Charitable Choices

Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era

John P. Bartkowski, Helen A. Regis

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780814709153
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politik & Staat

Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America’s welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty.

Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation's highest poverty rate and was the first state to implement a faith-based welfare reform initiative. The book provides a grounded and even-handed treatment of congregational poverty relief rather than abstract theory on faith-based initiatives.

The volume examines how congregations are coping with national developments in social welfare policy and reveals the strategies that religious communities utilize to fight poverty in their local communities. By giving particular attention to the influence of theological convictions and organizational dynamics on religious service provision, it identifies both the prospects and pitfalls likely to result from the expansion of charitable choice.

1
The Welfare Revolution and Charitable Choice

America has recently witnessed a revolution. No weapons were fired. No blood was shed. But this revolution has already influenced the lives of citizens by the millions. And it will undoubtedly shape every major social institution well into our nation’s twenty–first century. The architects of America’s welfare revolution promised, in prophetic words first uttered by then presidential candidate Bill Clinton, to “end welfare as we know it.” And with the passage of welfare reform legislation in 1996, they delivered on this promise. It is not an overstatement to say that we have entered a new phase in our nation’s history of social welfare. Given the benefits restrictions and work–first orientation ushered in through this new legislation, America has entered the post–welfare era (Handler and White 1999; Mink 1998; Schram 2000).

Apart from its profound political significance, there is every indication that the welfare revolution will alter the landscape of American religion. Under the legal provision, charitable choice, faith–based organizations of various stripes—religious congregations, interfaith ministries, and denominational relief agencies—have been thrust into the center of America’s welfare–to–work transition and community revitalization efforts (Bartkowski and Regis 1999; Chaves 1999; Cnaan 1999; Bane, Coffin, and Thiemann 2000; DiIulio 1997; Glennon 2000; Lockhart 2001; Orr 2001; Sider and Unruh 1999, 2001; Walsh 2001; Wineburg 2001). Charitable choice makes it illegal for state governments to discriminate against social service providers whose organizations have a religious mandate. And on the heels of this policy change, several states have begun to underwrite faith–based social service programs with public funds (Griener 2000; Sherman 2000).

This volume takes charitable choice—and, more broadly, the changing relationship between religion and social welfare—as its primary point of departure for investigating faith–based poverty relief in the post–welfare era. Specifically, we hope to broaden current discussions of charitable choice to encompass issues—among them, racial inequality, denominational cleavages, and local cultural forces—that have not been given their due. With the hope of advancing a more grounded and inclusive dialogue about charitable choice, we explore how this policy initiative might affect religious organizations that vary by race, faith tradition, and local milieu.

Guided by the premise that social context matters, our work is intentionally idiographic. We produce detailed analyses of faith–based poverty relief as undertaken by religious congregations located in east central Mississippi. To accomplish this task, we analyze an array of qualitative data, including in–depth interviews with thirty local pastors in Mississippi’s Golden Triangle Region, detailed field observations from five congregations with active service programs, and unstructured ethnographic interviews with religious relief workers in these programs. Given Mississippi’s distinctively high rates of religious affiliation and impoverishment, there is not a more ideal state in which to explore the prospects and pitfalls of faith–based poverty relief. Our rendering of the complex organizational processes and cultural dynamics underlying religious benevolence poses a serious challenge to broad–brushed portraits that paint religious congregations with the positive gloss of virtue or the negative gloss of vice. We demonstrate that the work of congregational poverty relief is a more complicated undertaking than such one–dimensional caricatures would have us believe. Most public discussions of faith–based initiatives are overdetermined by the ideological agendas of political commentators. Too few of these social commentators are engaged with the empirical realities of faith–based service provision.

Finally, in our effort to push forward debates about the place of religious organizations in American civil society, our study draws together insights from several different theoretical traditions. We argue that religious groups define their collective identities with reference to a commemorated past, a palpable present, and aspirations for the future. Moreover, benevolence work and community outreach are key resources through which religious organizations define their moral character and draw social boundaries. As it turns out, religious definitions of morally appropriate responses to poverty vary considerably from one congregational context to the next. We explore the range of poverty relief strategies that congregations adopt to negotiate the countervailing ethical demands of compassion and moral rectitude. Lastly, we seek to extend the burgeoning literature on faith–based social capital. Where faith–based poverty relief is concerned, we demonstrate that social capital in religious communities can serve both integrative and exclusionary ends. We pay careful attention to the subtleties of religious networks, thereby revealing how different types of faith–based benevolence can either transform or reinforce existing social boundaries.

