In one sense, the Silver Ring Thing, a faith-based program that promotes sexual abstinence among young people, deserves a little sympathy for having a federal grant suspended, pending corrective measures to separate the religious content of its activities.

After all, the Bush administration has implicitly encouraged the breaking down of the wall of separation between church and state -- and the funding of faith-based initiatives is part of it. The Silver Ring Thing, which is based at Christ Church at Grove Farm in Ohio Township, has merely been doing its own thing -- and that thing not surprisingly reflects the evangelical Christian context in which it operates.

Yet now a letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services arrives saying that its program "may not have included adequate safeguards to clearly separate in time or location inherently religious activities from the federally funded activities." Coming from an arm of the Bush administration, this might seem like bait-and-switch. It is like throwing a juicy steak to a bulldog and then complaining when he eats it.

The letter from the Health and Human Services Department didn't occur in a vacuum; it came after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging that the Silver Ring Thing uses federal funds to promote Christianity. The Silver Ring Thing must take "corrective action" to receive a $75,000 grant earmarked for it.

In theory, faith-based initiatives are appealing. By harnessing an army of compassion, in President Bush's phrase, people can be served in ways that cannot be matched by government agencies. But it is one thing to feed the homeless, for example, and another to promote values such as chastity. The first is practical; the second involves beliefs.

The situation of the Silver Ring Thing illustrates the problem. Its proponents say that religious and secular versions of the program are offered and the young people get to choose. But good luck keeping the federal funding straight when religion so permeates the atmosphere.

Quite apart from any constitutionally suspect behavior, a practical argument exists that the federal government shouldn't be in the business of funding abstinence-only programs that ignore advice on contraception as well.

For one thing, evidence suggests that abstinence-only programs are not as effective as their supporters claim. In editorializing on this general subject in 2002, we observed that "abstinence is the desired behavior for teen-agers in a perfect world. In the imperfect, sexually charged world of adolescent America, however, it defies common sense to believe that simply urging abstinence is going to be persuasive to every teen-ager."

That is not to say that the Silver Ring Thing has no chance of succeeding with some of the young people in its program. In our view, it is entirely appropriate for a Christian church to give expression to its religious values by undertaking such a mission.

But that, of course, is the point. The Silver Ring Thing needs to be supported by its own dime. Churches are already exempt from taxes; they cannot expect the taxpayers to fund their activities, even when they are passed off as a social service.