The Fly in the Ointment: Faith-Based Programs and Discriminiation against Gays

Evangelical leader Tony Campolo has an interesting reflection today at Alternet about Barack Obama’s choice to continue the Bush faith-based social service programs (here). Campolo’s take? These programs may seriously impair the “religious distinctiveness” of the faith groups sponsoring them.

Campolo notes criticisms of the faith-based programs that I have outlined in previous postings (here and here). As he points out, the faith-based social service programs were almost immediately politicized by the Bush administration. The money provided to faith groups operating these programs was used as a bargaining chip to pull faith-based groups into the Republican fold.

Moreover, this initiative was seriously underfunded, resulting in a loss of social services crucially important to many Americans in need who had previously been assisted by the federal government. And many of the programs were abysmally managed, with little accountability or supervision, with a dearth of solid data to verify that they were meeting their goals, and with holes in accounting procedures, so that the money given to many groups was not clearly accounted for.

Campolo notes,

It wasn't long before there was talk about how this office was being subverted by the likes of Karl Rove to serve political purposes. Certain leaders of African-American denominations complained that government dollars for faith-based ministries were being used to lure pastors from black churches into loyalty to the Republican Party. The resignation of John DiJulio as the Director of the White House office lent substance to the rumor that faith-based programs were being politicized. Then J. David Kuo, the deputy director of the President's program, not only resigned, but wrote an exposé of how the faith-based programs supported by the White House were underfunded and were more propaganda than substance. Yet religionists, and especially Evangelicals, failed to raise a ruckus over what was happening, probably because they still were hoping that crumbs, in the way of grants, might fall their way from the White House table.

His primary concern has to do, however, with the effect of these programs—with the effect of the choice of faith groups to take federal funds—on the religious distinctiveness of churches. He notes that the money comes with strings attached.

And as he also observes, particularly troubling to many evangelicals has been the hint that Mr. Obama might revise the Bush presidency’s decision to permit faith-based discrimination in these faith-based programs. The big fly in the ointment? The expectation that religious groups receiving federal funds to provide social services might not be permitted to discriminate against gays and lesbians:

Evangelical groups immediately saw the fly in the ointment. Religious organizations would have to be open to hiring persons who were not necessarily in accord with their beliefs and sexual behavioral expectations. They decried the requisite that they would have to provide equal opportunities for the employment of gays and lesbians if they were to receive federal grants.

Apparently church leaders' horror at the thought that they might have to forfeit gay-bashing in order to receive federal money led to big behind-the-scenes powwows between Obama’s team and his evangelical constituents in the period before the election, confabs about which I knew nothing until I read Campolo’s article. Campolo says that the upshot of these powwows (in which Rev. Rick Warren seems to have been involved) was that word was “sent down” that “the policies that were in place on these matters during the Bush Administration would be continued.”

That is, faith-based groups could continue business as usual, discriminating against gay and lesbian citizens, who are among those providing the tax dollars that fund these programs, while receiving funding for social services under the Obama administration. Campolo says that he is given to believe this “word” came down directly from Mr. Obama himself.

Now, it seems, a reversal is taking place, and there are hints from the new administration that discrimination will be frowned on in groups receiving federal funding for faith-based social service programs. To Campolo, this presents a challenge: if churches have to sacrifice their beliefs and practices in order to receive federal funds, then perhaps the price for such federal support is too high.

I’m not surprised by Campolo’s analysis. Though he is on the moderate end of the evangelical spectrum when it comes to gay issues, he is still of the hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner mindset. A mindset that we sinners who find our sin hated by followers of Christ notice all too often translating itself into hate, period.

What strikes me as curious about Campolo’s argument (and it captures the outlook of many Christians of the center-right today) is that it pays no attention at all to the way in which discrimination against a group of demeaned human beings is in itself an abdication of all that faith groups claim to hold most dear. The problem Mr. Campolo should be facing, and calling on his co-religionists to face, is not how to take federal funds while continuing to engage in faith-based discrimination.

It is to repudiate discrimination altogether. Most faith-based groups have apologized for and repented of their discrimination against people of color. Many faith-based groups are en route to doing the same re: women, though most still have a long way to go in that regard.

