One of the first female faculty members at the resurrected education university in Kabul, Afghanistan, rummaged through her desk in the office of the English department, a narrow room with a single window.

We had just spent the morning with her, observing her colleague as he taught an English class. She said she had something to show us, a gift from her students. But after opening and slamming metal drawers shut, she sighed. She couldn’t find the photograph she was looking for, so she described it to us: Some of the male students had found a broken stair railing with vertical metal bars. They all held it up to their faces like they were in prison, and posed with exaggerated expressions of misery. One of them displayed a handmade sign: “Guantanamo University.”

“That was my gift,” the young professor said, rolling her eyes like an exasperated mother. I felt a stab of shame in my country’s government.
 

And now the Americans

If we are to believe the American point of view, the recent history of Afghanistan could be divided into pre- and post-Taliban, one of the world’s most infamous theocracies.

The Taliban years, from the mid-1990s until the U.S.-led overthrow after September 11th, seem to us a nightmare of medieval proportions: adulterers and thieves stoned and hanged in public, ancient Buddha statues destroyed, burqa-clad women beaten with sticks for showing an ankle or for wearing fingernail polish, music and kite-flying prohibited.

We Americans were all too eager to portray post-Taliban life as an explosion of long-denied freedoms. Women threw off their burqas and went to beauty parlors. Girls returned to school. Kites, pop music, and Bollywood flicks filled the skies, airwaves, and cinemas, and the newly installed Democratic government and constitution would soon usher in a new era of hope and modernization.

Of course, now we know the liberation of Afghanistan has proven more complex.

Nearly seven years after the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance made its triumphant entry into Kabul, President Hamid Karzai and NATO struggle to keep even Kabul under their control. The Taliban have regained control over much of the south and the volatile regions along the Pakistani border. Regional leaders — many of them affiliated with the Northern Alliance, which fueled the brutal civil war that preceded the Taliban — govern with equally draconian restrictions on women. In many provinces, local villages have chosen to side with the re-emerged Taliban over NATO and the new government; they reason that at least life was orderly, free of suicide bombings and rampant opium trafficking, under the old regime.

Four years ago, when I visited Afghanistan with photojournalist Stephanie Yao, I was struck to discover that nearly all the Afghans I met saw the United States as just another foreign occupier. (The Taliban originated in Pakistan.)

“First we had the British,” a longtime Kabul resident, a woman of about 60, told me. “And then the Soviets. And then the Americans came in to fight the Soviets. Then the mujahedin [the anti-Communist resistance fighters who started a civil war after the Soviets left]. After that, the Taliban. And now the Americans again. We’ll see if they do any better than the others. Probably not.”

Meeting the English professors

I recall first meeting the woman I shall call Fahima by accident, as my group and I were being escorted from one dull official meeting to another. At a teacher-training college, streams of students whisked past us. The young women and young men never mixed, but they wore modern clothes, by Kabul standards. The men wore jeans and western-style button-down shirts in bright solids and plaids. The women were in trim two-piece ankle-length skirt sets and modern headscarves that were close-fitting, not the voluminous shawl-like ones most other women in Kabul wore. I felt disconnected from them; I wanted to know them and their lives, but they glided past us like fish in an aquarium.

I cannot remember why Fahima was different, how we managed to stop and talk to her and Hamid (also a pseudonym) — both young professors in their late 20s. Maybe they overheard us speaking English to each other and said something to us, or maybe we heard them talking in English. I do recall making eye contact with her, and being drawn by her lively, dark eyes. She was surrounded by men, her male colleague and three male students; mixed-gender groups were unusual. She was tall, taller than some of the men, and her tailored gray skirt and top seemed to accentuate this. She told us they were all professors and students in the English department, and that now, particularly since the American invasion, this was the “hot” major.

Russian used to be the sought-after major, she said. Once there were hundreds of Russian majors at the university, and now there were about a dozen. The Soviets were yesterday’s occupier. Now everyone, from the United Nations, to construction companies, to journalists, were willing to pay top dollar to English-speaking, trustworthy Afghan workers, interpreters, or fixers. The students flanking her puffed up with pride as she talked about how only top applicants were accepted into the department.

“Will you come visit us in our department later?” Fahima asked, as our escort from the dean’s office started shifting from one foot to the other. We had another meeting to get to. We agreed to come by later.

