Last week George W. Bush met with religious leaders for what he termed a non-political dialogue regarding a faith-based strategy for augmenting government social services. He invited ministers and leaders from a wide spectrum of religious organizations, including Muslim, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant. One third of the ministers invited to the Wednesday meeting in Austin were African-American and the meeting was viewed as having been driven by a Bush strategy to woo the black community toward the Republican camp, but George Bush had been an advocate of faith-based social programs and counseling from early in his term as governor of Texas.

It was less about post-election spin, than about a successful change in the social service paradigm. One to which Governor Bush had long subscribed. He outlined a plan to offer a $500 tax credit to taxpayers who donate to qualified religious or private education or counseling services who work with local and state governments. He also announced his plan to open an Office of Faith-Based Action.

Outside of the process of cabinet selection, the meeting was the first publicly organized forum on the Bush-Cheney agenda since the extended election litigation finally ended two weeks ago. Advocates of faith-based solutions range from practical social liberals, such as the Rev. Eugene Rivers of the Ten Point Coalition in Boston, to compassionate conservatives like Robert Woodson of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, who cite a high success rate among religious based community outreach organizations in social programs ranging from housing assistance to anger management counseling and drug rehabilitation. For example, in his book, The Triumphs of Joseph, Woodson mentions a faith-based drug rehab program that costs $50 per day has a 70% success rate compared with conventional professional programs which can cost as much as $600 per day with less than a 10% success rate.

The critics of faith based programs feel that entitlements and government social insurance programs would be compromised if religious organizations are allowed to encroach on what has been, for the last thirty years, the exclusive territory of bureaucrats and other civil servants, who, in the administration of their duties, shun the stuffy tenets of morality in favor of whatever psychotrend du jour is being touted in the latest issue of Psychology Today. They say that mixing faith and government is a recipe for abuse of power and supression of the First Amendment. They believe that government funding, or tax incentives to encourage church or other faith-based organizations, violates the doctrine of separation of church and state.

Among the moderates, the opposition consists of those who have healthy concerns for the separation of church and state concerns, those who are rightfully skeptical about whether or not government agencies can resist the temptation of advancing one religion over another. There's little to argue in the face of such caution. In fact, they are wise to question how Bush's newly proposed Office of Faith-Based Action will implement or otherwise guide public policy when it comes to easing the restrictions on religious organizations contracting services to government programs.

On the other hand, there are those who, when the truth is known, resent religion altogether. They are the infamous "secular humanists," who rival the most fervid religious fanatics in their sheer intensity. They've had a stranglehold on the welfare, rehabilitation, and social insurance systems since the onset of the great failed social experiment that we charitably refer to as The Great Society.

These are the purveyors of the poverty industry. For nearly four decades they have run the show in hard-core liberal strongholds like Washington, DC and Boston where the poverty rate, except when self-help and religious organizations have intervened, remains little improved. The blind faith of the liberal poverty purveyors keeps them in the misery business. They need lifetime professional victims in the same way that Sara Brady needs high school shoot-outs, as showcase examples to stir public emotion over reason and to keep their causes in the spotlight.

If you don't believe it, all you have to do is observe how a community can turns around a dismal record of violence and social decay and restore a safe, prospering neighborhood aided by self-help and faith-based services. Success stories exist in abundance. There are examples of faith-based groups working successfully to bring ex-gang members back to a decent life and numerous cases of ex-drug addicts delivering their drug addicted brethren from the grips of addiction, but chances are you haven't seen them, in part, because the Maxine Waterses and Jesse Jacksons of the world don't want you to see them. They don't really care to highlight the success stories. They need victims. They need strife. But most of all, they need eternal funding with no strings attached. No singing for your supper. No promises to do better. No hymns, nor prayers. No accountability and certainly no responsibility for the actions of their victim constituents.

Just sign the checks. Don't preach. It's none of you're business, Maxine and Jesse will tell you, and it's akin to blasphemy to suggest that entitlements should be conditionally delivered on a commitment to responsible
behavior from the receiver. Who are you, they'll demand, to advise our people against exercising their God-given (oops, the "G" word) right to have children out of wedlock by multiple deadbeat dads or to do drugs or to abuse their kids. Just give us the food stamps and get out of our faces with your Koran and your Bible thumping.

And so the conflict lies.

On one side we have the likes of Rev. Herman Lusk and the controversial Marvin Olasky, carrying the banner of faith-based programs. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the secular zealots like Kweisi Mfume and Congressman Barney Frank representing the Church of Government Mandated Altruism, where victimhood is the highest state of grace that can be achieved and responsibility is sacrificed at the altar of eternal entitlement on a perpetual basis.

It is faith vs. blind faith. Indeed, as the battle heats up on this issue, the left is likely to display something beyond even the magnitude of blind faith, crossing over into the delirium regions, speaking in tongues on the floor of the House about the impending doom and ruin. Surely the collapse of their poor constituencies are nigh under the harsh hands of Calvinist tyrants preaching fire and brimstone.

Brace yourselves because although Governor Bush was able to incorporate religious and faith-based alternatives into the social service landscape of the great State of Texas, President Bush is about to send his troops into the breach on this issue.

© Lynette Warren 2000 All rights reserved


Previously by Lynette Warren...

Under the Mistletoe with Sinn Fein (12/15/00)

Mrs. Clinton Goes to Washington (12/08/00)

It's the Outrage (12/01/00)

The Great Florida Vote Hunt (11/24/00)