Is the Faith-Based Experiment Hazardous to Faith?

The battle over President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative—his plan to increase government support for church- and community-run social services—opened on a second front this spring, when political and religious heavyweights on the right began to unload some potent criticism on the newly assembled team of experts who came from far and wide to lay the chief cornerstone of Bush’s social policy. Their angle of attack: whether faith- based organizations pocketing government money under a portion of the president’s plan would morph over time into some version of a government program, with a muted moral message and a top-heavy bureaucracy. The verbiage critics used sounded a lot like that of church-state separationists on the left, and some conservatives remarked on the irony with a kind of sober delight.

“The [faith-based] office expected a soft, easy waltz, with cheering, as they slew the dragons of religious bigotry,” opined Michael Horowitz, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Hudson Institute’s Project on Civil Justice Reform, in an interview with the Web-based news service, Newsroom. “They had no idea of the intensity of the First Amendment concerns on the right.”

But supporters of the contested parts of Bush’s faith- based initiative weathered the assault, lobbing their own skillful counterarguments, so that over the last few months, it has become increasingly difficult to discern which of the following scenarios is more accurate: Is the debate over various parts of the Bush program a battle between Courageous, Progressive Crusaders and Boring, Shortsighted Naysayers; a skirmish between Divinely Inspired Methuselahs and the Reckless Crew on a Ship of Fools; or, as is most probable, some combination of the two? The truth won’t likely be known for some time. Meanwhile, watching the debate unfold is at times akin to watching a billboard that flips back and forth between advertisements—it never looks the same for long.

Charitable Choice—the Rub

The various pieces of the faith-based puzzle are being fitted together by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, established by executive order in one of Bush’s first actions as president and headed by a Catholic Democrat, John J. Dilulio, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania. The office will initiate and organize policy recommendations concerning faith-based social service activity across the federal government. The pillars of the Bush plan include five satellite centers—to be set up in the Departments of Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Education—which will investigate excessive regulation imposed on faith-based social services; tax incentives to prompt an increase in charitable giving, including a tax deduction for non-itemizers; and an expansion of what is called the “charitable choice” provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. This last aspect of Bush’s strategy is what has provoked all of the controversy; it is the rub, so to speak.

The 1996 charitable choice provision was introduced by then-Republican Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri (he is now U.S. attorney general). It was the brainchild of Carl Esbeck, former director of the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom and now director of the faith-based center in the Justice Department.

Esbeck says he was motivated to draft the provision by what he saw as government discrimination against faith-based social service providers—often the most effective of such organizations—on the one hand; and, on the other, by ensuing government discrimination against the poor, who wanted but were unable to access services offered by religious entities. The result, explains Esbeck: “I manufactured a baton and passed it.”

Charitable choice allows the government to give money from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a program created as part of the 1996 welfare act, directly to faith-based organizations without requiring them to water down or alter manifestations of their religious character. An organization that accepts funds under charitable choice cannot be required to change its governing structure, remove religious symbols from its facilities, or hire people who don’t subscribe to its particular faith. On the flip side, those organizations are not allowed to use government money for proselytizing activities.

Since 1996, charitable choice has been extended to apply to substance abuse and community service programs. Just how many faith-based organizations have taken advantage of the opportunity to apply for government money is unknown. The Center for Public Justice, a Christian think tank based in Annapolis, Maryland, published a report to that end last year. Amy Sherman, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Welfare Policy Center, did the research and found that by the end of the summer of 1999, there were some 125 new government partnerships with faith-based organizations in nine states. Eighty-four involved direct financial support; 41 were nonfinancial relationships and, therefore, not charitable choice relationships per se.

Idea-wise, charitable choice didn’t revolutionize the world of social services by suddenly including the faith- based sector. Governments have been partnering with the faith-based social service community for generations. In that mix were big religiously affiliated nonprofits such as Catholic Charities USA, Lutheran Social Services, and Jewish Family Services, along with more obscure organizations with which governments have had ongoing relationships at the local level. But the rules grafted onto such partnerships historically have been uneven. Government policy has ranged from a turn-a-blind-eye approach to a crack-down-and-sue approach. Charitable choice aimed to systematize the rules and make the relationships more flexible for the faith-based providers.