Why not continue the process with the group now in the sights of maleficent believers who think they must always have an enemy, in order to be the church militant? Why not grant that if the churches were wrong in the past about their conviction that scripture and tradition require discrimination on grounds of pigmentation or gender, the churches might be equally wrong today about their certainty that discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation is biblically mandated and in line with the best of Christian tradition?

Why not give up discrimination altogether? And recognize that it damages the churches far more than taking federal funds while expecting to discriminate does?

The Faith-Based Social Service Initiative Reconsidered: John DiIulio's Testimony

After the announcement by Mr. Obama last year that he would continue Bush’s faith-based social service programs in his new administration, I blogged a number of times about the faith-based programs (see http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/07/obamas-faith-based-announcement-faith.html, http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/06/barack-obama-and-post-homophobic-models.html, http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/07/faith-based-social-programs-ending.html, http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/07/continued-dialogue-about-faith-based.html).

As those postings note, I have some experience with these programs both as an administrator in universities that stress civic engagement education, and as a grant-writer for a federally funded faith-based program. As the postings also indicate, I have very serious reservations about the Bush faith-based initiative for the following reasons:

1. It transfers the burden of providing much needed social services from federal and state programs to faith-based communities that do not have the resources to provide adequately for all those they serve through these programs.

2. It provides only a pittance—a token pittance—for these programs, which now do the grunt work of social outreach that was previously done by well-funded and well-administered government programs.

3. It actively encourages abuse of funds on the part of some administrators and church officials, who are sometimes totally incapable of administering the programs for which they have received funds.

4. The program has permitted faith-based groups to accept money without demonstrating solid results for the monies they received, and without accounting adequately for their use of these federal funds.

5. The program permits and even encourages faith-based groups to discriminate, as they apply these funds; LGBT persons, in particular, are targeted by some faith-based groups receiving federal funding, and are actively discriminated against.

6. The program has been highly politicized. In some states (including my own), governors have had final veto power over funding requests as they are sent to the federal level, even when the governor has no expertise in the area being funded and when the program has no statewide implications. This vetting method has allowed governors to r punish faith-based programs that do not toe the line of the governor’s party, and to reward cronies.

These are my first-hand observations about what has been going on with the faith-based social service programs under the last administration. They are observations I made while working at historically black universities (HBCUs), and while working for a faith-based program that provided services to an inner-city African-American community.

They are observations that many black ministers with whom I interact also share. In the view of some of these ministers, the faith-based initiative has been largely a failure, an attempt by the federal government to deny its responsibility to create a social network for the least among us, while shifting that burden to faith communities—many of them African-American—ill-equipped to deal with this burden.

In key respects, some of my ministerial friends in black churches tell me, this program has functioned as a political arm of the Republican machine reaching out to the African-American community in the hope of obtaining more black voters. It throws a smattering of money at many black churches and their pastors, with the goal of tying these communities to the Republican party, and without seeking assurance that the funds given to these communities have been properly used. This program has been, in the view of some of my friends, damaging to many African-American communities.

Given my experiences with the faith-based initiative, I’m interested to read John DiIulio’s take on the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, in the latest issue of America magazine (http://americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11400). DiIulio is an authoritative voice: he was the first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives when the program was formed. He resigned within his first year as director of this program after having seen that too many Bush programs were staffed by what he called “Mayberry Machiavellis” who lacked even basic knowledge of the programs they were directing (www.esquire.com/features/dilulio). In his view, the primary interest of this Mayberry crowd was in “steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.”

DiIulio knows whereof he speaks, in other words—particularly when he addresses the faith-based initiatives. Because of his background with the faith-based programs, and because he continues to applaud President Bush (whom he respects) for implementing these programs, DiIulio’s testimony about these programs should be taken seriously.

DiIulio’s America overview of these faith-based programs is, for the most part, a scathing critique. He notes that they have passed to many nonprofits an impossible expectation of providing social services that they cannot provide, given the level of funding they are receiving under the faith-based programs. He also notes that the data about these programs have been “stretched” by the Bush administration in reports full of “self-congratulatory semi-truths” and “pseudo statistics.”

DiIulio continues to support the faith-based initiative. I, by contrast, am highly skeptical about its ability to meet social needs that should not be passed on to faith groups by a government that should lead the way in providing social safety nets for the least among us.

