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In fact, the bill now goes to the Senate, especially the Democratic leadership. Democratic Senator Lieberman has been working all fall with Republican Senator Santorum to draft a compromise bill. In fact, they were ready with a bill this past December that would have, among other important things, increased charitable donations by billions of dollars by enabling the 80 million tax filers who use the short form and therefore do not itemize their deductions (Form A) to claim a tax benefit for their charitable giving. (The House bill (H.R.7) passed by Republicans last spring included this provision, but allowed $25 a year for individual filers and $50 for a couple! Fortunately, Lieberman/Santorum greatly increased that figure.) For some reason, Democratic majority leader Daschle did not let this Lieberman/Santorum measure come to a vote this December.

Mr. Daschle must now decide whether he will allow the Senate to vote on the Lieberman/ Santorum compromise bill (which includes several significant expansions of the faith-based initiative even though it does not expand Charitable Choice). As I told the Washington reporter for The Boston Globe on January 15, if Daschle does not, then Democrats will have to explain to the American people during the election campaign this fall why Democrats blocked measures that everybody from the ACLU to the Southern Baptists endorse.

Almost everyone agrees we should expand the role of faith-based organizations to help reduce the scandal of widespread poverty in the richest nation in history. To implement that consensus, however, requires significant change on the part of many people: private secular and corporate foundations who often automatically reject applications from religious social service agencies; conservative Christians who too often rail against government anti-poverty programs without giving sacrificially from private funds to support effective faith-based programs; and yes, the Democratic leadership in the Senate.

In our introduction, the Working Group reminds the nation of the "fierce urgency of now:" "Over twelve million children live below the poverty line. Massive numbers of youth are falling behind and dropping out of school." We must, the report says in a careful reference to what I call inner spiritual conversion and external socio-economic change, "stand with those who struggle, helping them find the strength they need from within, and the help they need from without, to change and improve their lives." In the words of Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, "now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children."

Ron Sider is president of Evangelicals for Social Action. This essay first appeared in the January 23 issue of ESA's Prism E-Pistle.

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Also appearing on our site today:

The State of the Faith-Based Initiative | One year after Bush outlined his plan to let religious social-service groups compete for government funds, little has actually made it through Congress.

Past Christianity Today articles on the Faith Based Initiative include:

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January (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46