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"Of course, they cannot replace the government role, but it's a situation of 'both/and' and not 'either/or'. What needs to be asked is: 'What does each sector do best?'"

The National Council of Churches (NCC), the nation's biggest ecumenical agency, has not yet issued a statement on the Bush plan, but is reported to support some aspects of the initiative. But the NCC is apparently also concerned about church-state sensitivities.

A statement on the initiative is expected from the NCC soon, an NCC spokesperson told ENI. Some NCC-related programs, including immigration resettlement by the NCC-affiliated relief agency Church World Service, already receive government funding, as do other Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish relief and development agencies.

But these programs are well established. Concern over expanding federal funding for faith-based organizations has more to do with smaller faith-based groups, such as congregations, suddenly seeking funds for programs they do not have the capacity to implement.

James Wind, president of the Alban Institute, an organization which studies U.S.congregations, told ENI that churches needed to move cautiously. Most congregations, he said, were small and had limited resources. A quarter of them did not even have formal budgets. "There can be unrealistic expectations of what churches can do," said Wind, who is a minister with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

"Before we go running off with expectations of what churches can do, we first need to assess what their capacity is," Wind said. Some large churches could already provide such services, but many more could not.

There was also a philosophical issue at stake, Wind told ENI. Churches could not merely be social service providers, he said. They must also provide pastoral care, worship, and, if need be, act in the prophetic tradition and criticize the government and larger culture when they feel the obligation to do so.

"Those are roles that are as important to our culture and society as social ministry," he said, adding that a church taking federal money could find itself compromised if it felt called to take a prophetic stance on a public policy issue, but was concerned about keeping its government funding.

At the same time, Wind said, the president's initiatives expressed "something that is out there: the society is undergoing a shift on the issue of religion and public life." The shift is "something that is healthy and good. We just need to proceed carefully."

On the potential problems of capacity, Sherman said that most congregations doing social service work were small-scale and still effective; that moderate-to-large churches could potentially expand their work; and that U.S. congregations were generally a "sleeping giant" in the area of social service work.

"It is true that congregations cannot take over large-scale government programs," Sherman told ENI. "But there is still a lot of untapped capacity among churches and congregations."

And while Sherman said there was a potential risk that churches could lose their "prophetic" edge if they accepted government funding, she also suggested that their prophetic role could actually be enhanced because "they are building relationships with people and institutions that put them at the table [of influence]."

Copyright © 2001 ENI

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February (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45