Social Work and Faith-based Organizations

Beth R. Crisp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415509800
• eBook ISBN: 9781317743057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Prestation de soins de santé

Faith-based organizations continue to play a significant role in the provision of social work services in many countries but their role within the welfare state is often contested. This text explores their various roles and relationships to social work practice, includes examples from different countries and a range of religious traditions and identifies challenges and opportunities for the sector.

Social Work and Faith-based Organizations discusses issues such as the relationship between faith-based organizations and the state, working with an organization's stakeholders, ethical practice and dilemmas, and faith-based organizations as employers. It also addresses areas of debate and controversy, such as providing services within and for multi-faith communities and tensions between professional codes of ethics and religious doctrine. Accessibly written by a well-known social work educator, it is illustrated by numerous case studies from a range of countries including Australia, the UK and the US.

Suitable for social work students taking community or administration courses or undertaking placements in faith-based organizations, this innovative book is also a valuable resource for managers and religious personnel who are responsible for the operation of faith-based agencies.

1 What Are Faith-Based Organizations?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315793955-1

With non-governmental actors increasingly enmeshed within intergovernmental structures and governmental agendas, the principles and policies of humanitarianism were increasingly articulated in secular terms. Organizations with varying connections to faith traditions generally adopted an approach and discourse that rendered it difficult to distinguish them on many criteria from secular agencies.

(Ager and Ager 2011: 457)

Introduction

It has been proposed that ‘welfare services constitute a site where the sacred and secular interact’ (Angell 2010: 75) but, as the above quote suggests, just what distinguishes a so-called ‘faith-based organization’ from other services may not be readily apparent. Nor is there any consensus as to what the term ‘faith-based organization’ means (Hugen and Venema 2009), or even whether it is an appropriate term to describe initiatives of religious groups for whom ‘faith’ is not a key component of their religion (Alison 2010). That ‘faith’ is often regarded as synonymous with religion reflects the overwhelming influence of Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the literature about welfare provision by religious organizations, and a lack of recognition that ‘faith’ is not necessarily the most important tenet in some other religions. But some have proposed that the focus on ‘faith’ reflects a predominantly Protestant and Western perspective in the literature (e.g. Jawad 2009). Hence, it is important to clarify at the outset that in using the term ‘faithbased organization’, this book is referring to a social service agency which employs qualified social workers and has its ‘identity and mission … self-consciously derived from the teachings of one or more religious or spiritual traditions’ (Berger 2003: 16) and/or is auspiced by any religious organization or religious community (Palmer 2011). In addition to welfare organizations established by religious organizations, in some countries there is also a tradition of philanthropic organizations established by the urban bourgeoisie or nobility which take their inspiration from, and identify with, religious teachings (Fix and Fix 2002). Hence, the definition of faith-based organization which has been adopted in this book is ‘a social service agency which explicitly identifies with a religious tradition and/or is auspiced by any religious organization or religious community or organization. Programmes or services offered by a faith-based agency don’t necessarily have any religious content.’

Like Jeavons (2004), this book has restricted the scope further to organizations which employ qualified social workers, but recognizes that this is a narrower definition than has sometimes been adopted by those writing about faith-based organizations (e.g. McGrew and Cnaan 2006), who will sometimes refer to ‘any kind of faith-related voluntary association (including churches, mosques, synagogues, and congregations) engaging in social welfare’ (Göcmen 2013: 496). Such a broad definition includes organizations where welfare provision is not among their key reasons for existence (Unruh and Sider 2005).

Expressions of faith include the branding of an organization, organizational structure, how it understands its purpose, and the role of religion in service provision (Cnaan and Boddie 2006; Unruh and Sider 2005). Each of these expressions will now be considered in turn, along with the impact of changing circumstances upon the faith basis of welfare organizations.

