Good Faith

By Crispin Sartwell

President Bush is scrambling to revive his plan to deliver Federal social service funds through faith-based organizations. The idea seems to many an obvious breach of the establishment clause of the Constitution, and is impossible to pass in its present form.

But I hope it can be revived.

Obviously, the procedures by which this money is distributed must be carefully delineated, and it must be fairly distributed among different religions and denominations. And obviously the religious organizations must be accountable for their use of the money and not employ it to make converts or distribute propaganda.

Within those constraints, however, the faith-based initiative can only make federal programs better. Government welfare bureaucracies are extremely inefficient; churches, temples, and mosques are often well-practiced at delivering services cheaply and effectively. And whereas government officials and programs are often distant from the communities they purport to serve, faith-based organizations are already central to and trusted by those communities.

That is particularly true in minority communities, where religious institutions are often the greatest single cohesive factor. African-American churches, in fact, are sometimes the only functional institutions in the very poorest communities, and they have a legacy of trust and redemption that gives them deep credibility.

When Malcolm X went from burglar, hustler, and drug addict to a man whose life and words have inspired generations of young black people, he did it by a conversion experience and brought it to others in a ministry. He helped heal thousands of people.

I come from a family in which alcoholism and drug addiction are rampant. My father, his father, and two of my brothers have all died of their addictions. Those of us that survive have needed to have profound, transformative experiences in order to get and stay sober; we needed to find a "higher power" and to pray for help.

That is the only way I have ever known anyone to overcome drug addiction in an enduring way. If the federal government wants to help drug addicts, it needs to have faith in its arsenal.

In short, faith-based organizations are often the best-placed to help people and often provide the only possible source of effective aid. It would be overly punctilious not to make use of them. Anything else robs the taxpayers and also the people at whom the aid is aimed.

The primary purpose of the establishment clause is to prevent the formation of an official religion. And we need to worry about that right now in particular because the president and the attorney general, among other officials in this administration, are evangelical Christians. There is no doubt that their own religious orientation - which includes the idea that there is only one way to achieve salvation (theirs) - is part of what motivates them to put this proposal forward.

That is why it is appropriate to hedge the faith-based initiative around with safeguards. As Mike Allen reported on Monday, "The administration wants new language specifying that direct government grants must go to a separate account from private funds, officials said. Bush also wants faith-based groups to have the same accountability requirements, including self-audits, as other government contractors. And they want an individual who objects to the religious component of a program -- for example, a prayer service in a homeless shelter -- to be able to skip it and still get the social services."

Those safeguards are more than appropriate; they are essential. But so are faith-based institutions.

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