2 of 7

"No one has a clue as to what it would take for public policy to be sufficient," former U.S. Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan acknowledged in a speech at Harvard just a few years ago. Partly out of desperation, policy experts and the public generally began to wonder if religious groups had at least more of the answer. Today, Cnaan says, "the public is ready to have government support the religious community in doing what everyone else has failed to do."

Third, a growing body of research demonstrates that religion often goes hand in hand with good citizenship and overall health. Scholars as diverse as psychiatrist David Larson, for years a policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Patrick F. Fagan at the Heritage Foundation, and Cnaan cite a wide range of studies showing that "religion is strongly associated with good citizenship and improved physical and mental health." Active participation in a religious group correlates with lower suicide rates, drug use, and criminal behavior; better health; and altruistic behavior. Independent Sector's 1994 survey found that persons who attend church weekly are about twice as likely to volunteer (and volunteer twice as many hours) as nonchurchgoers. Catholic University of America sociologist Dean R. Hoge recently concluded, "Church attendance and participation in church programs are by far the strongest predictors of volunteering." In a widely cited study, Harvard economist Richard Freeman found that church attendance was the best predictor of which young inner-city black males were likely to escape the syndrome of gangs, drugs, and prison.

Emerging reports prove that faith-based organizations (FBOs) succeed in combating social problems. Graduates of Teen Challenge have an 85 percent drug rehabilitation success rate, according to a recent Northwestern University study—in contrast with another study's finding of a 28 percent rate for secular programs. Faith-based mentoring teams seem to have played a crucial role in enabling Ottawa County in Michigan to become the first county in the United States to have nobody on the welfare rolls. Lawndale Community Center's faith-based health center has helped cause a 60 percent drop in infant mortality rates in a destitute section of Chicago, prompting headlines in local papers and careful exploration by federal health officials.

Too much of the evidence is still anecdotal. We need far more extensive scholarly evaluation of holistic faith-based providers. But there are enough indicators to raise the possibility that holistic FBOs sometimes succeed when almost everything else has failed.

Fourth, there is growing agreement that our social problems have both socioeconomic and moral/religious roots and that therefore moral and spiritual transformation must be a part of the solution. Economists Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk report a fascinating analysis in their book America Unequal. They ask how much of the growing poverty from 1973 to 1991 is due to economic factors (especially declining wages for low-skilled persons) and how much is due to the rapid growth of single-parent families. Their answer? The two factors are almost equally important. A child who grows up in a single-parent family is 11 times more likely to experience persistent poverty than a child who grows up with both parents. Obviously, structural economic factors have contributed to the decline of two-parent families, but so have changing ethical norms and personal moral choices. Equally obvious is that if we want to reverse the decline of two-parent families, our churches will have to play the leading role.

next page... |  2 of 7

share this page

June 11 2001, Vol. 45, No. 8