Interesting, how one-sidedly the British press has played President Bush’s announcement that he will move at once to dramatically expand his social programs involving faith-based organizations.
The Independent’s headline: “Bush Gives Churches a Foothold in White House.” And in the article itself, the writer says without nuance that this means “funneling federal welfare funds to church groups interested in converting the poor and needy.”
The Times’ lead conveys no complexities: “President Bush yesterday ignited a debate over the separation of church and state with plans to funnel billions of dollars to religious groups to provide social services.” But the Guardian headline was the most bombastic and misleading of all: “Bush embraces evangelical agenda.”
When I spent a fruitful day with then-governor George W. Bush two years ago in Texas, it was clear that he was impassioned by the idea of addressing severe social problems in America–drug use, unwed motherhood, welfare dependency, crime–by placing recovery programs under the transformational care of diverse faith-based organizations.
He stressed that these groups, which have had enormous success while state-centered groups have languished, would not receive federal funds directly for religious activities or proselytizing. On the other hand, the spirit of religion could, and ideally would, provide a spiritual fuel to changing one’s behavior and life that secular programs simply cannot provide.
Until President Bill Clinton, under pressure from Republicans in Congress, abolished welfare as we have known it, the pattern of American secular welfare had become clear. One went to a utilitarian state welfare office where the mood was often dour. Stand in line, get the handout. Nothing much was asked of you because, frankly, nothing was expected of you. The message was: Shut up and stay out of productive society’s way, and we’ll see that you exist, minimally, but with no dignity and no hope.
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Welfare reform has–thank God–solved many of those problems, but we need to move on to the next step.
Amy Sherman of the Manhattan Institute in New York, a conservative think tank, outlines the characteristics that distinguish faith-based organizations from state welfare ones. “We try to anchor people in an objective and knowable universe. We enfold people in a loving community that can facilitate their hopes. We strive for meaningful and non-condescending relations that blur the relationship between giver and givee, and we challenge the needy themselves to become people of service, as well.”
But others in the movement are inspired more by what they see on the streets after all these years of “the state” taking care of people. “We’ve exhausted the secular, social sciences, therapeutic, social-engineering model,” says the Rev. Eugene Rivers, an African-American Pentecostal minister who has done remarkable work in Boston with teenaged crime. “It crashed and burned.”
The Bush administration is not attempting, by any means, to take the state completely out of welfare. It is merely trying to inject into these empty programs values that can transform people and help them to overcome the poverty of hardships and values that few people can manage alone. As Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) told me recently: “It’s not that we don’t want government in these programs. It’s that the model’s been wrong. The model has kept people from working, kept them from getting married, kept them dependent.”
Yet the European press already seems to perceive the Bush proposals as a kind of “evangelical” trick–even though the two heads of the program are Roman Catholic and Jewish, and even though former Vice President Al Gore and most Democrats in Congress support the faith-based idea.
One of the great social earthquakes of the 20th Century was the Marxist attempt, followed to various degrees by many countries worldwide, to put social programs under the all-knowing, all-powerful state. Not only did these policies fail, often with tragic results, but they also drained the life out of civic society. Look at the lost souls of Russia and, still, in much of Eastern Europe.
But in the United States, “the state” never went as far, so there is time to set a more beneficial and profitable course for our nation and all its citizens.
That is what President Bush is trying to do. His is a moderate, balanced revitalization of American culture, values and even virtues. It is a practical updating of the one-to-one “charity” of the 19th Century. Americans should welcome this long-overdue renewal of our social systems.
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Georgie Anne Geyer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C. E-mail: [email protected]