Service projects

Commonweal, May 21, 2004 by Michele Dillon

Saving America?

Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society

Robert Wuthnow

Princeton University Press, $29.95, 352 pp.

Michele Dillon

In March of this year, the ambiguity of the boundaries between church and state in the United States once again made headlines. The California Supreme Court ruled that the Catholic Church's moral opposition to artificial contraception was insufficient reason for Catholic Charities not to provide medical insurance to its employees that would cover the cost of contraception. The ruling drew attention not only to the legal and political complexities in defining what constitutes a religious organization, but to the difficulties in determining when a religious organization is a faith-based organization and when it is a social-service provider/employer.

In Saving America?, Robert Wuthnow wades into the increasingly politicized debate about the nature, functions, and social implications of faith-based social services. As he remarks at the outset, this debate is dominated by quite a bit of misunderstanding of religion and how it functions in society. Public officials who favor faith-based services tend to assume that religion by definition is a good thing and should be supported by the government; others (including many academics, journalists, and policy analysts), by contrast assume the opposite--that anything vaguely religious should be kept out of policymaking. Wuthnow--as readers of his many previous books would expect--enters this debate armed with good empirical data, which he deftly uses to map out the many interrelated dimensions of faith-based service activity. He uses survey data from three of his own national studies and a community study he conducted in northeastern Pennsylvania that included a survey of households in low-income neighborhoods. He also draws upon hundreds of interviews with clients, employees, and clergy at various service agencies.

Wuthnow uses these data (mostly pertaining to Christians and Christian congregations and organizations) to address several questions about faith-based services in contemporary America. There is much to learn from his extensive, careful, and clearly presented analyses. Catholics and mainline Protestants, for example, are equally likely to be members of congregations that sponsor food pantries, but the former are more likely than the latter to sponsor tutoring programs; Catholics are also more likely than Evangelical or mainline Protestants to hear sermons about inequality and caring for the poor. Wuthnow also notes that volunteers at nonsectarian service programs are likely to be church members, but are more likely to identify as religious liberals than as conservative or moderate. It is not surprising then--though it is often forgotten during political debates--that faith and religious values inevitably penetrate, sometimes quite subtly, non-faith-based service organizations.

Wuthnow points to the many things that churches do, and importantly, cannot do. For example, while churches provide various opportunities for engaging in volunteer activities, they are not effective as civic spaces for members to discuss issues of economic inequality. Moreover, the volunteer work organized by congregations is usually related to church and school activities rather than to services for the poor or otherwise needy people in the community.

Wuthnow also provides extensive data on national and community trends in poverty and public (federally funded welfare) assistance; the religious characteristics, assistance needs, and expectations of low-income individuals; and the levels of support for government funding of faith-based organizations. The Pennsylvania community survey shows that the poorest in the community (households with less than $20,000 annual income) were more likely to seek economic rather than spiritual or emotional assistance. Wuthnow emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between congregations and faith-based and secular service organizations. Congregations, he suggests, may not be as well equipped as nonsectarian and religious service organizations (like Catholic Charities) to deal with severe economic problems, but they may be more attractive options for people experiencing emotional, spiritual, or health-related difficulties.

Clients of service providers, Wuthnow found, perceived public government welfare least positively while congregations were seen most positively. (Private nonprofit religious and nonsectarian organizations fell somewhere between.) But, as Wuthnow highlights, there is "little evidence that [faith-based organizations] are perceived as being more effective than secular nonprofits," and there is no evidence "that clients perceive faith-based organizations to be any less effective than secular nonprofits." Wuthnow also dispels the common fear that clients of faith-based services are expected to show deference toward the faith beliefs of the organization in exchange for assistance. He concludes, rather, that "faith-based organizations seem not to be any more effective than other service organizations in communicating ideas about faith in general or about unconditional love in particular."