“The real innovation of charitable choice,” explains Center for Public Justice senior research associate Stephen Lazarus, “is that the faith-based organization is given new guidelines that protect its religious mission, so it does not have to become ‘secular’ or ‘religion-free’ as a condition of receiving government funds.”

Many of the relationships between government and the faith community outside of the charitable choice arena have been bearing fruit for years. In the sprawling resort city of Virginia Beach, Virginia, for instance, the Department of Social Services has nurtured a 20-plus-year relationship with the local faith community, according to the department’s charitable choice liaison, Ofelia Wattley. “We wouldn’t have been able to serve the public as we do if that relationship had not been there all along,” she says.

Currently, Virginia Beach works with a local Interfaith Advisory Board to provide volunteer mentors to people coming off welfare through the city’s Neighbor-to-Neighbor program, established in 1997. The city also refers people in crisis to the faith community for assistance.

“The churches have always been forthcoming, bringing their own resources to the table,” Wattley remarks. “They have always come offering something.”

But herein lies a point of concern. Opponents of Bush’s plan to expand charitable choice to a broader array of social services argue that churches and similar organizations—heretofore initiators of ministry to the poor and needy, historically drawing on and multiplying the resources of private citizens—will turn into another class of government dependents now that money is clearly available, showing up at the door of government for a handout.

Wattley notes that whenever the media spotlight charitable choice, she receives calls here and there from ministries wanting to know how they can access government dollars. In the minds of some charitable choice opponents, this may be the sort of thing that foreshadows a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Show Me the Money

Derek Davis, director of Baylor University’s J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies in Waco, Texas, argues that as government begins to fund the ministry enterprises historically supported by private citizens, those citizens gradually will begin to expect the government to shoulder the bulk of the weight and will slack off in their financial involvement.

“Take a closer look at what’s happened in Europe,” Davis points out. “Europe has been forced to support religion because it couldn’t get the kind of voluntary support we have here in America. Now look at the consequences. That relationship has been damaging to religion. These pro grams are government programs in people’s minds, not church programs. The people have withdrawn from them.”

No special money is set aside under charitable choice for faith-based organizations. Rather, charitable choice levels the playing field so that faith-based groups can apply along with everyone else for contracts to supply government services. The problem, some observers say, is that the available money is not enough to maintain the current status quo, notwithstanding the potential influx of new competitors on the government contract scene.

“We like the president’s faith-based initiative,” claims Sharon Daly, vice president for social policy at Catholic Charities USA, “but we say to the administration, ‘Put some money behind it so religious organizations can do more.’ We don’t see enough money for it in the budget.”

Daly’s concern echoes sentiments expressed by the initiative’s opponents. As Richard Foltin, counsel and legislative affairs director for the American Jewish Committee, remarks: “This may cut an already small pie into even smaller pieces.”

Provisional budget numbers available at press time suggest a nearly 7 percent increase in funding for social services, employment training, and education programs in Bush’s budget plan. Early Department of Health and Human Services numbers include an increase of $124 million for health centers in inner-city and low-income neighborhoods. The money could pay for 100 new centers and expansion work on 100 others.

Some charitable choice opponents may suggest that this asking-for-more-money business before the Bush initiative has even gotten out of the gate proves the case against it. “Charitable choice is simply a new way to expand the welfare state,” argues Llewellyn H. Rockwell, president of the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. “The administration is not proposing any cuts in the system. This is a brand-new initiative bringing more players in. It’s an expansion.”

From the ground, however, these money-related arguments look more complex, explains Sister Mary Rose McGeady, D.C., president of Covenant House, a Catholic ministry to homeless and runaway youth based in New York City.

