Lemon-aid

This is pretty cool.

The Limestone Presbyterian Church in Pike Creek, Del., just got a new roof. And now they're putting 180 solar panels on it. According to the church:

On sunny days when we are not using much electricity, our church's electrical meter will go backwards. In the evenings or when it is raining, the meter will move forward when electricity is being used in the building. The 180 solar panels will produce, in an environmentally friendly manner, about two thirds of the electricity that Limestone uses annually.

Bravo. By going solar, the church is drastically cutting its reliance on fossil fuels and its greenhouse emissions. This is a Good Thing. It's also, we're coming to realize, probably a Necessary Thing -- something that more churches, libraries, businesses, schools and private homes are going to need to do if we hope to substantially address both our growing energy crisis and the effects of climate change.

So why isn't this being more widely done? Well, it turns out that this good and necessary thing is not an inexpensive thing. Limestone Presbyterian's solar project is costing about $250,000. That money is an investment, since the church will recoup much of that cost in the years to come through energy savings, but those future savings don't change the fact that they've had to come up with $251,790 up front, which is a lot of money for a medium-sized congregation -- or for any library, business, school or homeowner.

Fortunately for Limestone Pres., the state of Delaware has a program that helps to encourage this sort of renewable energy by leveraging investments like this solar conversion. The Delaware Green Energy Program "provides cash incentives for the installation of Renewable Energy Systems." In Limestone's case, that involves an "energy alternatives" rebate of $125,895 -- half the cost of the project. Between that and a loan from their denomination, the congregation was able to afford this solar conversion.

I believe in the strict separation of church and state and here we have a church, a sectarian entity, receiving almost $126,000 in taxpayer funds. And I approve. More than that, I applaud. How can I explain this seeming contradiction?

The bottom line here is that the state isn't supporting the church. This isn't an establishment in which the state is funding religion. The state, rather, is funding solar energy. And solar energy is not sectarian.

The state of Delaware has decided, I think rightly, that providing this kind of funding to support renewable energy is good policy. It doesn't cease to be good policy just because this particular roof belongs to a church. The standard for this distinction is called the Lemon Test, which takes its name from the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman. Wikipedia provides a nice summary of the three-part Lemon Test:

1. The government's action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
3. The government's action must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

The application of that test can be complicated, and in recent decades Lemon has been strengthened and weakened by numerous cases involving Santeria, peyote and, of course, school prayers. But the basic wisdom of this three-pronged test, I believe, still holds. The solar-energy rebate for Limestone Presbyterian Church, it seems to me, easily passes all three parts of this test. The rebate serves a secular/non-sectarian purpose; it does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion; and it does not result in an excessive entanglement of church and state.

I hope to have a chance soon to take a closer look at Barack Obama's proposals regarding state support for faith-based initiatives. When I do so, it will likely be through the lens of the Lemon Test. I don't want to comment on his plans before having a chance to examine them more closely, but for now I'll just say that I think it shouldn't be too difficult to design such a program that could pass the first two parts of the Lemon Test. Whether or not such a program might pass the third part, it seems to me, is a trickier matter.

Comments

[hapax]

Awww, Fred. Two posts in one night? Did you miss us as much as we missed you?

I confess that I often get the Lemon Test confused with Lemon Laws. If a government knowingly sells us a faith-based initiative program that is defective and of proven poor quality, are we entitled to a full refund?

[hapax]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that a local church has put up 3 power-generating windmill turbines, expected to meet about 15% of their power needs. They are actually kind of pretty, like spinning crosses, and are meant to be "an expression of our Trinitarian faith...Wind has long been regarded as a sign of the presence of God's Spirit upon the earth."

I know at least a good portion of the money was put up by the diocese, but I think there was a state grant as well.

[JayH]

Third!

Hapax, I really like that "Trinitarian expression" thing. Kudos to them.

[JayH]

Oh, and Fred: welcome back!

[Yeltar]

Oooo, Hapax, can you post a link about those turbines? That sounds super-cool!

[Michael Llaneza]

That's a fine use of taxpayer funds. It's a very high-profile solar installation. A lot of people will see about it and that will help popularize solar. Seeing it in use is the best advertisement.

[dr hil green energy]

Interesting post.
Putting a solar panels on a church will be a good example to the community. We have to remember that churches have also community value beside its religion purpose. The state is promoting good private energy habits, and we can see it as an educational support and not religion support.

[Praline]

Putting up solar panels on any public building is of general benefit; it's not as if there was a special church-reserved source of electricity they were using before, or a special church-reserved environment they'll no longer be polluting. This kind of thing is about the building rather than the use it's put to: it benefits seculars and religionists alike. The problem would be if the government was more prepared to sponsor a church than a university or an office block, which doesn't seem to be the case here...

