For more than two centuries, it has been one of America's most acrimonious constitutional debates. Yet search the U.S. Constitution line by line, and you will not find it.
The long-established doctrine of separation of church and state is back in the headlines, with President Bush pushing a faith-based initiative aimed at promoting a partnership between government and religious institutions to attack the country's social ills.
He saluted the idea in his inaugural address as the cornerstone of his ''compassionate conservatism'' and in the 15 months sinces has repeatedly told church leaders that he is determined to ''put government on your side'' by making it easier for religious groups to use public dollars for social services.
But the president's plan has been sharply attacked - and not just from the left. Some conservatives worry that acceptance of government money could force churches and religious groups to compromise their principles if the federal dollars come with too many secular strings.
''All the restrictions and hoops you have to go through is what gets faith-based groups discouraged and sometimes wondering whether involving ourselves with public money is worth the trouble,'' said Rev. Michael Jacques of St. Peter Claver Church in New Orleans. Despite the occasional headaches, Rev. Jacques's church and other groups affiliated with it have gone after local and federal funding for numerous faith-based efforts.
On the left, civil libertarians view Bush's plans as an attempt to subvert a constitutional principle reinforced by countless court decisions, if not explicit in the Constitution. They warn that tax dollars could be used to advance groups' religious agenda in the guise of social work.
''This approach strikes at the heart of the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment,'' said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United For Separation of Church and State. ''(It) would essentially merge church and state into a single bureaucracy that ... could force religion on families in need.''
Bush tried to answer that criticism in a Fourth of July speech last year at Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where he said, ''We are funding the good works of the faithful, not faith itself.''
It was no accident that Bush chose Philadelphia for his remarks. The city has one of the nation's most extensive collection of church-state partnerships, covering an array of social programs - many of them focused on schools. As the director of Philadelphia Mayor John Street's office of faith-based initiatives, Nick Taliaferro is familiar with all of the constitutional arguments. He's not buying them.
''When you toss a life preserver to a drowning person, his first question isn't, 'Was this rope bought with tax dollars'? '' Taliaferro said. ''We ought to be looking first at what works and then, within proper bounds, to make it easier for those things to happen.''
Bush's attempt to make it easier still for religious groups to compete equally with their secular counterparts for tax support underwent a bruising debate inside and outside Congress last year before stalling in the Senate, then being subsumed by the Sept. 11 crisis.
A battered John DiIulio, the academic Bush picked to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, quit after seven months, retreating back to the University of Pennsylvania campus. Two months ago, Bush finally named a successor: Jim Towey, a Floridian who headed the advocacy group Aging With Dignity.
A compromise measure proposed by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Rick Santorum, R-Pa., now is before Congress. Among other things, the $12 billion bill would prohibit the government from disqualifying religious groups from competing for federal dollars and allow individuals who do not itemize on their tax returns to deduct up to $400 in charitable donations.
The Lieberman-Santorum bill scales back Bush's original plan, and the concept remains so controversial that a ''litigation orgy'' can be expected, to use columnist George Will's phrase, if faith-based groups become more deeply entangled with publicly funded programs and policies.
In one closely watched case, a federal judge in Wisconsin recently ordered the state's Department of Workforce Development to stop funding Faith Works, a Milwaukee drug- and alcohol-addiction program that incorporated Christian teaching, including Bible study and chapel services. The more than $600,000 in state funds allocated to Faith Works, the judge wrote in her 68-page January decision, constituted unconstitutional government support for a program that ''indoctrinates its participants in religion.''
The continuing hypersensitivity over the church-state issue is perfectly - if unintentionally humorously - captured by an incident several years ago in Los Angeles.
In a letter to LA's Catholic archbishop, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development inquired about federal aid going to a homeless shelter being run under the auspices of the local St. Vincent de Paul charities. Would it be possible, HUD wanted to know, for the facility to be renamed the ''Mr. Vincent de Paul Shelter.''
As that makes clear, plenty of faith will be needed to win further congressional blessing for faith-based initiatives.
''You hear some of these things and, no matter which side you're on, you want to say, 'Good Lord!' '' said New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial. ''Except you might start an argument.''