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If the average North American congregation were to bill its community for the social services it provides, the tab would run about $184,000 per year. We've known that congregations help the needy. Now—thanks to a groundbreaking social-science study—we know just how much they do.

The source of this and other surprising findings is a study spearheaded by Ram A. Cnaan, published in his book The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare (New York University Press, 2002). Cnaan is an Israeli-born secular Jew who is professor of social work and founding director of the Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania. He talked with ct associate editor Agnieszka Tennant.

Did your study of congregations confirm the widely accepted notion that liberal churches provide more social services than do conservative churches?

No. When it comes to caring for the needy, groups with different core theologies—mainline or conservative—basically deal the same with people. They spend an equal amount of resources to serve the needy.

Were you surprised by that?

At first I was. And then I found that I'm not the only one. Christian Smith at Duke University also found similar things—that volunteers and volunteerism among mainline liberals and evangelical groups are the same. So I'm not totally off. When you get a finding that doesn't agree with the common convention, you assume that you are wrong. But I was delighted to find out that there are other people who find similar things.

What other discoveries stand out to you?

The biggest surprise is that it's really a norm for a congregation in America to provide social services. It took me awhile to find out how pervasive this norm is. The respondents said, "Of course, we're a congregation, so we [care for the needy]." No one even questions it. Sometimes they apologized to me. "You know, we're just a young congregation. We just started. We don't do much. We should have done more." Half the time they would ask me, "Can you tell me how we can do more of what we are doing?" And I would look at them and I would think, "You are asking me?" Nobody told me, "No, we cannot do it" or "It's not our job."

It's a major power for our society. We don't know exactly how many congregations there are nationwide, but even if you take a conservative number of 300,000, then there are 300,000 groups that assume that it's their responsibility to help people.

Not many congregations think of themselves as significant suppliers of social welfare. Why is that?

In talking with them, I found that things that they thought are not social programs really are social programs.

In the congregations' minds, social services were some big projects at least in collaboration with the government. For us, a social program or social service is something that they do in a consistent manner to help the needy. Sometimes they're offended if you call something a social program. Say I see a soup kitchen, and ask them, "So you have a food distribution program?" But they say, "No, that's not a program, that's only the men's group activity."

So the language is very important. When we meet with them, we give them a list of activities, asking if they're involved in them. After they see the list of activities that qualify as social services, they say, "Oh, that's what you mean. Yes, then we do have social programs."

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February 2003, Vol. 47, No. 2