[Jake]

An idea just occured to me. If a person/business wanted to set up a wind turbine or solar panels on their property, but they don't have the up-front money for it, they could sell shares. The idea being that all of the energy generated goes straight to the grid, and then everyone who owns shares gets their percentage of that energy for free from the grid. Maybe (I understand how shares work in principle, but I'm never really sure how it's worked out in practice) the operator of the panels/turbine could get a number of shares for free in payment for their time and effort. Or something.

Hell, this is even something that a co-op could get together and do on unused land they buy off the government, without having to use any one home/business owner's land.

[Ursula L]

If you're going to be looking at faith based initiatives, here's an aspect you don't see people look at much - what does it do to the workers who are actually providing the work? A lot of the time, it means transfering work from government jobs, which pay a living wage and have union protections, to work for nonprofits, which tends to be poorly paid and non-unionized.

[Lila]

Good point, Ursula. I don't like faith-based initiatives, for 1st Amendment reasons as well as because oversight is problematic, but you bring up another reason not to like them. (And of course both the jobs and the programs are subject to overnight disappearance if something changes in the religious organization.)

[Robb]

A lot of the time, it means transfering work from government jobs

I dunno about that - what sort of gov't jobs would there be that Non-profits are doing? Ok, so there may be some gov't paid teachers at community centers, for example, or perhaps some health care or census workers, but does the gov't pay people to work in soup kitchens & homeless shelters? Does the gummint pay folks to work for Habitat for Humanity & other similar volunteer home builders? The volunteer aspect is key here: a huge percentage of non-profit work force is volunteer, and is doing work that is not directly equivalent to most government or contractor jobs.

[Nina]

Jake, I just read an article (can't remember where now - someone e-mailed it to me...the New Yorker, maybe?) about a community in Denmark that has done exactly that: they put up a bunch of turbines to take advantage of the incessant wind there and people in the community own shares in them. A number of people also have smaller backyard turbines, which they buy with help from their neighbors, who then own shares in those smaller turbines also. The project has been spectacularly successful.

[Nina]

Ok, I just went back through my e-mail and found the article. It's titled "The Island in the Wind: A Danish Community's Victory over Carbon Emissions," by Elizabeth Kolbert. As I remembered, it is from the New Yorker, the July 7, 2008 edition. Unfortunately, I don't have a website for it, but I highly recommend reading it. You can probably find it at your local library.

[cjmr]

Our town just built a new building for the Parks Maintenance Division that has a solar panel roof on the south/west facing side, and those cool tube skylights for natural light on the north/east facing side. I don't remember how much money they are estimating that will save in electric bills, but the additional cost for building green was less than the 'cost overrun' from the previous building that had been built for Parks Maintenance.

They also built the big equipment garage with 1/3 of the building hay-bale construction, 2/3 standard construction so they can compare which building method turns out to be more energy efficient. (Not sure how they're going to measure that.)

[Tonio]

Although I wasn't familiar with the Lemon Test by name, I have defended such tests in the face of criticism from people who object to any government money going to religions. An example - on another board I read screams of betrayal from a few atheists after Obama announced his change for Bush's faith-based initiative.

Under Bush, the program benefited fundamentalist charities at the expense of even other Christian ones. (David Kuo claims this was simply to reward fundamentalist supporters, but I suspect this was to use government to push fundamentalism.) Obama would almost certainly run the program in a nonsectarian way. Still, I question the reasoning for focusing only on religious charities. Why not include secular charities as well? Would even a nonsectarian version of the faith-based initiative flunk the Lemon Test? I cannot think of a "secular legislative purpose" for excluding the secular charities.

[Bugmaster]

Putting up solar panels on any public building is of general benefit; it's not as if there was a special church-reserved source of electricity they were using before...

Shame on you ! You're using the Sun, aren't you ? And who do you think created the Sun, huh ? It sure as hell wasn't Darwin. Some people are so greedy, bless your heart !

[harmfulguy]

Hopefully, new technology will make solar collection a lot cheaper in the near future: http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/article.php?q=08071107

[hf]

on another board I read screams of betrayal from a few atheists after Obama announced his change for Bush's faith-based initiative.

Obama's proposal to make any group receiving federal money shun discrimination would likely violate the Lemon test. It'll blow up in his face a week after he makes the offer to black churches. But he may have to learn this for himself.

[Jake]

Obama's proposal to make any group receiving federal money shun discrimination would likely violate the Lemon test.

In what way?

[Tonio]

It'll blow up in his face a week after he makes the offer to black churches.

