Faith-based groups can help cure social ills

Thursday, March 15, 2001

By GREGORY RUMMO

Over the past four decades, the federal government has spent $6 trillion to solve social problems that continue to vex us.

President Bush, recognizing that these noble efforts have failed, has taken a bold step in proposing his faith-based initiative. The Bush plan will send money back to the states in the form of block grants to organizations already helping the needy. Additionally, the plan will allow taxpayers to deduct charitable contributions on their tax returns, whether they itemize or not.

The program is outlined in a White House report titled "Rallying the Armies of Compassion." In the foreword, the president states: "Private and charitable groups, including religious ones, should have the fullest opportunity permitted by law to compete on a level playing field, so long as they achieve valid public purposes, like curbing crime, conquering addiction, strengthening families, and overcoming poverty."

The problems facing America are staggering. Some 15 million young people are at risk of not reaching productive adulthood. They will fall prey to crime, drugs, or other problems that make it difficult to obtain an education. About 1.5 million children have a parent in prison; more than half a million children are in foster care.

In 1997, more than 1 million babies were born to unwed mothers, many of them barely past their own teen years. One out of six American families with children live on an annual income of $17,000 or less. Homeless shelters in New York are filled to their highest level since the Eighties.

Problems such as addiction, crime, and homelessness are almost always symptoms of deeper, spiritual problems. We must acknowledge the moral component of these ills. Unless we do, efforts to help the needy can be compared to applying a Band-Aid to a severed artery.

Rescue missions, soup kitchens, halfway houses, and pantries already have personnel dedicated to helping the needy. For them it's not a job but a calling.

"The main problem for soup kitchens, like any charitable organization, is having the money to keep the mostly volunteer enterprises going," says Mark Cowan, a reporter for Family News in Focus. "Bush's plan would change that by allowing church-supported social service providers to apply for government aid."

This approach is in keeping with the Constitution's mandate to ensure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare.

Marvin Olasky, the father of compassionate conservatism, writing in "Renewing American Compassion" (Free Press, 1996) says: "Government's ability to promote compassion rather than provide services is directly connected to improving its performance in areas that are the center of its mission. Our predecessors understood the Constitution's charge to promote the general welfare as ensuring an environment within which individual and community action could flourish."

Bush's initiative is offered to faith-based organizations of all types, thus adhering to the constitutional principles of "pluralism, non-discrimination, and evenhandedness," the president has stated. But critics are worried about a breach of the First Amendment.

"It's evident that conservative Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and Muslims will be generally arrayed in favor, while many liberal Protestants and Jews join the opposition," writes Richard N. Ostling, a religion writer for the Associated Press.

The chief counsel at the Rev. Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow, contends that the plan honors the Constitution. "This is a broad-based program of faith-based community organizations, and the Supreme Court in a number of cases has said as long as it is broad-based, there's no constitutional difficulty," Sekulow said.

Nevertheless, the American Jewish Congress is suing to block a similar project stemming from Bush's days as governor of Texas. The organization charges that the president risks undercutting the Constitution's doctrine that "the government may not fund religion or use religion as its surrogate."

Scripture doesn't offer much guidance on the subject of the intermingling of church and state. Much of the history of Israel recorded in the Old Testament occurred under a theocracy. In the New Testament, Jesus alluded to a separation of church and state when he was questioned about whether it was proper to pay taxes: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God, what is God's" (Mark 12:17).

But the Bible clearly places great emphasis on individual responsibility to alleviate social ills. Jews and Christians are admonished to be financially generous and personally involved in the lives of the poor.

"If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered" (Proverbs 21:13). Echoing this principle, Jesus taught his disciples to become involved in the lives of the needy. Collectively, it is the church's duty to carry out this work.

Some 2,000 years later, our political leaders have realized that religious organizations are uniquely equipped to address the evils that plague the human heart. But they face stiff opposition from the self-appointed guardians of our civil liberties, who apparently prefer that the destitute remain in the clutches of despair.

The rest of us can refresh our memories of what the 10th Amendment guarantees: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."

The resources to change lives must now be delegated by the federal government back to the people -- those dedicated volunteers who have given their blood, sweat, and tears to serve their fellow men and women in need.

Gregory Rummo is a business executive who belongs to Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson, where he also serves as choir director. You may e-mail him at [email protected]

You can e-mail his editor, Lisa Haddock at [email protected]
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