How faith based charities are changing governance
By Peyton R. Miller
History will likely remember George W. Bush as a “war president” who responded to 9/11 with increased domestic security and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet his initial campaign for the presidency had little to do with terrorism. In a 2000 article for the Hoover Institution, Stephen Goldsmith, former mayor of Indianapolis and domestic policy advisor to the Bush campaign, defined “compassionate conservatism” as the desire to improve prosperity for all by combining traditionally conservative policies like tax cuts and investment incentives with efforts to empower those at the bottom of the economic ladder. In announcing his candidacy in 1999, then Governor Bush stressed the applicability of this ideology to governance, including poverty and crime prevention. Much of Bush’s vision involved a partnership between government and faith-based organizations to improve the condition of the impoverished at the grassroots level, an ideal that became a reality on his tenth day as president when he created the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives by executive order. Bush’s compassionate conservatism thus leaves a complex legacy in the form of this new agency, which has instigated a fundamental change in governmental approach to humanitarian relief while laying the groundwork for charges of inefficiency and violation of church-state separation.
An Expanded Role for Faith-Based Charities
The OFBCI seeks to make it easier for religious humanitarian organizations to receive government grants to boost their role in providing relief. Goldsmith explained, in an interview with the HPR, that such charities are often more effective in alleviating need because they provide flexible, personalized service, as opposed to the one-size-fits-all character of government programs. The OFBCI reports increases in both the funding available to faith-based groups and the quality of services provided since 2001. Prisoners who have been linked with federally funded faith-based mentoring programs, for example, return to prison at less than half the national average, and over 70,000 children of prisoners have received career counseling. Faith-based organizations have also increased the scope of the federal effort to aid recovering drug addicts. Since 2001, grantees have created or expanded over 1,200 community health clinics, increasing the number of low-income individuals with access to these services by 4.7 million. On the foreign policy front, approximately 2,213 partners in the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, or 81 percent of participants, were indigenous organizations, and nearly a quarter of these were faith based. These partners have supported 15,000 project sites for prevention, treatment, and care.
Whose Faith?
The faith-based strategy has been the subject of controversy, including, as Heritage Foundation historian Lee Edwards told HPR, the perception that it has “tested” the separation of church and state. A 2006 report issued by the Government Accountability Office indicates that, although the program requires faith-based groups to separate federally funded services in time or location from religious activities, a few organizations had programs that appeared to violate this stipulation, and the ambiguity of the Justice Department’s guidelines in this regard have caused confusion about what is permissible. The GAO also questioned the program’s efficiency, citing that in fiscal year 2005, four of the five agencies subordinate to OFBCI reported that the single largest category to which they allocated funds was staff salaries and benefits.
A Mixed Legacy
Edwards and Goldsmith agree that the compassionate conservative ideology is unique to Bush’s personal philosophy and therefore has not left a permanent mark on the presidency. Yet it is clear that the faith-based approach has fundamentally changed the government’s strategy for improving the lives of the downtrodden. For example, 35 governors, 19 Democrats and 16 Republicans, as well as over 100 mayors now have offices or liaisons dedicated to strengthening the faith-based movement, and no such office has been terminated due to a change in political control. Both Republicans and Democrats have pledged to either maintain or increase funding for faith-based charities after the 2008 election.
Faith-based charities and compassionate conservatism in general will not be a Republican campaign theme due to the importance of international relations and domestic economic concerns of a less altruistic nature, not to mention the fact that the concept is inextricably linked with President Bush and his paltry approval ratings. But it is also apparent that, due to the achievements of faith-based charities that have received federal aid, the partnership between government and religious organizations will continue to strengthen.