Dumb question - how so? My first thought is that the fundamentalist churches would reject the money rather than stop threatening gays with eternal suffering.

[Hawker Hurricane]

"Putting up solar panels on any public building is of general benefit; it's not as if there was a special church-reserved source of electricity they were using before...
Shame on you ! You're using the Sun, aren't you ? And who do you think created the Sun, huh ? It sure as hell wasn't Darwin. Some people are so greedy, bless your heart ! "

You cannot use sunshine to create electricity without proper sacrifices to Apollo (god of the sun), Heaphestus (god of metalworking), Athena (god of crafting) and Zues (god of lightning/electricity). For shame!

[Tonio]

Zues (god of lightning/electricity).

I thought that was Lord Sidious, the living Van de Graff generator.

[Hawker Hurricane]

Lord Sidious is but one of the mighty Zues' many names...

[Jeff]

idea being that all of the energy generated goes straight to the grid, and then everyone who owns shares gets their percentage of that energy for free from the grid.

You sell 150% of the shares, and then you hire a REALLY bad designer to make sure that it consumes more energy than it saves. Profit! What could possibly go wrong?

[Ecks]

hire a REALLY bad designer to make sure that it consumes more energy

A biofuel solar generator? Science is amazing :)

[Cowboy Diva]

Jeff,
Can you hear me singing "Springtime for Hitler" from here?

[Caravelle]

Hum. I agree that the Lemon test seems to be respected, but are those funds directed specifically at churches, or at any organisation that wants to build solar panels ?
If it's the second case I don't see how separation of Church and State is even an issue.

[Jeff]

Can you hear me singing "Springtime for Hitler" from here?

You've got a great voice! Ever thought about going on American Internet Idol?

[Dash]

Hawker Hurricane: You cannot use sunshine to create electricity without proper sacrifices to Apollo (god of the sun), Heaphestus (god of metalworking), Athena (god of crafting) and Zues (god of lightning/electricity).

Followed by an even bigger sacrifice to the god of permits and paperwork.

[cjmr]

And, of course, the god of zoning hearings. He's merciless. (Or at least our local version of him is.)

[Lucia]

My only reservation about any government aid to churches is that while the government's action may not have the primary effect of advancing religion, money is fungible, so if the church doesn't have to pay for solar panels it can use that money for, say, picketing same-sex weddings instead. (I am speaking generally here, not impugning the motives of LPC.)

The same Bush admin hacks who forget this when promoting their faith-based initiatives suddenly forget it when it comes to aiding family-planning clinics that so much as think the A-word.

All that said, I'm glad the church has solar panels, and the point about being an example to the community is an excellent one.

[Lucia]

Aaack. Suddenly remember it when it comes to aiding family-planning clinics.

[Ursula L]

I dunno about that - what sort of gov't jobs would there be that Non-profits are doing? Ok, so there may be some gov't paid teachers at community centers, for example, or perhaps some health care or census workers, but does the gov't pay people to work in soup kitchens & homeless shelters? Does the gummint pay folks to work for Habitat for Humanity & other similar volunteer home builders? The volunteer aspect is key here: a huge percentage of non-profit work force is volunteer, and is doing work that is not directly equivalent to most government or contractor jobs.

The "faith based initiatives" generally don't just mean government funding of charities that that churches are doing anyways, or things done by volunteers, like soup kitchens.

The faith based initiatives generally involve larger projects, like running schools for adult education, running group homes, running substance abuse programs, or handling case work for people on public assistance. Skilled work. So if the county department of social services was running a substance abuse program directly, a "faith based initiative" program will often involve shutting down or diverting funds from the county program to the private one. Which means putting out the people who were doing the work for the county.

I saw this most directly while working for various agencies running group homes for developmentally disabled adults. Everyone agrees that the large, state-run hospital like institutions were bad. But when the decision was made to shut them down, rather than opening group homes run by the state directly, and staffed by state employees, the money was given to private agencies to run the new homes. And this was sold as a [i]benefit[/i] of the system - you could pay the workers less than state employees, so it became cheaper to have the residents live in the small homes than the big institutions. Which was great for the residents, on the surface. But it meant that the people that cared for them were often exhausted from working two jobs just to make ends meet, which leads to mistakes and short tempers, and a lower quality of service than if they could survive on one job. There also was religious abuses, despite all the protestations otherwise.

One agnency I worked for, which labled itself "Christian" requred all the restidents to attend Christain churches, even if they weren't Christian. They also opened staff meetings with prayer. They went out of their way to recruit staff (particularly manegement) from the sectarian colleges in the area. The discrimination was there, and there was no state oversight to stop it. State inspections focused on the quality of care, not compliance with regulations to prevent religious discrimination.

