Search Results

Although George W. Bush is not more personally devout than Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter, religious issues have played an even more important role in his presidency than for any of his predecessors. The impact of Bush’s faith is evident in his personality, rhetoric, campaigns, appointments, and policies. It has helped shape his electoral strategy, his political agenda, and his relationship with domestic constituencies and leaders of other nations. The nature of his personal faith, the many religious factors involved in his campaigns, and the influence of his religious convictions on his policies have provoked an immense amount of discussion, debate, and disagreement. More than that of any other president, his White House is filled with individuals who have strong faith commitments. Bush has been frequently accused of being a Christian zealot who wants to remake America in accordance with his own religious views, as evident in his domestic agenda, political appointments, and approach to international relations. Detractors also protest that many of Bush’s policies and his belief that he is God’s instrument violate First Amendment guarantees of church-state separation and are extremely dangerous. Bush faithfully reads the Bible and stresses the power of prayer. The support Bush received from evangelicals and conservative Catholics contributed significantly to his narrow victories in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Bush’s faith played a major role in his promotion of compassionate conservatism and faith-based initiatives. The war on terrorism and the invasion and occupation of Iraq have provoked substantial debate among America’s religious communities. Critics and supporters reach dramatically different conclusions about Bush’s faith and its effect on his presidency. Some argue that Bush’s faith is insincere, hypocritical, and a political cover for his right-wing agenda. Others counter that his faith has sustained him during crises, strengthened his resolve, increased his courage, confidence, and compassion, and shaped his policies in many positive ways.

While most research has focused on federal faith‐based initiatives, what has gone largely unnoticed has been how extensive state faith‐based initiatives have become. State faith‐based initiatives are in fact more advanced in many ways than implementation at the federal level. States have passed significant faith‐based legislation, something the federal government has never been able to do, and state implementation of these initiatives has begun to shape governmental and faith‐based organizational culture. The consistent efforts of state liaisons and faith‐based conferences, with new faith‐based policies, have created greater opportunities for partnership between faith and government sectors, but have very rarely come up with the resources to make these new efforts work for extended periods of time. Analysis of data illustrates that state faith‐based policies and practices are creating an over‐arching cultural shift away from church/state separation to church/state cooperation.

Since 1996 states have created a variety of faith‐based practices, such as adding faith‐based members to advisory boards or creating programs that help faith‐based groups write grant applications. This chapter explores the history of early implementation at the state level. The data show three main ways states have altered government culture to increase the access and information going to faith‐based groups: by creating faith‐based liaison positions, by passing faith‐based legislation, and by offering faith‐based conferences. This chapter also outlines the story behind the original implementation at the state‐level, starting with Texas and then Governor George Bush, and the subsequent spread to many states, in many different forms.

Religious entities play a vital though limited role in our social safety net. The majority of congregations engage in community-serving activities, though their commitments tend to be shallow. Four currents in the broader political and social setting have particular implications for understanding faith-based social services: devolution, faith-based initiatives, changing norms for religion in public life, and ambivalence toward evangelism. Shifting patterns in church-state relations have generated both opportunities and uncertainties. This dynamic context invites a fresh conceptual framework for interpreting churches' public engagement. In particular, new language is needed to describe the “faith factor” that has meaning outside of the religious community, but does not reduce faith to a product of other social variables

This chapter recounts the religion-based medical neglect-related deaths of several children in Oregon, including seven-year-old Tony Hays, who died in 1995 after his parents, members of a Fundamentalist sect known as the Church of the First Born, elected to treat his leukemia solely with prayer. A close study of events in Oregon – and of the religious beliefs of those involved – is especially fruitful because the state is home to one of the largest concentrations of faith-based neglect deaths in the country. Central to this section is a discussion of how prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers in Oregon struggled to balance statutory protections for the religious liberty of faith-healing parents against the state's obligation to safeguard the rights and welfare of children.

The actual vitality of American Christianity’s cultural capital today resides almost exclusively among average people in the pew rather than those in leadership, on the periphery not the center of cultural production, in tastes that run to the popular rather than the exceptional, the middle brow rather than the high brow, and almost always toward the practical as opposed to the theoretical or the imaginative. The collective impact of the Christian community of the nature and direction of the culture itself is negligible. They have been absent from the arenas in which the greatest influence in culture is exerted.

Many supporters of faith-based initiatives claim that a religious approach is better at solving social problems. Without purporting to evaluate these claims, this chapter describes the ways Christian activists explain a link between faith and social efficacy, in the form of five postulates: Being faith-based expands social service program capacity; people of faith serve more effectively; a religious perspective enhances program content; spiritual conversion empowers beneficiaries to achieve socioeconomic goals; and church-based programs offer beneficiaries the support of the faith community. While ministry practitioners disagree whether faith is necessary to social outcomes, seldom do they claim it is sufficient. The potential of faith-based approaches may be limited by a disconnect between the ideals of religious practitioners and actual praxis.

Research on the “faith factor” in solving social problems should take into account the complexity of the religious dynamics of social action. More nuanced understandings of the role of religion in public life are needed for accurate assessments of the risks and rewards of faith-based initiatives—shifting the focus from whether to how government should partner with faith-based social services. Well-crafted public policy can expand the civic contributions of religious groups with a public mission to serve society. As some Christians emphasize social service as a vehicle for evangelism, it is important to learn whether conversionist, socially engaged churches represent a growing movement. The “both-and” paradigm of a holistic mission orientation bridges the conservative-liberal dualism that has long characterized American Protestantism.