Waiting for the grass to grow

“Come in, come in,” our two new professor friends beckoned us into the office, which had two proper desks, and several haphazardly arranged student desks, the kind with the chair attached. Hamid rushed around to arrange the student desks into a comfortable configuration for us. Then, to be official, or perhaps because it was the only space left for them, each of them took their seats behind their two desks.

Their desks, jammed together, took up nearly the entire length of the room. The female professor had to walk all the way around her colleague’s desk, a breezy sweep of gray fabric and trim white headscarf, and work her way into her desk, which was closer to the door. He took his place after her, easing into his. The ease with which they did this, the proximity of their desks, spoke of an intimacy that defied their propriety. Of course, we never saw them once touch, and they never held eye contact with each other for more than a second — even that would have been considered brazen outside of this liberal university campus. But their fondness for each other occupied the little air in the room. We settled into our seats, talking about all manner of things.

Fahima told us about her ill-timed entry into teaching. After her education was interrupted several times by the civil war, she finally graduated and was hired by the college. The year was 1995. Unfortunately, she barely finished a year before the Taliban took control of the city and banned female teachers and students.

“I spent five years at home. I read my books and dictionaries as much as I could,” she said, her English accented and precise. Some of her female students came to her family’s home, where their professor secretly tutored them. But as the Taliban became increasingly extreme, she feared what would happen to her if she got caught — and her anxious students stopped coming. “All I wished I could do was stand in class one day and teach my students. I prayed for it.”

The college was one of the few in Afghanistan that had close to a 50-50 male-female student ratio in 2004, but a female professor was in the distinct minority. Women comprised only 15 percent of university faculty in the country. Fahima knew how important she was to her female students.

“They sew clothes for me,” she said, motioning to the sleek gray outfit she wore — a sort of Muslim-friendly skirt suit, with a slightly fitted button-up top and a long, flowing skirt. These gifts from students were welcome, she said, given that the cash-strapped university couldn’t afford to pay her a living wage. The young women had a special bond with her, she admitted, often seeking her out for personal advice.

“I hope when my female students see me, they know what is possible for them.”

Then, realizing she had been talking about herself for a while, she turned to her male colleague, who had been listening attentively. “Well, what about you? Let’s hear about your stories.”

He waved her off, shaking his head. “I have no good stories,” he said. “Only yours are good.”

All of us women cajoled him until he offered that he loved soccer. “I was a footballer,” he said.

“Was?” I asked.

“Before the Taliban, he was a very good player,” Fahima said. “He played for a professional team.”

His easy smile became broader as he lowered his head sheepishly. He said he had not played seriously for years. Though he wore a baggy button-up shirt and jeans, I could see the strength of his legs in the way he stood, feet slightly apart as if ready to defend the goal, and the athleticism in the broadness of his slightly squat torso. But of course, I was not supposed to be noticing these things. Away from the relative freedom and permissiveness of the college campus, our Afghan American interpreter had laid out the rules clearly for me: No eye contact with men.

Not eager to get in any kind of trouble, I took her lead and got used to studying the carpet or some other focal point on a wall as I talked to men. But here, on campus, I immediately sensed the slack in the rein. I found myself using the additional freedom I had to study men in subtle ways, noticing all the things that even a light gaze now and then could pick up. Even our interpreter, thoroughly accustomed to both Afghan and American ways of being, reacted to it.

“He has pretty eyes,” she whispered to me at one point on campus, out of either professor’s earshot. I nodded immediately, having noticed his heavy-lidded, golden-hazel eyes as well, so often crinkled in a smile. Of course, Fahima, who worked with him day in and day out, could not have been blind to this either.

“But of course, it’s quite a miracle he can play football — soccer — so well,” she continued the discussion, a glint in her almost-black, almond-shaped eyes, “since he is so short.”

Her laughter came musical and easy, and he let out an open-mouthed gasp in mock offense. He feigned indignation, but couldn’t stop the smile from creeping up on his face. Clearly this was a running joke between them. She was one of the tallest Afghan women we met in our time there, her lithe frame appearing to stand an inch or two higher than her colleague’s with her heeled shoes on.

I wanted to know more about his competitive soccer days, so I asked. That was more than a decade ago, he said, and seemed at a loss to describe a time so far removed. I pressed on a bit. “What were the games like? Whom did you play? What did your uniforms look like?”

His expression clouded. “The Taliban didn’t like us wearing shorts. When we played in Kandahar, the Taliban shaved our heads and imprisoned us for two days. Our hair was too long and our beards too short. Soon, we just stopped playing. There wasn’t really space for football.”

