Churches Divided on Role in U.S. Social Service Programs

Kirk Smith, rector of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, runs three schools, a Friday night soup kitchen, an emergency food pantry, a Scouts program, an Alcoholics Anonymous group--in all, 40 programs to meet the community’s spiritual and social needs.

President Bush plans to unveil proposals this week to call on religious “armies of compassion” to assist in government social service programs aimed at battling poverty and other social ills. Smith wonders where the troops will come from; his are fully deployed.

Bush is expected to create an Office of Faith-Based Action designed to encourage more religious-based organizations to help run government social service programs.The president also is expected to propose an expansion of government efforts to enlist religious groups.

In 1996, the federal government began encouraging religious involvement in efforts to move welfare recipients into the work force. Bush would like to expand that idea to programs aimed at social problems such as juvenile delinquency and drug addiction. During his presidential campaign, he pledged $8 billion for faith-based efforts.

Smith is not the only cleric raising questions about that. In many states--California among them--religious involvement in the welfare-to-work effort has been slow to get off the ground. Skeptics say the program’s record suggests Bush’s broader plans will face practical, political and theological hurdles.

For starters: It isn’t clear how many congregations even want to enlist in the battle.

“Nobody asked us if we were interested or prepared to do this. . . . It feels like something coming from the outside and imposed on religious communities,” said Scott Anderson of the California Council of Churches. The council represents 19 Protestant and Christian Orthodox denominations that together claim 1.5 million members. “Whether we have the capacity to run a formalized government service is a really problematic question.”

The power of faith to transform lives is demonstrated daily in the scores of social service programs that religious groups run--from prison fellowships and drug rehabilitation to job training and feeding programs. Faith groups offer considerable advantages over other organizations, including high levels of community trust, a potential volunteer pool and the spiritual resources to help people find the strength to change their ways.

But faith leaders are sharply divided on whether to spend those assets in government programs. Evangelical Christians have generally embraced the initiatives. Much of the organized Jewish community has opposed them, wary of crossing church-state lines and inviting government-funded proselytizing. Members of mainstream Protestant denominations have been divided.

Church-State Relationship

The Rev. Jim Lawson, a prominent Los Angeles civil rights leader, told a USC researcher that he feared a shift from government safety nets to faith-based volunteer networks would propel African Americans back into “involuntary servitude.” By contrast, the Rev. Cecil L. Murray of First AME Church endorses a greater church-state partnership.

“The sacred and secular must walk hand in hand because the problem is so gigantic,” said Murray, whose church-affiliated nonprofit corporation is managing one Los Angeles County welfare-to-work contract.

Even congregations receptive to the idea, however, often lack the staff, resources or technical savvy to apply for government grants and hack through red tape.

Some counties, such as San Bernardino, have taken pains to simplify the intimidating government contracting process, but such cases are rare, said John Orr of the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

Over at New City Parish, Executive Director Jim Roberts said he walked away from government funding for a food and shelter program because the reporting requirements were too time-consuming.

“Why hire someone to chase paper when you can take the same money and put food on the table?” Roberts asked.

If Bush made more money available to church groups, however, Roberts said he would hire professional grant writers to seek some of it and add staff to do the paperwork.

Murray, for his part, called the reporting requirements “a necessary evil.” During the war on poverty of the 1960s and 1970s, he said, the government dumped money into low-income communities without sufficient controls and, as a result, invited corruption.

Lack of staff and familiarity with reporting requirements are among the key reasons why few California congregations have jumped to participate in government programs. Only 6.1% of California congregations surveyed had applied for government welfare-to-work funding; half said they lacked the resources to seek it, half were daunted by red tape, and 29.7% cited theological reasons for steering clear, according to a recent survey by the California church council, USC religious research center and the University of San Francisco Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management.

Organizations such as Catholic Charities have been receiving public funds to run secular social service programs for decades. But the 1996 rules for welfare reform--which were sponsored by then-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), now Bush’s nominee for attorney general--specifically enshrined protections for faith groups.

The rules allow faith groups to talk to welfare recipients about their religious motivations for working with them, make hiring decisions based on religion and maintain religious icons in their offices. The groups are still prohibited from using government funds to proselytize, and government agencies are required to offer welfare recipients secular programs if they object to faith-based ones.

California has taken few steps to implement that program. Unlike Bush when he was governor of Texas, California political leaders have not promoted the scheme in speeches or directed the state bureaucracy to push county welfare departments on the issue, according to Anderson.

States Unfamiliar With Programs

Perhaps as a result, only 4.7% of California congregations surveyed were “very familiar” with the Charitable Choice rules, according to the study by the church council. Nationally, the Center for Public Justice gave flunking grades to 40 of 50 states for failing to inform congregations about the new welfare reform opportunities.

Anecdotal evidence, however, abounds that faith-based programs can succeed. Take Carlene Smith and Tomeko Stubbs. Smith is an Evangelical Christian and volunteer with PACE-NET, a mentoring program for welfare recipients run by Mobilization for the Human Family, an alliance of Christians working to ease poverty and social injustices in Southern California.

Stubbs is a former crack addict who has overcome 15 years of drug addiction and two years of welfare dependency. Today, she is an assistant supervisor at Goodwill Industries, having been promoted three times from an entry-level job unloading trucks.

She said Smith, her mentor, has been her “guardian angel” who has supported her struggle: helping her obtain food and bus tokens, get through the trauma of her baby’s head surgery, and overcome her doubts and despair.

Stubbs said she was not interested in religion when she met her mentor. But she saw the power of faith in her life as Smith and other PACE-NET members kept praying for her, she said.

“Without a religious mentor it wouldn’t be the same,” Stubbs said. “I was so in bondage with the devil’s life for 15 years that I need some religion.”

But as promising as the potential may be, PACE-NET is plagued with the same problems facing other faith organizations: a shortage of troops. PACE-NET project director David Mayeranderson said the majority of congregations he approached for volunteers declined to participate.

“It’s not as if the government can put out a clarion call and expect a big response unless they really bring in the resources to make this happen,” Mayeranderson said. “It gets down to what they’re asking for and what they’re offering. So far, my experience is that they’re asking for a lot and not offering much.”