Deterioration of Church Facilities Said to Endanger Social Services

The physical deterioration of churches and synagogues could imperil many important social-services programs — just at a time when governments are shifting many of their social-welfare duties to religious organizations, says a new report.

The report, “Sacred Places at Risk,” was based on a study of social services that are provided by 111 congregations in six U.S. cities. It was commissioned by Partners for Sacred Places, a Philadelphia non-profit organization that works to protect old and historic religious properties and to see that they remain in use.

According to the report, nine in ten of the congregations, all housed in pre-1940 structures, provide at least one major community service, usually in their own buildings. The average congregation offers four types of services, from food pantries and shelters to day-care and after-school programs. For every congregation member served, more than four non-members benefit, the study found.

The work is labor-intensive and expensive, the report says. The congregations each provide an average of 5,300 hours of volunteer support a year. And the average congregation provides more than $140,000 in subsidies for social programs.

Yet a difficult choice bedevils many congregations: They must decide whether to keep spending money on social services or use the dollars to make desperately needed building repairs.

“Many congregations defer caring for their aging physical plants to expand their services,” says Robert Jaeger, co-director of Partners for Sacred Places. “But it’s important to realize that if we can’t save the buildings, we can’t save the services.”

A fourth of the congregations in the study face major structural repairs, and the average tab runs more than $200,000 over the next few years. “No wonder that many congregations lurch from one repair crisis to another, stretching to raise funds for one but no better prepared for the next,” the report says.

Ram Cnaan, the study’s chief researcher and an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work, said the social role of American churches is unusual among Western democracies.

In many Western nations, Mr. Cnaan says, government subsidizes clergy salaries or other religious expenses. In England, for example, revenue from a government lottery is used to maintain church buildings.

“So there’s a double whammy,” says Mr. Cnaan. Governments don’t provide much help to congregations because of concerns about violating the Constitution’s requirement that church and state issues be kept separate, he says. “At the same time,” he says, “our congregations are the most productive at providing social welfare, which is a state function in other countries.”

Even so, churches are slowly winning some government aid. The new federal welfare law enables states to give some of their money for social-services programs to programs operated by religious institutions — as long as no proselytizing is done in programs run with government money.

Partners for Sacred Places called on government, philanthropy, business, and religion to “discuss their shared stake” in the future of congregations that do community work. Among the obstacles to overcome in seeing that older churches are protected, it cites:

* Constitutional limits on government support for religious institutions.

* “Reluctance” among private foundations and corporations to provide money because of real or perceived limits in supporting the public-service role of congregations and their related structural-repair needs.

* “Inexperience on the part of congregations in approaching potential outside supporters and meeting expectations for financial and administrative accountability.”

The report has garnered support from political figures on both sides of the ideological divide. William J. Bennett, the conservative Republican commentator and former U.S. Secretary of Education, shared the podium with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, at a Washington press conference where the report was released.

Mr. Bennett said the study would not have been necessary if Americans had a greater awareness of religious congregations’ role in dealing with social needs. “Only an age so besotted with intellectual corruption would fail to recognize the value of sacred places,” he said. “It’s extraordinary that one has to do an empirical demonstration of it.”

Said Senator Lieberman: “It is hard to imagine what would happen to many of the neighborhoods served by historic churches and synagogues were they somehow to disappear. In areas ravaged by drugs and poverty and family breakdown, these sacred places are often the last thin thread holding the fabric of their communities together.”

The study included randomly selected Catholic, mainline Protestant, historically black, Jewish, and evangelical faith groups in Chicago; Indianapolis; Mobile, Ala.; New York; Philadelphia; and the San Francisco Bay area.

The Lilly Endowment, the largest source of money for the study, provided $400,000.

Copies of the report are available for $10 each from Partners for Sacred Places, 1616 Walnut Street, Suite 2310, Philadelphia 19103; (215) 546-1288.