But if the program is to succeed under President Obama, DiIulio thinks, it must stop engaging in discriminatory behaviors, refrain from overt politicization of social services, and pay attention to research, sound data, and accurate reporting:

To succeed, Obama, a former Catholic Charities community worker in Chicago, must insist that all grantees serve all people in need without regard to religion. He must keep the faith-based effort fact-based, bipartisan and open to corrections. And he must honor all campaign pledges to create or expand programs that benefit low-income children and families.

I hope that if President Obama continues these programs, as he has promised to do, he listens to DiIulio’s recommendations. People are in need, and the program as it is now configured is failing woefully to meet all the social needs it purports to serve. All of us concerned about those who are falling through social safety nets need to keep our eyes on these programs, and demand that they actually serve the needs they target—and provide proof of their results, along with careful records regarding their expenditures of our tax dollars.

Faith-Based Social Programs: Ending the Honeypot Mentality

Lots of thoughtful analysis today of Obama’s proposal to continue (and correct) the Bush faith-based social service initiative, a subject about which I blogged yesterday. Alternet provides helpful excerpts from a recently published book—Frederick Lane’s The Court and the Cross: The Religious Right’s Crusade to Reshape the Supreme Court (Boston: Beacon, 2008) (see www.alternet.org/story/90284).

The Alternet article—“Christian Nation: Bush Moves Big Bucks to Religious Organizations”—makes points similar to ones I’ve made in my own postings. In what follows, I’d like to offer excerpts along with commentary based on my experience working with faith-based social service organizations:

First, as I have noted, the faith-based programs are currently not reaching the goals Bush announced for them when he implemented them. A significant reason for their failure is insufficient funding. The needs these programs are intended to address are abundant; the funds provided are nowhere nearly adequate to meet those needs.

What we see going on currently with the transfer of social services from the federal and state level to communities of faith is a shell game, pure and simple. This transfer absolves our society of the obligation—previously regarded as the obligation of all of us through citizen-funded government services—to assist the least among us. We assume that because communities of faith have always proclaimed their concern to address these needs, throwing bits of money at these communities while ending tax-funded social programs will meet social needs.

We assume wrongly. As Lane notes,

The more significant story was contained in David Kuo's 2007 book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. Kuo, the number two official in OFBCI from 2001 to 2003, wrote a classic ex-administration-insider, where-the-bodies-are-buried book, the chief purpose of which was to complain that Bush and his political advisers had in fact not done enough to channel funds to FBOs -- by Kuo's calculation, just 1 percent of what Bush had publicly promised (my emphasis added).

Second, there is wildly insufficient accounting for the funds presently being disbursed through the faith-based programs. As the faith-based initiative is currently configured, it gives the benefit of the doubt to faith-based communities, in reporting results and use of funds they have received.

My posting yesterday offers what I consider to be weighty reasons for vigilance on the part of the government, even when (and perhaps particularly when) taxpayer monies are being given to faith communities providing social services. Lane notes,

More than anything else, the OFBCI and the various agency centers have been tremendously successful at awarding funds to faith-based organizations with few if any strings attached . . . . One of the significant problems with the Bush faith-based initiative is that no one really knows where the money is going. In January 2006, Josephine Robinson, director of the Office of Community Services within the Health and Human Services Department, conceded to the Chicago Tribune that given the number of staff in her office, there was definitely a limit to how much monitoring of grant recipients could take place. FBOs are not supposed to use federal money for "inherently religious" activities, but the combination of vague guidelines and inadequate oversight makes it virtually impossible to know if the boundaries of the Constitution are being observed (my emphasis added).

Third, the faith-based initiative, as it is currently configured, has set up a para-government structure based in the private sector, ostensibly to provide quality control in faith-based social service programs. This para-government structure is not working.

In my experience, many of the operatives in this supervisory structure are ideologues of the religious right who have little knowledge of the social needs and social services they are being paid to oversee. In many cases, their “assistance” is perfunctory at best; at worst, it is intrusive and designed to force the programs to conform to ideological goals of the religious right.

Those providing the supervisory services are paid an arm and a leg for shoddy services: they are mopping up at the expense of those in need whom faith-based programs are supposed to be serving; they are, essentially, being rewarded for being loyal foot-soldiers of the Bush administration—nothing more and nothing less.

