[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 87 (Thursday, June 21, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H3452-H3463]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rehberg). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, the subject I want to address tonight is one
that has been in the news a lot lately, and a lot of people are
confused and many Members of Congress are confused. I want to review
some of the basics, and that is about the faith-based initiative or the
so-called Community Solutions Act that will be marked up presumably
next week in the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Ways
and Means, as well as hopefully brought to the House floor right after
the July 4th break.
This is an area that has, as I said, a lot of controversy in it, a
lot of conflict in it, and at the same time is so basic to how we are
going to deliver social services and how we might address the problems
of the United States that it is absolutely essential.
I would like to go into a little bit of overview as to what all of
the fuss is about and why so many people are talking about faith. One
would think from some of the media coverage this is a brand new idea
discovered by President Bush and it was never talked about before in
American history. In fact, it has been part of the United States from
the very beginning. It has just been in recent years that we have
tended to deny this.
The Pilgrims came here because they wanted to practice freedom of
their faith. The Catholics in Maryland came because they wanted freedom
for their faith.
The Quakers in Pennsylvania came to the United States because they
wanted freedom to practice their faith. We have seen multiple revivals
in American history, when George Whitfield came through and it swept
through America right through the American Revolution, the Wesley
brothers came and settled in south Georgia and then moved up the United
States, and there was another evangelical revival.
On Monday on the House floor there is a proposal to build a memorial
to John Adams and John Quincy Adams and Abigail Adams, but particularly
focusing on John Adams.
The current second best-selling book in the United States by David
McCullough, if you read that book, at the very beginning, it talks
about how John Adams was raised in a religious family, and his father
was a minister, and how John Adams initially started as a
schoolteacher, and his dad wanted to be a minister. And it was only
after deciding to become an attorney that he decided not to become a
minister himself.
At the very end of that book when John Adams is giving advice, he
says, ``Walk humbly and serve God.'' John Adams, from the beginning,
the middle, and the end was a very religious man.
But it was not just John Adams. John Quincy Adams' son who died in
Statutory Hall, which used to be the old House Chamber, his last words
were that he was ready to meet his maker and he was ready to go to
heaven. He wrote a special book for his son giving him advice from the
Bible and telling him how to avoid all of the perils of the European
culture when he was over in Europe.
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But it was not just the Adams family. Even those who were the least
religious in the founding of our American Republic, arguably Thomas
Jefferson and Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson was concerned enough about
it that he did his own, in my belief, a phony Bible; but he took many
of the teachings of the Bible with it because he believed it was a
historic and important document for America's faith.
Ben Franklin repeatedly called on Congress at the very time when we
were supposedly debating about the separation of church and state,
right after they passed the religious liberty amendment Ben Franklin
was among those who called and passed a resolution saying Jesus Christ
was the one and only son of God and was the saviour of mankind.
Ben Franklin also had George Whitfield, probably the greatest
evangelist ever to come to America, at his
[[Page H3453]]
home; and Ben Franklin was not, in my terms, a particularly religious
man, but he understood the power and importance of faith to America and
how it was so integrated in our culture, and he at least understood the
power of faith.
We also saw that evolve. If Jefferson and Franklin were kind of the
least religious of our Founding Fathers, we had the founders of the
America Bible Society in our early Continental Congress, in our early
Congresses. Most of the people in those Congresses were divinity school
graduates.
Even when you look here in the House Chambers, and it will not be
able to be seen on C-SPAN, but there are lawgivers all around this
Chamber from Rome, from Greece and so on. All their heads on this side
are turned that direction. On this side, they are turned that
direction. There is only one facing towards Congress. It is Moses,
Moses of Bible fame, who looks straight down on the chairman. Behind
the chairman, it says, ``In God We Trust.''
So when we talk about separation of church and state, let us do not
get too cute here. We have Moses looking down on us every time we
debate this, with ``In God We Trust'' behind us.
What does this have to do with what we are talking about in public?
It is because we have increasingly in America tried to deny this
heritage and separate and act as though somehow we are not rooted in
that and the people are not rooted in that, whereas the people in
America are still a religious people; but the government has in effect
tried to impose a secular alternative on this.
Let me look at the role of faith in social services. In fact, if
religious organizations had not stepped in in the education field, all
of our major universities were religious universities to begin with.
They are not now, but Harvard and Princeton and Yale, all of these
universities were founded as religious universities. All the major
social organizations, hospitals, child abuse, juvenile centers, all of
these things in America were religiously founded.
The book ``Tragedy of American Compassion,'' by Dr. Marvin Olasky, is
a brilliant exposition of how we went from a basic religious-based
provider of social services to the government taking over most of those
options.
Now we had a terrible Depression. There were other things that were
occurring as well, but he highlights how some of it has been a
substitution of character mixing with private charity and helping
others to a government takeover of social services initiatives.
I commend all of Dr. Olasky's books to us. He has a great book on
compassionate conservatism that is probably the best single book out on
that subject right now. He has several books on leadership and some of
the American heritage to understand the mixing of how faith was so
important in our country.
Going back to the social service providers, what has happened is
government has taken over more of the social service providing. They do
not have the character mix. I am not saying government employees are
not committed, but they are not going to stay there in the evening.
They often will move back to their suburbs rather than live and work in
the communities where the problems actually are. It is a different type
of commitment. It is not leveraged with private funds.
On top of that, what it has done it has absolved the rest of us from
our obligations to help those who are hurting and those who have
problems. We say now it is the government's business. It is partly
because our Tax Code is high and partly because we see all of these
billions of dollars being spent in the social programs; therefore we do
not have to do it. But let us not kid ourselves. Part of this is an
excuse. It covers our selfishness, and we have allowed the government
to step in and provide social services that are really our
responsibility as well.
I am not saying there is not a government role. Obviously, a safety
net is needed; but it can be a supplemental role. President Bush is not
proposing to have government replaced. He is proposing to have an
additional add-on and to add the hearts and compassion of the America
people on top of our tax money that is going to this. That is what we
are trying to do with this, is to expand the base of how we do social
services.
I want to read a couple of examples from World Magazine of which Dr.
Olasky, who I referred to earlier, was one of the original founders.
World Magazine is probably the best of the evangelical publications
now. It is kind of like a Time Magazine for Christians, for lack of a
better word. This week's issue, June 16, has a feature on compassionate
conservatism and particularly looking at a lot of things related to
this initiative of President Bush.
One of the articles is on Teen Challenge, and let me read a little
bit about this. Then I am going to relate these into the larger
question of how faith-based organizations and community solutions work.
Quote, ``Just tell them it is a spiritual bootcamp,'' responds the man
who runs the Teen Challenge. It is a 4-month induction phase to the 12-
month Teen Challenge program. The New Orleans center serves as the
ground level, weed-out program that grabs drug users off the street and
incubates them in Biblical teaching. Those who stay off drugs and
complete daily Bible lessons receive gold stamp certificates and a bus
ticket to another 8-month training center that offers intensive Bible
study and job skill training. Only 20 percent of the residents who
enter the Teen Challenge program graduate after 12 months. Of those
graduates, 86 percent remain drug-free 7 years after graduation,
according to a study done by the National Institute of Drug Abuse in
1975 and later confirmed by university studies in 1994 and 1999.
``At this place, we deal with the problem of sin, not its effects,''
says Mr. Pallitta. The only way to change sin is through the
deliverance power of Jesus Christ.
We had Teen Challenge at one of our committee hearings. They are one
of the only programs that have been steadily audited by different
groups who cannot believe their success rate because we are told, you
mean clean for 7 years? That is amazing compared to our drug programs.
It is a difficult question because it is clearly an overtly Christian
program. How do we deal with that in this Community Solutions Act and
the faith-based initiative? That is part of what I am going to talk
about as I develop tonight's Special Order.
Now here is another story. This one is in Dallas, a crime-infested
area in Dallas. It says, ``We use Biblical principles to help children
develop leadership skills,'' he said, explaining that there are no
neighborhoods or parks in the area; just 10,000 apartment units that
often host drug gangs and prostitution rings. These children are
exposed to so much. Everything you would not want your child to see is
right outside in the parking lot. It says that these children
participate in community service programs, in a youth choir that
performs at local nursing homes and malls. David Pruessner, a 45-year-
old lawyer volunteer who teaches chess, quote, ``You have to learn to
develop a strategy and think ahead.'' During the summer, he gives group
lessons to 20 students at a time using ten game boards and hand-made
wall charts but teaching about God is at the center of the program, for
Mr. Gaddis states that the gospel is the only thing that really changes
lives.
Now here is another story in this same issue of World Magazine on the
Good Samaritan Center, actually Good Samaritan House in Orlando, or
actually Sarasota, Florida. It says, at the Good Samaritan House, ``The
right direction begins with a set of simple, nonnegotiable rules.''
Residents must remain alcohol and drug free and accompany Mr. Cooley to
church and Bible study weekly. They must secure a full-time job or work
as day laborers at a local temporary agency until they find permanent
employment.
GSH residents must pay rent, $6 a night after their fifth free night
of shelter. While they may spend a little money on personal needs, the
men must save much of their earnings with the goal of becoming
economically independent of this house. The rules include in bed by
10:00; no foul language; no fighting; and no women, presumably at least
outside of marriage.
I wanted to illustrate some of these examples because you can see
that many of these groups are effective. How does this relate to the
government and how do we work through this question of religious
liberty in America, because it is illegal to use taxpayer dollars to do
proselytization or to do direct, overt funding of Christian activities
or any other religious activities
[[Page H3454]]
with taxpayer dollars. It is unconstitutional.
So how do we work through these? What would you think, from many
people's criticism of this program, is that this is the type of thing
that we are directly funding and we are directly funding the
proselytization, but that is not the case.
Let me walk through a little bit first some of the legal questions.
David Ackerman at the Congressional Research Service has probably done
the most work on this subject. His most recent is April 18, 2001,
analyzing this charitable choice part of the debate. There are three
parts to this that I want to illustrate in this section.
The first is what is happening now. As he says in this document, that
in the past, because contrary to public impression many faith-based
organizations, hundreds and thousands of them, currently are involved
in government. So what is this debate about? Well, the debate is that,
as he says, these organizations have in the past generally required
programs operated by religious organizations that receive public
funding in the form of grants or contracts to be essentially secular in
nature, essentially secular in nature. That means, for example,
religious symbols and art had to be removed; religious worship
instruction and proselytizing have been forbidden. Therefore, they are
not really when they are doing these religious organizations anymore.