Religion Goes Public: The Emergence of Charitable Choice

How did charitable choice find its way onto the map of American politics? The most obvious answer resides in an examination of the debates over welfare during the 1990s. However, a more careful response to this question suggests that revolutionary changes in social policy are rooted in deeper philosophical transformations. If there is a guiding motif that captures the character of poverty relief during much of twentieth–century America, it is one of parallel tracks. Under welfare as we knew it, the fight against poverty was waged on many different fronts by largely independent parties. Public assistance and religious benevolence were distinct enterprises. When confronted with persons in need, of course, collaboration between religious leaders and social workers at local government offices was not forbidden and sometimes occurred. However, the ideal of church–state separation, along with the cultural chasm between religious organizations and government entities, meant that public-private collaboration was minimized.

The welfare revolution radically restructures the relationship between government agencies and faith–based service providers. The welfare–era motif of parallel tracks separating government support from religious benevolence has been supplanted by the post–welfare principle of partnership. In America’s post–welfare era, religious communities and government agencies are now seen as allies whose mutual interests are served by the formation of public-private partnerships. The partnership ideal of welfare reform, part of a broader privatization of government (Savas 2000), is coupled with a new practical opportunity for faith–based providers. Under charitable choice, religious organizations can seek government funds to underwrite a whole range of social service activities including food assistance, job readiness training, and child care. It is, of course, too early to tell if this newly formed relationship will be a happy marriage or, for that matter, a collaborative partnership among equals. Religious suitors of government funds find themselves pitted against formidable competitors—secular nonprofits and private service providers—in the quest for what, in all likelihood, will be a limited pool of public resources. And, of course, the professional staff and social connections enjoyed by secular nonprofit organizations might give these agencies an inside track over their faith–based counterparts in the competitive bidding process. For its part, the Bush administration has argued for a level playing field in which all prospective providers will be judged on performance—that is, the degree to which funded programs can deliver in a clearly measurable way on their stated goals. The confidence of religious service providers is likely buoyed by a president who touts the distinctive merits of “rallying the armies of compassion”—virtuous, tenacious religious reformers—to combat America’s most pressing social problems (Bush 2001).

How, then, did landmark legislation passed near the close of the twentieth century propel us into a post–welfare era of public–private partnerships? The short–term origins of welfare reform and charitable choice harken back to the early 1990s. With public opinion strongly favoring a major overhaul of America’s welfare system, policy makers who supported the integration of local faith communities into welfare reform found a vocal advocate in Marvin Olasky. An academic and an outspoken evangelical, Olasky¹ initially catapulted the prospect for faith–based welfare reform into the public consciousness through his popular treatise, The Tragedy of American Compassion (1992). In this provocative volume, Olasky chided what he viewed as the bureaucratic detachment and lack of accountability of the modern welfare system. Olasky argued that prior to the rise of the twentieth–century welfare state, religious communities effectively redressed the needs of America’s poor. By his account, religious communities provided the highly personalized care—and, as needed, the strict discipline—to lift the disadvantaged out of the mire of poverty. Based in part on this historical precedent, Olasky articulated a vision in which religious organizations of the late twentieth century could provide the needy with immediate material relief such as food, clothing, and temporary shelter while also promoting more permanent transformations in both the moral fiber and economic circumstances of the poor.

Although proponents of charitable choice sometimes disagree on the particulars of faith–based welfare reform and the best way to make it a reality (cf. Center for Public Justice 1994; Olasky 1992), they generally agree on its justification (Carlson–Thies and Skillen 1996). Charitable choice advocates call attention to the special repository of resources cultivated within faith communities—a robust sense of mission, high standards of moral integrity, close–knit relationships among coreligionists, holistic views of personhood, and a connectedness to the local communities in which religious adherents are situated. These resources are believed to give religious communities a unique role in assisting the poor and advancing the project of the welfare revolution. Consequently, champions of charitable choice agree that, when compared with government–based and secular solutions to social ills, religious organizations are superior providers of social services because of the moral values they embody and the holistic goals to which they aspire.