On this point, Lane notes,

As part of his faith-based initiative, Bush also instructed the secretary of Health and Human Services to use his Demonstration and Research Authority, a program within HHS, to establish the Compassion Capital Fund (CCF). According to the CCF's website, the purpose of the fund is to "help faith-based and community organizations increase their effectiveness and enhance their ability to provide social services by building their organizational capacity." The Republican Congress appropriated $30 million for the CCF in FY 2002, and over the next four years, more than doubled the size of the program to $64.4 million in FY 2006.

The CCF's goal of training FBOs to become more effective applicants for the federal funds available under Bush's executive order is disconcerting enough. Even more worrisome is the fact that the CCF does not directly administer its funds itself. Instead, it awards grants to "intermediary organizations" that are charged with providing "technical assistance and capacity-building sub-awards" to smaller FBOs . . . .

A portion of his [i.e., Kuo’s] book is devoted to a discussion of the political uses of the Compassion Capital Fund, in which a handpicked panel of Religious Right activists graded the grant applications. Many groups, Kuo said, received high scores (and thus grants) more on the strength of their support for the Bush administration than their ability to provide assistance to the poor and downtrodden. A review panel member reportedly told Kuo some time later that when she saw an application from a non-Christian group, she simply gave the application a zero and moved on. According to the panelist, many of her peers did the same thing.

Fourth, there is the crucial issue of religiously based discrimination. As currently configured, the faith-based program allows religious groups freedom to discriminate that is not permitted to any other program or group receiving federal funds.

As Lane indicates,

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, religious organizations have always had a limited exemption to discriminate on the basis of religion for religiously oriented positions in their organization (for instance, a Unitarian Church can advertise for and hire only Unitarians to serve as minister). But Title VII's prohibitions against discrimination on other grounds -- race, gender, national orientation, etc. -- still apply, and when filling purely secular positions, the prohibition against religious discrimination must be observed as well. When Congress passed the Job Training Partnership Act in 1982, it permitted religious organizations to participate in the federally funded program only so long as they agreed not to discriminate on the basis of religion when hiring anyone under the program.
. . .

As Representative Barney Frank, D-Mass., inimitably put it, "The notion that you need to allow religious groups to discriminate to receive federal funds is a lie. If you dip your fingers in the federal till, you can't complain if a little democracy rubs off on you" (my emphasis added).

I also highly recommend Pam Spaulding’s commentary entitled “That Little Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Idea . . .” (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5985). As Pam Spaulding notes, before reacting to Obama’s proposal, it is advisable to read what he actually said in his speech earlier this week about faith-based programs. Her article helpfully appends the text of the speech, along with a fact sheet from the Obama campaign commenting on the speech.

Pam Spaulding also notes that how the program is currently configured and operating under Bush “poisons the waters of discussion.” As she states, “Truth be told, the Bush administration did precious little with this office other than use it as a carrot to dangle in front of fundies as proof of ‘his compassion agenda’ and the access he granted to them. It was largely a sham.”

That is absolutely correct. I have worked in various capacities with a number of faith-based social programs primarily focusing on needs within African-American communities—needs including literacy development for youth, daycare for working teen mothers, educational and other assistance for single teen mothers, provision of medical and other services for those living with HIV and AIDs, and so on.

In each instance, I have seen tremendous needs—unmet needs, needs that cannot be met with the pittance of funding provided through faith-based programs. The faith-based initiative is allowing an entire generation of needy Americans to slip through the cracks of social assistance networks. We all pay a price when anyone among us goes uneducated, hungry, uncared-for in the crucial childhood or teen or elder years, without adequate medical treatment, unemployed, etc.

In the programs with which I’ve been affiliated, there is a draconian competition among faith groups for the pittance of funds available to all of these groups. The program, as currently configured, pits one faith-based group against another, as all compete for the same tiny pot of funding. The predictable winners in this Darwinian lottery are groups most pliable to the political mandates of the current administration.

Various levels of supervision and vetting have been set up to assure that organizations receiving funding are with the Bush program. For instance, in many states, even federal grants given to faith-based groups are vetted locally by the governor—by the Republican governor, in a large number of states.

This assures a corrupt system of patronage in which groups loyal to state and federal Republican administrations receive preferential treatment. Proposals sent by groups under a cloud of ideological suspicion do not receive careful attention, even when they are superbly crafted, have accounting checks and balances in place, come from programs with demonstrable track records of achievement, and are more likely to address the social needs targeted by the program than are other proposals. Proposals from groups that have strong lobbying and other ties to state-level Republican administrations receive much more favorable reception.

