c. 2000 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ The 2000 presidential campaign has produced promises of a new partnership between church and state on behalf of the poor, with Vice President Al Gore calling for increased federal grants to faith-based organizations and Gov. George W. Bush saying he would emulate Texas’ heavy reliance on religious charities to help the needy.

But whoever is elected will face doubts among the religious, particularly religious conservatives. Even though the Christian right’s political leaders are the most outspoken supporters of increased church-state collaboration, the view from the evangelical pew is that Uncle Sam is not to be trusted, even if he comes riding a Republican elephant with bags full of money.

The overarching, often-overlooked concern of the faith community is not that the church will unconstitutionally influence the state. It’s that the state might saddle the good works of churches with burdensome rules and regulations.

“We don’t take government money and never will,” said Denny Nugent, director of development at Cleveland’s City Mission. “We’ve been here for 90 years. Even with this talk of faith-based organizations and charitable choice, we’ve found that there are always strings attached.”

City Mission’s biggest worry is government pressure to temper its religious message.

“A relationship with God is the means by which people change their lives,” Nugent said. “If you don’t change from within, any other change is temporary, a Band-Aid approach. Without the freedom to teach that, our hands are tied.”

Indications are that Nugent and his organization have plenty of company, even among non-evangelicals.

Analyzing data from the 1998 National Congregations Study, which included 1,236 congregations, Mark Chavez, a sociology professor from the University of Arizona, concluded that only 3 percent of all churches had received government funds for a social service project.

A mere 28 percent of conservative, evangelical church leaders said they were willing to apply for government funding. That compared with 40 percent of Roman Catholic Church leaders and 41 percent of church leaders in liberal or moderate Protestant denominations.

The most supportive group is not defined by theology or denomination, but by race. Nearly two-thirds of pastors from predominantly African-American churches said they would seek grants.

“Government funding will mainly go to African-American churches,” Chavez said. “Liberal, white churches will also step up and take advantage of this. But when it comes right down to it, signing a contract with a government agency is going to be much more difficult for a conservative church than a liberal church.”

Liberal Jewish congregations seem most opposed to the concept on grounds that it lowers the traditional wall between religious organizations and the state _ a much-discussed point that the courts will inevitably decide.

Nonetheless, both presidential candidates appear determined to create faith-friendly administrations.

In a speech last year, Gore alarmed some of his more secular supporters on the left when he told the Salvation Army: “I believe strongly in the separation of church and state. But freedom of religion need not mean freedom from religion. There is a better way.”

Gore likes a section in the 1996 welfare reform law, known as charitable choice, that permits government to fund religious groups’ efforts to move people from welfare to work without taking religious images off their walls. Gore says Washington should expand charitable choice to help the faith community fight drug abuse, homelessness and youth violence _ as long as government grants don’t fund proselytizing.

Bush has been even bolder in what he considers a better, more religious way, saying, “We will never ask an organization to compromise its core values and spiritual mission to get the help it needs.”

The Texas governor wants a new White House “Office of Faith-Based Action” and $8 billion in tax incentives to increase charitable giving to anti-poverty groups, whether secular or religious. He sees tax credits (in addition to direct grants) and the bully pulpit of the presidency turning faith-based groups into the most effective, caring troops in his compassionately conservative army.

But in churches, synagogues and mosques, skepticism abounds.

A chronically cash-starved ministry called The Barn for the Poorest of the Poor has been feeding AIDS patients in New York City and the homeless in Newark, N.J., for more than 20 years. If any poverty-fighting group could use a grant, this one, based in Middletown, N.J., is it. But its founder, Barney Welch, hasn’t considered looking to Washington because of the bureaucracy he’d have to hassle with.

“We would object to any army-type regimentation,” said Welch, a Catholic who models his work on the example of Mother Teresa. “We don’t want them to come in and do inspections and say the food crates we’re using can’t be used, or that we need a different container.”

A few former skeptics have become cautious believers.

