Faith healing

Public Interest, Spring, 2004 by Joseph Loconte

It is hard to imagine convicted felons voluntarily relinquishing the right to a television in their rooms, access to pornography, and most of their personal freedom--as the IFI program stipulates--just to get their hands on three-ring binders and a saxophone. And though the program accepts public funds, officials insist they are spent only on computer training, budgeting courses, and other secular services. Plainly religious activities, such as Bible studies and worship services, are paid for privately and run by volunteers. "The state is not contracting for religious programming," says Jerry Wilger, national director of IFI. "They are contracting to reduce recidivism."

A social policy revolution?

Integrating Prison Fellowship and Teen Challenge into the social safety net without compromising their spiritual mission would, in fact, be an enormously delicate task. It is not always clear that even the administration understands what is at stake. For the first time since Johnson's Great Society, government would admit that programs predicated on secularism are unlikely to solve our most pressing social problems. At the same time, explicitly religious organizations would consider a partnership with the federal government that could conceivably compromise their religious mission.

The First Amendment debate over religious charities is often trivialized as a fight over mealtime prayers or a crucifix hanging on an office wall. Something much more consequential, however, is at issue. The real fight is over whether the overly scientized public sphere will accept a competing anthropology: a view of the human person as endowed with moral and spiritual capacities--and obligations. If Bush's faith-based initiative can bring significant government support to groups so decidedly religious, and if those groups can deliver real results, it could revolutionize social policy in America.

The author would like to thank Claire Burgess for her research assistance.