In my experience, the corruption extends to the private-sector groups set up to provide “assistance” to organizations receiving faith-based funding. In one program with which I have worked, which served African-American inner-city teen mothers and their children, the group assigned to “assist” was a largely white, ideologically rigid (and all male) group associated with a “family-values” church that has widespread influence in the Western part of the country.

The “assistance” this group provided the faith-based program serving an African-American community was shameful. It consisted largely of taking data from the faith-based group and running it through a computerized template used for every client of this organization—regardless of where those clients were, who they served, the size of their organization, and so on. Every meeting I ever attended with these “assistants” convinced me of their sense of racial superiority to the population being served by the faith-based organization I was helping; every meeting demonstrated to me the almost non-existent expertise of the “assistants,” when it came to understanding and truly helping the faith-based group and those it served.

I should also note that the “assisting” organization was making a killing out of its ties to the Bush faith-based program. And the money it was making was not money it truly earned: it did almost nothing for the money it earned.

A few years ago, in my capacity as an academic administrator, I had the opportunity to attend a conference of faith-based social service programs in Florida. What I saw there was eye-opening. Prior to the conference, none of us attending received any instructions about the time and place of registration.

When I arrived at the center at which the conference was to be held, scores of us were wandering around button-holing any bypasser we could find, to discover where we were to register. When we finally found the location, we discovered a desk at which the registration staff were sitting, with letters of the alphabet indicating where those with particular surnames should line up.

The only problem was, the letters were not above the people doing the registration: they were below them, invisible in the crowd of folks standing in line to be registered. My line snaked through an area that had large cache-pots of plants, which prevented those of us with L surnames from reaching the registration desk.

As I stood in line, I chatted with a very pleasant woman from a faith-based social service organization serving an inner-city African-American population in south Florida. We both found the shoddiness of the conference preparations unbelievable. At one point, she observed, “If I ran my program the way this federal conference is being run, they’d shut me down.”

Consistently, in all the sessions I attended, personnel from the federal faith-based program were ill-informed and unprepared. In one session, a federal presenter handed out forms that she announced we might as well ignore, since they were out of date—but she had no up-to-date forms to give us. In other sessions, we were provided with typewritten (and misspelled) forms that might have been composed by someone in junior high school.

We deserve better. We who fund these programs deserve better for the money we are giving to the programs. But above all, those being served by faith-based programs deserve better. In far too many instances, what is happening now is an unsupervised take-the-money-and run shell game in which faith-based groups are not expected to demonstrate results for monies handed to them, or to account for their use of funds received.

As I have noted, this ultimately corrupts those receiving faith-based funding, when their own faith-based community does not have stringent guidelines for fiscal management. An illustration: in my work as an academic administrator at a faith-based historically black college/university (HBCU), when I was given the unpleasant task of supervising a refractory employee who oversees a federally funded program, the employee and her staff informed me that they would not accept my request that they account for their use of funds.

The employee refused to provide me with a budget showing who was being paid (and how much) by the program. My persistent attempts to obtain this information resulted in none-too-subtle insinuations that I was harassing the woman overseeing the program, solely because she is a black female (and I a white male). One of her staff members told me—as if my attempt to do my job was motivated by a desire on my part to filch money from the federal program—that, if I wanted a “honeypot” of my own, I should find it, and not try to dip my hands into his boss’s honeypot!

In the long run, I received grief for simply doing what I was asked by the school’s administration to do: to supervise this employee and assure adequate fiscal controls in the program she administered. When I finally left the HBCU to take a job elsewhere, I left a detailed report outlining the many fiscal irregularities I had found but could not correct in the program, since, when push came to shove, the supervisor was protected by the school’s administration and I was punished for trying to do my job.

As far as I know, she continues to administer “her” “honeypot” . . . . Neither the board of the school, which is replete with ministers and a bishop, nor the president, who has strong roots in the church that owns the school, has, to my knowledge, done anything at all to call this employee to accountability or to assure that her program exercises fiscal responsibility.

