Mark Chaves: Does anyone remember the faith-based initiative?
A brief recap: Beginning with welfare reform in the late 1990’s but picking up speed when George W. Bush became President in 2001, government officials at every level looked for ways to increase congregations’ and other religious organizations’ involvement in social services, and they tried to increase the flow of government money to congregations and other religious organizations. The media paid a lot of attention to these efforts, reporting mainly on the debates they provoked. The debate produced more heat than light, however, not least because people overlooked the fact that religious organizations, including congregations, long have played a role in our social welfare system, and they long have received public money to support their human services programs. Still, the faith-based initiative tried to enhance that role and alter its character in certain respects.
What effect did the faith-based initiative have on congregations?
Very little. National Congregations Study data from 1998 and 2006-07 show that neither the overall percent of congregations that report social services (82% in 2006), nor the percent with a staff person devoting at least quarter-time to social services (11%), nor the percent who received government funding (4%), have increased since 1998. Not even the level of collaboration (whether or not money is involved) between congregations and government or secular nonprofit organizations increased. In both 1998 and 2006-07, about 6% of the social services programs congregations reported were done in collaboration with government, and about 20% were done in collaboration with a secular nonprofit agency.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether these numbers represent a glass half-full (“look how much congregations contribute to our social welfare system!”) or half-empty (“congregations should do more!”). But the amount of water in the glass has not changed since 1998.
Despite this stability in congregational social service activity, the graph above shows that congregational interest in social services increased since 1998. The number of congregations that would like to apply for government money to support social service programs increased from 39% in 1998 to 47% in 2006-07. The number of congregations who hosted a speaker from a social service organization increased from 22 to 31%. And the number who recently conducted a community needs assessment jumped from 37 to 48%. These are impressive increases, probably representing an increased level of congregational interest in social services generated by media attention to faith-based initiatives and by the mistaken belief by some congregational leaders that there would be government money specifically set aside to support congregations’ human service activities.
There are nuances. For example, the data hint at the possibility that the faith-based initiative may have led some congregations who already were involved in social services to intensify their effort by devoting slightly more staff and volunteer time to these activities. But these hints are too faint to alter the basic conclusion: the faith-based initiative increased congregations’ interest in social service programs, but it did not change their behavior.
Why the faith-based initiative accomplished so little is a subject for another day.
Mark Chaves is Professor of Sociology, Religion, and Divinity at Duke University and Director of the National Congregations Study.
Concerns About Mistaken Assumptions
Unfortunately, Mr. Chaves' research and this post suggest--at their root--a number of significant misunderstandings of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative. A thorough response would take several pages. Perhaps most significant is the mistaken assumption--oft repeated by media observers with limited knowledge of the FBCI--that the Initiative was primarily about increasing government funds to religious organizations. Certainly, an important and early focus of the Initiative was to ensure that religious organizations could compete on a "level playing field" for public funding. However, the core objective was far larger: to more effectively aid the needy by shifting away from big government solutions managed by Washington to the creative, compassionate responses to need led in local communities. Although in the imperfect and often piecemeal way change always comes about, this indeed occurred through the FBCI under President Bush--and President Obama has vowed to continue advancing this vision.
As an October 2008 article in the Harvard Political Review concluded, the FBCI "fundamentally changed the government’s strategy for improving the lives of the downtrodden." The most important results, of course, were measured in human lives touched by the work of both faith-based and community nonprofits partnering with government to serve the needy--from the 100,000 children mentored through the Mentoring Children of Prisoners program to the more than 2 million orphans and vulnerable children cared for through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to the 30% reduction in chronic homelessness.
Perhaps one reason for Mr. Chaves' seemingly contrary findings is the fact that it was generally faith-based and secular nonprofit organizations--not congregations--that partnered with government to serve the needy under the new models pioneered by President Bush.
Individuals serious about examining the deeper story would benefit by reviewing "Innovations in Compassion"--a final report on the Faith-Based and Community Initiative. (http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/government/fbci/pdf/innovatio...)
This illustrates the problems
Mr. Medefind’s comment nicely illustrates several fundamental problems with the faith-based initiative, and with the debate about it.
From its beginnings, advocates for the faith-based initiative exaggerated its potential; now that it’s over, they exaggerate its impact. They base these exaggerations on misleading, and sometimes outright false, factual claims. 100,000 mentored children? 2 million children cared -for? 30% reduction in chronic homelessness? All attributed to the faith-based initiative? I don’t know where these numbers come from, or if they are accurate, but even if they are accurate I’m skeptical that the faith-based initiative deserves the credit.
I’m skeptical about claims like this in part because debate about the faith-based initiative has been muddled from the start by factual mischaracterizations. I documented several persistent myths associated with the faith-based initiative in a 2003 article that appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Here’s a link: www.ssireview.org/images/articles/2003SU_feature_chaves.pdf
More fundamentally, this comment’s emphasis on the faith-based initiative’s goal to “more effectively aid the needy by shifting away from big government solutions managed by Washington to the creative, compassionate responses to need led in local communities” sums up one of the initiative’s most basic flaws: it was built on a false dichotomy between government solutions and local solutions, and on another, related, false dichotomy between large, professionally-run social service agencies and small, informal efforts–as if all the creativity and compassion was on one side of those dichotomies, and all the inefficiency was on the other side.
It is crucial to recognize that religious organizations (mainly meaning religious social service agencies like Catholic Charities but also including some congregations) were an important part of our social service system long before the faith-based initiative. This system includes government agencies as well as large and small religious and secular social service organizations. There surely are ways to strengthen this system’s ability to help people, but the faith-based initiative’s strategy of bypassing the existing system (caricatured as “big government solutions managed by Washington”), redirecting resources from one to another part of it, and trying to build up one small part of it rather than building up the social service delivery network as a whole, was not likely to be effective.
Let’s hope that President Obama’s faith-based initiative will be more firmly grounded in knowledge about how the system actually works, and more informed about religious organizations’ current role in that system.
My original post on this subject is a boiled down version of an article, co-authored with Bob Wineberg, that will appear in March, 2010 in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. You can find a working paper version of that article at www.soc.duke.edu/natcong/Writings/Chaves_Wineburg_FaithBasedInitiative&C.... In addition to more detail about congregations, that article also cites other research showing the faith-based initiative’s limited impact on religious and secular organizations other than congregations.
Importance of not throwing the baby out with the bath water
It seems to me that the fundamental element here is about the fact that followers of the Christian faith feel compelled to help others out. What this is showing is that individuals are trying to find funding on a much larger playing field with the news and the internet ensuring that people are much more connected with things that are happening in the world at large.
Although as a whole we are bombarded by an awful lot of negative media i think people are generally good of heart and once aware of something will try to contribute in some way.
Kind regards
David.
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