Faith-based initiatives: Still finding skeptics among the faithful

Published: 2004-06-04

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A week apart in meeting rooms of two Washington hotels, the federal government's faith-based initiatives received strikingly different treatment from its chief promoter and some of the people who want the government's help in battling poverty. At the Washington Hilton June 1, President Bush listed some of the funding the administration has given or budgeted for faith-based institutions to offer community services of various types. The upbeat session at a daylong conference hosted by the White House included Bush introducing two beneficiaries of aid from faith-based organizations: refugees who were resettled in the United States with the help of Catholic agencies in Allentown, Pa., and Richmond, Va. A week earlier, there had been somewhat less warmth about faith-based initiatives at the Washington Plaza Hotel, as a member of Bush's Cabinet spoke to people who want poverty to be at the forefront of concerns this election year. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said poverty is "a state of mind," as he talked up the administration's faith-based initiatives as a way of attacking problems at the community level. But participants said his May 25 effort landed with a thud among some of the very people who operate faith-based social service programs. The day before, dozens of people attending the national mobilization conference of Call to Renewal had signed a unity statement on overcoming poverty in a nonpartisan way that "links religious values with economic justice, moral behavior and political commitment."

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