This should not be going on. It is a travesty. Church people, black or white, green or yellow, should not be buying into faith-based programs that encourage or reward dishonesty, shabby work, and outright theft. Those faith-based programs that operate this way undermine the credibility of the many faith-based programs operated by honest, hard-working folks who are truly concerned to meet human needs.

And, again, the discrimination question: above all, faith-based communities should not be rewarded for discriminating. As I stated yesterday, my bottom line for supporting Obama’s faith-based initiative will be to see whether he truly does stop up the holes permitted by the current Bush program, which allow church-based groups to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

If we do not permit gender-based and race-based discrimination in federally funded programs, then we have no business permitting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in these programs—regardless of the religious views of the group receiving funding. This is a human rights issue in which our democratic commitment to fundamental human rights must override the intent of religious groups to discriminate.

After all, groups have every right to forgo federal funding on the basis of religious principles, if their desire to discriminate overrides their commitment to human rights. Catholic Charities in Boston stopped providing adoption services when government guidelines required that it not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In places like Denver and Great Britain, Catholic Charities has expressed an intent to close rather than to be forced by government guidelines to prohibit discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

No one is forcing any of these faith-based groups to apply for or accept federal funding. Just as the groups have the freedom to discriminate in-house, they also have the freedom not to apply for federal funding when they have religious scruples about human rights principles to which they are expected to adhere, in order to receive federal funding. Barney Frank is absolutely right when he notes, "The notion that you need to allow religious groups to discriminate to receive federal funds is a lie. If you dip your fingers in the federal till, you can't complain if a little democracy rubs off on you."

Obama's Faith-Based Announcement: Faith-Based Reflections

I have been thinking about Mr. Obama’s announcement that he intends not only to continue, but to enhance, the Bush faith-based social services programs. I am not surprised. These programs have great cachet among black evangelicals, and it is to that constituency that this announcement speaks. I think it is possible to develop such programs so that they perform much-needed social services.

At the same time, I think that, as they currently operate, most faith-based social service programs are falling far short of the mark. I wonder if Mr. Obama has thought carefully enough about some of the shortcomings of these programs, as they currently operate.

I addressed some of these issues in my previous posting entitled “Barack Obama and Post-Homophobic Models of Black Leadership” (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/06/barack-obama-and-post-homophobic-models.html). As that posting notes, the transfer of many social services to faith-based initiatives in recent years, coupled with a diminution of federal funding of these services, has been disastrous, on the whole.

It has been disastrous primarily because it is a shell-game. I speak from experience. I spent two decades teaching in faith-based historically black universities (HBCUs), in which I saw at close range 1) federal monies flowing into universities from government programs, for which there was dubious to non-existent accounting; 2) faith-based programs sponsored by the university and funded by federal faith-based funding, which did not adequately meet the goals outlined in the programs’ mission statements; 3) the abuse of religious rhetoric and religious ideology to cover over what amounted to plain incompetence and greed on the part of directors and staff of some programs.

In theory, I have nothing against the use of faith-based groups to extend social services the governmental sector has historically provided. I have nothing against funding social services that churches themselves also sometimes provide, in an effort to see these services offered even more widely than they might be if church and government function independently of each other in providing the services.

In practice, however, I find that these programs have not done what they promised to do, when they were implemented. A large part of the problem is not with the programs per se: it is with the shoestring budgets on which they are forced to operate, due to lack of sufficient government funding.

In practice, the transfer of federal social service programs to churches and other faith-based organizations in the Bush period has resulted in radical cuts in much-needed social services in communities already suffering due to cutbacks in federal social services beginning with Reagan. The money provided to faith-based programs in the Bush era is pitifully far from what is needed.

There has also been insufficient scrutiny of how these programs operate and inadequate accounting for funds dispersed. Solely because the groups using the funds are faith-based, they too often receive the benefit of the doubt as to their use of faith-based funding, when accounting procedures and the accomplishments of the program fall short of government expectations. The flow of faith-based social service money to many churches and other faith-based groups has even been a corrupting influence in some of these churches and groups.

If an enhanced faith-based social service initiative under Mr. Obama is to be more effective, it will require much more stringent procedures to assure the proper use of funds by faith-based groups, careful administration of faith-based programs according to best-practice standards, and clear evidence that the programs are actually doing what they say—in short, that they are worth funding, because they are meeting social needs.