On the one hand, Covenant House, the largest privately funded child-care agency in the nation, consciously determined when it incorporated in 1972 to refuse per-child payments from the government. The organization accepts nominal government funding from Housing and Urban Development as well as substance abuse money, but 92 percent of what Covenant House spends comes from private donations.

“We wanted to do things our way,” Sister McGeady offers. “Some of us with experience with state and city governments felt the government controlled too much. We wanted the freedom and independence to do what the kids needed…. This is the biggest thing we can do to safeguard against government intrusion—not take the money.”

Covenant House operates in 14 U.S. cities as well as in Canada and Central and South America. The organization served some 61,000 troubled young people last year.

To McGeady, intrusion of the most onerous sort usually comes in the form of government regulation. “When the president signed the executive order for the faith-based office,” recalls McGeady, who was there, “he mentioned he’d gone to the Methodist church for a service and had asked the minister whether the church had a day-care center. The minister had replied, ‘No, we can’t afford it.’ Well, there’s no way Bush’s faith-based initiative could ever furnish enough money for that ministry to run a day-care and keep all the rules for the District of Columbia.”

On the other hand, McGeady acknowledges, very few organizations in the child-care community can make it on private donations, given the time and energy demands required to raise money. “Organizations have a hard time just surviving on charity.”

Her proposal to Bush’s faith-based team: “Grease the wheels of government so that organizations can get things done…and let’s give this a try.”

Slippery Slope

Still, some argue that making government discretionary grants more easily accessible to faith-based organizations will set the religious community up to go the way of the once-vibrant secular nonprofit world. Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, who served as general counsel for the Office of Management and Budget under former president Ronald Reagan, says he saw firsthand the agile, effective secular nonprofits turn into bloated, bureaucratic extensions of government once the federal money became available and the regulations kicked in.

“The history of federal grant programs suggests that a charitable choice program will be very different from what it is today once it becomes a mature and standardized system under which hundreds of thousands of grants are awarded by largely unmonitored mid-level government officials,” Horowitz argued in a statement that he and University of Texas law professor Marvin Olasky, one of the architects of compassionate conservatism, released just days after Bush signed his executive order to set up the faith- based office. However, the statement was supportive of Bush’s overall agenda.

In an interview with Crisis, Horowitz points to the Catholic community as containing the most striking examples of what government dollars—or their absence—often beget. “Contrast Catholic Charities USA—which has taken government money and become just another purveyor of social services over the decades with a modest record—to Catholic ghetto schools, about which I can’t say enough. They are shining beacons of miracles and the singularly most successful examples of any faith-based initiative. They model the point because they are doing it on their own.”

Daly of Catholic Charities USA vigorously refutes the contention that her organization has become lethargic because it receives government aid, as has been charged often over the course of the faith-based initiative debate. “There is no more effective organization at the local level in terms of service delivery with dignity and efficiency,” she insists. “We deal with needs in a human, comprehensive way” In 1999, Catholic Charities agencies nationwide served 9.53 million people; government money constituted some 62 percent of the organization’s $2.2 billion budget.

Horowitz and Olasky are joined by charitable choice supporters in their concern about government bureaucrats meddling with an organization’s religious character. William Tobin widely considered the most expert lobbyist on voucherized child care, which Congress first approved as part of the 1990 Child Care and Development Block Grant, makes a similar contention. “Lower-level administrative people have biases,” he says, “and this is where problems come in. It’s not the states treating the poor as minions they can control, but people who don’t respect human dignity.”

Yet according to Tobin, a Catholic, the potential for abuse on lower bureaucratic levels shouldn’t preclude an expansion of charitable choice. “What we need to do with charitable choice is the same thing we need to do when we consider Catholic schools participating in voucher programs,” he argues.”We need to think things through as we set structures in place but also be prepared to do the dramatic gesture: to stand up if the government encroaches on the integrity of an organization’s religious character.”

