April 8, 1999 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Two years after the federal government overhauled its welfare programs, only about one-fourth of the nation’s religious congregations
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were aware that the new system explicitly permitted them to obtain government grants to help the poor, according to a new report.
But the report suggests that as many as 36 per cent of congregations would be interested in applying for government money to support social-service programs.
“This means that a large minority of American congregations are open to the idea of turning themselves into publicly funded social-service providers,” said Mark Chaves, author of the report and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Arizona.
Mr. Chaves’s conclusions were based on data from the National Congregations Study, a 1998 series of hour-long interviews with ministers, priests, rabbis, and other leaders at 1,236 religious congregations around the country. The Lilly Endowment financed most of that study.
Mr. Chaves cautioned that clergy members who were interviewed may have unintentionally overstated their congregations’ willingness to apply for money, so his figures probably represent the maximum number of churches that would want to seek government aid.
He noted, however, that “an increase in the proportion of congregations receiving public funds that was even half this amount would represent a major change in church-state relations in the United States, and a major increase in religious congregations’ participation in our social-welfare system.”
Only about 3 per cent of congregations now receive government funds for social-service programs, the report said. About 57 per cent of congregations participated in or supported social-service, community-development, or neighborhood-organizing projects of any kind within the past 12 months.
Mr. Chaves found that 16 per cent of congregations have a policy against receiving any government money.
“There is apparently room for more public education about charitable-choice opportunities,” he said, referring to the provision in the 1996 law that encourages new partnerships between religious charities and government. “But there also is a small subset of congregations that will not be interested at all in these opportunities.”
Some observers may be surprised by the kinds of congregations that are more — and less — interested in seeking government money, Mr. Chaves said.
Congregations in liberal and moderate Protestant denominations — United Methodist, United Church of Christ, and others — and Roman Catholic and Jewish congregations are generally more likely to apply for government money, he said.
Congregations in the predominantly white conservative and evangelical Protestant denominations are less likely to be interested.
Such a result may be startling to some, Mr. Chaves said, because the strongest proponents of the charitable-choice provision — elected officials such as U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft, a Missouri Republican, and advocacy groups — have generally been conservative while the most fervent opponents have been liberal.
“It seems that, if charitable-choice initiatives are successful in reaching American congregations, the congregations most likely to take advantage may not be the ones our political and religious leaders expect,” he said.
That finding should not be too surprising, he said, because congregations expressing the most interest in obtaining government money generally are liberal — what Mr. Chaves called “the inheritors of the social gospel.”
The report said that predominantly black congregations were five times more likely than other congregations to express an interest in seeking government aid for social-service programs.
“This is consistent with other research and with anecdotal evidence suggesting that urban black churches are among the most actively engaged in their communities,” Mr. Chaves said.
“Indeed,” he added, “it may not be too much to say that, if charitable-choice initiatives successfully redirect large amounts of money to religious congregations, this mainly will mean funding large African-American congregations to deliver a variety of social services.”
Free copies of “Religious Congregations and Welfare Reform: Who Will Take Advantage of Charitable Choice?” can be ordered from the Aspen Institute’s Nonprofit Sector Research Fund, which helped pay for the study. To order, call (202) 736-5838 or send an e-mail request to nsrf@aspeninst.org.