Much has been made of the Taliban’s conversion of Kabul’s soccer arenas into public execution sites, like modern-day coliseums for the aforementioned hangings and stonings. But I knew this was not what he meant. Space was in the mind and heart; the capacity to relish sport that was subsumed first by the civil war and then by the Taliban’s harsh rule, and the poverty that overtook the city during both eras.

He grew quiet. I tried to shift to a brighter perspective.

“Well, now that the Taliban are gone, are you playing again?”

The professor raised his eyebrows, as if he had never really contemplated the idea, even though nearly three years had passed since the overthrow. Everyone in Kabul seemed so busy, so frantic to catch up with the sudden new world order — going back to school, learning English, angling for lucrative contractor jobs. Soccer seemed frivolous.

“No. Maybe someday I will,” he said. He turned to the window, as if trying to see through the university walls to the brown rubble and dirt roads outside. “Someday when grass grows in this place.”

 
Liberation in the classroom?

Later that afternoon, Fahima sat with us as we observed Hamid teaching his English III class. The students were working on identifying subjects, verbs, and objects in sentences. Their professor was encouraging them to come up to the white board to write sentences and then underline the subjects, verbs, and objects in different-colored dry-erase markers. It reminded me of the sentence-diagramming exercises I so dreaded in middle school English.

The male students were eager, their hands shooting up at every opportunity. But the women’s hands remained firmly on their desks or in their laps, and they avoided eye contact with their teacher. One broad-shouldered male student, wearing a snug-fitting white polo shirt, went up to the board twice. The second time, he wrote “I like to swim” in large letters, skewed at a strange angle because of his somewhat forced stance. Our interpreter laughed and whispered to me that he seemed to be flexing his muscles as he wrote. There was no mistaking it; that was exactly what he was doing. The telltale arms-akimbo stance and exaggerated motions, uncapping and recapping the different-colored pens — some male behaviors are universal, apparently. 

The professor finally called on Lima, a petite, pale girl in a light-brown outfit and cream-colored headscarf. Fahima whispered that Lima was a top student, much better than the boys who had gone up before her. Lima stared at her shoes as she walked quickly up to the board, snatched a pen, and wrote her sentence in small, timid handwriting. She bit her lower lip as she found each of the colored markers, underlining words as if this all couldn’t end soon enough. It was the best, most complex sentence that had been written, with conditional tense and dependent clauses.

“Very good. Excellent,” her professor encouraged her.

She slunk back to her desk quickly, with a slight smile on her face.
 
I knew it was easy to exaggerate in our minds the significance of that moment. The idealistic, feminist, American part of me wanted to think that something revolutionary had happened. That little by little, each woman student the professor coaxed to the front of the room was changing Afghanistan. That somehow, that turn up at the board incrementally altered each woman.

But when I talked to some of the female students later, I learned that many of them doubted they would pursue careers after their education. Their parents would resist any job that would require living away from home, thus limiting their options. Even jobs in the city would be difficult to get to, since few had their own transportation. There were still few female drivers on the road, despite the lifting of Taliban restrictions on women driving. And they were expected to marry soon, with no guarantee their husband and in-laws would approve of them working.

Fahima admitted she was a rarity — a woman of nearly 30, whose father was comfortable with her pursuing a career and remaining single, for now. Her father was disgusted by families — particularly uneducated rural ones, she said — who married their daughters off as young as eight years old in order to benefit financially from the arrangement.

Ultimately, the shortsightedness brought on by poverty would likely be the worst enemies of her female students’ budding careers. Though a bilingual woman working or teaching for an non-governmental organization, or interpreting for the United Nations, would make good money for her family, many parents pushed their daughters to marry early for economic reasons. Not only would the bridewealth paid by the husband’s family provide much-needed cash, but marrying off a daughter would also mean one less mouth to feed.

An educated daughter might catch the eye of a more affluent family’s son, and she might be better taken care of with her in-laws than with her parents. The students at the college were from middle-class families for the most part. But in Afghanistan, to be middle class is still a struggle. In reality, the economic exchange system of marriage had been in effect for centuries, millennia even. In harsh times, that could be relied on. The whispered promise of education and employment for Afghan women felt alien and unreliable in these times.

Still, I engraved Lima’s slight, self-satisfied smile in my memory. I wanted to remember it, for what it was worth. 

Fahima who was sitting in the corner of the room with us, suddenly had a gleam in her eye. She smiled and stage-whispered to us as the teacher walked toward the front of the room: “Maybe we should lower the board, because now Hamid is going to write something.”

