In his last State of the Union Address, President Bush urged Congress to make his faith-based proposals permanent.
"In communities across our land, we must trust in the good heart of the American people and empower them to serve their neighbors in need. Over the past seven years, more of our fellow citizens have discovered that the pursuit of happiness leads to the path of service. Americans have volunteered in record numbers. Charitable donations are higher than ever.
Faith-based groups are bringing hope to pockets of despair, with newfound support from the federal government. And to help guarantee equal treatment of faith-based organizations when they compete for federal funds, I ask you to permanently extend Charitable Choice," he said.
The President's speech came on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the launch of his Faith-Based and Community Initiative, in which he signed an Executive Order establishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
The primary intent of the effort is to place churches and non-profit organizations on a level playing field when seeking federal grants to provide an array of social services.
To coincide with the seventh anniversary, the President went to Episcopal Community Services of Maryland, in Baltimore, which runs the faith-based Jericho Program, which helps former prisoners make a successful transition back into society.
"When I came into office, the nation's traditions of religious freedom and equal opportunity were facing unnecessary obstacles. Throughout America, religious and community groups were providing effective assistance to people in need, but there was a great reluctance on the part of the federal government to help them. There was the notion that somehow that there needed to be a clear separation of church and state, and therefore, we shouldn't be using taxpayers' money to help programs that were helping to meet important national goals.
Unfortunately, in some instances where there was no interface with government, people were told that in order to interface, you have to take the cross off the wall, or take down the Star of David. In other words, you had to abandon the very principle by which you existed in the first place. And it made no sense. If a program was effective because they were willing to recognize a higher power, if a program was effective because people responded because they felt a call from a higher power, then to deny the higher power really reduced the effectiveness of the program.
So, seven years ago, my administration created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, to deal with this problem. We wanted to focus our government and taxpayers' money on solutions, on effective programs, and we recognized that many of the effective programs existed in the faith community.
Since 2001, the government has leveled the playing field. That's one of our objectives, early on in my administration, was to level the playing field, to make it easier for faith-based and community groups to compete for billions of dollars in federal grants, grants that would help them accomplish their objectives.
With this newfound support, America's faith-based groups are getting results. There are programs to help provide mentors for 70,000 children whose parents are incarcerated. There are programs to help deal with drug addiction and alcohol addiction, programs to help young people in our inner cities escape gangs. These are all programs where a faith-based or community group has dedicated their lives to solve a problem. And it makes sense for the federal government to give these programs a chance to access taxpayers' money.
When we began the work, we didn't settle for just opening an office in the White House; we opened eleven offices for faith-based and community initiatives throughout the federal government. It's one thing for the White House to have an office. But most of the money–or all of the money, for that matter–is appropriated to different Cabinet officers and their secretariats, and then those distribute the money. And so we wanted to make sure that this faith-based initiative was rooted throughout the government.
Our government should not fear the influence of faith in our society. We ought to welcome faith-based programs. There ought to be consistency of policy. Our government ought to welcome results," the President said.
Since its inception seven years ago, the White House office says it has delivered in-person training to more than 100,000 social entrepreneurs, by teaching them how to better track their outcomes, write grants and develop other key skills that help their organizations maximize impact for the people they serve.
In 2006 alone, it said the federal government provided more than 18,000 direct, competitive awards to America's non-profit organizations to aid the homeless, at-risk youth, recovering addicts, returning offenders, AIDS victims and others.
The office noted that those grants totaled more than $14.7 billion to boost services to people in need. It said, faith-based groups were welcomed as a central part of this work, winning more than 3,000 grants in 2006 totaling nearly $2.2 billion.
A survey released in December by the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy said, American congregations are delivering a wide-range of social services–from marriage counseling to food pantries–to their members and surrounding communities. But, of the 1,692 congregations surveyed, the Roundtable found that relatively few of the respondents have applied for government funds to provide such services, or know about changes in federal law meant to ease the way for them to do so.
The report, "American Congregations and Social Service Programs," was the result of the survey conducted for the Roundtable by John Green, political science professor at the University of Akron and a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, with financial support from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Of those congregations that have competed for government funds, nearly 80 percent reported difficulty in applying for and managing the grants. Those that did not apply listed concern about external control and a lack of space for new grant-funded activities as their key reasons.
The study found that about 70 percent of the houses of worship surveyed provide social services, but only seven percent rely on government grants.
Of 26 social service program areas listed in the questionnaire, marriage counseling was the one most commonly provided by congregations (offered by two-thirds of respondents) and vocational training was the least common (offered by less than one-tenth).
The survey found no clear-cut relationship between the religious characteristics or theology of a congregation and the level of social service activity. Instead, the size of the congregation turned out to be a greater predictor of the likelihood of service provision. Congregations that were more active in social service delivery tended to have experienced growth over the last decade, were more diverse in terms of race and income, and had younger members than less active congregations.
Among the critics of the President's faith-based initiative is the Interfaith Alliance, which says it has "grave concerns about current efforts to undermine the appropriate relationship between government and houses of worship," which in turn "endanger both the sanctity of religion and the integrity of government."
The Interfaith Alliance, in a statement, continued, "By accepting government funds, houses of worship would be subject to government oversight, as well as invasive government regulation, including compliance reviews, audits, and perhaps even the subordination of religious principle to government policies and objectives. Such practices would inevitably undermine the independence and integrity of religious organizations.
For decades, houses of worship have set up separately incorporated institutions to fulfill their prophetic missions. These relationships have prospered due to safeguards in current law that ensures the rights of service providers and the well-being of beneficiaries. Altering the process by which faith-based service providers currently operate will jeopardize the unique and carefully balanced relationship between government and faith-based providers. These changes will create problems–not solve them," it stated.
Likewise, Americans United for Separation of Church and State says, Congress has refused to adopt key parts of the President's plan because it would "roll back civil rights laws barring religion-based hiring discrimination, and open the door to publicly funded preaching."
Americans United Executive Director, the Rev. Barry Lynn, said, "Bush's ‘faith-based' initiative has been a colossal failure. It undercut civil rights laws and jeopardized important religious liberty safeguards. I don't believe Congress is going to adopt it at this late date in the administration's tenure. The faith-based initiative did nothing to help the disadvantaged and it was often used to advance partisan politics. Bush has never been interested in a level playing field for faith-based groups, as he often claimed. He has been interested in tilting the field toward favored religious organizations that want to discriminate with government funds," Lynn said.
Lynn added, the President has implemented some provisions of the faith-based initiative through executive orders that the next president may overturn.
However, Jay Hein, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, noted that 35 governors and 100 mayors have faith-based offices. In addition, he said, the percentage of federal grant money going to faith-based groups has increased from two to three percent ten years ago, to eleven percent today.
Besides seeking to ensure the permanence of the program, Hein said the Office is "putting a special focus on expanding programs that partner with small charities" and is supporting the governors who have started their own Faith-Based and Community Initiative, as well as other states that are interested in growing their own partnerships with non-profit groups.
"Given the success we have seen in strengthening government partnerships, the Initiative has become an invaluable governing strategy that will greatly assist the next president in meeting the social challenges that awaits his or her administration," Hein said.
[Home] [Introducing UNI] [News Coverage] [Features Page][Publications]