Faith-Based Initiatives and the States

State Scan Study
State by State Resource Map
State Constitutional Law
State Case Studies
Fiscal Trends

In much of the country, there is a long, history of cooperation between local governments and religious organizations with a social service tradition.

To date, most state and local governments have not followed the Bush Administration’s example by mounting large initiatives to engage in faith-based social services. However, state and local governments are enormously important to this question. They have their own, and sometimes conflicting, constitutional and statutory provisions on the relationship between church and state, on hiring rights for employers, and requirements for contractors doing business with government. They administer the nation’s programs for public welfare, education and training, health care, and public protection, among many other areas. And more and more management – and often financial – responsibility has been devolved to them by the federal government.

The Roundtable monitors, examines, and reports on key developments among the states concerning the participation by faith-based organizations in providing social welfare services.

State Scan Study

A comprehensive look at faith-based social service activity across the 50 states

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State by State Resource Map

Visit our state by state resource map on faith-based and community initiatives by state.

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State Constitutional Law

  • Click here for an overview paper on state vs. federal constitutional law on government partnerships with religious organizations (excerpted from State of the Law, by professors Ira Lupu and Robert Tuttle of George Washington University School of Law)
  • Click here for an analysis by professors Lupu and Tuttle of the February 2004 decision of the US Supreme Court in Locke v. Davey, a case that raised issues of supremacy in a situation of alleged constitutional conflict between federal free exercise clause and state non-establishment clause concerns.
  • Click here for a state by state summary of state constitutional provisions and religious exemption statutes

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State Case Studies

In-depth looks at faith-based social service programs in nine specific states

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Fiscal Trends

Click here to read a Rockefeller Institute report "State and Local Governments Face Continued Fiscal Pressure -- A New Year's Report."

Click here to read the Roundtable report "Funding Faith-Based Social Services in a Time of Fiscal Pressures."

Click here to read a transcript from a panel discussion held during the Roundtable's December 2004 conference in Washington, DC entitled "Trends and Challenges: State Partnerships with Faith-Based Service Providers."

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