So many religious organizations do not even apply to do social service
work in any government grant program because they basically have to
become, as is stated here, essentially secular in nature.
So what is the President proposing to do, and what are we going to
look at here in the House? People think of it as just this charitable
choice, but it is to help States set up their own versions of faith-
based and community initiatives. It is to help implement the charitable
choice measures. It is to help pilot programs in this, but it is also a
whole series of tax initiatives including giving nonitemizers the right
to claim charitable deductions; to permit tax-free withdrawals from
IRAs; to have individual development accounts; to encourage States to
adopt charitable gift tax credits; to increase the charitable donation
from corporations to 10 to 15 percent. It is a series of tax incentives
as well, and then also technical assistance to small community and
faith-based organizations.
So are those things unconstitutional?
Now what David Ackerman writes, and this is the fundamental kind of
guts of the argument, he says, more particularly, the Supreme Court now
appears to interpret the establishment clause in a manner that does not
automatically disqualify pervasively sectarian institutions from
participating in direct aid programs and perceives them as able to
honor restrictions to secular use even without intrusive government
monitoring. But the court's revised interpretation still requires that
direct aid be limited to secular use by recipient organizations and the
court has left open the possibility that other limitations may apply as
well. Moreover, all of the justices have expressed doubt that direct
money grants to pervasively religious entities can pass constitutional
muster.
The standards governing indirect aid, however, do not appear to have
changed. Some aspects of the charitable choice proposals that have been
enacted seem to satisfy these requirements. The provisions do not give
religious institutions any special entitlement public aid but simply
require that they be considered eligible on the same basis as
nonreligious institutions.
In addition, they all bar the use of public aid for sectarian
worship, instruction and proselytization; i.e. they require that the
aid be used only for secular purposes. Then it is constitutional.
What we have been working through the last week in particular is some
concerns regarding the original drafting of the bill and whether it met
these constitutional questions.
Now let me illustrate some of the types of things that we are working
with. To give you an example, there was a report that an official of
the Department of Housing and Urban Development wrote to the bishop in
charge of the St. Vincent de Paul Housing Center in San Francisco
asking them to rename the building the Mr. Vincent de Paul Center
because they got a government grant. That is how ridiculous some of
this is getting.
In another case that was reported in the Washington Post January 28,
2001, in a George Will column, a city agency notified the local branch
of the Salvation Army that it could be awarded a contract to help the
homeless only on the condition that the organization remove the word
``salvation'' from its name.
Now those are extreme cases, but more generally the problem has
become, as Dr. Amy Sherman has said, charitable choice, most important
effect thus far, is that it made the collaboration plausible for those
within government and the faith community who had previously assumed
such partnering was somehow outside the bounds of constitutionality
under their misguided interpretation of the first amendment.
In other words, much of this has not been unconstitutional. It is
that people did not realize it was constitutional. So that was kind of
attempting to address some of the constitutional questions.
Now let me explain and review again this mix of what we are trying to
do with the Community Solutions Act.
First, and this is first because it is the most dollars and the most
important, it is not government. It is the private sector.
Secondly, it is tax incentives, because the best way to help the
private sector is to encourage more charitable giving. Then we do not
have the debate about whether or not government is involved or not, and
there are more dollars than the government will have in it.
{time} 2100
Thirdly, it is technical assistance for small communities and
churches. There are lots of Hispanic and black churches in urban
American that have 15 to 50 people in them. They do not have CPAs and
accountants in their churches. They do not know how and when the
government grants are coming. They need technical assistance, so, one,
they do not get sued, and, secondly, so they can figure out how to be
eligible for the grants.
Then we come to charitable choice. Let me go through each of those a
little bit in particular here. First let me deal with the question of
corporate philanthropy. This has become highlighted because of a speech
that President Bush gave at the University of Notre Dame, as a graduate
I would have to say arguably the best university in the United States.
But he chose that to address the question of why corporations have
not been allowing, they do not allow their corporations to give to
faith-based. In other words, we can complain about government, but Dr.
Michael Joyce, who has been a leader in a lot of these things, Michael
Joyce was with the Bradley Foundation and is now working with the
Capital Research Center and other groups, and he is the person who
called this to the attention of President Bush.
Listen to some of our biggest corporations in America and their
standard for corporate giving, and then we can talk about the problem
of faith-based, but let us first look at what is happening in the
private sector. When the government starts to separate faith, but it is
even the private sector that separates.
General Motors, number one in corporate giving, declares
contributions are ``generally not provided to religious
organizations.''
The Ford Motor Company fund, the number three corporation, ``as a
general policy does not support the following religious or sectarian
programs for religious purposes. That is in the same undesirable
category as animal rights organizations or beauty or talent contests.''
So Ford and General Motors do not allow their funding to go to faith-
based organizations.
The fourth largest, Exxon-Mobil, explains, ``we do not provide funds
for political or religious causes.'' That is not exactly true, since
the company touts its support of environmentalists, advocacy groups for
women and groups performing ``public research.'' But no money for
faith-based organizations.
But IBM, the number six corporation, ``does not make corporate
donations or grants from corporate philanthropic
[[Page H3455]]
fund to individuals, political, labor religious or fraternal
organizations or sports groups,'' and many faith-based groups also have
trouble with the last two words of IBM's ban which says that they will
not give any money to organizations that discriminate, for example, on
gender and sexual orientation, which means faith-based organizations
like the Catholic church that do not allow female priests or any
religion, which is most major religions, including Christianity,
traditional orthodox Judaism, Muslims, on homosexuality. So they are
ruled out because they have ``discrimination.''
So we have General Motors, Ford, Exxon-Mobil, IBM, saying no
donations to faith-based groups. No wonder we are having a problem with
faith-based groups getting funded. As Michael Joyce told the President,
according to this article, ``I said the President is both the President
of the government, but also President of the Nation. There is a huge
private sector that spends billions emulating what the government
does.'' So our lack and kind of our trying to separate ourselves from
faith has resulted in the private sector also separating themselves
from faith.
Now one of our colleagues here, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr.
Green), has developed legislation which I am thrilled to cosponsor, and
I praise him for his initiative, to try to have Congress go on record
saying this is wrong out of the private sector. We need the private
sector and the corporate sector leading in the effort to try to get
more money to the people who are effective at the grassroots or
actually changing people's lives.
Now, the second part of this is the tax incentives. I was in an
earlier life in the eighties the Republican staff director of the House
Committee on Children, Youth and Families, when Dan Coats was the
ranking member, former Congressman and Senator.
We came to the conclusion after looking at so many of the problems in
the United States that there was going to be a limitation on how far
the Federal Government and even state governments and local governments
are going to be able to go in assisting in solving our tremendous
problems in this country, and that the best way to achieve this was
going to be through faith-based organizations and the best way to
achieve that was going to be through assisting in the Tax Code.
Let me give you an illustration. It does not matter whether the state
has a Republican Governor or a Democratic Governor or who controls this
Congress. We have not increased funds outside of education for most of
the social problems in America to keep up with the problems of child
abuse, with runaways.
There is not a probation department in America that does not realize
that their caseload per probation officer is increasing. In Indiana, we
are now entering, I think it is our 13th year of Democratic governors,
and we have seen more money for education, but not for rehabilitation,
not for a lot of the family services, not for child abuse, not for how
we deal with the people when they are in prisons and try to help them;
that no matter which party you are at the state level, we are a little
slow here in Washington, you are saying the only way we are going to be
able to address these problems is if we can extend the government
dollars and get the faith-based groups involved.
The most direct way to do that, I have an act that we call the Give
Act to try to increase the value of the charitable deduction. When I
worked for Senator Coats, we developed the charitable tax credit.
Senator Santorum and Senator Lieberman in the Senate have introduced
this Community Solutions Act as a tax bill, and as I mentioned earlier,
it is part of our Community Solutions Act in the House. Arguably the
most important.
Now, I am disappointed that we have cut back the President's proposal
so much than the non-itemizers, but I understand we are under
tremendous budget pressures. I am still enthusiastic about the bill. I
will take whatever we can get.
But I am disappointed that we were able to come up with tax cuts for
other groups, but not where we really need it in a lot of the social
programs where the people are hurting the most, and I hope we can
continue to increase that over the number of years, and I hope the
President will keep the pressure on in the Senate, and in the next few
years to increase that if our surplus continues to come in the way it
is.
But the tax incentives and the private sector philanthropy, plus the
efforts of Steve Goldsmith and now Les Linkowsky in a lot of
everything, from AmeriCorps to a lot of the other public service
things, in addition to the President's proposals in each department to
see if the departments can look at how they can extend staff to help on
faith-based, those are actually the biggest part and the most important
part of the Community Solutions Act.
The next part is this technical assistance question. We have $25
million I believe in the bill to go to HHS. The President is also, I
believe next week, having mayors in to talk about what they can do at
the local level. We are encouraging states to set up initiatives.
It does not all have to come out of Washington. Most of the best
execution and the better ideas do not come out of Washington, they come
up towards Washington. Part of this is how are we going to help? The
fundamental thing we are trying to address here really is how do we
help those who need the help most and what is the gap?
One of the gaps is that we see at the grassroots level, even in the
worst cases, as my friend Bob Woodson always points out, all you guys
down there seem to do is focus on the failures. Why do you not focus on
the successes?
When you look at the successes, in the worst places, I got challenged
once by Bob when I first came in as a staff director and he said,
``Don't be a typical white guy who sits on your duff and pronounces
what is wrong in our urban centers. Go in and talk to people who are
successful and figure out what is working.''
When I have been into Harlem and Brooklyn and inner-city L.A. and in
Detroit and Washington and Baltimore and most of the major cities of
the United States over the last 15 years as a staffer and Member and
talked to people, in the worst places possible, there is always a
success story there. There is always somebody who is not failing, who
is succeeding. At least 40 percent, even in the worst cases, are
succeeding.
I remember one study by, I think it was David Farrington out of
England, that if your parents are not married, one of them is gone from
your home, they both have been in prison, they are both abusing drugs,
neither are employed, and the chances of that child getting caught up
in the juvenile delinquency system are only 33 percent. What happened
to the other 67 percent?
