Faith healing

Public Interest, Spring, 2004 by Joseph Loconte

Equally important, at least 79 percent of Teen Challenge respondents were involved in small, church-based groups. About two-thirds of them attended several times per month, as compared to about 50 percent of the comparison group that attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Finally, about 90 percent were employed full-time one to two years after treatment, compared to 36 percent of secular program graduates. "Cures can be expected," concludes Bicknese. "Revolving-door treatment need not be a way of life. Productive participation in society by former addicts is not unrealistic or utopian."

The politics of conversion

President Bush has stated that "the goal of these faith-based groups is not just to provide services; it is to change lives." This and other such candid statements have incited a hailstorm of reproach. To many critics, the idea of faith as therapy sounds facile, or even dangerous. Fears arise that clients will be coerced into treatment. "We've worked so long and hard to combat the stigma that substance abuse and delinquency and mental health are a symptom of a breakdown of morality, and to convince people they are an illness," a spokesman for the National Association of Drug and Alcohol Counselors told the Washington Post in 2000. "This would roll us back 60 years, right back to when people thought you were an alcoholic merely because you didn't accept Jesus as your personal savior."

Despite such lamentations, the influence of groups like Prison Fellowship and Teen Challenge seems likely to grow. Under the 1996 federal Charitable Choice law, religious charities can use federal money for their work and still control the "definition, development, practice and expression" of their religious mission. No public funds can be spent on sectarian worship, instruction, or evangelism. But the law allows for these activities in services funded directly by government (via grants and contracts), as long as they are paid for privately, offered voluntarily, and separated from the secular aspects of the program.

President Bush's Access to Recovery plan, still being debated in Congress, could free millions of additional dollars of federal money for drug-treatment groups like Teen Challenge. The plan authorizes states to provide addicts with vouchers to pay for help at any certified treatment center--secular or religious. There is no doubt about the need: A few years ago, the United Methodist Baltimore-Washington Conference sought $6 million in federal and state grants to set up 19 treatment facilities. But the initiative has gone nowhere, even as the region's drug problem has deepened.

Until now, Teen Challenge has shunned government support because of rules forbidding religious activities. (The organization accepts federal food stamps from people in its rehabilitation centers, but otherwise relies on private donations.) Reverend John Castellani, the group's executive director, thinks vouchers would be a legitimate use of public money to extend his organization's reach, however. "I could see us participating in some of it," he says.