Tobin points to legal action taken by dissatisfied parents in the Milwaukee school voucher program, the premier education voucher program in the country. In 1990, before religious schools were allowed to participate, parents challenged the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s inclusion of far-reaching special education regulations that independent schools would not have been able to fulfill. The judge ruled in favor of the parents, and the rules were altered. Says Tobin: “Taking vouchers or government money doesn’t have to mean you’re giving away your birthright.”

But Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, counters that the perpetual need for vigilance on the part of religious organizations taking government money reflects the trouble with the policy: “If you are fighting and constantly pouring out energy to maintain yourself against intrusion, then that indicates there is a problem.”

Vouchers, Father Sirico claims, which are also being proposed as part of Bush’s faith-based initiative, are a step in the right direction but still potentially problematic. “Any direct funding or voucher turns the attention of the organization from the recipient of the service to the source of the funds,” he says. “I fear that while the culture of a religious entity may remain intact in the first few years, over time it will become eroded.”

So far that has not been the case with Milwaukee’s Messmer High School, according to school president Brother Bob Smith, O.F.M. Cap. He argues that the school has not experienced any adverse effects on its Catholic culture since taking government vouchers. “We’ve made no adjustments so far as the religious aspects of our program are concerned—we haven’t had to change one iota…. We’re a Catholic school, and we’ve made it clear from the beginning that that’s non-negotiable.”

Brother Smith points to the benefits provided to the more than 1,000 low-income, mostly minority Milwaukee students the school has accepted since 1998, when religious schools joined the voucher program. “We had the best legal minds working on our voucher program here in Milwaukee,” he explains. “And while nothing is ironclad, we did our best to ensure the long-term viability of the program. This is partly a journey of faith, but we believe in the program’s construction.”

Rev. Donna Jones of Cookman United Methodist Church in north Philadelphia, which has been accepting money for its job-training program since 1998 through the 1996 charitable choice provision, similarly claims to have compromised nothing in the way of the program’s religious nature since accepting government money. “People opposed to charitable choice play this up in an unrealistic way,” she says. “We have had no problems.”

Cookman offers the students in its program secular alternatives to worship services, but teachers otherwise talk openly about spiritual subjects, Rev. Jones says. “The issue is that I cannot force religious education or information on someone.”

Still, vigilance means applying practical wisdom, contends Amy Sherman of the Hudson Institute, who recently finished a handbook for faith-based organizations looking to compete for government dollars. “There is more of a real risk for faith-based organizations that are very faith-based,” she said. “They must be committed to their mission…and not chase money for programs that are outside of their mission. They must not become overly dependent on one source of funding—I advise no more than 20 percent of their overall budget should come from government contracts. And they should not allow their organization to take on the bureaucratic structure of their government partner. Preserve flexibility, informality, to some degree, and a personable quality.”

Rev. Gary Ham, executive director and cofounder of Operation Breakingthrough, an inner-city ministry in Newport News, Virginia, says his organization, which began partnering with government soon after its founding in 1989, will collaborate with other ministries in setting up an academy for faith-based organizations in the Tidewater area to prepare them to apply for government dollars.

Rev. Ham, who originally set up Operation Breakingthrough in a kitchen, said his concern was that ministries become adequately trained and equipped before entering into relationships with government. His clarion call to the ministries that want to take advantage of charitable choice is, “Bring in the experts.”

Opponents claim the evidence that government money doesn’t necessarily corrupt amounts to the difference between a case study and substantial research. While the Bush faith-based team, they contend, may be as adept as anyone in making its policy recommendations, and while the faith-based community may prove as vigilant as ever in setting up safeguards on its end, the expansion of charitable choice still should be considered an experiment.

“The real question,” Horowitz quips, “is who must bear the burden of proof in this argument. If I’m wrong, fewer poor people will get the treatment they need, and that will be terrible. If the other side’s wrong, church programs will become less efficient, and the independent church in America will disappear. There’s no margin for error in this debate.”

Author

  • Stacy Mattingly

    At the time this article was published, Stacy Mattingly was a writer living in Atlanta, Georgia.

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