We stifled our giggles. The class seemed unfazed and unaware. Hamid stopped for a moment and glared at Fahima. But then his stern look broke into a smile, and he shook his head. Barely missing a beat, he grabbed a marker and began writing the homework assignment on the board.

After the class, alone with Fahima in the cramped English department office, we teased her about her colleage. She raised her dark brows in an exaggerated gesture of surprise, shook her head fiercely, and then furrowed her brows to say, “No, no, no. We are just friends and colleagues.” Her English was, as always, crisp and formal, but I could detect the hint of a chuckle behind her declaration.

 
Graduation

Later that week, we went with our two new professor friends to the school’s graduation ceremony — the first for the three-year program since the Taliban’s overthrow. The women who received their diplomas that day, in a local restaurant banquet room, were the first female university graduates in a decade. The occasion was festive, beginning with a reading of Quran verses, and ending with a live band that alternated between deafening Persian synth-pop and Pashtun folk music.

Young women in colorful, sparkly outfits and headscarves posed for pictures with their proud parents. They sat talking to each other and fingering their colorful pink-and-turquoise diplomas, while the boys danced with abandon. The women feigned a lack of interest in the young men taking turns on the dance floor, twirling, clapping, and writhing until their faces glistened with sweat. Fahima told me the women would dance later, when the men finished.

In America

After our visit to Afghanistan, I learned that our professor friends would be coming to the University of Indiana. I lost contact with them, but I couldn’t help wondering if the time they spent traveling together may have caused love to flower.

As Afghanistan’s fragile post-Taliban hope fractured into dwindling U.S. and NATO control, suicide bombings, and growing daily death tolls, I felt that wish was hopelessly romantic. Did I expect the two of them to taste American freedom, fall rapturously into each other’s arms, then return to Afghanistan and, by the sheer force of their love and determination, save all the college-aged women? I wanted a Hollywood ending — just as we Americans had envisioned fixing Afghanistan as a matter of casting off the Taliban like a burqa, as the sunshine of freedom heralded a new day.

If I learned anything from my time in Afghanistan, it was that only Americans, not Afghans, saw the overthrow of the Taliban as a defining “before and after” moment. For most, the near quarter-century of war and unrest that had preceded 2001 — the endlessly changing regimes, each one brutal and ineffective in its own way — had numbed them from investing too much importance in the end of a theocracy and the beginnings of a U.S.-installed democracy.

But it was the final twist in this story that delighted me with the surprise of discovering lost friends, and blindsided me with the realities of the threatening, lawless place this so-called democracy has become.

When the original version of this piece was posted online, I immediately heard from the young man I am calling Hamid for the first time in years. He and his female colleague were indeed at the University of Indiana, getting their master’s degrees. It was a dream come true, he said. He had even started playing soccer again, but had been sidelined by a knee injury.

But their dreams came with a price back home. Fahima’s family had been threatened because she had gone away to study at a U.S. university. This kind of affiliation with America was cause enough for extremists to attack.

I had read news accounts of this growing climate of fear, the threat of an unseen but ever-tangible form of vigilantism that pervaded Afghan life now. Four young actors from the Hollywood movie The Kite Runner were relocated to the United Arab Emirates by the movie studio, for fear of repercussions resulting from a culturally inflammatory rape scene. Last year, prominent female radio journalist Zakia Zaki was shot dead in her home north of Kabul, after criticizing warlords. It was the third such murder of a female Afghan journalist in two years.

I apologized to my worried friend, but he interrupted me with his own apology. We had so much fun when you came and interviewed us, he said.

“It’s not at all like it was then. We all felt free to talk to you,” he said, his voice heavy. “Kabul is so different now.”

Angie Chuang

In a jungle encampment in eastern Myanmar, 67-year-old monk Saw Wizana sits meditating in orange robes. Behind him, hundreds of men with semi-automatic weapons line up in military formation and march in circles around a field. They are preparing for another battle against Myanmar’s military government.

Saw Wizana and the soldiers are Karen, the largest ethnic group in Burma. They have been fighting the government for 60 years in what has become the world’s longest running civil war. While tens of thousands of monks caught the world’s attention last August and September for their massive nonviolent protest, some Buddhist clergy in Burma — including Saw Wizana — insist that violent resistance is the only viable strategy against the ruling junta. Today, monks from both schools of thought continue to battle the military dictatorship. They say they belong to the same revolution.

