KIM LAWTON, correspondent: It’s graduation time at the Helping Up Mission, a nondenominational Christian ministry for poor and homeless men in Baltimore. On this day, several men are being recognized for reaching new stages of success in their recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Helping Up believes that spirituality plays a key role in the recovery process, and it wants those who work there to reflect its values. The ministry relies largely on private donations, but it has received some public funding as well, and that raises a difficult question: If the mission takes government money, should it still be allowed to only hire people who share its religious beliefs?

BOB GEHMAN (Executive Director, Helping Up Mission): A faith-based organization is only faith-based if it can hire people of the particular faith that it espouses, so if, for instance, we were not able to discriminate in our hiring practices based on our faith and religion, that would change us.

BARRY LYNN (Executive Director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State): I don’t think that there’s any moral or ethical or constitutional justification for a religious group taking government funds, tax dollars, and saying we’re only going to hire the people we want, we’re going to have a religious litmus test for hiring. That’s dead wrong, and it should be stopped.

LAWTON: For decades, religious groups have been partnering with the government to provide a host of social services in the US and around the world. Those partnerships attracted new visibility—and new controversy—after President George W. Bush created his faith-based initiative—

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: People who don’t have hope can find hope.

LAWTON: —in his words “to level the playing field” so that more religious groups could compete for government grants.

A series of laws, regulations and court decisions have tried to ensure that the faith-based partnerships don’t violate the Constitution. For example, tax dollars may not be used to fund proselytizing. But the issue of religious hiring remains one of the most contentious questions. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its regulations banned discrimination in hiring but granted faith groups an exemption, allowing them to hire on the basis of religion. But Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says federal funding should change the calculus.

LYNN: Whenever government money enters the picture, then the civil rights rubric of our country is you don’t get to discriminate anymore. If you’re engaged in federal work with federal money, you really have to play by the same rules as everyone else. You don’t get to be a bigot, you don’t get to discriminate, you don’t get to select people for a job or fire people from a job because of their religious beliefs or orientation.

LAWTON: Stanley Carlson-Thies heads the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, which helps faith-based groups protect their identity and practices. He says the law allows religious groups to create an organizational philosophy as other federally funded entities do.

STANLEY CARLSON-THIES (Executive Director, Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance): I think the faith groups see it as, you know, like a Democratic senator hires Democrats for his or her office, and environmental groups hire environmentally sensitive people, and so on, and they say hey, we’re a faith group, it’s faith that motivates us, defines us, so we’re looking for people who are, share that faith.

LAWTON: Carlson-Thies sees this as an issue that pits an individual’s rights against institutional rights. He says for faith groups it’s not discrimination in the traditional sense.

CARLSON-THIES: It’s not that they think of this as you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, we’re going to keep you out. No, it’s more do you share the things that motivate us? Do you have the same set of values? Do you have the same set of behaviors?

LAWTON: On the presidential campaign trail in July 2008, candidate Barack Obama visited a Christian youth program in Zanesville, Ohio, and promised that his administration would continue partnerships between faith-based groups and the government. But he said there would be a few caveats.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: First, if you get a federal grant you don’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them, or against the people you hire, on the basis of their religion.

LAWTON: When President Obama set up his White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, many civil rights groups expected to see all religious hiring preferences banned in federally funded programs. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Joshua DuBois, head of Obama’s faith office, has outlined a different course.

JOSHUA DUBOIS (White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, in speech): With regard to the issue of co-religionist hiring, hiring discrimination hiring, it’s a difficult topic and one that where there are very clear and strong opinions on both sides. The president has decided to take a case-by-case approach, and as difficult legal issues arise he wants me to work with the White House counsel, with the attorney general, to explore those issues and give him a recommendation.

LYNN: A case-by-case basis is like saying, well, maybe Rosa Parks may be in the front of the bus; other African-American women, they get into the back of the bus. There is no way to deal with fundamental civil rights issues on a case-by-case basis.

