Charitable choice

Christian Century, March 14, 2001 by Carl S. Dudley

A closer look

Church leaders want to work with government, but only if it involves a partnership, not an administrative nightmare.

WHAT DO FAITH-BASED groups and social agencies really make of President Bush's effort to try to expand the role of faith-based groups in addressing social needs? What do they think of the "charitable choice" legislation, which makes religious groups eligible to receive social welfare funds from the government? To find out, a group at the Institute for Religious Research interviewed leaders of 14 socially active congregations in the Hartford area along with officials at 13 related social agencies. We also spoke with staff in the governor's office, with administrators of relevant state agencies, and with political leaders from both parties.

It quickly became apparent that the welfare reforms of 1996, which imposed work requirements and limits on welfare eligibility, have changed the social landscape. Many people formerly on welfare are now working, yet their social situation has not necessariy improved. Many are now faced with child care and transportation costs which their meager paychecks cannot cover.

"Even though [people] have work now, they are finding life is so difficult with this work pattern that they are getting very discouraged. People are more discouraged than 1 have ever seen," said the director of a Salvation Army shelter. "We are [seeing] more and more parents who are homeless.... People are poorer than they were before .... They have to pay day care and transportation costs. So their expenses have gone up and their income has gone down."

A citywide agency executive pointed to the implications of these changes for churches and faith-based programs: "It used to be that public assistance was the permanent system and church intervention ... was the temporary fix, because the state welfare was there. Now we have turned that on its ear. We have said that welfare is the temporary fix.... We don't know what the permanent one is going to be."

How will churches respond to the role they are being asked to play? It is too soon to know for sure, but our research tended to dispel five prominent notions about charitable choice.

Misperception No. 1: Charitable Choice threatens the wall between church and state.

In the case of welfare-related programs, we found no wall. Pragmatism and passion for ministry long ago breached any pure separation of church and state in the Hartford area. Kevin Loveland, director of Social Services for Connecticut, reported that a significant portion of the state welfare dollars is funneled through Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, Salvation Army and many other faith-based agencies. And we found that government funding and private funding have been mixed together in every kind of congregational social ministry and faith-based agency.

This is not to say there is no tension. Congregational leaders were concerned about fulfilling their unique religious mission, and about avoiding exploitation by the state. As one evangelical said, "Our board feels strongly that they [do] not want to compromise what they know to be the `active ingredient.'" Others worried that the state was avoiding its essential responsibilities. "The churches are conned into accepting responsibility so that the feds and the state can dump it on the churches and say, `Now it is your problem, not ours,'" said one leader. A pastor agreed: "I had the impression that the welfare legislation was just to make the churches pick up the tab."

But even for those who had questions, a pragmatic passion for ministry prevailed, as eloquently summarized by a Catholic nun: "Would we try to get federal monies? I don't think we would have any scruples if we saw a need that was not being met and our parish could do that for the neighborhood."

Misperception No. 2: Conservative evangelicals are most interested in government funding of faith-based organizations.

Although John Ashcroft and other religious conservatives first championed charitable choice, according to sociologist Mark Chaves conservative evangelical churches are in fact the least likely to take advantage of charitable choice legislation, whereas black Protestants and urban Catholics are the most likely. His findings were supported by our research. The African-American churches we contacted either receive or have received significant government funds for their social ministries.

Interestingly, we also found that the historically black churches in general have far more diverse ministries and far more diverse sources of income for their ministries than white churches. Listen to a member of the staff of a Christian Methodist Episcopal church: "We have a technology center for the community. We also have a project where we will take students and train them to fix cars and then they can buy them.... We have food banks and an after-school tutoring program.... We have identified about 58 ministries. We are partnering with the board of education, and we partner with the different social service agencies, and with different churches."