Well, usually they got involved in some sort of a mentoring and
faith-based hook. The fact is that success stories are when there are
two parents involved, or when there a faith-based mentor involved, or a
church involved, and there is work. We know what the keys to success
are. We have to build on those successes, rather than trying to
reinforce the failures.
Now, part of this is how do we help those little organizations?
Pastor River's organization in Boston, they talk about how they have
helped reduce the number of killings on the streets and so on, and you
hear all these government programs bragging about it. But most
government programs abandon that area and their neighborhoods in
downtown Boston and the inner-city areas about 5:30 or 5 o'clock, maybe
even at 4:30. The people who are left there are the people in the
community and the churches.
But they do not get the grants. How do they know between June 15 and
June 30 there is a grant on juvenile delinquency? How do they have the
time or knowledge to write out the grant proposals? What we do in small
business? For example, when I was in my 2-year MBA program at Notre
Dame, one of the things we did in small business was we went out as
students, and part of our requirement was to go out and help people
prepare the grant requests.
We have microenterprise centers to help small businesses and start-up
businesses get started in a lot of these communities to do that. Why do
not we have that in social services? That is partly what the President
is talking about in his compassion fund. That is partly what the
President is talking about when he says the agencies need to help that.
[[Page H3456]]
We need to have the creativity and the entrepreneurship and the
reinforcement in the social areas if we are really serious about
addressing the problems, like we do in trying to provide jobs for
people. The two things go hand-in-hand. Part of the solutions are
economic and part of them are in here.
Broken families, you cannot educate somebody or you cannot educate a
child if they are being beaten at home. If they are worried about
whether their parents are going to get divorced, if they do not know
where they are going to get their evening meal, it is pretty tough to
educate them. It is a social problem and an economic problem, and we
have to address both of themselves.
I hope our universities, one of my dreams is that some of the
universities would say, look, we are going to work with some tech
centers, we are going to have our students spend some volunteer times
in the communities helping these small groups figure out how to apply
for some of the grants, how to raise the private money from the
philanthropic groups as they become more sensitive to the need for
faith-based organizations.
So that is the technical assistance questions, because we have to
come up with some creative ways to address that.
Now let me move to the most controversial part, which is charitable
choice. So the basic question is, if someone chooses to attend a faith-
based program, why should that be denied? That is really the
fundamental question here. If you want to go in a drug treatment
program and go to a faith-based program, why should that be denied?
For example, if you want to go to Salvation Army center for the
homeless, why should you be denied that, if you want to go to the
rescue mission. If you have a child care program and you want to go to
a Catholic sponsored child care center, this include a hospice for the
elderly, respite care, housing for people dying or trying to recover
from AIDS, programs for juvenile delinquents.
If you want to go to a faith-based programs, why should you not be
able to go to a faith-based program? Faith is a big part of most
American's lives, whether it is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist,
whatever it is, why should you be denied, particularly at the time of
your greatest crisis, any access to faith if you so desire?
Let me go through some of the difficulties with this. As I said
before, one of the questions is, can you use my money, for example, I
am a committed evangelical Christian, can you use my money to fund a
Muslim program? Quite frankly, I do not want to fund the teaching of
the Koran, but the money cannot be used for proselytization, and if we
are trying to figure out how to help somebody who is dying from AIDS
and provide a hospice shelter for them or recovery center when other
people will not care for them, and they are Muslim and they want to go
to a faith-based organization, and I am not being forced into that, and
they cannot use my money for proselytization, why should I care, if
that is what is going to be most effective and what that person wants?
Now, a key part of that, which is one of the things we have been
battling about in this bill, is you have to have a choice. Let me give
you a couple of illustrations with this.
I have a son, Zachary, who is 7th grade moving into 8th grade. Let us
say his junior high has an after-school program, and so many of us are
used to thinking of it in a different way, so let me phrase it this
way. Let us say that the group that wins the bid for the after-school
program is Muslim.
He comes home at night and tells me, hey, after we got started with
the program we bowed down to Allah and had a prayer to Allah, and then
a little later we had a study on the Koran.
I call up the school and say, what in the world are you doing,
putting my son in an after-school program where they are bowing down to
Allah and studying the Koran? They say, oh, that part was done with
private money, not with Federal money.
Ha, I do not care. My son was in the middle of the program. You mean,
he would have had to step out and have a big mess so he did not get up
and embarrass himself in front of his friends? Look, if this is an
after-school program and everybody is in there, you cannot mix it that
way.
But now what if there were two after-school programs? What if he had
the option of which one he wanted to go to, and there was a secular
option, why should not those kids who wanted a Muslim program be able
to go to a Muslim program? Not really a very good reason why they
cannot, but you do have to have the option or clearly it is
unconstitutional in my opinion.
Let me give you another illustration. A nutrition site, say, in Fort
Wayne Indiana, not one of the more international cities of the world,
but changing like the rest of the country. We have had a lot of influx
of immigrants. Most people think, oh, Mexican and Central American
Spanish-speaking people.
No, we have a problem, because in some of our areas, a problem in the
sense the fire department talked to me about language problems, but it
was not about the Spanish language. It was about the fact we have had
the largest population of dissident Burmese in the United States in
Fort Wayne, and one of the housing complexes on the north side of town
is about half Burmese. Interestingly, what Chief Davey was talking to
me about was the other half roughly of this complex, which are Bosnian.
{time} 2115
Now, if we put a nutrition site in Fort Wayne, Indiana; admittedly, a
mostly Anglo, mostly Protestant and Catholic city, but in that area, if
you do a nutrition site and it was faith-based it would probably either
be Buddhist or Muslim. Now let us say you are a Christian in that
neighborhood and the only nutrition site is either Buddhist or Muslim,
you have a problem. But if you have a choice, which is critical to the
faith-based option here, it is not a problem. If the Bosnians who come
to Fort Wayne organize themselves, and I am not saying they do, but if
they organize themselves around a Muslim church, or if the Buddhists
are more comfortable with their faith in having something, say a
respite care center that teaches the pacifistic and relaxing attributes
of Buddhism and that is what they want for hospice care, and there is
an alternative for the other people in the neighborhood, why is that
wrong? It is part of their institutional strength of what a community
builds upon. Faith cannot be separated from life for most people,
regardless of what their faith is, somewhere around 80 to 90 percent of
Americans of all types and all heritages and all religions.
So one of the things is we clearly have to have a choice, but we have
to understand, those of us who are in the majority, that we are not
always going to be in the majority in a given neighborhood and that
religious liberty means religious liberty. Now, one problem that some
conservatives are having with this is that say, what do you mean a
Buddhist group can be funded? Hey, that is what religious liberty is.
If this organization is the best to address the problems of that
community and people want to choose that, that means it can be Buddhist
or Muslim. It does not just mean that Christian organizations are going
to be funded in this bill; it means that any religious organization, as
long as there is another provider, has the flexibility to do that,
because faith means faith. It does not mean one kind of sectarian faith
over another kind of sectarian faith. It has to be balanced. There has
to be equal opportunity. And that goes in both directions.
If I am saying that if you want to have a Christian program or a
Jewish program or a Muslim program or a Buddhist program, and you have
to have a secular alternative, you ought to also have the opportunity,
if there is a secular program, to be able to opt out and choose a
faith-based program. It goes in both directions. We keep hearing here
how you cannot have people forced into a faith-based program. Well,
they should not be forced into a secular program either if they want to
opt out and take that choice, for example, in drug treatment.
Now, one other thing that we have been debating here, and this is
another very ticklish situation, is should the grants go directly to
the church or should we set up 501(c)(3)s, meaning an independent
entity much like Catholic charities or Catholic social services,
Lutheran social services. Those are big
[[Page H3457]]
churches, big denominational setups. Okay. Now, let us take an African
American church in inner city Philadelphia like one of our witnesses
was that is small, maybe 70 people. How do they set up a 501(c)(3)?
That is our technical assistance question, and this is a very difficult
question, because we need to help them set up a 501(c)(3), and what I
have become aware of as I have worked more with this issue and I have
carried charitable choice bills to the floor now about four times, is
we have to be very careful we do not suck the church into a very ill-
defined and increasingly changing court decisionmaking process on what
constitutes the flexibility of religious freedom.
Now, for example, the bottom line is I do not want to sink the church
in the name of faith, and that could happen here if we are not careful,
because there are very difficult questions. Would the church be covered
by minimum wage laws? Some say of course it should be covered by
minimum wage laws, but what does that mean? We have run into this with
a number of religious children's homes. What it means is you get paid
for 40 hours and if there is a problem at your home and the kids need
help and your 40 hours is up and the church does not have more money to
pay you, you have to leave, regardless of what the problem is, because
you are not allowed to volunteer. That was meant to protect workers in
the United States from corporations taking advantage of them and
saying, okay, your 40 hours is done, now I need you to stay a little
bit of overtime and we are not going to count it because we are not
going to pay you. It was meant to protect workers, but it has never
applied to churches, because many people in the churches are volunteers
and working for the church. Probably there are very few church
secretaries, very few church staffers who do not both get paid for a
certain number of hours and then volunteer when there is a revival,
volunteer to take kids to an amusement park. You cannot do that if you
lose your religious exemption.
Another tough question. As I mentioned earlier, some religions, some
major religions, both in Protestant and in Catholic faiths and big
parishes and churches believe in a very tough thing to say today, but
in sex discrimination, they believe that in certain positions, there
should not be male nuns, for example, and do they have the right to
maintain their religious freedom. If the church gets sucked into that
and gets government money, this is a tough, tough question.
One of the most hotly debated subjects in America today is
homosexuality, and many, many, if not most faiths, still believe that
that is morally wrong. They have the right in America as a church to
have that view. If we put government money directly into the church, we
endanger them, depending on where the court moves, on this subject, if
they have a 501(c)(3) as a separate entity that receives it. The
clarity is still being sorted through, but the church mission itself
will not be at risk.
Now, the closer the 501(c)(3) is to a direct faith initiative; for
example, Catholic schools basically are exempt also for the most part
because of the religious exemption, because the mission of the school
is very faith based. But the degree you move, for example, to an
exercise class or if a church moves to say a Pepsi bottling plant, the
farther they move away from their basic mission, the more they are
covered by sex discrimination laws, minimum wage laws, and a very
difficult one, hate crimes laws, because how we define that in America
has become increasingly flexible and puts those who have strong views
on certain moral issues in potential risk. These are crucial matters of
religious freedom and how we draft this bill and move through is very
important, because we do not want to destroy the church.