Saw Wizana argues that as a Buddhist monk, he supports the controversial Karen armed struggle because he says it saves lives.

“We want to use a peaceful way like Martin Luther King, like Gandhi, but the military regime doesn’t accept it. That’s why we have to pick up arms,” he said. “Of course we want peace. Everyone wants peace. But it doesn’t work. That’s why we need weapons. We only use them to defend ourselves.”

The Saffron Revolution, brutally suppressed

The Buddhist country of Myanmar, named Burma until 1989, is among the most oppressive in the world. Pro-democracy advocates are routinely imprisoned, and ethnic groups like the Karen are regularly attacked by the military government.

Until recently, because of the government’s stranglehold on dissent, only the Karen rebels have openly confronted the dictatorship. But in August and September of last year, when tens of thousands of monks became involved in what originated as pro-democracy and student protests against rising fuel prices, a nonviolent resistance was reborn.

After days of nationwide protest dubbed the “Saffron Revolution,” the monks were brutally beaten and shot at by the military.

Monk Saw Wizana says the tragic result of September’s protests, in which at least 31 people were killed and hundreds imprisoned, proves that nonviolent resistance won’t work against the Burmese dictatorship.

“Nearby countries like Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand — they are all Buddhist countries, and they wouldn’t hurt monks,” he said. By contrast, in Myanmar, he added, “monks were tortured by the military soldiers and forced to worship their torturers.”

Buddhism and armed struggle 

Saw Wizana — an imposing, heavyset man with gold wire frame glasses and rolls of orange fabric — has been a monk for 37 years. He spent four years in prison between 1984 and 1988, and was forced into hard labor as punishment for challenging the government.

“I was in the forest with several young students I was teaching. When we were sleeping, the military shot my students because we are Karen,” he said. “I told them they were breaking the law, and because I talked back to them, I was put in prison.”

He insists the Karen armed struggle is not in conflict with Buddhism because it is protecting life.

“We have to use it together with religion,” he said. “Use weapons for defense and religion to keep us courageous.”

Of the armed groups that have fought Myanmar’s dictatorship, all but the Karen have surrendered. The Karen National Union (KNU) comprises Christian, Buddhist, and Animist ethnic Karen people, and has suffered major troop losses over the decades. The KNU estimates its forces are outnumbered by government forces at least 25 to 1.

The KNU is also criticized for planting landmines, recruiting child soldiers, and instigating violence in civilian areas — accusations they deny.

At KNU headquarters, Saw Wizana is known as “Monk Rambo.” Other monks say they too understand the Karen armed struggle. One of them, 53-year-old Oh Bah Seh, was a leader of last year’s protests and says he does not condemn the Karen war. He is neither Karen nor part of the KNU movement. “No one wants violence, but because of the inhumane persecution [by] the government, that is why some came to take arms to fight the evil system.”

He, however, practices nonviolent resistance, like most other Buddhist monks. He says that as he was being beaten with a stick during the September protests, he still continued chanting loving kindness toward his oppressors.

Nonviolence is key, others say

Twenty-eight-year old Ghaw Si Tha, another leader of September’s peaceful marches, said nonviolence is key to a Buddhist resistance.

“We must go on chanting love, as we are monks. Even though they use force, even though the regime doesn’t follow the Buddhist precepts, we have to be faithful to love,” he said. “We believe that only love can produce success. That’s why we march with loving kindness, peacefully without violence.”

In Myanmar, political resistance by Buddhist monks dates back to British colonial times when Buddhist clergy helped fight for independence. The Buddhist clergy are a venerated group, seen by the general public as leaders. Today, Myanmar’s 400,000 monks are a group outnumbered only by the military.

Although unwilling to give specific details, monks Ghaw Si Tha and Oh Bah Seh say there are plans for future nonviolent protests in Burma. Many suspect August 8 — the 20-year anniversary of the massive pro-democracy protests, as well as the opening of the Beijing Olympics — to be a day to watch in Myanmar.

“Now, in this way, we Buddhist monks are also doing the same thing as the Karen fighters,” said Oh Bah Seh. “Revolution.”

Anna Sussman

1620: The Mayflower Compact
Religious radicals seeking to “purify” the Church of England are run out of the country, and cross the Atlantic on a ship called the Mayflower, settling in what is now Massachusetts. Upon landing, the so-called Puritans draft the Mayflower Compact, considered the first written constitution in North America, in which they state their journey had been “undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith,” and they were now forming a “civil body politic.”

