path to reform that wouldn't have caused so much collateral damage, but the old status quo wasn't all that healthy in many ways.
Fresh off the press
The never-ending debate over the separation of church and state
What to know about the white and black smoke used during a conclave
How faith groups feel about the ethics of the Trump administration
Will the Supreme Court accept religious charter schools? It may all come down to John Roberts
Nike apologizes for using phrase associated with Holocaust in London Marathon ads
The first-of-its-kind religious school exposing First Amendment tension
Term of the week: First impression
When used in regular life, the phrase 'first impression' refers to what stood out to you about a person when you first met them.
But in the legal context, it refers to a new legal issue or question that wasn't addressed in the text of a law or in past rulings.
Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who rose to national prominence in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, will soon appeal what some see as a first impression case to the Supreme Court.
Davis is fighting a ruling that says she needs to pay damages to one of the couples who sought a marriage license from her 10 years ago.
'The case has raised the question of whether a government official sued in an individual capacity and stripped of governmental immunity may assert a personal First Amendment defense to monetary damages. By taking the case, SCOTUS can answer the question of 'first impression,' resolve any conflicts with Supreme Court precedent, and ensure that former government defendants standing before the Court in their personal capacity do not lose First Amendment protections,' Davis' law firm, Liberty Counsel, said in a press release last week.
What I'm reading...
A major new study on human flourishing seems to confirm the old adage that money can't buy happiness. Researchers found that 'poorer countries have higher scores for positive emotions, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and social connection and relationships,' Christianity Today reported.
A Ghanaian leader's cathedral dream quickly became a nightmare for the African country. The New York Times has the story.
Religion News Service recently spent a few hours with Latter-day Saint women who have found a unique way to express their frustration with the Trump administration: creating quilts about the Constitution.
Odds and ends
The Deseret News is celebrating its 175th birthday on June 15. Go to deseret.com to see our fancy new logo for the occasion — it's at the top of the page.
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