Before I outline some considerations I urge Mr. Obama to think further about if he is elected and follows through with his intent to develop faith-based initiatives, I should also note that my reflections depend not only on my work in HBCUs, but in having served on advisory boards for and worked with a number of faith-based programs in recent years, including programs to help those with HIV and to provide services for single teen mothers and their children. I speak out of these experiences, as well, in what I say below.

I would encourage Mr. Obama to think carefully about the following, if he enhances the faith-based social service initiatives of the Bush administration:

1. In order to be effective, faith-based social service programs need much more money than they are currently receiving. The amount disbursed to these programs is woefully inadequate to address effectively the social needs they are currently expected to address. It is a pittance—an insulting pittance designed more to relieve the conscience of a government (and a people, whom the government represents) than to meet the many glaring needs of the least among us.

2. In order to be effective, faith-based social service programs must not be given the benefit of the doubt simply because they are faith-based programs, when it comes to demonstrating their effectiveness and accounting for the monies they receive. There must be much more stringent best-practice government standards setting the mark for these programs. The programs must be held to these standards. They must have bona fide directors and staff, as well as trustworthy governing boards with strong concepts of fiscal integrity and professional decorum, in order to perform the services they are expected to perform.

3. Religion, church, and faith are not automatic assurances of integrity and competence in any area, let alone in the area of social services. Religion cannot be used as a kind of flag to be waved by those supporting these social programs, to justify misuse of funds and/or incompetent provision of social services.

One of the many teaching moments the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic priesthood in the United States has provided for all Americans—and all U.S. churches, in particular—since its unfolding in the Boston media in 2002 is the recognition that we give far too much latitude to churches in this nation with the soul of a church. We give too much latitude to churches when it comes to the cash-value of their promises to us. We give churches and their leaders the benefit of the doubt. We do not expect churches and their leaders to abuse their authority or to misuse money.

And yet, if the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church has taught us anything, it should have taught us that churches and their leaders do abuse and will abuse power and authority, and do misuse money. Along with many other churches, the Catholic church has exceedingly shoddy accounting procedures, in the fiscal sector. No rules, no guidelines, no governmental expectations require churches to disclose fully and accurately how much money they take in and how they use that money.

One of the central revelations of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church is that money—they money of millions of faithful laypersons, parallel to the money provided by taxpayers to the government—is being misused to pay off families of minors that have been abused. No one knows the extent of these pay offs throughout the country. The few indicators we have suggest that they have run into millions, and have occurred in dioceses everywhere in the nation.

Recent studies indicate a pattern of embezzlement of funds in parishes and at the diocesan level in at least a third of American dioceses—and this study touches only a minority of American dioceses. Indeed, news reports reveal that embezzlement is a problem in churches of all denominations across the country. In my little state alone in recent years, the Catholic parish in which I live has announced that a significant amount of money has disappeared from its treasury; the parish’s fiscal manager was responsible. In the town in which I spent my teen years in south Arkansas, a prominent United Methodist church has just revealed that a secretary has been embezzling money for years.

Misuse and misappropriation of funds is always entirely possible in any organization that does not have transparent accounting procedures. There is abundant evidence to suggest that abuses have occurred in groups to which the government has directed faith-based funding. In order for these programs to do what they claim they intend to do—and what our government proclaims they are doing—someone is going to have to bite the bullet and demand that churches and church leaders do what they resist doing: account carefully and scrupulously for the funds they receive, and assure that funds given for faith-based social services actually translate into such services.

4. Faith-based social service funding is particularly attractive to black evangelicals. To an extent that far surpasses the efforts of white evangelical churches, black churches have historically functioned as providers of many social services. They have historically been the backbone of the African-American community, functioning not merely as houses of worship, but as centers for education and voter registration; they have maintained credit unions. They have provided churchgoers countless social services unmet by society at large.

Given this history, as well as the commitment of the black churches to living the gospel through feeding the hungry, healing the sick, etc., it is not surprising that black ministers and black congregations have welcomed faith-based initiatives. These groups have been among the most conspicuous “consumers” of the faith-based programs of the Bush administration.

I would propose, however, the reliance of the black churches on faith-based funding is dangerous to these churches themselves, unless much more careful attention is given to operating rubrics and fiscal responsibility. Historically, the pastor of black churches has been beyond question and beyond reproach. Many African-American pastors exercise an amazing amount of unchecked control in the lives of their congregations.