1636: Roger Williams founds Providence
The Massachusetts Bay Colony banishes Roger Williams, a radical clergyman who preaches freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. Williams and a small group of followers buy land from the Indians and establish Providence, Rhode Island. A beacon of religious liberty in early America, Rhode Island is at one time the only colony not to have anti-Quaker laws on its books.

1681: William Penn founds Pennsylvania
William Penn, a Quaker convert from a wealthy English family, obtains a colonial charter and founds Pennsylvania on land purchased from Indians. The colony becomes home not only to the much-persecuted Quaker minority — subject to exile and execution elsewhere for their anti-authoritarian and nonviolent views — but also to a wide range of other religious groups unwelcome in other colonies. Penn drafts a colonial constitution far ahead of its time, the Frame of Government, which codifies principles of religious liberty and the balancing of power across different branches of government.

1779: Virgina Statute for Religious Freedom
Three years after penning the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson drafts the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The statute forbids the government from dictating religious beliefs, arguing that “Almighty God hath created the mind free” and “civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” The Virginia General Assembly takes seven years to enact the statute, but Jefferson cites it in his epitaph as one of his three greatest achievements.

1787: Constitution
The Founding Fathers complete the Constitution, which states in Article Six that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Article Six also allows public officials to affirm, rather than swear, their support of the Constitution, a passage aimed at accommodating the Quaker minority, who were forbidden by their beliefs to swear oaths.

1791: First Amendment
Congress ratifies the Bill of Rights, whose First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These 16 words, the so-called establishment clause and free exercise clause, become the bedrock of constitutional law concerning the separation of church and state and the freedom of worship.

1797: Treaty of Tripoli
The U.S. Senate ratifies a treaty with Tripoli aimed at stopping Barbary pirates from terrorizing American shipping. The treaty declares that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

1802: “Separation of church and state”
Thomas Jefferson first used the phrase “building a wall of separation between church and state” to describe the First Amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

1827: Ezra Stiles Ely, Christian crusader
Presbyterian minister Ezra Stiles Ely preaches “The Duty of Christian Freemen to Elect Christian Rulers,” a sermon calling for the election of candidates who “know and believe the doctrines of our holy religion.” His movement amounts to a 19th-century version of the Christian Coalition, except that the early Christian political agenda focuses not on abortion or homosexuality, but on the evils of Sunday mail delivery.

1833: Last established church
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts officially rescinds support of an established church. It is the last state to do so. (At the time of the Revolution, most states had an official religion.)

1920: Prohibition
Decades of agitation by religiously inspired temperance activists culminates in the 18th Amendment, which bans the sale, manufacture, and transport of alcohol. Support for Prohibition is strongest among certain Protestant denominations, and the teetotaler cause brings together diverse constituencies, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, African American labor activists, and the Ku Klux Klan. Thirteen years later — after speakeasies mushroom throughout the country and illegal booze sales make gangsters rich — the amendment is repealed.

1925: The Scopes trial
John Scopes, a Tennessee high school teacher, violates a state law that bans teaching that “man has descended from a lower order of animals.” His trial unleashes a titanic struggle between supporters of creationism and evolution, who find their paladins in famed attorneys Clarence Darrow (for the defense) and William Jennings Bryan (for the prosecution). While trained chimpanzees parade outside the courthouse, inside the proceedings soon descend into a rambling discussion of what in the Bible is factual. Scopes loses and is levied a $100 fine, but the losers in the court of public opinion are Christian evangelicals, savaged by the press as “yokels” and “morons.”

1928: Catholic runs for president
Al Smith, the Democratic governor of New York, becomes the first Roman Catholic to become a major party’s nominee for president. Facing allegations that he would be a pawn of the Pope, Smith declares his belief “in the absolute separation of church and state.” Smith’s candidacy is greeted with great hostility, including Ku Klux Klan cross-burnings, and Republican Herbert Hoover trounces Smith on Election Day.

1947: Court endorses “Wall of Separation”
In Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court rules 5-4 that government funding to bring students to and from their parochial schools does not violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause. But this decision also said the Founders intended a “wall of separation” between church and state. “Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion to another.”

1954: “Under God”
Congress adds the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

1956: “In God We Trust”
A federal law establishes “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States. It appears on U.S. currency.

1960: Catholic wins presidency
John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, faces Richard Nixon in a closely fought presidential race. In an effort to defuse anti-Catholic sentiment, Kennedy gives a speech before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, in which he states: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.” Two months later, Kennedy wins by a mere 0.1 percent margin in the popular vote.