Amy Sherman, senior fellow of the Hudson Institute’s Welfare Policy Center,a conservative think tank, expressed serious concerns when she wrote a 1995 article for Policy Review titled “Will Conservative Welfare Reform Corrupt Religious Charities?” Her answer was probably.

But after examining 84 programs in nine states, Sherman now says the 1996 charitable choice provisions just might preserve the religious character of faith-based charities.

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Among other things, the rules allow groups receiving government contracts to discriminate in their board governance and hiring.

“It’s a really, really big deal for us in the faith community that we have a religious atmosphere in our facilities and maintain control of our internal governing boards,” said Sherman, an evangelical Christian. “We don’t want government telling us we have to have two gays and two of this and two of that instead of putting whoever we want from our church on the board.”

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While charitable choice was supposed to create a level playing field for secular and religious groups to compete for federally funded, state-administered welfare service contracts, many churches and states have failed to recognize, much less adopt, the newer approach.

A September national report card by The Center for Public Justice, a Maryland-based religious think tank, gave failing marks on implementing charitable choice to 37 states. Three _ Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin _ received A grades, with Texas getting the only A-plus.

But where it has been implemented, “religious groups accepting government funding are not having to sell their souls, and clients’ civil liberties are being respected,” Sherman wrote after her survey.

One example that persuaded Sherman is the government-funded work of a faith-based organization she helped found, Abundant Life Ministries.

A creation of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Va., Abundant Life focuses on the impoverished neighborhood of Fifeville. Last summer, Abundant Life won $20,000 in federally funded, city-administered grants aimed at curbing crime and increasing opportunities in low-income areas. Because the grants didn’t provide welfare services, they didn’t fall under current charitable choice provisions.

Nonetheless, the relationship worked. The ministry kept careful records on its use of taxpayer money, dividing time into 15-minute segments, with the government never billed for anything remotely religious, Sherman said. She volunteered, however, that there were times when government-funded computer training might be held for one hour, with the same group of people getting an optional, privately funded Bible study the next 30 minutes.

On the Abundant Life Web site, Executive Director Rydell Payne wrote: “Praise God that we are able to use these grant funds and not compromise the values of our ministry, especially our commitment to have Christian-based programming where we can share the good news about Jesus Christ.”

Unlike white, evangelical churches, African-American congregations have a history of working with the federal government.

At Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., the congregation has received some type of federal aid for more than 30 years, whether for food programs or afternoon day care. And with two volunteer lawyers sorting through the government regulations, the Rev. Leon G. Lipscombe Sr. said he has had no problems, and would like more grants.

“We’ve got religion, but no faith,” Lipscombe said of churches in general. “We can shout all we want at the 11 o’clock service, but people are hungry after that service. They’re bewildered. They’re lonely. You have to put your faith into action and that’s where the government comes in to help.”

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Meanwhile, Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress warns that church-state collaborations are “a matter of substantial constitutional debate” and could punch dangerous holes in the wall of separation that has served the country well.

Chavez, the Arizona professor, sees ironies in the debate.

“At the national level, liberals are resisting this,” Chavez said. “But at the local level, it’s moderate to liberal churches most interested in moving in this direction.”

Conversely, conservatives such as Bush and Sen. John D. Ashcroft, R-Mo., are the most politically active in pursuing government collaboration with churches, while conservative congregations seem most wary of the idea.

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But even some non-evangelical analysts warn against a day when religious do-gooders might destructively compete against each other for federal aid, with contracts given as political favors. In addition, government-dependent churches could eventually lose the support of private donors.

Yale law professor Stephen Carter, author of the new book “God’s Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics,” cautioned that “religious groups licking their chops to get their hands on this public money should be very prayerful and thoughtful.”

During a question-and-answer session with reporters, Carter spelled out a scenario in which a church takes government money under a faith-friendly administration and constructs a building, only to see future regulations passed that conflict with what the church preaches.

“So what do they do?” asked Carter, an Episcopalian. “Tear it down? The time to think about that is before they take the public money, not after.”

DEA END O’KEEFE

(You can reach Mark O’Keefe at mark.okeefe(at)newhouse.com)