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The New York Times
Opinion
The Faith to Outlast
Politics
By DAVID KUO and JOHN
J. DIIULIO Jr. Op-Ed Contributors
From nytimes.com on
the Web, January 30, 2008
Washington -- IN his State of
the Union address Monday evening, President Bush asked Congress to permanently
extend the federal laws permitting religious nonprofit organizations to compete
for federal grants.
Seven years ago this week, Mr. Bush started his faith-based initiative. He
promised to build on these “charitable choice” laws, which were begat by
bipartisan compromises between President Bill Clinton and Senator John Ashcroft.
“Government cannot be replaced by charities,” Mr. Bush declared, “but it should
welcome them as partners, instead of resenting them as rivals.”
The president’s original plan called for making federal grants and vouchers more
readily available to the thousands of religious nonprofit organizations that
provide job training, affordable housing, after-school programs and other social
services. The initiative prescribed $8 billion in tax credits and new
spending, including at least $700 million in a “compassion fund” to benefit
exemplary programs. It was designed so that small congregations and
ministries that had long served needy neighbors on shoestring budgets — and not
just large, national religious charities — could get their fair share of
government aid.
It did not happen. The number of faith-based organizations receiving a
federal grant rose from 665 in 2002 to only 762 in 2004, according to a
Rockefeller Institute study. A program that was projected to finance
mentoring for 100,000 children of prisoners has so far paid for only 33,000,
according to the White House. Over the past six years, federal grants to
faith-based programs have shifted away from the local “armies of compassion”
praised by Mr. Bush and toward large, national organizations with religious
affiliations.
Every nonpartisan study has concluded that the initiative has not delivered the
grants, vouchers, tax incentives and other support for faith-based organizations
that the president originally promised.
In a book published last year, Michael Gerson, Mr. Bush’s former speechwriter,
concludes: “The faith-based initiative was not tried and found wanting.
It was tried and found difficult — then tried with less and less energy.”
President Bush has promised much. It will be left to the next president to
deliver on those promises. The good news is that every major presidential
candidate seems open to doing just that.
Hillary Clinton has declared that there is no contradiction between “support for
faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles.” John
McCain has supported the idea especially as it relates to improving educational
programs for disadvantaged children. Barack Obama describes faith-based
programs as a “uniquely powerful way of solving problems” especially where
former prisoners and substance abusers are concerned. When he was governor
of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney created his own faith-based office.
Politicians from both parties have come to realize that faith-based programs are
indispensable even if they are not miraculous. America’s churches,
synagogues, mosques and other congregations supply dozens of major social
services — like day care, homeless shelters and anti-violence programs — worth
billions of dollars each year, as Ram Cnaan, a professor of social work at the
University of Pennsylvania, has proved in several studies. Dr. Cnaan is
not even counting the work done by inner-city religious schools and other local
faith-based programs. From coast to coast, the primary beneficiaries of
these services are low-income children and families who are not otherwise
affiliated with the religious nonprofit organizations that serve them.
The Constitution is no longer a potential obstacle to a successful faith-based
initiative in the White House. In several cases decided since 2001, the
Supreme Court has clarified that even “pervasively sectarian” religious
nonprofit organizations remain tax-exempt and can receive government social
service grants on the same basis as secular nonprofit organizations. Their
eligibility is constitutionally secure so long as they do not proselytize or
engage in sectarian instruction; serve all persons without regard to religion;
follow applicable federal anti-discrimination laws; and use public monies only
to serve grant-specified secular purposes.
Increasingly, governors and mayors, with or without Washington’s help, are on
the case. Since 2001, governors by the dozens and over a hundred mayors
have started faith-based initiatives on their own. In numerous places, the
initiatives have persisted through changes in administrations and party control
— further evidence for the emerging political consensus in favor of using public
dollars to support faith-based organizations. The ideological disputes
that infect inside-the-Beltway debates over the separation of church and state
have little life in cities where what gets accomplished (or not) in juvenile
justice, health care and other social services is a visible, life-and-death
drama.
In Monday night’s address, President Bush rightly focused attention on the
faith-based saints in the Gulf Coast. Religious nonprofit organizations
have led the physical and financial recovery in New Orleans after Hurricane
Katrina. That includes giants like Catholic Charities and the Salvation
Army, universities like Loyola, and many among the roughly 900 local
congregations (down from 1,500 before the levees broke) that have revived
themselves since August 2005. Blessed by federal and state government
support, religious groups in New Orleans have built thousands of houses, opened
neighborhood health clinics and provided cash assistance to the destitute and
the homeless.
Faith-based initiatives have a centrist past that can be prologue. The
first “faith center” in the federal government was in the Department of Housing
and Urban Development under President Clinton.
Surveys by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life find that large majorities
among Democrats, Republicans and independents favor using federal money to
support the work of faith-based organizations. Support remains steadfast
among Americans of every race, class, region and religion.
And among the 4 in 10 adults who describe themselves as born-again or
evangelical Christians, big changes are under way that will help the next
president promote faith-based initiatives. Some prominent evangelical
leaders remain focused on abortion or gay marriage, or oppose sacred places
serving civic purposes with government support. But Pew surveys find that
over two-thirds of evangelicals favor permitting churches and other houses of
worship to apply for federal grants. Since 2001, new conservative
Christian leaders — like Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” —
have commanded attention from the news media, developed robust domestic and
international social service ministries, and avoided being seduced into
single-issue or partisan politics.
Younger evangelicals are keenly interested in alleviating poverty. Only 40
percent of 18- to 29-year-old evangelicals identify themselves as Republicans,
down from 55 percent in 2005, a Pew survey last year found. A slight
majority (51 percent) now say they are either independents (32 percent, up from
26 percent in 2005) or Democrats (19 percent, up from 14 percent in 2005).
On Jan. 19, 2005, Mrs. Clinton, speaking before clergy members in Boston,
captured the spirit that is likely to prevail in the White House, no matter who
is elected: “But I ask you, who is more likely to go out onto a street to
save some poor, at-risk child than someone from the community, someone who
believes in the divinity of every person, who sees God at work in the lives of
even the most hopeless and left-behind of our children? And that’s why we
need to not have a false division or debate about the role of faith-based
institutions, we need to just do it and provide the support that is needed on an
ongoing basis.” Amen.
David Kuo, the author of “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of
Political Seduction,” was the deputy director of the White House Office of
Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2002 to 2003. John J. DiIulio
Jr., the author of “Godly Republic: A Centrist Blueprint for America’s
Faith-Based Future,” was the office’s director in 2001.
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