Skeptic reflects on faith-based initiatives

The heart of the White House faith-based initiative is the intention to open up more opportunities for increased federal support to faith-based organizations to enhance their social service capacity. Critics, on the other hand, have expressed concerns about the motives behind the proposal and the fear that it will erode the traditional separation of church and state.

Anyone familiar with established religious social service organizations is aware that a close working relationship already exists between faith-based groups and the federal government. My organization, the Maine Council of Churches, for example, recently administered a federal grant to explore how religious groups might be more helpful to victims of crime, and other organizations such as Catholic Charities and Lutheran Family Services routinely depend on some amount of federal assistance for their social service programs. Many of us may feel federal grants are more difficult to administer, but any faith-based group which legally qualifies for federal assistance has an opportunity to apply.

The recent White House study, however, confirms that although present law permits close working relationships between the government and faith-based groups, there are difficulties and prejudices against faith-based groups within some government agencies. The obvious solution to these problems is to use executive directives to make internal procedural changes in these agencies and to educate their staff on how to develop more viable working relationships between government and faith-based groups. If simply improving channels between faith-based programs and the federal government is the problem, it would seem that the solution is primarily administrative rather than showcasing the issue as a centerpiece of Bush’s political agenda.

The more important issue is the question about what we really mean by “faith-based initiatives,” and whether the growing distrust from the religious community about the White House proposal is in fact based in historical and biblical terms.

Religious groups generally have had a long and respectable history in our country in terms of supporting charity: feeding, clothing and sheltering the poor, visiting the prisoner, and caring for the sick, for example. And we continue to do this quite well, albeit most often in a geographically limited, haphazard, emergency, short-term context. But we have never been able to provide the systematic, universal entitlement approach that, at least theoretically, is available through democratically secured tax revenues and centrally organized social service programs.

Then there is the history of faith-based initiatives of prophetic witness against economic and social injustice. Few who provide charity over the long haul can do so without eventually asking why people are poor in the first place. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, before he was assassinated, was said to have remarked that when he offered charity to the poor he was considered a saint; but when he asked why people were poor he was labeled a communist. Those conscientiously serving the poor become aware that people are often poor because they have been neglected and oppressed by those who reap considerable personal gain from exploiting the labor of the poor.

Inspired and guided by prophetic teaching, and motivated by working in solidarity with the poor, leaders of faith-based service organizations often feel compelled to speak out with a prophetic witness against the systemic exploitation of the poor – the “faith-based initiative” of Rev. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, for example. I’m skeptical, however, that a call for economic justice and the liberation of the poor is the kind of “faith-based initiative” the Bush administration has in mind, and I join other religious leaders with the concern that an emphasis on faith-based charity will undermine existing publicly funded social services for the vast majority of poor and working people.”

A third type of faith-based initiative has been to support projects of economic development. This typically has involved religious communities generating capital to create jobs and/or housing programs for the poor. Small but significant efforts here in Maine such as HOME in Orland, RCAM in Leeds, Coastal Enterprises in Wiscasset, Faithworks in Lewiston or the Genesis Fund in the midcoast area are examples of local “faith based” economic development.

So if faith-based groups already have legal access to federal money, and increased support for faith-based groups can apparently be handled administratively, why does the Bush administration apparently want us to believe they are creating a new version of a compassionate delivery of charity to the poor with the blessing and collaboration of faith-based groups? Is it too cynical to be concerned that faith-based groups are being co-opted to join a plan to sugar coat a political agenda that offers less charity for the poor while doing nothing about why they are poor in first place?

A truly compassionate, faith-based political agenda would do two things. First, it would create a society where basic human needs were universally provided: health care would be a right, housing and food would be affordable, education and the welfare of children would be simply a given, the elderly would be cared for with deep respect, and by and large workers would earn a livable wage that provided basic necessities and personal dignity and self-worth.

Second, the political agenda would guarantee humane care for those not able to care for themselves – the infirm elderly, the incapacitated, the orphan, the ill, for example.

There is, therefore, a significant difference between the politically motivated White House idea of compassion and charity and the biblical vision of economic justice and compassionate care for the poor. We should not allow the traditional sense of charity handed down from our religious traditions to be compromised and co-opted by political opportunism

Faith-based organizations al-ready make significant contributions to caring for our citizens, and many of them already use federal dollars responsibly and effectively to accomplish their mission. Let’s simply help them do this better by improving administrative procedures. And at the same time, let the American public in general, and faith-based groups in particular, keep our eyes on the goal of creating a truly compassionate society, a society where the fundamental economic structures assure that no child is left behind, basic needs of food, shelter and health care are made available to all.

We have a long way to go to reach this truly “faith-based” goal.

Tom Ewell is executive director of the Maine Council of Churches.