Throughout his term, President George W. Bush has consistently endorsed faith–based solutions to a wide range of social problems including unemployment, inadequate housing, persistent hunger, crime reduction, and substance abuse. Soon after being sworn in as America’s forty–third president, Bush sought to expand the reach of charitable choice from state governments to federal agencies. At the same time, he called attention to collaborative partnerships that had already been forged between innovative state governments and the faith–based organizations to whom they had outsourced public services. To implement his vision of compassionate conservatism, Bush created the Office of Faith–Based and Community Initiatives. Soon thereafter he had every sector of the government’s executive branch evaluated to determine their openness to partnering with faith–based organizations. These changes were predicated not on a policy of hands–off diagnostics, but aimed to create new avenues for the participation of faith–based organizations in federal programs.

Bush’s ardent support for charitable choice reflects a broader social trend that began in the 1980s. It was then that evangelical religion dramatically broke out from the private realm of personal piety and family morality into the public realm of politics, social justice, and civil society. It is not at all difficult to discern the boldly public role that religion has played in the Bush campaign and the administration’s legislative agenda. During his campaign for the White House, the born–again Bush called Jesus Christ his favorite political philosopher. And in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, Bush invoked the Christian aphorism “love thy neighbor”—coupled, tellingly, with his advocacy of four thousand lifetime hours of civic volunteerism for every American citizen—as the best way to “stand up to evil” in the world. Many in the Bush administration would seem to share his view that faith is a bona fide public good, and a priceless civic resource at that. Bush selected Tommy Thompson, an outspoken conservative Catholic, to head the Department of Health and Human Services. During Thompson’s tenure as Wisconsin’s governor, his state’s implementation of faith–based welfare reform initiatives was rivaled only by that of Texas under Bush’s governorship. Moreover, Bush’s Attorney General, John Ashcroft, was the principal architect of the charitable choice provision found in 1996 welfare reform law. Ashcroft, then a senator from Missouri and now the nation’s chief legal figure, is a devout Pentecostal who seems strongly convinced that religion can restore virtue to American civic life.

The administration’s Faith–Based and Community Initiatives Act (H.R.–7), more commonly dubbed the Charitable Choice Act of 2001, was passed by the House of Representatives on July 19, 2001. That bill proposed to create a “compassion capital fund” that would match private donations to small faith–based charities with federal funds. The bill, however, soon came under fire—particularly with regard to its protection of discriminatory hiring practices by religious groups who could exclusively employ members of their own faith if they so desired. Despite a watering down of the bill prior to its ultimate passage in the Senate and the resignation of John DiIulio as head of the Office of Faith–Based and Community Initiatives, Bush has shown no signs of backing away from his goal of creating collaborative partnerships between local faith communities and all branches of government. Indeed, Bush recently named Jim Towey—whose most touted credential is having conducted hands–on ministry to the poor alongside Mother Teresa—as DiIulio’s successor at the Office of Faith–Based and Community Initiatives. Bush has promised to keep faith–based initiatives at the forefront of his domestic legislative agenda. What’s more, in the wake of 1996 welfare reform law, several states have moved forward to implement extensive charitable choice programs (Griener 2000; Sherman 2000). While the majority of states (including Mississippi) continue to weigh the merits of forging service provision partnerships with religious providers, the exposure and momentum given to faith–based initiatives show no sign of reversing themselves anytime in the near future.

Debating Charitable Choice: Elite Disputes and Public Concerns

The charitable choice provision in welfare reform law and, more recently, the Charitable Choice Act of 2001, set off a firestorm of criticism (e.g., American Civil Liberties Union 2001; Americans United for the Separation of Church and State 2001; Boston 1998; Connolly 1999; Pinkerton 1999; Rogers 1999; see Fritz 1999; Raasch 1999; Sack 1999 for reviews). Some critics contend that these policy initiatives threaten religious liberty by allowing the government to favor particular religious groups over others as social service providers. And despite legislative clauses forbidding proselytization through service provision, others worry that charitable choice accords too much decision–making authority concerning staff hiring and client needs to religious organizations that might harbor coercive moral agendas. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has begun to mount a legal challenge to charitable choice, making it likely that proponents and opponents of this initiative will exchange volleys in the courts to complement those that have already been traded in the media.

Still other critics assert that all the attention given to religious benevolence forestalls more meaningful discussions about the structural causes of poverty, thereby permitting the continued exploitation of the poor by elites. Hitchens’s (1997) exposé of politicians and corporate elites who used their affiliations with Mother Teresa to advance their own political careers, ideological agendas, and economic interests provides many cautionary tales about the malevolent ends sometimes served by religious benevolence. Finally, some have warned that faith–based social service initiatives, at least as initially conceived by Olasky, are naive and impractical in the contemporary era (Wolfe 1993).

