Dr. Robert J. Wineburg is a professor of social work at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and is the author of "A Limited Partnership: The Politics of Religion, Welfare, and Social Service," just released by Columbia University Press. He can be reached  at (336) 334-5228 or via email at bob_wineburg@uncg.edu

The Liberals in the White House

By Dr. Robert J. Wineburg, Ph.D

    I feel like Rip Van Winkle in reverse. Twenty years ago I started to study faith-based social service delivery. Not only

There are tidbits here and there that show that faith based programs work. No research however, demonstrates in an empirical way that they are better than any other program. There are testimonials galore – but no clinical trials.

 was the country sound asleep, but no matter how hard I yelled that something amazing was happening on Main Street, the snoring drowned out my cries.
    A holy war of sorts was taking place. It was being fought on three fronts simultaneously and CNN wasn’t there:
At the outset, the Reagan administration decimated and confused local social service delivery systems with drastic cuts, paralyzing and bloodying them so that they were slow to respond to problems like AIDS and homelessness. These efforts were not comprehensive when they did respond. Then George Bush senior was going to give us a kinder gentler nation. Remember?
    On the second front, these weakened systems in communities everywhere got extraordinary help from the mainline religious community, quietly and without ceremony. Today there is a vast network of congregations and new faith based organizations playing strong auxiliary roles in local service provision. Their help made the entire delivery system limp along better.
    The third front? Remember the Moral Majority? The Christian Coalition? While the mainline congregations were calcifying the shattered pieces of local delivery systems in the 1980s and 1990s, these two right wing religious advocacy groups, who saw themselves as lifeboats in a world of wrecked vessels, worked with government to put society back on track. For the most part, their churches did not deliver social services in the community. Their mission was to shape the social agenda, cleanse an immoral public, and return government to its Christian roots. Remember that contract?
    Faith-based organizations have always played a key role in delivering social services to their communities, and they should continue to do so. But throwing money at them without a plan backed by research, and expecting them to solve society's ills makes absolutely no sense. That's the same approach that conservatives have, quite rightly, criticized liberals about for years.
    After a 20-year snooze, it is now the dawn of a new day in America. The morning air is draped by the mist of 'holy water tinted the color of dollar bills – not spraying from the pulpits of America, but from all places, the White House. The country must be still dreaming.
    The president and his minions are not only chanting an old liberal prayer: "Government money is the solution" but they are following that devilish liberal path by creating another government bureaucracy to tattoo that prayer everywhere. I think they are calling the baby bureaucracy an office. Am I in Wonderland?  Am I the only one that remembers the conservative prayer: "Government is not the solution, it is the problem! "
    Why are we creating another bureaucracy? While the country slept, the people who wanted to return government to its Christian roots were relentlessly burrowing their way to into the halls of secular power. The people, they thought, have fallen from grace, – especially in low income impoverished areas. Forget that these same people don’t have adequate housing. Forget that their schools are falling apart. Forget that they don’t have the resources for adequate transportation to reach jobs near urban outskirts. Forget that they don’t make wages to sustain a family even when they work 40 hours a week. That would have been liberal talk.
    The homilies of conservative political religion isn’t that it takes a community to raise a child but a government to raise a church.  Conservatives believe together church and government can catch people as they fall from grace. Transformation is the solution, one soul at a time. Today an office of faith based social service, tomorrow the country. Not a bad scheme. Why get money the old fashioned conservative way with spirit lifting sermons and passing a bigger basket in the church pews?  Because this is New-Age religion.
    Something else is buoying this takeover. The media has bought it for 20 years with blind faith. I call it the big white lie. There is no research that shows that faith based social services are more effective than non-faith based social services.
    There are tidbits here and there that show that faith based programs work. No research however, demonstrates in an empirical way, that they are better than any other program. There are testimonials galore – but no clinical trials.
 I have done extensive research on the social service delivery of faith-based organizations and congregations, and favor their continuing in a well planned way. If these same conservatives went to the bank and wanted an $8 billion loan, but had no business plan, no market survey - just faith and some good stories, how much money could they expect to get?
Be it a ram's horn, a noon day prayer call, or the church bells ringing, it is a sad day when the faith community is saying to Big Brother, “Buddy can you spare a dime - or is that $8 billion?”
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