President Bush’s new White House Office on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives sounds like a practical solution to some of the nation’s humanitarian needs. This heaven-sent help may have some devilish details, but they are worth working out.

First of all, what’s the government’s definition of a faith-based organization?A predominantly Christian electorate may have little problem with government funds going to churches and synagogues. But doubts may arise as people of other faiths and even fringe groups seek government help for their humanitarian efforts.

The benefits of enlisting the faith-based organizations’ help may outweigh the risks. Certainly the experiment has not had disastrous effects so far. Though Bush makes his notion sound new —“I am resolved,” he said, “to put government ... on the side of the committed and the caring and the compassionate.” — Congress approved a first step in this direction as part of welfare reform in 1996. The public did not hear much about it at the time because the debate over the changes in welfare overshadowed this detail. But for four years now, faith-based groups have been able to get community service grants and drug treatment funds as a part of welfare reform.

Rowan Helping Ministries here has been helping distribute government funds to the poor for several years. They come in the form of emergency shelter grants, heating assistance and other emergency assistance. Though Rowan Helping Ministries is not a church, the agency did grow out of the mutual efforts of area churches, and would stand as a good example of how faith-based organizations can work together to address community needs.

What they cannot do, though, is use government funds to prosyletize or otherwise promote their religious messages. As one Bush administration official said of government funding, “It can fund the soup, it can fund the shelter; it shouldn’t fund the Bibles.”

Just how the government will make sure religous groups don’t veer off into that direction with their government-funded initiatives is not clear. Tax money will have to come with some government strings or red tape —which may discourage potential participants. But the last thing the Bush Administration should want is to fulfill the dire predictions of those who claim this move violates the separation of church and state. Bush’s team will have to see that this program is administered carefully — to protect the government’s integrity, and the churches’, too.