Branding

The branding of an organization, including the name and signage, are often the first indications that it may have some faith basis, but this is not necessarily an accurate predictor, with some faith-based organizations intentionally choosing names which have no religious connotations (Ebaugh et al. 2003). For example, in New York a faith-based organization serving people with HIV/AIDS changed its name from ‘Upper Room’ to ‘Harlem United’, downplaying its religious basis and seeking to emphasize the compassionate and non-judgemental nature of the services provided (Chambre 2001). On the other hand, having a name with religious connotations may be more a reflection of history than of contemporary circumstances. Although its name and symbol might suggest a religious organization, the Red Cross is typically now regarded to be an organization which had religious origins but which is now ostensibly secular (Cnaan et al. 1999).

An analysis of the names of the approximately 50 publicly listed member organizations of Catholic Social Services Victoria (2013) reveals considerable diversity in naming, even by organizations which are all associated with one religion in one Australian state. Member organizations had names which could be categorized as follows:

• Explicitly Catholic (e.g. CatholicCare).
• Obviously Catholic to anyone who knows some basics about Catholic culture (e.g. Corpus Christi Community).
• Obviously Catholic to those with some advanced knowledge about Catholicism (e.g. Edmund Rice Camps, MacKillop Family Services).
• Of some religious persuasion (e.g. Bethlehem Community Inc.).
• Of no obvious religious persuasion (e.g. Keysborough Learning Centre, Griefline).

The importance of the name was discussed by a number of the Australian research participants, particularly in respect of many of the welfare agencies associated with Roman Catholic dioceses across the country changing their name from ‘Centacare’ to the more ostensibly religious ‘Catholic-Care’ which was commented on by social workers working for other organizations. One explanation given to the author was that this name change was premised on a belief that this would endear the agencies more to the Catholic community by being more upfront as to this being a church response to the welfare needs in the community. Observations from Australian social workers in Catholic welfare organizations included the comment:

[I]n our diocese, they think parishioners don’t see Centacare as Catholic, you know, as a response from the church to welfare. So they think the name, if you call it CatholicCare, people when they see CatholicCare in the paper will think here is the church doing something good.

However, concerns were also raised that this might alienate potential service users and it was observed that such changes may be more about serving the needs of the religious faithful than in affecting how services are provided.

A further complication with naming is that some external programme funding requires host organizations to promote the name of the programme rather than of the auspicing organization. This may include using programme rather than agency letterhead, such that service users may be quite unaware that the services they are receiving are actually being provided by a faith-based organization.

Acknowledging that the distinction between religious and cultural symbols can be blurred (Netting 2004), visual branding may nevertheless also be used to promote messages as to the extent to which an organization is faith based (Ebaugh et al. 2003). In an organization where some research participants actually questioned whether or not it was really ‘faith based’, it was noted that the symbol of the cross on the logo, once prominent, had become much less noticeable on a recent revision. This does not necessarily reflect any lessening of religious faith in the organization’s underpinnings or values but may represent a conscious decision that their faith is best expressed in how they treat service users rather than in the use of symbols or signage (Tangenberg 2005).

How organizations brand themselves is not only important in respect of communications with service users, but also to other stakeholders including donors. In an analysis of religious welfare organizations in Lebanon, it was observed that whereas some organizations appealed to donors on the basis of being a ‘civilizing force’, others marketed donations as being a form of religious ‘worship’ (Jawad 2009: 109). However, despite what may seem apparent branding as being faith based, organizations may not be recognized as such in the wider community (Jawad 2012b). For example, in the UK, the Charity Commission for England and Wales does not necessarily classify welfare organizations as having a faith basis, even though this might be implicit in their name, such as Jewish Care. Only organizations which explicitly state their objectives as religious rather than welfare provision are readily identifiable as having a faith basis (Charities Aid Foundation 2013).