Now, a fundamental question here is, and I would suspect that many
churches will not apply. Nobody has to apply for a government grant. If
any church is fearful that they could be drawn in, then do not apply.
It is very simple. You do not have to get caught up in this. But I
believe, as in multiple votes here generally speaking with a margin of
about 290 Members supporting, it has ranged from probably 240 to 300
and some, have supported charitable choice, because we believe that
ultimately, it is going to be impossible to address the problems in
this country without the help of faith-based initiatives, and I commend
the President for his Community Solutions Act.
Let me finish with two things. One is a further quote from Michael
Joyce. It is an article about him, and I will insert the full article
from World Magazine into the Record at the end of my remarks.
Joyce says, ``Ordinary people understand this really well. We take
human nature into account. We understand humans as they were wrought by
God. These people wish to remake them,'' he means the government, ``and
rearrange them. It is like that line in a Bob Marley song: `Don't let
them rearrange you. That is why they fail.' ''.
They are not accounting for the basic human emotions and needs and
beliefs of the American people in many of these government programs.
One of the most moving things that I have had happen to me in my life
was the first time I visited Freddie Garcia and Juan Rivera at the
Victory Life Temple program for drug addicts that they operate in San
Antonio and now throughout Texas. Admittedly, this illustrates several
things. This program would not be eligible for a direct government
grant, period, because it is overtly faith. They would benefit from
corporate philanthropy, they would benefit from the tax exemptions, but
this is why so many of us feel that faith-based things have to be
involved in any programs.
I have just visited Johns Hopkins where they told me you could not go
off crack cocaine without tremendous effort. I met in one day at least
150 former addicts who went cold turkey because they gave their lives
to Jesus Christ. I met them in housing complexes. I met them in
churches. I met them in neighborhoods. It was extraordinary. They told
me over and over, we were dealers. Generally speaking, when I would
come into the different housing complexes or places where they were,
they would say, can we get you a drink of water, and I would say either
yes or no, depending on if it was a hot day in San Antonio, and they
would say, can I tell you how I met Jesus Christ? I was lost and he
turned my life around. They do not operate a drug treatment program,
they operate a turn-your-life-around program which gets people off
drugs. Nobody disputes that they have the best success record.
Later that evening, after having met, like I say, 150 to 200 people,
I was with Juan Rivera who was telling me his story, how he went cold
turkey, and we were in this little building with the sandy streets
around it, he talked about this tree where he first read the Bible and
he was in his backyard, at the backyard of that, and I pictured kind of
a woods and it was just one barren tree with sand everywhere, a little
different than the Midwest, and he said how he just is so thankful
because he was on multiple drugs, how his life was a mess, like many of
the others had told me, and he said, I was going to be a dead man. He
said, now my life has changed. And I said, I am really embarrassed,
because I have had a great life and I am not thankful enough. And he
said, you should be ashamed and I said, well, I really am ashamed. He
said, my dream is that some day my kids can have the opportunity that
you have.
When we see people who are hurting in drug abuse and we see people
who do not have opportunities; part of the reason we started government
programs was in the area of AIDS because many people would not help
people with AIDS because they thought they could catch it and only the
churches went out because they were confident of their souls, so they
were willing to take the risk, so they reached out, and that is partly
how the government got involved in faith-based organizations, because
only the Christians and the Buddhists were early on too, in the area of
AIDS.
Then in the area of the homeless. We do not have enough dollars for
the homeless. Organizations like the Salvation Army and the rescue
missions and churches reached out to the homeless. We are going to tell
these people, because faith is mixed in, you do not even get the option
of going to faith based?
This has been a tragedy to watch how America went from Founding
Fathers, from Congresses where we put Moses there and ``In God We
Trust'' behind us, to the point where our major corporations in America
will not even let
[[Page H3458]]
their contributions go to faith based; where we have to fight about the
Tax Code, where we have to try to get help for faith based and people
object. If there is a guarantee you have another option, and if there
is a protection, that people would still oppose faith-based groups
getting in. You either care about people and want to help them in every
way possible.
Mr. Speaker, I support the government programs that try to reach
people, but we also need to strengthen our private sector. I hope that
we can pass soon, and I am thrilled that President Bush has made this
such a key part of his agenda, and I hope the House and Senate will
have the courage to move forward with this.
[From World, June 16, 2001]
Front-Line Reports
(By Marvin Olasky)
One journalism newsletter complained recently that
reporters have overquoted me during this year's debate about
President Bush's faith-based initiative. I agree. Reporters
shouldn't be basing their stories on what Barry Lynn of
Americans United for Separation of Church and State says.
They shouldn't be basing their stories on what I say. They
should be going out into the field and talking with people
fighting poverty at the front lines.
That's what WORLD is trying to do this year with stories of
four kinds--and over the next 22 pages you'll see examples of
each. The first kind illuminates the debates going on within
religious anti-poverty groups as they think through how to
respond to the faith-based initiative. As the following story
about Teen Challenge shows, evangelicals are not easily led,
and the questioning is intense and good.
The second kind documents the perseverance of some social
entrepreneurs. Journalists not familiar with their activities
sometimes assume that the poor must wait on the lords of
government. The articles beginning on p. 76 show how
individuals--Mo Leverett in New Orleans, Ray and Carolyn
Cooley in Sarasota, and Vincent Gaddis in Dallas--have
created programs that inspire both those in need and
volunteers willing to help.
The third variety extends the boundaries of compassionate
conservatism to areas sometimes seem as apart from it. The
day-to-day work of crisis pregnancy centers is probably the
clearest example of compassionate conservatism around:
Counselors suffer with individuals in need, working to save
bodies and souls. Our story on p. 84 tells more about the
major technological boost those counselors are now receiving.
While we roam the countryside we try through a fourth kind
of story to cover the debate inside the Beltway, but even
there we want to go beyond the usual suspect themes. In that
vein we conclude this section with a look at visionary Mike
Joyce's battle to get corporate and foundation givers to drop
their frequent discrimination against religious groups.
____
[From World, June 16, 2001]
Teen Challenge's Newest Challenge
(By Candi Cushman)
``If all you're looking for is an oil change, this isn't
the place. Because the oil will get dirty again,'' says dark-
haired Enzo Pallitta, speaking with a thick New Jersey accent
and dramatic hand mannerisms. ``Listen closely,'' he says,
leaning over his desk and staring at his listener. ``This is
not just about getting clean. This is about changing your
lifestyle.''
Mr. Pallitta isn't selling cars. But as an ex-heroin addict
turned Christian counselor, he doesn't mind high-pressuring
the addicts who walk through his door. ``I don't like to give
them time. I've seen so many guys walk out the door, get
shot, or pop a pill and overdose. I'm trying to reach them
before the cycle begins again.''
After drifting through six secular treatment centers, Mr.
Pallitta broke his own cycle in 1995 by checking into Teen
Challenge, a Christian drug-rehabilitation program. Founded
40 years ago by a Pentecostal minister, Teen Challenge has
over 300 worldwide affiliates, including 147 U.S. chapters.
At the New Orleans affiliate, Mr. Pallitta and six other ex-
addicts run a street-front operation in the heart of the
Ninth Ward ghetto. Their office--a weathered, two-story
clapboard home--faces a grungy concrete bar called Paradise
Lounge and rows of dilapidated wooden homes whose occupants
sit in metal chairs beneath brightly striped awnings.
This morning's walk-in--a thin blond man in his late 20s
with long sideburns and bleary eyes--slumps in a chair across
from Mr. Pallitta and stares at the wall. He can't seem to
kick his six-year heroin habit, he says, and his parents
don't know how to help him. ``I stayed away from it for five
days, but I crashed this weekend. . . . I need help, but I'm
worried my dad won't like this place. He wanted me to go to a
boot camp.''
``Just tell him it's a spiritual boot camp,'' responds Mr.
Pallitta. As the four-month ``induction phase'' to the 12-
month Teen Challenge program, the New Orleans center serves
as a ground-level, weed-out program that grabs drug users off
the street and incubates them in biblical teaching. Those who
stay off drugs and complete daily Bible lessons receive gold-
stamped certificates and a bus ticket to another eight-month
``training center'' that offers intensive Bible study and
job-skills training.
Only 20 percent of residents who enter the Teen Challenge
program graduate after 12 months. Of those graduates, 86
percent remain drug free seven years after graduation,
according to a study done by the National Institute of Drug
Abuse in 1975 and later confirmed by university studies in
1994 and 1999. ``At this place we deal with the problem--
sin--not its effect,'' says Mr. Pallitta. ``And the only
way to change sin is through the deliverance power of
Jesus Christ.''
Drug addicts aren't the only ones undergoing change at Teen
Challenge. As a poster child for President Bush's faith-based
initiative, the organization has received unprecedented media
attention in recent months, and as name recognition increases
so does scrutiny. Critics note that many staff members are
ex-addicts whose only degree is a Teen Challenge certificate.
That, worries the liberal group People for the American Way,
``could nullify state regulations for substance abuse
professionals by requiring states to recognize religious
education as equivalent to any secular course work.''
The complaint marks the latest round of volleys fired at
President Bush's efforts to allow faith-based social-service
programs to compete for federal funding. At first, left-wing
groups argued that putting Chris-drenched programs like Teen
Challenge on a level playing field with secular programs
amounted to state-funded ``proselytism.'' John Dilulio, head
of the White House faith-based office, placated them in
February and March by guaranteeing that programs like Teen
Challenge wouldn't be eligible for grants. But after
conservative pressure forced him to reverse that policy,
opponents discovered another buzzword, quality control. At
issue is how much oversight Uncle Sam should have over
Christian groups that accept funding.
As a preemptive strike, Teen Challenge leaders have pushed
voucher-style funding and prodded their own centers to adopt
higher standards. The question is, can Teen Challenge accept
more regulations without diminishing the grassroots flavor
that makes it so effective?
All Teen Challenge affiliates currently follow 80 standards
outlined in a 28-page manual published by the organization's
national office in Missouri. Affiliates must keep written job
descriptions and evaluations of each staff member, maintain
student files for at least five years, and record each
discipline ``incident'' and individual counseling session.
