Faith-Based, II

John J. DiIulio, Jr., formerly a University of Pennsylvania professor and a member of this institute's Council on Civil Society, and Don Eberly, a founder of the National Fatherhood Initiative, an Institute affiliate scholar, and also a member of our Council on Civil Society, are now serving as director and deputy director, respectively, of President Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. I think of them as colleagues and friends. For years they have thought deeply about civil society and, in particular, about the role of religion in U.S. public life. They have also personally embodied the ideals of citizenship - a generous and volunteering spirit, a genuine respect for other people, and an unshakable commitment to the common good - that they write about and recommend. Now they are in the White House, with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to advocate their ideas at the highest levels of the federal government.

Their main thesis is that the federal government can, in modest but meaningful ways, help local community organizations to do more to solve local problems, rebuild communal norms and institutions, and, in particular, improve outcomes for at-risk children. They are developing four main strategies for accomplishing this goal. First, changes in the tax code designed to increase charitable giving. Second, changes in government regulations designed to allow small and religious organizations to compete more effectively for government social service grants. Third, significantly more government funding available to these local, essentially private initiatives - either direct funding, where the money goes straight to the organization, or indirect funding, where the money goes (in the form of vouchers) to eligible individuals who may choose to seek out the organization's services. And fourth, using the White House bully pulpit to encourage leaders and institutions across the country to spend and do more to strengthen civil society and help at-risk children. Currently, by far the most controversial aspects of this plan are those parts in which government funds, intended for secular purposes, such as treating drug addiction or reducing teen violence or teen pregnancy, might go directly to religious or religiously oriented ("faith-based") organizations.

Several thoughts on this last issue. First, it's important to establish, at the level of principle, that there is nothing illegitimate about religious people in the public square, or more specifically in this case, about religious people using public money to do public work. As DiIuilio, Eberly and 22 others of us wrote in 1998 in A Call to Civil Society, some U.S. policy makers seem to believe that "a modern state implies or requires a society sanitized of public religious influence, a society in which religion is forcibly reduced by law to a purely private role. We reject this idea…[and in particular hope that policy makers] will no longer stifle creative local experiments with church-provided services in poor communities, and more generally, will recognize anew the vital role that religion plays in helping people to help themselves." In the long run, challenging and ultimately changing elite opinion about the legitimacy of public religious influence will probably prove to be this initiative's most important legacy.

Second, the great danger is not that government-funded social services, much less government in general, will be taken over by people intent on establishing a state religion or fomenting intolerance. (If that threat were to emerge at any point in the future, I know that many people, me included, would fight it unconditionally.) The great danger here is that government funding will slowly drain all of the religion, along with everything else that is distinctive, out of these community organizations, gradually transforming them into little replicas of existing government agencies.

This transformation has already taken place in other countries. I saw it first hand in Australia. Several decades ago, for example, in the field of marriage education, the Anglicans in Melbourne were running a program called "Anglican Marriage Education and Counseling Services." The Catholics ran a program called "Focus on Marriage." Today, thanks in some measure, I was told, to the steady incentives and overall homogenizing and secularizing influence of government funding, the Anglicans run something called "Lifeworks," and the Catholics run something called "Partnerships," each of which closely resembles the other, and neither of which differs much at all from the main secular agency, which is called "Relationships Australia."

In the U.S., the "faith-based" agency that currently receives the most government funding is Catholic Charities, an organization that, with the exception of a few local agencies, has sought mightily, and with considerable success, to embrace an essentially secular vision and government model of delivering social services. Will other U.S. religious organizations, in the process of competing for government funding, follow this path?

In light of this potential danger, and to safeguard the distinctive ways that religious organizations can contribute to the common good, I hope that President Bush's initiative will develop a fundamentally new approach to government funding of religious organizations that provide social services. A friend calls it the "black box" approach. The religious organizations are the black boxes. Government funding, allocated for secular purposes, can legitimately flow into these black boxes. The government is then responsible for rigorously measuring and evaluating the results that emerge. Are the drug addicts off drugs? Are the drop-outs back in school? Are the fathers supporting and nurturing their children? These are secular questions, to be answered empirically. At the same time, apart from guaranteeing that client participation is voluntary - that is, making sure that clients can choose from a range of programs, non-religious as well religious - the government is officially disinterested in what goes on inside the black box. If the program inside the box involves jumping, jumping is OK. If the program involves prayer, prayer is OK. No messing around with their method, no telling them what their code is. What matters is results. An organization that produces good secular results, be that organization secular or religious, is a good candidate for funding. An organization that does not, is not.

Sources: A Call to Civil Society (New York: Institute for American Values, 1998).

First published Spring/Summer 2001.