LAWTON: Both Carlson-Thies and Lynn were on a task force about government partnerships for Obama’s Faith Advisory Council. But the hiring question wasn’t allowed to even be part of the discussion. It’s an issue of deep concern for many faith-based charities, including Helping Up in Baltimore. The residential addiction recovery program has about 400 homeless addicts who live here for at least a year. They go through a 12-step program and receive counseling, medical help, job training, and Bible study. Executive director Bob Gehman says faith is crucial in the program’s effectiveness.

GEHMAN: Many of our men here have tried other programs, and they’ve come to us because they particularly like the faith-based ingredient that we have here. It offers them the kind of hope that they need in order to get beyond all the failures that they’ve had in the past.

LAWTON: That was the case for Michael Anthony Gross, who came here after three decades of cocaine and heroin addiction.

MICHAEL ANTHONY GROSS (Helping Up Mission): When I was in detox, I talked to a gentleman, and he recommended the Helping Up Mission, and he spoke about the spiritual basis that, you know, the program is run on, and I come to know that after all these years that’s what I was missing.

LAWTON: The mission’s internal surveys have found that two years out, almost 80 percent of the men who complete the program are still drug-free and employed. The program accepts men from all religious backgrounds, and leaders say religion isn’t imposed on anyone. The men may opt out of chapel or Bible study, but if they do they must attend another 12-step-style meeting. Tom Bond is Helping Up’s program director, who in 2002 came here himself as a homeless addict.

TOM BOND (Helping Up Mission): The whole faith and recovery both are highly unique. What we do is we just try to kind of create a platform and a vehicle for these guys to succeed and make things available to them and let them figure things out for themselves, not force it on them.

LAWTON: Gehman says the mission has been careful not to use any public money for the explicitly religious parts of the program. But he says hiring people who share the mission’s faith is central to maintaining its identity. If the government makes nondiscrimination a condition, they wouldn’t be able to accept public funding, and he says that would give other groups an unfair advantage.

GEHMAN: It really gives secular organizations a real power-edge, because they’re fully funded. They can build their buildings, they can develop their programs, and the faith-based organizations are left to have to raise their own money, which is becoming increasingly difficult.

LAWTON: Indeed, says Carlson-Thies, if the administration changed the longstanding policy, many charities from across the religious spectrum may be forced to end their partnerships with the government.

CARLSON-THIES: It’s not that we just say, well fine, if you want to walk away, walk away, because this implicates billions of dollars and a big volume of services.

LAWTON: One organization that might be affected is World Vision, the largest US-based relief and development group. World Vision has been taking federal funds since 1983 and last year received more than $300 million in cash and goods from the government. The Christian group wants to maintain the right to consider religion in its hiring. World Vision’s chief legal officer told me his organization has never discriminated among its recipients or engaged in illegal hiring practices. But, he said, if the policy changes and World Vision can no longer partner with the government, “the losers would be children in need around the world and American taxpayers.”

LYNN: Scientific studies certainly don’t prove that World Vision is the only group that can help the poor around the world, nor does it suggest that the best charities at home are those that have a religious title affixed to their name.

LAWTON: Under strong pressure from both sides, the Obama administration has been reluctant to clarify its position or make any changes, and White House officials declined to comment for this story as well. But with several court cases moving in the pipelines, the issue isn’t going away.

I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.

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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The fate of St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans is uncertain. Its pastor was evacuated to Baton Rouge while members of the church have spread across the nation. In the absence of a sanctuary where people can worship, Amy Butler, the church’s former associate pastor, is trying to minister to members online from her offices at the Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., where she is now pastor. She brings them prayer, solace and aid — all with the help of the Internet.

AMY BUTLER (Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church): Nobody knows what’s happened to the church. And the church building seems secondary, but it’s a symbol of this community that’s there to support us and be our family in times of crisis. And, so the first priority is to try to reconnect with all the people. And then we’ll start talking about the building.