They must also adhere to their own states' health and safety
codes and pay for annual independent audits. To guarantee
adherence, the national office collects monthly financial
reports and conducts on-site inspections every four years.
This self-regulation is burdensome enough without adding
onerous oversight from Uncle Sam, says Greg Dill, the New
Orleans director. ``I'm already struggling to pay for the
audit, which costs me $3,000 each year,'' he said. ``If
they throw in another 10 regulations, that would be fine.
But if they throw another manual on the table, that's
another matter.''
Mr. Dill's center is cramped but clean. A tiny reception
area doubles as a dining room filled with plastic round
tables, fish tanks, and maroon couches. At the door, two
parakeets greet visitors with cat calls they learned from the
residents. Upstairs, 14 men wait in line for three showers
and share three bedrooms, but each has his own bunk and
closet space. Residents begin their day at 7:00 a.m. with
group prayer, breakfast, and household chores followed by
eight hours of mandatory Bible study, chapel, and choir
practice, even if they can't sing. (``They have to learn to
praise God instead of just asking Him to fix their
problems,'' says one employee.)
At 8:30 a.m., they squeeze around an upstairs conference
table covered with Bibles and spiral notebooks. Behind a
small wooden podium stands Brother David Sampson, a 6-foot-2,
220-pounder with lots of gold rings on his fingers and a
heavy silver cross handing from his neck. ``Some of you guys
figure, OK, this is Christian and that's good as long as I'm
getting out of jail,'' says Brother Sampson. ``but the real
jail is not a place; it's your mind. And if your spirit
doesn't change, then your mind won't change.'' Brother
Sampson ends his lesson with a commentary on the book of
Romans: ``That guy Paul, he knew something.'' he concludes.
``He knew that no one becomes a Christian by accident. God
never tricked a person into becoming his follower. This isn't
a Burger King, `have-it-your-way' religion.''
As the on-site ``dean of students.'' Brother Sampson
teaches and counsels drug addicts eight hours a day. But he
doesn't have a college degree. His qualifications are 15
years of street experience as a homeless crack addict and
three years of Bible classes. After graduating from Florida's
Teen Challenge training institute in 1995, he became a
certified teacher making $50 a week. (``It's not that we're
opposed to hiring MSWs [master of social work], it's just
that most MSWs didn't go to school to make $50 a week,'' said
Mr. Dill, who also graduated from the program. ``This is a
ministry, not an occupation.'')
Mr. Dill and his colleagues are what national Teen
Challenge leaders call ``street fighters''--ground troops
working on the front lines to rescue prisoners from
enemy territory. Street fighters aren't concerned with
national strategy or whether the battalions are
appropriately equipped; they simply want to save lives at
any cost. ``Without them this organization would just be
another
[[Page H3459]]
institution. They are the only ones who can reach the
people we want to reach,'' said Dave Scotch, the Teen
Challenge accreditator, Problem is, most feisty street
fighters tend to resist outside mandates. ``We're still
trying to resist outside mandates. ``We're still trying to
get them to wear our national logo,'' sighed Mr. Scotch.
And now he wants to convince them to accept more
regulations so Teen Challenge can compete for faith-based
funding. Texas became the first testing ground recently as
some 40 Teen Challenge directors met for a southwest regional
conference at the gleaming white Calvary Temple building in
Irving, a Dallas suburb. ``If Teen Challenge is going to
climb the mountain, we've got to learn to live with change,''
insisted Teen Challenge's president, John Castellini: ``Say,
change.'' Some 40 directors mumbled, ``Change.''
A balding minister with bushy eyebrows and round cheeks,
Mr. Castellini was trying to unite the independent-minded
street fighters in a willingness to apply for government
funds in order to expand their programs. He started out
treading lightly, first telling a few introductory jokes
about his grandchildren and reading a news article about how
hotels earn five-star ratings. Then he levied the final
punchline: ``You just think you've been inspected now. But
just wait until this faith-based initiative takes off,'' he
said, adding that some centers might need the pressure: ``The
parents are the real inspectors. Can I be very honest? I
would not drop off my son or daughter at some Teen
Challenges.''
That comment irritated some directors, who still have fresh
memories of their less-than-glamorous beginnings. ``When we
first started, our place was dirty and run down, and all of
our staff were wearing 15 different hats. But you know what?
People got saved, delivered, and set free,'' argued Jim
Heurich, director of the San Antonio affiliate. ``My concern
is that we are going to be so evaluated that we are evaluated
out of business.''
``Go Jim,'' whispered someone across the room. Mr.
Castellini remained unfazed. ``We should treat the government
like any other private donor and be accountable,'' he said.
``The government consists of taxpayers.'' Mr. Castellini
believes the extra funding and added legal protection
provided by faith-based legislation will outweigh the cost of
conformance to regulations as long as those regulations don't
change the Christian emphasis. But local affiliates remain
skeptical.
Mr. Heurich has good reason to feel skittish. In 1995,
state officials tried to shut down his San Antonio center,
even though it was not state licensed, did not receive
government funding, and defined itself as a ``discipleship
program.'' After a much-publicized rally at the Alamo (see
WORLD, July 29, 1995), then-Gov. Bush came to the rescue,
pushing through a state law exempting faith-based social
programs from state interference. That was the beginning of
his compassionate conservative campaign.
So far, that campaign hasn't helped other Teen Challenge
centers. Florida director Jerry Nance received food stamps
for 17 centers and 650 residents every year until officials
suddenly withdrew assistance in 1999, announcing that
unlicensed facilities no longer qualified. Here's the catch:
To obtain the license, Mr. Nance had to replace Bible lessons
with group psychotherapy sessions and hire state-approved
counselors. Explaining that his program was a ``discipleship
model, not a medical model,'' he refused and lost $100,000.
``Does this make sense to you?'' Mr. Nance asked a White
House drug abuse committee last year. ``Individuals can live
in the streets, use drugs, rob people, and still get food
stamps. But if they decide to get help and come into a faith
-based program, they lose their stamps.''
At the heart of the dilemma is a difference in diagnosis:
State-funded groups treat drug addiction as a disease,
prescribing medical treatments and psychotherapy. But Teen
Challenge says the disease began with a condition of the
heart and prescribes a relationship with Jesus Christ. That
difference threatens some people: ``This [faith-based
funding] will roll us back 60 years, right back to when
people thought you were an alcoholic merely because you
didn't accept Jesus as your personal savior,'' fretted Bill
McColl, spokesman for the National Association of Drug and
Alcohol Counselors.
But Mr. Castellini says he just wants the right to offer
his solut9ion alongside others: ``We're not asking for a
handout. We just want a level playing field so we can take
care of people's basic needs.'' With that in mind, he is also
offering his own ground troops a compromise: In exchange for
federal vouchers for food stamps, emergency medical
assistance, and lodging, Teen Challenge will accept
reasonable government safety, health, and accountability
standards. (``Just because you're saying the name Jesus
doesn't mean you should build fire traps,'' he said.)
Mr. Castellini, however, emphasized that Teen Challenge
will not accept extra regulations--like teacher education
requirements or required psychotherapy sessions--that
ultimately undercut faith-based initiative by eliminating
differences between religious and secular entities.
Ultimately, he said, the street fighters will have the final
say: ``We will only lead those who want to be led.''
____
[From World, June 16, 2001]
Leading Young Leaders
(By Candi Cushman)
Crowded with nondescript business buildings, dingy low-
income apartments, and well-lit liquor stores, the northeast
Dallas business district hardly seems a place for children.
But every day at 3:30 p.m., backpack-laden children fill the
sidewalks and weave their way through condemned apartment
buildings and asphalt parking lots.
Like an urban deliverer, 42-year-old Vincent Gaddis stands
on a street corner welcoming them into the tree-lined
courtyard of the Fellowship Bible Church of Dallas. Wearing a
navy cap and matching dress slacks, he escorts them into an
office decorated with red and green round tables and wooden
bookshelves full of Bible videos and Dr. Seuss books. Through
his Youth Believing in Change ministry, Mr. Gaddis provides
tutoring, Bible studies, and free meals for some 150 inner-
city kids a year.
``We use biblical principles to help these children develop
leadership skills,'' he said, explaining that there are no
neighborhoods or parks in the area--just 10,000 apartment
units that often host drug gangs and prostitution rings.
``These children are exposed to so much. Everything you
wouldn't want your child to see is right outside in the
parking lot.''
Mr. Gaddis, who is black, works with Hispanic children in a
predominantly white church. But God was the original
Deliverer, he insits--and he first heard the tune 12 years
ago while pointing a revolver to his head. Mr. Gaddis at
first made the Dean's List every semester at his college in
Tennessee, but then his mother unexpectedly died of a brain
hemorrhage during his second year there. Grieving and angry
with God, he turned to drugs as an escape. Nine years later,
a long-time drug dealer, he planned his final act of
rebellion--suicide. But as he cocked the trigger, a Bible
verse floated through his mind: What does it profit a man, if
he shall gain the whole world but lose his own soul? His
mother had taught him that.
``In spite of everything I had done, all of the Scriptures
I learned as a child were still with me,'' Mr. Gaddis said,
and instead of killing himself, he turned himself into local
police. After serving a five-year prison sentence, he came to
Dallas as a homeless man, found a church to attend, and
earned enough money to attend college and seminary. He
graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary in April 2000,
with a master's degree in Christian education.
Now he identifies with the children who walk the city
sidewalks. ``I want them to understand how the Scriptures
apply practically to their life, not just memorize them. I
didn't have that understanding growing up,'' said Mr. Gaddis.
To accomplish his mission, he recruited the help of
Fellowship Bible Church, which supplies free office space and
weekly volunteers. With a $240,000 annual budget, the program
is funded by donations from individuals and churches.
Three nights a week, volunteers donate their time tutoring
children, who mostly come from single-parent families that
speak little or no English. Tonight's tutoring session begins
with cheese cracker snacks and peer-led singing. The children
hold hands in a circle as a fourth-grade boy named Bryan
stands in the middle and loudly recites several Bible verses.
With his hands raised in the air, he then leads his playmates
in a boisterous chorus of ``Lord, I Lift Your Name on High.''
Afterward, the children go to their assigned tutors,
including a college librarian in a starched yellow dress
shirt, a bilingual businessman wearing khaki shorts and
Birkenstock sandals, and a housewife in a long flowing broom
skirt.