Organizational structures

Whether or not indicated in their name, faith-based organizations typically have some degree of affiliation with a religious constituency, and it is this religious affiliation that differentiates them from their secular counterparts (Ferris 2005). This may include welfare services auspiced by local groups or congregations, those at the district or diocesan level, and independent welfare organizations that are affiliated with one or more faith communities (Leis-Peters 2006, 2010; Sinha 2013). Furthermore, there are organizations with a faith basis which may operate independently of institutional religion and have only informal connections with religious hierarchies (Deines 2008), although they may have had such relationships previously (Davis et al. 2008).

Both national and religious characteristics may influence the organization of faith-based welfare services. Over the past decade and a half, much of the literature which has emerged concerning faith-based welfare provision and which has originated from the US has focused on initiatives provided by local faith congregations (e.g. Boddie and Cnaan 2006; Tirrito and Cascio 2003), particularly from those associated with Protestant forms of Christianity (Unruh and Sider 2005). However, some religions (e.g. Catholicism and Judaism) have more of a propensity to develop centralized services which may be organized on a national or regional (e.g. state, province, diocese) basis (Sinha 2013). Such services, although often underpinned by religious teachings, are about a need for taking communal responsibility for members of society experiencing disadvantage, rather than an explicit faith-based identity (Wittberg 2013). Hence, within a nation such as the US, it has been proposed that models for analysing Protestant faith-based initiatives may have limited utility in other settings (Jeavons 2004; Smith and Sosin 2001).

In contrast to the US, Australian faith-based welfare organizations are often associated with religions which have strong national or international structures, resulting in welfare agencies often being organized at regional or diocesan level (Himchak 2005). Particularly since the mid-1990s, but to some extent before then, the welfare agencies of the major Christian churches in Australia have formed alliances with similar agencies from either the same or from other regions. This has led to the establishment of some large organizations under a single management structure, agencies such as CatholicCare, Anglicare and UnitingCare, which are national federations of locally run welfare organizations associated with the country’s three largest religious groups. Nevertheless, this trend of federating welfare organizations associated with a particular religion under a single umbrella is not confined to Australia and has also occurred in the US (Vanderwoerd 2004).

A key aspect of organizational structures concerns decision-making processes within organizations. It may be important that the leadership is both skilled in managing a welfare agency and that there are processes reflecting the religious beliefs of the religious auspice (Schneider 1999). Whereas in some faith-based welfare organizations the major decisions are made by management groups controlled by the religious auspice, in others, the auspicing group (or groups) may be entitled to nominate some but not all members of a board of management. Furthermore, there may be rules as to how many, if not all, board members are required to be co-religionists (Holden and Trembath 2008; Sinha 2013).

A mix of motivations for appointments to a board of management of a faith-based organization can readily lead to decision-making in faith-based organizations which is at least in part based on maintaining ethics or values rather than purely rational grounds (Torry 2005). Hence, Clarke and Jennings (2008) have proposed that the term ‘faith-based organization’ refer to ‘any organization that derives inspiration and guidance for its activities from the teachings and principles of the faith or from a particular interpretation or school of thought within the faith’ (Clarke and Jennings 2008: 6). But just because people claim to believe in God or some other deity does not necessarily result in a consensus as to what this means, and the implications for service provision (Dezerotes 2009). While some may argue that this is no more than wishful thinking, it has been declared that:

Faith-based organizations have a set of characteristics that distinguish them from their secular counterparts. The language of faith, the religious idiom, frequently better reflects the cultural norms in which the poor and marginalized operate.

(Clarke and Jennings 2008: 15)

Alternatively, faith-based organizations may reflect the cultural norms of the groups which established them. For example, in Lebanon five types of religious welfare organizations have been identified: organ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 What are faith-based organizations?
• 2 Faith-based organizations and the welfare state
• 3 Faith-based organizations in a multi-faith society
• 4 Stakeholders
• 5 Working in faith-based organizations
• 6 Ethical practice in faith-based organizations
• 7 Controversies
• 8 Challenges and opportunities
• References
• Index