1962: Public school prayer banned
In Eagle v. Vitale, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited prayer in the public schools as a way to prevent “the indirect coercive pressure” that occurs “when the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief.”

1976: Jimmy Carter, evangelical president
Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian, is elected president of the United States, bringing evangelical faith out of the political wilderness. In a Playboy interview published weeks before his election victory, Carter admits to having looked on women with “lust” and having committed adultery in his “heart.”

1979: Moral Majority
Televangelist Jerry Falwell founds Moral Majority, a conservative Christian political organization that fervently opposes abortion, gay rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and arms talks with the Soviet Union. With a membership in the millions at its peak, Moral Majority dominates an ascendant Republican Party throughout the 1980s, transforming the Religious Right into the establishment voice of American evangelicism and a potent force in national politics.

1987: Religious expression permitted in public places
The Supreme Court throws out a ban by the Los Angeles airport on leafleting by members of Jews for Jesus. This is the first of several “free speech” rulings over the next two decades that allow religious expression in public or even government settings, as long as it is initiated by private individuals or groups, rather than government officials. The Court ruled, for example, that a Christian student club in an Omaha public high school could meet after class.

2003: George Bush, “compassionate conservative”
President George W. Bush, a self-identified “compassionate conservative” strongly favored by evangelical Christian voters, says that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Four months after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Bush announces to a Palestinian delegation that the Almighty spoke to him with the words “George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan” and “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.”

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Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

In the basement of a row house in East Baltimore, Maryland, Adolphus Moseley, who had served time in jail for cocaine possession, was listening to a visitor who had been arrested decades earlier for drunken driving.

“I understand addiction,” George W. Bush was saying, according to a reporter allowed to overhear the conversation, “and I understand how a changed heart can help you deal with addiction.”

President Bush was talking about himself, of course. In the last year of his presidency, he seems to have become more candid about a problem with alcohol that he has often talked about more vaguely in the past: He had quit drinking at the age of 40, and has attributed his continuing sobriety to vigorous exercise, and religious faith.

But the president was in Baltimore for what he might call a higher purpose. He was visiting the Jericho Program, which works to help recently released prisoners succeed outside of prison. Jericho is run by Episcopal Community Services of Maryland, one of some 5,000 religiously oriented groups throughout the United States that, during the Bush administration, have received funds from the federal government to provide various social services.

The day before, in his final State of the Union address, Bush had trumpeted what he had intended from the start of his presidency seven years earlier to be a key part of his domestic agenda, his so-called faith-based initiative.

His visit to Baltimore, like his faith-based initiative itself, may not have gone completely as planned. When Moseley suggested that the city could use more programs like Jericho, Bush replied: “There are programs like that all over the city. They are called churches.”

“They are not sincere, like Jericho,” Moseley said.

The president seemed taken aback, according to press reports. “My only point to you is there are a lot of faith-based organizations that exist to help deal with very difficult problems,” Bush said. “It starts with the notion that there is a higher power that will help people change their thinking.”

Mixed legacy

For the past seven years, Bush has hoped to change the thinking of America about the involvement of the state in church activities. But many observers see at best a mixed legacy.

Some who support Bush’s goals say that they have not been fulfilled, or point to inequities: One report showed that federal funding awarded to black churches is disproportionately low.

But opponents question the whole concept, accusing the president, in the words of a recent editorial in The New York Times, of having “worked to blur the line between church and state.”

It is not just the achievements of his faith-based initiative, but its very definition, that is also in something of a haze.

By the way that President Bush talks about programs such as Jericho, it would be easy to infer that it is their religious orientation that makes them effective. But studies are inconclusive about the degree to which faith-based organizations are any more effective at providing social services than secular ones. And — to pick the program that Bush chose to highlight — Bonnie Ariano, Jericho’s director, says that there is no religious content to their program.

“Sometimes a client will ask to say a prayer,” Ariano says, “and we will ask the other clients if that is okay with them.” The role that faith plays in the program is in motivating the organization to work with the poor.

Indeed, anything more would be unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal money cannot be used to fund religious worship, religious instruction, or any kind of religious proselytizing, since these activities would violate one of the core principles upon which the nation was founded: the separation of church and state.

It is this principle that critics of varying beliefs see endangered by Bush’s faith-based initiative. Some worry that the government could wind up funding religious ideology. Others are concerned that the government money could interfere with religious activity. Still others are most disturbed by the fact that the religious institutions getting federal funding are exempt from many federal civil rights and labor laws.