This chapter delves in greater detail into the role of faith‐based liaisons and offices of faith‐based and community initiatives. The practices, tasks, personal goals, ideals, and duties of individual liaisons and OFBCIs are examined. Data from interviews with these state liaisons reveals a complex on‐the‐ground reality of implementation of state faith‐based initiatives. Understanding state‐level implementation of faith‐based initiatives thus required answering two questions: What actions do faith‐based liaisons take to implement the Initiative? Who are these liaisons? The history of the faith‐based initiative has been tied to the activities of a few dedicated individuals who strongly believe in the role of religion in social services. Many of these individuals now feel that the true power behind the initiative has been stripped and that what has been left in its place is a mere game of politics.

Between 1996 and 2007, 41 states passed 271 pieces of legislation in states. Legislative implementation varies widely among the states; it tended to encourage, rather than mandate, greater participation by religious groups in government‐funded social services. States created several main types of legislation encouraging collaboration with faith‐based groups in their contracting decisions, adding members of faith‐based groups onto various government advisory boards, and appropriating funds to various faith‐based practices. This chapter examines the potential future impacts of these practices.

State faith‐based conferences are a way for state organizations and FBOs in that state to connect. However, they also serve another purpose — states have used conferences as political rallying grounds around the initiative, particularly as a way to connect with the black church community. Faith‐based conferences sponsored by federal and state governments look much like state‐sponsored religious political events, akin in cultural tone and style to events held at black churches. This chapter explores the relationships among race, religion, and politics and discusses the faith‐based initiative at the state level. While African‐Americans make up only 12 percent of the overall population in the United States, almost half of state liaisons were African‐American. State implementation thus appears to be at least partially designed to fulfil the political goal of shifting the black vote away from the Democratic Party and to the Republican Party.

While some see faith‐based initiatives as ephemeral, there is reason to believe that they can impact policy in the future by reshaping how the United States views the norm of church‐state separation. States have created extensive faith‐based bureaucracies, connecting government to religious groups and affecting the delicate balance between church and state for many years to come. These initiatives have flourished because of the confluence of fiscal need, social need, and religious belief with the political rhetoric surrounding them. State faith‐based initiatives have created a phenomenon that is beneficial for many politicians and political leaders, who can say they have helped and show off their new offices and policies, without having to come up with new money. The policies and practices that make up state faith‐based initiatives do not do what their supporters originally promised; rather, they have created a new cultural understanding of church and state.

Acts of compassion are not unique to people of faith, but faith makes these actions uniquely meaningful. Even ostensibly secular good works may be saturated with personal religious significance. The ascription of spiritual meaning to social action is part of the larger religious enterprise that Peter Berger refers to as “world-building”. Among Protestant Christians, these meanings fall into four domains: religion mandates social action; divine agency empowers social change; social activism reflects or enhances one's inner spiritual state; and social ministry is intended to enhance the spiritual life of others. It is the selection and combination of these four modalities—dutiful, empowered, devotional, and evangelistic—that gives a faith-based social service program its distinctive character.

Some faith-based social service programs incorporate specifically religious content, intended to expose beneficiaries to religious resources, messages, or activities. Religious program elements include religious references in program self-descriptions, religious objects in the program environment, invitations to religious activities, prayer, use of sacred texts, worship, sharing of personal testimonies, religious teachings, and invitations to a personal faith commitment (proselytizing). Seven variables further describe the style or format of these religious elements, particularly whether they are mandatory, and how they are structured into the program methodology. From this follows five general strategies for incorporating a religious dimension into social services: implicit, invitational, relational, integrated-optional, and mandatory.

The term “faith-based organizations” is inadequate because no clear definition exists of what it means to be “faith-based”. This chapter proposes an inductively derived typology to capture the religious characteristics of social service organizations and programs. The analysis focuses on the tangible, overt ways that religion may be manifest in a nonprofit entity, yielding six types: faith-permeated, faith-centered, faith-affiliated, faith-background, faith-secular partnership, and secular. The model is multidimensional, recognizing that the religious characteristics of an institution may differ from the specific programs it operates. Examples are drawn from the Philadelphia area to illustrate each type of organization and program.

The current conversation about faith-based initiatives calls for closer attention to socially active conversionist churches—those that serve society alongside, or motivated by, a desire to save souls. Five main dialectical qualities depict these churches' public mission: engaged orthodoxy that balances this-worldly engagement with anticipation of other-worldly salvation; a whole-person anthropology, concerned with meeting both spiritual and social needs; invitational voluntarism that recruits others to Christian faith while respecting their free will; expressive relationalism that promotes caring relationships as a channel for communicating the gospel; and expanded individualism that values personal regeneration and structural reform as mutually reinforcing objectives. These attributes help to explain how conversionist churches are able to adapt and diversify their outreach strategies to expand their access to secular resources. The impact of socially engaged conversionist churches is likely disproportionate to their number, particularly among evangelical, inner-city and ethnic minority congregations.

The provision of welfare was for a long time pre-eminently a religious function. This chapter traces two earlier forms of secularization at the Reformation and in the rise of the welfare state before considering whether current welfare law shows signs of a third form. The survival of religious charitable welfare activity in the second half of the 20th century in a model of ‘welfare pluralism’ is noted before considering the impact of recent equality laws. This is exemplified by the termination of arrangements with Roman Catholic adoption and fostering agencies. As with education, a superficial desire to widen the involvement of faith-based agencies has been combined with a legal environment in which state-religion collaboration is made more difficult.