During the summers, YBC takes the place of the public
school, providing free lunches for poor children and a refuge
for latchkey kids stuck in crime-ridden apartments. Children
who attend regularly can go to a riverside Bible camp in the
Ozarks.
YBC children participate in community service projects and
a youth choir that performs at local nursing homes and malls.
Volunteer David Pruessner, a 45-year-old lawyer, teaches
chess, where ``you have to learn to develop a strategy and
think ahead,'' During the summer, he gives group lessons to
20 students at a time using 10 game boards and handmade wall
charts. But teaching about God is at the center of the
program, for Mr. Gaddis states that, ``The gospel is the only
thing that really changes lives. When I sat in the car with a
gun to my head and when I went to prison, I already had a
good education. But that didn't help me. What really changed
my life was the word of God. And that's what's going to save
these kids.''
____
[From World, June 16, 2001]
The Good Sarasotan
(By Barbara Souders)
``The nerve!'' huffed Carolyn Cooley, hurstling her two
young daughters past the unkempt man who lay surrounded by
beer cans, sprawled against a palm tree on church property. A
battered hat shielded the man's eyes, but holes in the soles
of his shoes seemed to watch church-goers' reactions. Mrs.
Cooley's indignation dissolved into tears when, within the
hour, she learned the man's identity. The ``bum'' was
actually her pastor, Neville E. Gritt. He'd stationed himself
outside the church that Sunday morning to awaken his
congregation to needs he'd seen while driving through
Sarasota, Fla.
Heartsick, Ray and Carolyn Cooley prayed that day in 1985
that they could begin to show Christ's love to such people.
Feeling God's call, they spent the evening pruning their
tight budget and gauging their financial ability to rent a
house that would serve
[[Page H3460]]
homeless men. They followed through, and during the past 16
years almost 2,000 men have found refuge at Good Samaritan
House (GSH), honored this year with a Florida ``Points of
Light'' award--and some have found hope. The home provides
emergency housing for homeless men recovering from traumas
(such as surgery, a mental breakdown, or a prison term) and a
longer transitional program for those ready to try to get
back on their feet.
Andrew Cunningham is one of the people helped. At age 22,
he was on and off drugs, on and off the streets, and on and
off in his relationship with God. Initial stints at Good
Samaritan House and a Sarasota Salvation Army shelter didn't
change him. But a stay in an abandoned house where he and a
friend stayed ``strung out on crack cocaine'' convinced him
to return to GSH. At 25, he emerged clean and sober. Now 13
years after that emergence, Mr. Cunningham is married with
twin daughters, works as a certified nursing assistant, owns
a home, and is an active church member. ``Ray set my feet in
the right direction,'' he says.
At GSH, the right direction begins with a set of simple,
nonnegotiable rules: Residents must remain alcohol- and drug-
free, and accompany Mr. Cooley to church and Bible study
weekly. They must secure a full-time job, or work as day
laborers at a local temporary agency until they find
permanent employment. GSH residents must pay rent: six
dollars per night after their fifth free night of shelter.
While they may spend a little money on personal needs, the
men must save much of their earnings, with the goal of
becoming economically independent of GSH. The rules include:
In bed by 10:00 p.m., no foul language, no fighting, and no
women.
The rules echo those of 19th-century Christian workhouses.
While neighbors and church members in American towns
generally cared for people made suddenly poor by calamity or
death, townspeople built workhouses for men made poor by
alcoholism or sloth. Residents of such homes were expected
both to work and pursue virtue in exchange for their keep. At
the Chelmsford workhouse in Massachusetts, for example, the
``master'' of the house could at his discretion reward
faithful and industrious men, while punishing ``the idle,
stubborn, disorderly and disobedient.'' Use of ``spirituous
liquors'' was prohibited, and house rules demanded every man
``diligently to work and labor.''
Although the Cooley's efforts at GSH were grounded in such
history, and in Scripture, many Sarasota Christians didn't
support their efforts to help homeless individuals in the
area.
The house in which the Cooleys launched GSH stood on the
property of a small Sarasota church; the church's leadership
agreed to let the Cooleys rent it and start the shelter
there. ``But the church became upset with what we were
doing,'' Mrs. Cooley said, ``and the numerous needy and
homeless [on the property] giving the church a bad image.''
After 11 months, the church asked the Cooleys to leave.
That's when they bought the 1920s-era home that is now Good
Samaritan House.
The Cooleys don't hold fundraisers. Today, two churches
regularly donate money and in-kind gifts to support GSH, but
from the beginning, the couple financed--and still finance--
the shelter largely with their own cash. That means Mr.
Cooley, 61, continues to work five days a week as a zone
technician for Verizon Wireless. After work he goes home to
spend time with his family; at about 8 p.m., he heads for
GSH. There, he spends most evenings talking and watching
television with the men who pile in after their own day's
work to sink into sofas and chairs that crowd the paneled
living room. Mornings, the aroma of brewing coffee lures
residents downstairs to grab a cup before biking or busing
to work. Mr. Cooley also leaves, going home to his family
(if his wife and son--his daughters are grown--haven't
spent the night at GSH) before heading off to his day job
again.
Mr. Cooley himself had struggled with alcoholism until a
pastor's life inspired him to change. Today, he says his aim
is ``to live his faith in front of the men, to plant seeds.''
During each man's stay at GHS, Mr. Cooley guides him through
a substance-abuse recovery program that emphasizes Christ as
the basis of healing and renewal. Mrs. Cooley supports her
husband, spending time at the house with him and the men,
attending church with them. Wednesday and Sunday evenings,
and distributing free clothing to GSH residents and other
Sarasota homeless people.
The Cooleys say they rarely hear again from men who leave
GSH: ``They're embarrassed and don't want to be reminded'' of
things like job loss, mental illness, or substance abuse that
led them there in the first place. But some, like Everett
Reid, 36, maintain contact. He learned of GSH through
Sarasota agencies that appreciate the Cooleys' no-nonsense
biblical approach to helping homeless men become self-
sufficient. ``It's a good place for them to go. They have
rules to follow,'' said Robert P. Kyllonen, executive
director of Resurrection House, a day resource center for the
homeless. Eleven months after showing up on GSH's oak-shaded
front porch and starting to follow the rules, Mr. Reid moved
to Jacksonville. He has completed the first year of a four-
year sheet-metal apprenticeship.
In February, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County
recognized GSH with its Unsung Hero Award and commended the
Cooley for funding the program themselves, rather than
waiting for outside assistance. With George W. Bush's offer
to make faith-based programs eligible for federal grants,
will the Cooleys now seek outside help? Mr. Cooley thinks
not. He fears the Feds might tamper with GSH's staunchly
biblical program. Still, he may seek funding for the Clothes
Closet, a GSH clothing-distribution program that he sees as
less vulnerable to government strings.
____
[From World, June 16, 2001]
A Day in the Life . . .
(By Candi Cushman)
Richard Scarry has won fame for children's books with
titles like What Do People Do All Day? Few people understand
what New Orleans minister Mo Leverett does all day, and what
he has done most days for the past 10 years. As founder of
Desire Street Ministries (DSM), an outreach program that uses
Christian principles to disciple youth and foster economic
renewal, he is a white man who has dedicated his life to
mentoring black kids in New Orleans' worst ghetto. Here's
what he and two people he has inspired do on a typical day:
10 A.M. On a rainy summer morning, Mr. Leverett winds his
car through narrow New Orleans streets named Pleasure and
Abundance, showing a reporter the gutted warehouses,
crumbling brick housing projects, and razor-wire fences of
his neighborhood. On Desire Street, three miles north of the
French Quarter, rows of graffiti-covered housing projects sit
amid piles of dirt and broken glass. Behind thick metal
doors, project residents stare like frightened prisoners
through rectangular window slats.
This is the Ninth Ward, an area whose daily drug shoot-outs
garnered it a reputation as ``New Orleans' murder capital.''
With 10,000 units in the center of the ward, the Desire
projects gained notoriety during the 1950s as the second-
largest (and one of the most dangerous) housing projects in
the nation. Although city officials recently demolished most
of the units, some 1,000 people still live inside the rat-
infested rubble. Over half are children under the age of 17
whose single mothers live below the poverty level.
In 1991, Mr. Leverett moved into a tiny duplex home near
the projects, his family of four becoming the only white
family in the Ninth Ward. For the next nine years, he
volunteered as an assistant football coach at the public high
school and led locker-room Bible studies. He remembers how
his passion for cross-cultural outreach began during high
school years in Macon, Ga., where he felt forced to live a
double life: Friday nights on the football field, with white
and black teammate pursuing victory together, and Sunday
mornings at all-white churches where racial jokes brought
laughs.
``On the football field there were two cultures working
together toward a common goal,'' he says, but at other times
``I had the heart-wrenching experience of discovering that
the people who most resisted the struggle for freedom were
white evangelical Southern men like me.'' After a broken hip
dashed his dreams of a football career, he enrolled in
Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Miss., studied
faith-based models for urban renewal, and became an ordained
minister within the theologically conservative Presbyterian
Church in America.
11 A.M. Wearing tube socks, khaki shorts, and a navy polo
shirt, Mr. Leverett is standing before an office blackboard
in the $3 million outreach center he opened last year across
from the housing projects. With a slickly polished gymnasium,
10 classrooms, and 13 new computers, the 36,000-square-foot
building built with private donations, doubles as a youth
recreation center and a church.
Today he is training three of his 20 full-time employees.
Like a coach explaining play-by-play strategy, he draws lots
of little arrows and circles. But the game plan starts with a
phrase: ``incarnational ministry.'' Mr. Leverett tells his
students, ``Like Christ, you have to enter into their lives
and suffer redemptively for them. Part of that suffering is
just demonstrating a willingness, a willingness to hear gun
shots at night, to feel insecure, unsafe, and exposed.''
In addition to offering weekly tutoring, Bible studies, and
sports leagues, Mr. Leverett helps students start for-profit
businesses, including the ``Brothers Realty'' housing
renovation program. He's also planning for next year, when
the outreach center will host the area's first private
school--Desire Street Academy.
