Tweet

Comments (4)

Related articles and links |  1 of 2

Mark Chaves, Duke University professor and director of the National Congregations Study, recently commented that the National Congregations Survey shows that the Bush faith-based initiative "accomplished so little." Comparing data from 2006–07 with the results from 1998 shows no increase in the percentage of congregations that offer social services, the proportion that devotes at least a quarter of an employee's time to such services, or the proportion that receives government funding to provide services.

As Chaves says, it could be that the glass is actually half full, not half empty: the survey shows that 82 percent of congregations offer social services—a major contribution to the wellbeing of our society. Further, there has been markedly more congregational interest in receiving government funds to support their services, a big jump in the number of congregations that hosted a speaker from a social service group, and a significant increase in the number of churches that has conducted an assessment of community needs. All the attention to the federal faith-based initiative—negative as well as positive, inaccurate as well as factual—no doubt helped to spark these important changes, he notes.

Still, he says, while congregational interest in social service programs went up, their behavior didn't change: there was no big bump in government funding of church-based social services.

But, of course, the Clinton, Bush, and now Obama faith-based initiatives are not federal programs devoted to expanding government funding of churches to provide social services! The federal reform effort has two other aims. The general aim is to make the federal government a better supporter of the good and important work that is done in communities by a wide range of organizations, including but not limited to churches—thus counterbalancing the typical government tendency to see its own efforts and plans as the best and most important source of assistance.

The second goal is to eliminate wrongful restrictions that the federal government has often put in the way of so-called "pervasively sectarian" organizations that provide social services. In the extreme-separationist reading of the First Amendment—which has now been abandoned by the Supreme Court—it was considered unconstitutional for the federal government to partner with organizations whose religion was prominent and encompassing. Faith groups that looked "too religious" were typically turned away when they applied for federal funding.

Reforms such as the Clinton-era Charitable Choice laws and the Bush-era Equal Treatment regulations abolished that limitation. Now every variety of faith-based organization has the same opportunity to seek federal grants, whether their religion is muted, only historic, or full-blown (but the federal funds generally cannot be used to pay for religious activities).

So here's the big change: "pervasively sectarian" social service groups now have the same opportunity to seek funds that religiously affiliated and mildly religious social service groups have always had. Churches can seek funding, as can robustly religious faith-based nonprofits, and YMCAs where the "C" is now only a letter, and secular nonprofits. Yet, in reality, not that many churches or other houses of worship seek federal funding-most congregations provide some services to their own members and to their neighbors but don't see social services as their main task.

The legal change—confirming the equal eligibility of all varieties of faith-based organizations-is highly significant: just listen to the continued criticism of extreme church-state separationists! But it doesn't fit the framework that many academics, reporters, and editorialists share. In their view, "religion" and "social services" occupy different boxes. Real social services are secular, not religious. Thus, if the federal faith-based initiative has opened the door to participation by distinctively religious organizations—pervasively sectarian organizations-that should mean a flood of churches (religious organizations) has joined (secular) social service organizations to provide federally funded help.

next page... |  1 of 2

January (Web-Only) 2010, Vol. 54