Faith and the feds

Government involvement with religious organizations did not begin with the Bush administration. During the Great Depression, government looked to religious groups to help address the social ills of that era. Many years later, Congress and President Bill Clinton once again turned to those of faith. During Clinton’s second term, the Charitable Choice laws were passed, which clarified the rights and responsibilities of faith-based organizations receiving funds for certain social service programs.

Bush campaigned to bring these organizations further into the federal fold on his way to the White House. Once elected, he signed a number of executive orders. One stated that faith-based organizations should get an equal chance at receiving federal dollars, and the other created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

In 2006, $2.2 billion dollars was awarded to faith-based organizations to aid such needy constituents as the homeless, at-risk youth, recovering addicts, returning offenders, and people with AIDS. The number, according to the White House, represents a 41 percent increase over 2003, although some have disputed this figure.

The Criticisms

1. Proselytizing

Critics charge that religious views have dictated the policies and practices of a range of federally funded programs.

Many of the pregnancy resource centers funded by Bush’s initiative were found to be providing false or misleading information about abortion, according to a 2007 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Callers to the center were told that “having an abortion could increase the risk of breast cancer, result in sterility, and lead to suicide and ‘post-abortion stress disorder.’”

“Abstinence-only” and other religiously inspired views reportedly led to the cessation of funds awarded to nongovernmental agencies in developing countries to provide condoms or to educate people about their use.

Department of Justice officials in charge of a program that funds faith-based organizations that run halfway houses told investigators they assumed these groups were exempted from the religious activities ban if chaplains or “organizations assisting chaplains” were involved. But this stance “could be read as allowing all providers of social services in these settings to engage in worship, religious instruction, or [proselytizing],” regardless of whether the religious activities are voluntary on the part of the participant, according to a report in 2006 by the General Accountability Office, an official government watchdog.

2. Inequity

One research group has found that the money distributed by the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has not been awarded evenly among religious groups.

Only 2.5 percent of black churches have received funding from Bush’s faith-based initiative, a survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies showed.

“The administration has not been successful in informing the black ministers about the nature of the program,” David Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center told Black Enterprise.

3. Politics over faith

Even while Bush is criticized for pushing the government’s relationship with religious groups too far, others allege he has acted as if he has done more than reality would bear out.

David Kuo, who was the second-in-command at the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has accused Bush of manipulating religion for political gain. Most recently, he coauthored an op-ed in The New York Times excoriating Bush for not doing enough. “Every nonpartisan study has concluded that the initiative has not delivered the grants, vouchers, tax incentives, and other support for faith-based organizations that the president originally promised,” the piece said.

The rise in funding to faith-based groups announced by White House was indeed misleading, according to a piece in The American Prospect. The article says the administration juggled the numbers to make it look like a rise. It points out that certain agencies were already distributing grants to these groups, but had not been part of the original tally.

4. Special arrangements

The government may be doing more than offering funds to religious groups. Since 1989, Congress provided hundreds of special arrangements, protections, or exemptions for religious groups, according to a two-part series in The New York Times in 2006. The story points out that these advantages give religious groups an edge in the competition to provide social services, whether they are government-funded or not.

A number of states have also exempted religious child-care programs from certain oversight, including Texas under Bush’s tenure as governor. There, religious groups were exempted from the need to license their programs under legislation pushed through by Bush. Although few groups took advantage of the new law, at the facilities that did, abuse of the law was 10 times more likely to occur, according to a study by a local watchdog group. The state no longer exempts religious groups from licensing. 

5. Undermining religious independence

Ironically, even many of the potential recipients of these grants are worried about their effect.

A letter signed by a 1,000 religious leaders representing a wide range of beliefs stated that they are concerned the funds would encroach upon their activities: “The flow of government dollars and the accountability for how those funds are used will inevitably undermine the independence and integrity of houses of worship.”

As Rev. Ted Fuson, pastor of the Culpeper Baptist Church, told the Jewish World Review: “The folks that send the money tend to tell you what to do with it and rightfully so, if you are taking tax dollars.”

The future

Will the faith-based initiative end with the Bush administration?

The answer is unclear. According to Christianity Today, all remaining presidential candidates have “voiced support for federal funding of faith-based social services. So far, however, none has unveiled a specific plan for the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.”

Meanwhile, the concept has spread beyond the federal government. More than 100 mayors and 35 governors now have faith-based offices.

Mike Muller