2 P.M. While Mr. Leverett does more mentoring, staff
members like 25-year-old Heather Holdsworth are working the
neighborhood. As DSM education director, Miss Holdsworth
every afternoon visits Carver Washington High School, located
three blocks from the projects and with the look of a giant
warehouse. Outside are gray bricks and chain-link fences.
Inside, the classroom doors have deadlocks, and the
hallways are bare except for signs touting the school
health clinic and day-care center.
Sporting tattooed arms and baseball caps turned backwards,
the students have crowded into a small gymnasium for a school
basketball game. Miss Holdsworth is there, sitting amid
hundreds of shouting students in the gymnasium bleachers,
greeting them and inviting them to after-school tutoring.
When she first arrived three years ago, none of the students
would speak to her. Even local police officers stopped her,
asking if she had come to buy drugs. ``She was a white girl
[[Page H3461]]
who came out of nowhere. So it took me a good three months to
speak to her,'' said Dwana, a 17-year-old student.
Now, though, Dwana prays twice a week with Heather and
attends DSM Bible studies and tutoring classes. Carrying a
pink diaper bag, she leaves the basketball game at 3 p.m. to
retrieve her 8-month-old baby. This June, Dwana will marry
the baby's 18-year-old father inside the Desire Street
Ministries building. ``I want my baby to grow up reading the
Bible and doing the right things,'' she said.
Each year, Miss Holdsworth helps some 30 students like
Dwana pass their ACT college admission tests and apply for
financial aid. That's a noteworthy accomplishment considering
that Carver students average a dismal 14 out of a possible 36
points on the ACT test. The welfare mentality that pervades
the projects provides a formidable obstacle to her efforts,
says Miss Holdsworth. While tutoring seniors, for instance,
she discovered that several parents allowed their kids to
apply for disability certificates instead of diplomas so the
family could receive federal aid. That decision automatically
disqualified them from college scholarships.
3:30 p.m. Mo Leverett is doing his best to break the
underachieving mentality by emphasizing the second part of
his game plan: indigenous leadership. Inside the DSM
classrooms, students peruse books including the Westminster
Confession of Faith. They are pupils in Mr. Leverett's first
Urban Theological Institute, a school designed to create
indigenous spiritual leaders.
Institute student Richard Johnson, one of Mr. Leverett's
first disciples, says a lesson on the ``Noetic principle''
(man's blindness to sin) caught his attention: ``The
principle applies to the projects: There's no family
foundation for children to see here. All we had were guys and
women just having sex and selling drugs. That's all our kids
see and they don't see any wrong in it. In our community you
are respected if you are a great athlete, a big drug dealer,
or a murderer.''
During high school, Mr. Johnson says, he respected his
older cousin, a drug user who eventually shot his mother
seven times. Mr. Johnson believes he was destined for similar
destruction until ``Coach Mo'' became his new role model:
``When he first walked on the field, we were like, man,
somebody's going to jail. Because a lot of the guys on the
team were selling drugs and we thought he was a cop. Coach Mo
wasn't just another fly-by-night white dude. He stood firm
and he coached, he preached and he loved.''
6 P.M. Dressed in baggy jean shorts and a black jacket, Mr.
Johnson stands behind a wooden podium as some 100 high-school
students file into the gym for a Tuesday night Bible study.
Boys with spray-painted nylons tied around their heads and
girls wearing lots of gold jewelry chat noisily. But the
audience grows quiet as Mr. Johnson explains the concepts of
original sin and undeserved grace.
``We can't overcome sin on our own because there is nothing
in us that is spiritual,'' he tells them. ``If you are
watching porno flicks or doing drugs, the only way to
overcome those things is to let Christ rule in your heart.''
Later, Mr. Johnson confides that he feels a sense of urgency
at every Bible study. Too often, unresponsive students walk
out the door only to become victims of drive-by shootings or
drug overdoses: ``Sometimes I feel like they aren't
listening, but I keep preaching anyway. Knowing that Christ
paid a debt I couldn't repay keeps me going.''
As Mr. Johnson teaches Bible study, ``Coach Mo'' squeezes
in some family time at his 9-year-old daughter's softball
game. Watching her play, he remembers other children he
watched today, especially those who came to the Bible study
to escape the drugs or physical abuse that pervade their own
homes. ``I feel many different emotions as I think about
that,'' says Mr. Leverett. ``I want to shelter my own
children, but I also want to teach them the heart of
Christ.'' Although his children attend a school outside the
ward, Mr. Leverett encourages them to interact with playmates
from the housing projects during after-school programs and
Sunday school.
Some people have called Mr. Leverett's decision to move his
family into the ghetto a foolhardy sacrifice. But sacrifice
is just his point, he says: ``I want my children to see the
incarnate gospel.''
____
[From World, June 16, 2001]
When a Picture Is Worth 1,000 Lives
(By Leah Driggers)
Amber, 17, sits on a chair in an ultrasound room swinging
sneaker-clad feet back and forth. Nearby, an embroidered pink
quilt hangs on the wall proclaiming: ``God's love always
forgives.'' A door swings open and ultrasound nurse Kay
Morton strides in, white lab coat fluttering.
``How are you doing?'' asks Mrs. Morton, 50, smiling over
multicolored reading glasses as she pages through the girl's
medical file. The answer is sad: ``My fiance just passed
away,'' says Amber, her hands trembling. Amber's boyfriend
hanged himself two weeks before, and Amber found the body,
dangling. Now she is faced with a crisis pregnancy, and is in
the process of choosing whether to carry or abort her child.
The Dallas Pregnancy Resource Center is offering a free
sonogram to help Amber decide.
``OK, just lie back,'' Mrs. Morton says in a soothing
voice, laying a white blanket across Amber's legs. Amber
holds her cotton T-shirt in place and pulls down black
overalls to reveal a slightly rounded belly. Mrs. Morton
squeezes a bottle that spits clear, blue gel on Amber's
stomach. ``Oh!'' laughs Amber: ``That's cold!'' The room
grows dim, and the jittery high-school senior freezes as Mrs.
Morton presses a handheld transducer into her abdomen. A few
feet from Amber's wide eyes, an image jumps on a small
computer screen.
``See that flickering spot?'' Mrs. Morton asks, using a
mouse to point a virtual arrow at a light that pulsates on-
screen. ``That's your baby's heartbeat.'' A huge grim spreads
across Amber's face. Mrs. Morton clicks the mouse again and
an electronic line appears that she uses to measure the tiny
image from head to toe. ``It looks like your baby's about
seven weeks,'' she tells Amber. The girl nods slowly, eyes
glued on the black-and-white monitor, her body stone-still.
Mrs. Morton points out the baby's legs, arms, and the head;
Amber clutches the top of her T-shirt, motionless.
Mrs. Morton types and two words appear on the screen: ``HI,
MOM!'' The image shakes as Amber giggles. ``Isn't it
incredible that your baby already has developed brain waves,
a heartbeat, and individual fingers?'' Mrs. Morton asks.
``When I was in college studying to be a nurse, I didn't
believe in God. But when I studied the development of the
embryo, that's when I said there must be a God. Isn't your
baby amazing?'' Amber nods, still staring at her sleeping
child. Mrs. Morton prints a still shot from the sonogram
while Amber wipes tears from her eyes. ``I can't wait for
my Mom to see this,'' she murmurs, fingering the photo.
``Now it is real.''
Amber chose to keep her unborn baby alive, and many more
moms are making similar decisions as crisis pregnancy centers
(CPCs) and support organizations nationwide discover the
power of ultrasound to affect hearts and minds. Heartbeat
International, one of the largest national CPC organizations,
recently surveyed 114 CPCs that use ultrasound. CPC directors
reported that 60 to 90 percent of abortion-minded clients
decide to keep their babies after seeing live pictures of
them.
``Ultrasound connects a woman with reality--what she's
actually carrying in the womb,'' said Tom Glessner, president
of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates.
``It's no longer a `condition' when the mother sees her
moving child. A bonding takes place.''
Ultrasound also helps other people in a pregnant woman's
life see a problem pregnancy as a person. Often, women choose
abortion because of unsupportive boyfriends or parents. So
centers strongly encourage clients to return with doubting
friends and family. Technicians nationwide relate stories of
bored boyfriends who shuffle in with arms crossed, but later
break down in tears or exclaim something like, ``My son!
That's my son!'' Grandparents, too, point at the screen in
shock, demanding, ``'Are you kidding me? Is that what's going
on in her? Is that my granddaughter?''
The military first used ultrasound to locate submarines.
But it wasn't until the early 1980s--at least a decade after
Roe v. Wade opened the abortion floodgates in 1973--that CPCs
began using ultrasound in their clinics. At least 200 CPCs
nationwide now provide the service, and other among the
estimated 3,000 CPCs across the country are converting
themselves into medical clinics that offer ultrasound and
other diagnostic pregnancy-related services. CPC directors
say medical clinics draw more clients--especially abortion-
minded ones--than nonmedical counseling centers.
Too bad ultrasound is so expensive: A machine costs about
$30,000. But some manufacturers offer discounts for pro-life
organizations, cutting the price tag to around $18,000.
Support supplies like gloves, gel, and film run around $1,000
annually, but medical professionals are the major cost.
Some CPCs that can't afford to buy a machine or employ a
technican are networking with other ultrasound clinics.
Such links save lives: When a counselor at a non-CPC
clinic senses that her client will choose abortion, she
can call a local ultrasound-CPC for an emergency visit.
To broaden the reach of ultrasound, some sonographers
independently contract services with local CPCs, toting their
own machines from center to center. Some OB/GYN doctors also
offer ultrasound services in their offices. Dr. Wendell Ashby
has offered sonography in his Amarillo, Texas, office for the
past nine years. ``We are a visual society,'' he said.
``[Mothers] can't handle their conscience saying, `You're
killing your baby.' When they see little arms and legs
kicking and moving, a heart beating, a brain, stomach,
bladder, spine, and babies sucking their thumbs, it's no
longer just tissue. [These women] say they had no idea--they
thought it was just a little tadpole in there.''
Shari Richards believes it's never too early to detonate
the tadpole myth. The founder of Sound Wave Images, an
international ultrasound education group in West Bloomfield,
Mich., has turned her attention to the next generation by
developing an ultrasound video shown in over 5,000 classrooms
worldwide. Schools using the ultrasound video as part of
abstinence curricula report declines in teen pregnancy of up
to 25 percent, Ms. Richards said.
