The GOP-led House in July passed its version of President Bush's faith-based
initiative on a largely party-line vote. Now the action shifts to the
Democratic Senate, where, in a delicious twist, the proposal's fate lies
in the hands of Sen. Joe Lieberman, running mate of Bush's 2000 opponent.
Ironically, that could prove to be its salvation. Lieberman has been
no less fervent in calling for a closer partnership between government
and religious charities to tackle the nation's most stubborn social ills.
And he has vowed to craft a new approach that, unlike the House bill,
can win broad, bipartisan support.
This gives Senate Democrats a chance to wrest the proposal from GOP conservatives
and turn it in a more progressive direction -- by converting the faith-based
initiative into a civil society initiative.
Where the GOP has focused narrowly on religious groups, Senate Democrats
should call for a broader civic mobilization to combat poverty. It would
include not only faith-based groups but also the myriad secular charities,
community foundations. and neighborhood-based voluntary associations that
work every day to help the needy. President Bush says he wants to "rally
the armies of compassion," but you shouldn't have to be a member
of a congregation to enlist.
By recasting the faith-based initiative as a civil society initiative,
the Senate can ground it in a Tocquevillian understanding of how the voluntary
sector acts as an independent realm of collective problem-solving as well
as a nursery for self-reliant citizenship. And it can reassure nervous
liberals and secular groups that the initiative's main purpose is to reduce
poverty, not promote religion.
Democrats also should insist that Bush match his rhetoric about a "compassionate
conservative" war on poverty with real money. House Republicans gutted
his plan to let non-itemizers deduct their charitable donations. The White
House also seems to have forgotten about Bush's campaign pledge to create
a "Compassionate Capital Fund" to fund community and faith-based
anti-poverty work.
Senate Democrats can put civic muscle behind their approach by linking
it to another civic enterprise -- national service. Washington spends about
$750 million a year on an expanding array of service projects of which
AmeriCorps, with 40,000 members, is the largest. Some AmeriCorps members
already work with faith-based groups such as Habitat for Humanity and
in secular efforts such as City Year. The Senate should boost national
service spending and encourage volunteers to work with civic and faith-based
groups in food kitchens, homeless shelters, after-school programs, public
health clinics, and anywhere else where willing hands are in desperately
short supply.
Finally, senators should insist that expanded public support for community
initiatives be based not just on pious intentions, but on performance.
No less than any government agency, civic and religious groups must produce
measurable results or the government shouldn't continue to fund them.
Such an approach would give progressives what they want -- a commitment
to bolster America's civic infrastructure and focus volunteer energy on
fighting poverty -- while accepting the valid premise of Bush's original
proposal: Government ought not to discriminate against religious groups
when contracting out social services.
The public strongly supports this idea. Convinced that government can't
win the war on poverty alone, Americans have increasingly focused on the
up-close-and-personal work of community and faith-based groups, which
sometimes appear to succeed where bureaucracies fail. One example is Boston's
Ten-Point Coalition, in which church leaders joined forces to bring about
dramatic reductions in juvenile and gang-related violence. Bush likes
to cite Teen Challenge, a residential drug treatment program that boasts
an 86-percent rehabilitation rate.
In truth, there is little empirical evidence about the efficacy of voluntary
charitable efforts in general or the oft-cited "faith factor"
-- the spiritual motivation of volunteers out to heal damaged souls and
transform people's lives. That's why the Senate should include money to
fund research on what works and why. Above all, Senate Democrats should
avoid knee-jerk opposition to the faith-based proposal as well as the
rhetoric of their House counterparts, which too often was tinged with
hostility to religion. This only plays into the hands of GOP strategists
determined to drive the wedge deeper between Democrats and religious people,
who leaned strongly toward the Republicans in 2000.
Democrats cannot afford to let stridently secular groups define their
views on the interplay between religion and public life. Instead, they
should follow the lead of Lieberman and his running mate, Al Gore, who
challenged Democrats during the campaign to reject the "hollow secularism"
of the left, and added: "We must dare to embrace faith-based approaches
that advance our shared goals as Americans."