When these pastors preside over the administration of faith-based programs—and they do, when funding is provided to a church and its programs—they sometimes do so with no questions asked, no checks and balances on their control and disbursement of money. As with the use of funds in the hierarchical and impermeable structures of the Catholic church, the use of funds in many African-American churches is a recipe for disaster. Accounting procedures are as shoddy to non-existent in many African-American churches as they are in the hierarchical and impermeable Catholic church.

In the provision of funds to many African-American faith-based groups, there has often been a tacit assumption on the part of the government that stringent questions cannot be asked about how the funds disbursed are being used. There is a tacit assumption of the entitlement of the African-American community on the part of those disbursing this funding, which is insulting (and damaging) to African-American churches, and which, in the last analysis, reveals an awareness on the part of the government that the money being handed out to African-American churches falls far short of the needs these churches are expected to meet. It is, in a sense, tainted money, given with a bad conscience, and without questions asked regarding how the money is used.

This needs to change, under Mr. Obama. It needs to change if the needs these programs are expected to meet—in the African-American community, above all—are to be met adequately. It also needs to change if these programs are not to be a corrupting influence in black churches, shoring up the authority of pastors who abuse authority, and/or tying black churches to the government in a way that diminishes their independence when it comes to making their own faith-based decisions about their values and commitments.

5. Having made these criticisms of the black churches and the use of faith-based funding that sometimes prevails in black churches, let me hasten to underscore a point my citation of the example of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church is already designed to make: these problems (abuse of pastoral power, abuse of fiscal accounting procedures) are not unique to black churches. They are endemic in American church life. In the context of addressing faith-based social service programs, I am focusing on the black church because African-American churches are largely invested in the faith-based initiative, and are, no doubt, encouraging Mr. Obama to expand this initiative.

In the AIDS social service programs with which I have been associated, I have seen horrendous abuse of pastoral authority by white churches. In one program with which I was closely associated, a Methodist church that happens to be close to where I live was one of the primary players in supporting this program and assisting persons living with HIV and AIDS.

Perhaps because its care teams were large and active, this church also claimed a degree of ownership of the program itself that was astonishing and inappropriate, and which ultimately led to the downfall of the program. The care teams of this church constantly undermined the program’s leaders—in the name of the Lord, of course—and even engaged in nasty rumor-mongering about some of these leaders.

Because these were church folks doing the rumor-mongering—solely because they were church folks (and folks attending a wealthy and prominent church)—they had influence that went far beyond their numbers within the organization. When they succeeded in bending the ear of a key board member, the organization’s fate was sealed. Other board members knew full well the venality, the petty jealousy and outright homophobia, that fed this Methodist church’s attempt to unseat the leaders of this faith-based AIDS initiative. I can recall one member telling me that, the moment he saw members of this care team at a “public hearing” sponsored by the board member listening to the care team, he knew mischief was afoot. Church = corruption, in the (sometime) experience of some of us associated with faith-based social services.

I should also hasten to note that the petty pilfering of funds given to faith-based needs is nothing beside the corporate robbery that goes on daily, about which many of us never raise our voices. White-collar embezzlement affects all of us, through higher prices, diminished wages, lack of confidence in our institutions. Beside that kind of embezzlement, the embezzlement that goes on in many church communities is picayune.

And yet, two wrongs do not make a right. And churches must be held to the standards they preach . . . .

6. Finally, a note about the claim of churches that they must be permitted to engage in employment discrimination and other forms of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, if they receive faith-based funding. This claim is not persuasive.

If an Obama administration upholds it, while faith-based programs are expanded, I will protest vigorously. Churches are expected to abide by federal expectations of non-discrimination when it comes to gender and race. Sexual orientation is no different. If Mrs. Obama was sincere in comparing racial discrimination to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation recently (and I believe she was sincere), then one of the first initiatives we need to expect from an Obama administration is adding sexual orientation to the list of categories on which no organization receiving federal funding can be allowed to discriminate.

The United States is far behind the practice of almost every other Western nation in this regard. When churches in most other Western nations claim the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in areas of hiring, etc., they are politely informed that the society in which they are functioning has a different (a higher) recognition of fundamental human rights. They are invited up to the standard recognized by their society.

And so it must eventually be in the U.S.