We’ve been able to be a central clearing house for those who need news of each other — to regularly check in with a blog online where people are posting information about where friends and church family might be, passing out phone numbers, being available when people call to give information.

(talking on phone): There are still three who are missing. So, we’re looking for them.

I think the concept of the local church has taken on a broader perspective in this day and age where we have instantaneous connections with each other over the Internet and by the telephone. The building is not there and we’re not there together. But the people are together, and in an electronic way, able to pray with each other, support each other, listen to each other.

(reading from an e-mail): I can’t tell you how your words touched us. I’m really grateful for the support and prayer from you and the church.

I hear from people that they’re so grateful to be alive and to know that their families are alive. And, the thing that they want from me is somebody to listen, somebody to pray, somebody to cry with. That’s what I’ve been doing a lot.

(praying): Lord, we just ask for comfort in this time of grief and pain.

A voice of prayer to God that’s just a simple prayer for comfort and reassurance of God’s presence. And the spiritual component of this is to know that God is not going to abandon us. And, maybe that’s the best thing that I can do as a pastor right now — to say those prayers and to say those words over and over again. So, the little bit that I feel that I am contributing is being a long-distance pastor here to connect people and to just sort of re-establish this sense of community, even if it’s not in a place. We are the family of Christ and we will be there for each other during this time.

I don’t know how to answer the deeper theological questions related to this. I don’t think that God caused the hurricane. And I don’t think that God is pleased with the suffering and the pain of God’s people. I think and I know that God responds with love and compassion and asks us as the church, outside of this horrible event, to step up and to hold out a hand and help people remember where their strength is coming from.

ABERNETHY: Congress this week approved nearly 52 billion dollars for hurricane relief, bringing the total so far to more than 60 billion. And many predict it will go even higher. Meanwhile, this weekend’s anniversary of 9/11 four years ago brings to mind the extraordinary program Congress set up then for victims of the attacks. We talked about that victim’s compensation fund last week with the man who administered it, Kenneth Feinberg, who joins us again.

Welcome. In addition to everything that Congress has already done and is likely to do in the way of relief aid, do you think there should be again something like a victims’ compensation fund?

KENNETH FEINBERG (Author, WHAT IS LIFE WORTH?): Well, of course, that’s up to Congress. Congress, when they created the 9/11 fund, Congress acted very quickly as part of legislation to bail out the airline industry, to make sure that lawsuits would be diverted into a fund. So, the context, I think, was quite different.

ABERNETHY: Yeah, but people have suffered — lots of people have suffered through no fault of their own. So, is there then a reason to have some kind of victim’s compensation fund?

Mr. FEINBERG: I think from the perspective of the victim’s, it’s hard to distinguish Katrina from 9/11, from Oklahoma City, from the USS Cole, from the African embassy bombings. If you look at the problem of compensation from the victim’s perspective, I think especially in a free society like ours, it’s very difficult to make those distinctions. From the perspective of the nation, however, I’m dubious whether or not Congress will do in New Orleans, in the gulf, what it did in the 9/11 situation.

ABERNETHY: If it did decide to do something, you would recommend what, flat amounts for everybody?

Mr. FEINBERG: Yes, as I’ve said, if Congress decides, a big if, but if Congress decides, certainly I think, for a lot of reasons, a flat amount, the same amount for every eligible victim would be the way to go.

ABERNETHY: And, what’s the underlying philosophy here, is it that I’m responsible for my own life and if something bad happens, too bad?

Mr. FEINBERG: That’s part of it. I think, it’s the United States after all. Our heritage is limited government, the government is not a guarantor of life’s misfortunes. I think the 9/11 fund was an aberration. I don’t think you will find anywhere in American history, two million dollars on average, tax-free, to every eligible claimant. I think it really is an exception to the general rule.

ABERNETHY: Kenneth Feinberg. Many thanks.

Mr. FEINBERG: Thank you.