Lest it be thought that all opponents of charitable choice are motivated by an antireligious zeal, it is worth noting that many faith–based organizations have expressed reservations about forming partnerships with the government in this revolutionary era (Burger 1996; Jewish News 1999; Pinkerton 1999; Raasch 1999). Some religious leaders worry that vying for limited public funds to expand their relief efforts might lead to religious rivalries—particularly among groups that have only recently cultivated tolerance for those outside their faith tradition. Others are clearly anxious about the prospect of political regulation that might accompany public funding. And given the antiproselytization clause that accompanies charitable choice legislation, fears have arisen that public funding might undermine the effectiveness of religious organizations. From the standpoint of many Christian groups, religious believers’ most valuable tool in fighting social ills is the life–transforming power of spreading the faith to nonbelievers. In those religious communities where spreading the faith is essential to their spiritual practice, concerns about any such gag rule run very deep indeed. In short, although the letter of charitable choice law is designed to placate the fears of religious organizations, many religious groups worry that the implementation of the initiative and actual formation of partnerships with the government may leave them vulnerable in ways not currently anticipated.

Debates about charitable choice have also been inflected by denominational tensions and racial dynamics, often overlaid upon one another. Only days after the Office of Faith–Based and Community Initiatives was established in February 2001, leaders from the Anti–Defamation League visited executive director John DiIulio to voice their concern about the prospect of the government providing public funds to the Nation of Islam. Similar concerns were soon raised about other “fringe” denominations, including the Church of Scientology, that were portrayed as not genuinely religious and too far outside the cultural mainstream. Just as the Charitable Choice Act was being debated by the House of Representatives in June 2001, Bush was heartened by the endorsement his plan picked up from none other than civil rights icon, Rosa Parks. Parks spoke glowingly of the Bush proposal at the 2001 U.S. Conference of Mayors. However, less than three weeks later and with congressional debates still in full swing, the NAACP passed a resolution opposing the Charitable Choice Act at its annual convention. Apart from voicing concerns about the quantity and manner through which funds would be made available to faith–based organizations, NAACP opposition to the Bush plan was chiefly concerned with the discriminatory hiring practices it would legally permit.

Elite debates and mobilization over charitable choice seem to have informed public opinion on this issue, though not in a deterministic fashion. The American public is overwhelmingly supportive of charitable choice in principle. A series of public opinion polls conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (most recently, in March 2001) revealed that 75 percent of the national survey sample favored government funding of faith–based organizations, with only 21 percent opposed. Blacks and Hispanics (81 percent) were more favorably disposed toward charitable choice than their white counterparts (68 percent). The public’s trust in the efficacy of religious benevolence is strongest for faith–based programs that feed the homeless, counsel prisoners, and mentor youth. Interestingly, support for government funding of faith–based initiatives is rooted firmly in the values of individual choice and religious compassion. A full 77 percent of Americans back charitable choice because they believe recipients of public services “should have a variety of options,” while a nearly equal percentage (72 percent) believe that religious people “are more compassionate and caring” than nonreligious providers. Moreover, 62 percent cite the power of religion to “change people’s lives” as a rationale for supporting public funding of faith–based organizations.

Despite such robust levels of general support for charitable choice, the American public remains wary of its specifics. High levels of support for the public funding of faith–based organizations dwindle significantly when the religious groups that would receive government monies are situated outside the cultural mainstream. Whereas between 60 and 70 percent of Americans back public funding for established religious charities, Catholic churches, and Protestant congregations, a scant 38 percent of Americans support government funding for service programs in Muslim mosques and Buddhist temples. Less than one in three (29 percent) supports the provision of government monies to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–Day Saints (Mormons) wins only weak public support for government funding (51 percent). And the Church of Scientology fails more than all others to gain the public trust, with only 26 percent of Americans favoring this scenario. Despite the preference for mainstream religion reflected in these figures, an overwhelming majority of Americans (78 percent) oppose discriminatory hiring practices that would allow publicly funded religious groups to hire only those of their own faith. In a nod toward religious pluralism, large percentages of Americans express fears about the infringement of religious expression among faith–based organizations (68 percent) and violations of religious liberty among service recipients (60 percent)

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