Faith-Based Fallout

White House shifts focus of program promoting government grants for religious charities

Facing opposition in the Senate over its efforts to steer government aid to religious charities

and the abrupt resignation of a top adviser, the White House has begun working on several new fronts to help faith-based organizations.

This fall, the Corporation for National Service, a federal agency that administers AmeriCorps and other volunteer programs, will assume a larger role in promoting faith-based groups, according to White House officials.

The administration shifted two advisers from the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to the Corporation. The advisers — Lisa Trevino Cummins and the Rev. Mark V. Scott — will work mainly on helping historically black and Latino churches that provide social services to gain federal grants to attract AmeriCorps volunteers. In addition, the Corporation is preparing to set up a clearinghouse to advise churches and other grass-roots nonprofit groups on how to win federal grants.

The AmeriCorps program links volunteers — most of them recent college graduates — with charities. About 6,000 of the program’s 50,000 volunteers work with faith-based groups, a sign, observers say, that the Corporation for National Service is in a good position to play a leading role in promoting the Bush plan at the state and local levels.

‘Government Bias’

Besides expanding the role of the Corporation, the White House has ordered five federal agencies — the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Labor — to use existing regulations to make it easier for grass-roots religious groups to receive grants.

In a strongly worded report, the administration accused the agencies of discrimination against faith-based groups and asserted that large nonprofit organizations have long enjoyed a monopoly on federal grant money without proving they are effective at solving social problems. Mr. Bush said the report “documents a government bias against faith- and community-based organizations, a bias that exists even when constitutional concerns about church and state have been addressed.”

Stanley Carlson-Thies, associate director for cabinet affairs in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, called both the report and the growing role of the Corporation for National Service a “redesigning” of the administration’s faith-based plan. But he said the two moves were not intended to compensate for congressional opposition to the Bush effort. After a hard-fought victory this summer in the House of Representatives, the administration’s faith-based effort faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where Democrats have vowed to produce their own version of such a plan.

Despite Mr. Carlson-Thies’s contention, critics see the actions — especially the report alleging bias among federal agencies — as an attempt to shift the focus away from Congress and toward the use of existing regulations to expand federal grant making to religious groups.

“The report is a neon sign flashing, ‘We can get more money out the door to faith-based organizations without Congress’s help,’” said Jonathan Rauch, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, in Washington. Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a group in Washington that monitors government spending, said the report shows an intent by the White House to get done by “fiat” what it hasn’t yet accomplished in Congress.

“I interpret that [report] as saying, ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,’” Mr. Bass declared.

Adviser’s Resignation

Suspicions that the Bush administration’s faith-based agenda could be in for rough sailing in Congress were heightened when, a day after the report was issued, John J. DiIulio Jr., the top White House adviser on the faith-based initiative, abruptly announced that he was quitting.

Mr. DiIulio, director of the White House Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said he planned to resign from his $140,000-a-year post once a successor is named. He cited health reasons and a long commute to Washington from his home in Philadelphia, where he took a leave from a teaching job at the University of Pennsylvania to work at the White House. No date is set for Mr. DiIulio’s official departure, but Mr. Carlson-Thies said a new director could be in place in a matter of weeks.

Mr. DiIulio’s resignation could jeopardize relations with minority religious groups that have felt alienated from the White House. Earlier this year, the administration apologized after the Secret Service mistakenly ejected a Muslim Public Affairs Council delegate from a White House meeting on the faith-based initiative. Mahdi Bray, national political director of the council, said that after the incident Mr. DiIulio promised to work closely with Islamic groups. But now, Mr. Bray said, he fears that the administration may not fulfill that promise and that its faith-based effort might be taken over by the “far-right evangelical part” of the Republican party.

“It smacks of a Christian-only initiative,” he said of the faith-based program, adding that Mr. DiIulio’s successor “should be someone who measures up to the Bush rhetoric” on diversity.

‘It’s Who You Know’

Just as Mr. DiIulio’s impending departure has stirred a wave of concern among minority faith groups, the report accusing the five government agencies of bias has roiled the political waters in Washington.

The report says that, at the expense of grass-roots religious and secular social-service organizations, officials are prone to hand money out to the same large grantees even though they have not proven their effectiveness at solving social ills. “Sometimes it’s who you know rather than what you do,” said Mr. Carlson-Thies, the report’s author.

The report says that the grants process “does more to discourage than to welcome the participation of faith-based and community groups.” It adds: “Too much is done that discourages or actually excludes good organizations that simply appear ‘too religious’; too little is done to include groups that meet local needs with vigor and creativity but are not as large, established, or bureaucratic as the traditional partners of the federal government. This is not the best way for government to fulfill its responsibilities to come to the aid of needy families, individuals, and communities.”

The White House report offers little empirical evidence for the charges, nor does it tie its conclusions to specific faith-based organizations. In September, the five departments are scheduled to issue their own documents recommending how to lower the barriers identified in the White House report, and those reports could include specifics.

Jerion Brown, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said his agency’s report would provide examples of large organizations that have repeatedly received grants from the federal government without showing proof of results. But Mr. Brown declined to say whether the examples would include faith-based organizations.

Critics interpreted the White House report’s lack of specifics as a sign that the administration was unable to prove its case that more money should flow to small religious groups and less should go to large charities that already receive government grants.

“It’s simply a slam against federal grantees,” Mr. Bass of OMB Watch said of the report. “The White House wanted to find a way to push its case for small faith-based organizations but failed to provide adequate data for its conclusions.”

Disputes Over Findings

In cases where the report did name specific programs, some agency officials and grantees disputed the findings.

Erich W. Larisch, who oversees the Labor Department’s Senior Community Service Employment Program, which helps people over age 55 find part-time jobs, disagreed with one of the report’s complaints: that the jobs program has provided grants to the same 10 secular groups for the past five years with little evidence that the grantees are successful in helping older people find work.

“The 10 national grantees are doing a great job,” Mr. Larisch said. The $400-million program requires its grantees to show ample evidence of success, he said.

Jim Seith, an official of the AARP Foundation, one of the 10 grantees, agreed with Mr. Larisch’s assessment. The foundation has been receiving Labor Department grants for 30 years to help older people find work, he said, noting that its most recent grant totaled $50-million. “The results,” Mr. Seith said, “are a matter of public record.”

Still, leaders of some religious organizations argue that the White House report accurately reflects weaknesses in the federal grant system.

The Rev. Luis A. Cortes Jr., president of Nueva Esperanza, a Philadelphia religious group that provides social services to the needy, said the federal grant-making process discriminates against small, minority religious organizations like his own.

Mr. Cortes said that despite making a half-dozen applications to federal agencies for money, his group has never received a dime directly from Washington, though it has received about $3-million this year from state agencies whose resources include federal money.

“There is a bias against faith-based organizations unless they are very large or white,” he said of the federal government’s grant making.

“The Latino community has been shortchanged. We get less funds than everybody else. We should have equal opportunity to compete.”