After seeing the Sound Wave video, one student wrote,
``I've always thought abortion was a choice each woman should
make. But after seeing the babies, I know that abortion is
wrong.''
[[Page H3462]]
____
[From World, June 16, 2001]
My Baby Wouldn't Be Here
(By Leah Driggers)
Tessa Malaspina was 22 years old when the cheap pregnancy
test she bought turned positive. ``I was going to have an
abortion,'' remembers Ms. Malaspina, a blonde club dancer who
once was heavily into drinking and drugs: ``I was having way
too much fun partying.'' When her mom convinced Ms. Malaspina
to stop by the Dallas Pregnancy Resource Center, Ms.
Malaspina warned her: ``It will not change my mind.'' She'd
already had one abortion; three months pregnant, she climbed
the stairs to the CPC's ultrasound room, determined to have
another one.
``I didn't want to see it, but at the same time I didn't
think it would matter,'' she says of the pending sonogram.
``But once I saw it was a moving person with a heartbeat, I
couldn't do it,'' Ms. Malaspina told WORLD. ``I couldn't even
think about [abortion] again. I never realized how advanced
they were so early. . . . They give you information in school
and stuff, but never enough. If I hadn't have seen it, I
wouldn't have changed my mind. I don't know how anyone could
go through with an abortion after seeing an ultrasound.''
The day she decided to keep her second child, she quit
dancing, smoking, and taking drugs. ``It totally changed my
life around,'' she says, pausing to tend blue-eyed son Riley,
6 months old. Ms. Malaspina, who now works full-time as a
bill collector, says her mom helps her with the baby: ``It's
hard,'' she says of being a single mom, ``but I wouldn't have
it any other way.''
Beverly Wright, 29, was five months pregnant when she
stepped through the glass door to Dallas Pregnancy Resource
Center, seeking a free pregnancy test ``to make sure.'' She
had just lost her job and her car, and was also behind on her
rent. ``I had an option to pay my rent or get an abortion,''
she remembers. After the pregnancy test confirmed her
pregnancy, Ms. Wright's CPC counselor asked if she would also
like an ultrasound. ``I didn't know what to expect,'' Ms.
Wright confesses. ``But my No. 1 choice was abortion, so I
wasn't scared.''
When the picture popped up on the screen, Ms. Wright began
crying. ``I was shocked,'' she says. ``They were all telling
me, `Look at her move! She's so pretty! Do you see the hand?'
That's what did it. I saw what it really was--my baby. It
gave me a change of heart.''
Ms. Wright took home the black-and-white sonogram photos
and kept them on her dresser in a white envelope marked
simply ``Baby.''
``It made me accept that I had her. And it made me fall in
love with her,'' says Ms. Wright, now the proud mother of
smiling 14-month-old Tia. ``I still have those pictures. If I
had never seen the ultrasound, my baby wouldn't be here,''
she says, shuddering. ``From the bottom of my heart, she's
the best thing that ever happened to me.''
Now Ms. Wright spends every day with Tia working as a live-
in employee in a health care home. What would she say to
other abortion-minded clients? ``Come get a sonogram, and see
what you've got inside. It'll change everything.''
____
[From World, June 16, 2001]
Separation of Church and Business
(By Tim Graham)
The White House faith-based initiative is opening up a new
front, and some of its guns are aimed squarely at big
business.
``Faith-based organizations receive only a tiny percentage
of overall corporate giving,'' President Bush announced late
last month. ``Currently, six of the 10 largest corporate
givers in America explicitly rule out or restrict donations
to faith-based groups, regardless of their effectiveness. The
federal government will not discriminate against faith-based
organizations, and neither should corporate America.''
The president's numbers came from a study soon to be
released by the Washington-based Capital Research Center,
which has issued an annual guide to ``Patterns of Corporate
Philanthropy'' since the mid-1980s. CRC's Christopher
Yablonski has noted that policies posted on the websites of
these top corporate givers often include rules to
discriminate against charities that see a connection between
material problems and spiritual problems. For instance:
General Motors (No. 1 in corporate giving) declares
contributions ``are generally not provided to . . . religious
organizations.''
The Ford Motor Company Fund (No. 3), ``as a general policy,
does not support the following: religious or sectarian
programs for religious purposes.'' That's in the same
undesirable category as ``animal rights organizations'' and
``beauty or talent contests.''
ExxonMobil (No. 4) explains, ``We do not provide funds for
political or religious causes.'' That's not exactly true,
since the company also touts its support of
environmentalists, advocacy groups for women and minorities,
and groups performing ``public research.''
IBM (No. 6) ``does not make equipment donations or grants
from corporate philanthropic funds to . . . individuals,
political, labor, religious, or fraternal organizations or
sports groups.'' Many faith-based groups might also have
trouble with the last two words of IBM's ban on
``organizations that discriminate in any way against race,
gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.''
The Citigroup Foundation (No. 7) declares: ``It is not our
policy to make grants to . . . religious, veteran, or
fraternal organizations, unless they are engaged in a
significant project benefiting the entire community.''
AT&T (No. 8) will only fund groups that are ``nonsectarian
and nondenominational.''
Wal-Mart, the No. 2 corporate benefactor, was the main
contrarian. Mr. Yablonski said the company awards a lot of
small grants, and on previous donation lists, it looked like
``every other grant'' was to a faith-based charity. And the
other companies' policies don't always completely bar
donations to religious groups. CRC found that in
contributions of $10,000 or more, some bans were complete
(IBM zero percent, AT&T 0.06 percent), but some let a little
sunshine in (GM 2.2 percent, Ford 3.2 percent, Citigroup 3.9
percent). One top-10 giver without an explicit ban, Boeing
McDonnell, still only gave 4.6 percent of its grant money to
faith-based organizations.
Corporations today often view their contributions as a
business expense. The CRC regularly finds liberal women's and
minority groups at the top of the corporate donation list,
which is a handy inoculation device against discrimination
lawsuits. But faith-based groups barely register on the
typical corporate radar screen. ``I was on a panel with a
corporate officer who said the First Amendment didn't allow
them to give to religious groups,'' said conservative
philanthropy executive Michael Joyce, commenting on the
corporate mindset. ``Corporate leaders are working with some
intellectual rot, or some pure ignorance.''
At a meeting at the White House in late January, Mr. Joyce
took his turn to speak about corporate discrimination against
faith-based groups: ``I said the president is both president
of the government, but also president of the nation. There's
huge private sector that spends billions emulating what
government does. A few well-placed words from the president
could have a profound effect. He could call in top CEOs and
ask `what's going on here?' The president picked up on that
right away.''
This month, at age 58, Mr. Joyce is stepping down from the
helm of the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley
Foundation to lead two new nonprofit groups at the crossroads
of business, politics, and faith-based initiatives. The
first, based in Washington, will take on the ``short-term
game'' of lobbying members of Congress and other Washington
elites about the virtues of President Bush's plan, as
summarized in the ``Community Solutions Act'' before
the House of Representatives. The second, based in
Phoenix, is a ``larger project, educating the culture, and
private donors in particular, for the long haul.''
But how will Mr. Joyce's new groups deal with campaign-
finance conspiracy theorists and follow-the-money
investigative journalists in the major media? They may
quickly insinuate that the groups are a clever way for Bush
donors to puff up the presidential legacy without any
troublesome contribution limits. Mr. Joyce thinks such a
brouhaha would be a waste of breath. ``Barry Lynn [of
Americans United for Separation of Church and State] and his
crowd have a lot of resources. It isn't who funds anything.
It's what they actually do.'' He plans on keeping in touch
with the White House, but ``what we cannot do is carry out
their wishes. We will have to operate independently. It's
just that simple.''
Tom Riley, director of research at the Philanthropy
Roundtable (which Mr. Joyce had a major role in creating
decades ago) says Mr. Joyce was an atypical foundation
executive during his 15 years at Bradley. Most program
offices at large foundations are incredibly risk-averse, and
since there's no risk of financial ruin, the biggest risk is
bad press. Many corporations and foundations try to avoid
controversy by avoiding charities that might be unpopular
with the press. ``Michael Joyce took those risks, and he was
strategic rather than reactive. He had a vision, a long-term
approach of building a movement, an infrastructure.''
Mr. Joyce brings a similarly unorthodox approach to his new
calling. Whenever the subject is the success of conservative
philanthropy, Mr. Joyce sees no big secret. ``Ordinary people
understand this really well,'' he said. ``We take human
nature into account. We understand humans as they were
wrought by God. These people wish to remake them and
rearrange them. It's like that line in a Bob Marley song,
`don't let them rearrange you.' That's why they fail.''
bradley's fighting vehicle
Neal Freeman of the Foundation Management Institute called
Michael Joyce ``the chief operating officer of the
conservative movement. . . . Over the period of his Bradley
service, it's difficult to recall a single, serious thrust
against incumbent liberalism that did not begin or end with
Mike Joyce.''
From his perch at the top of the John Olin Foundation,
another conservative heavyweight, Mr. Joyce took over the
brand-new Bradley Foundation in 1985 when it began with $280
million from the sale of Milwaukee electronics giant Allen-
Bradley to Rockwell. Despite giving away almost $300 million
in grants, Mr. Joyce is turning over the keys to a foundation
that now lists assets of $700 million. It's the 68th largest
foundation in America, and Mr. Joyce oversaw $44 million in
grants last year.
``I had no immediate offers or opportunities'' upon
retirement, he said, but ``I did
[[Page H3463]]
place my trust in providence.'' Just then along came Paul
Fleming, the Phoenix magnate of P.F. Chang's Chinese Bistro,
a 25-state restaurant chain. ``From his many years seeing
faith heal in the center city of Phoenix, he was enriched in
his own faith by what can be done.'' Together, they decided
to form a tax-deductible group to educate corporations on
faith-based charities. ``I talked him out of putting it in
Washington,'' Mr. Joyce said. ``I visit Washington often, but
when I leave, I always say, `I'm going back to America.' I
told him, be proud of your city.''
Mr. Joyce continues to apply his vision of keeping the
country from becoming a ``prisoner to a hopeless
progressivism'' with his new enterprise. ``At the end of the
19th century, liberals considered themselves the new Founding
Fathers,'' he said. ``They had their 100 years, and they made
a mess of things. At the start of a new millennium, they are
out gas.''
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