Unless there is serious oversight to ensure that there isn't religious discrimination, involving not just regulation, but inspection and enforcement, then "faith based initiatives" will involve significant levels of religious discrimination. Having the state just wait around for employees to report abuse isn't enough, because, as always, employees who need a job to get by will put up with a lot of abuse that they shouldn't have to, particularly when the abuse isn't just abuse of them, but abuse of the Constitution.

[Tonio]

a "faith based initiative" program will often involve shutting down or diverting funds from the county program to the private one

Was that a specific directive from the Bush Administration, or simply how some states chose to implement the program? I suspect that most Americans don't know about that aspect of the program. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an Administration directive - conservatives have long wanted to get government out of such projects.

[Ursula L]

Was that a specific directive from the Bush Administration, or simply how some states chose to implement the program? I suspect that most Americans don't know about that aspect of the program. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an Administration directive - conservatives have long wanted to get government out of such projects.

In terms of the group homes (which I am more familiar with) this goes back to the Bush I administration, or earlier. The decisions to shut down the large institutions were made in the 1980s (although implementation took years, and still isn't complete), and when I first started working at a group home, in 1990, this was going on, and it continued for as long as I was doing this type of work, with different agencies, all in NY state.

There was also a move to homes run by non-sectarian private organizations (such as ARC), which had some of the same issues for staffing - not the relgious discrimination, but still the lousy pay, lousy benefits and lack of union support.

But there is only so much money to go around, and only so many services needed. If the money is going to a faith based initiative, it isn't going to state employees to do the job. If it is a rural county that only needs one program, setting up a faith based one makes the state one seem superfluous.

Gov't bad, private good is a definate undercurrent to the issue. Recasting it as "faith based" rather than "privitization" is a way to distract from that undercurrent. If people are all stressed about the faith part of it, then the fact that you're giving over to private agencies, and busting the gov't employee unions, passes unnoticed. You also get support from people who love the idea of "faith based" but don't care about whether something is done private or public. And it also often opens to the back door to having for-profit companies try to get in the act, and further mess the situation by trying to take profits out of the money, as well as the salaries for workers and whatnot.

[Tonio]

Recasting it as "faith based" rather than "privitization" is a way to distract from that undercurrent...

That may have been the conscious intention. The downside to that theory, however, is that the secular non-profits may have been motivated to sue over their exclusion. Did they ever do so?

I wonder what fig-leaf rule Bush II's administration used to determine whether a non-profit was religious or secular. I say "fig leaf" because the program benefited mostly fundamentalist non-profits.

[Mark Foxwell]

Government aid to private programs which might or might not be religious is potentially, and has been often enough actually, problematic enough for reasons that have been touched on here; vice versa, if due consideration of the possible problems has been taken, it clearly also can be beneficial to tap into volunteerism, charitable intentions, and the flexibility of numerous independent private initiative. So clearly beneficial that actually such policies go back pretty much forever.

What is poisonous about the current Bush Admin's ballyhooing of "Faith-Based Initiatives" is that it is an attempt to relabel the entire spectrum of such privately run, publicly oriented, services as inherently religious.

Under a reasonably strict application of the "Lemon" principles, which are just common sense in a secular society, the government has no business concerning itself with whether the entities offered aid are religious or not, but only with what sorts of benefits the entity proposes to give the public with the funds. And of course whether or not there might be downsides such as Ursula has pointed out, and how to balance them against the potential benefits of tapping into what such private entities have to offer. Without muddying the waters by earmarking aid specifically to "faith-based" entities these issues of balance have been thorny enough.

By proposing to target aid at "faith-based" entities they make the situation much worse, clearly violating the principle of separation of church and state, no matter how worthy the projects and how harmless the downsides in particular cases, because the State sets itself up as judge of who is and is not properly "religious," and indeed declares that to be "religious" automatically brings benefits to public policy.

The reality of state aid to religious foundations has always been with us and probably always will be. But there is no need whatsoever for the government to earmark aid specifically to churches as such, only to define public benefits it hopes to encourage and criteria for anyone to meet to qualify for funding toward those goals. Calling the programs "faith-based" is an exercise in bad faith indeed.

(Clearly programs such as the one that helped this church in Delaware get its solar power installation are good, and shouldn't be labeld "faith-based" just because a church benefited. Assuming that is that the program is what it looks like, a standing offer to any entity, be it a company, a family, or anything else, to help upgrade their building, be it office, factory, home, chuch, or chicken coop. Ursula has pointed out that it gets much more problematic precisely in the domain that right-wing ideologues hold out as just where private, and specifically religious, organizations allegedly hold out the most promise--in matters of public policy.)

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