Black churches slow to warm to faith-based initiative, survey finds

September 19, 2006

By JONATHAN TILOVE
c. 2006 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON -- Only a tiny fraction of black churches have received money to help the poor as a result of the Bush administration's federal

These are among the findings of a first-of-its-kind survey of black churches by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank, released Tuesday (Sept. 19).

The survey -- conducted of 750 churches between November 2005 and January of this year -- was designed to explore how black congregations viewed the much-discussed effort to make it easier for religious organizations to receive public monies for providing social services, and how many, and what kind of churches, are participating.

The results would seem to tamp down any great claims for the program's reach, to date, in the black community, while also allaying critics' fears that the program would be a cudgel or lure to gather influential black pastors into the Republican fold.

In fact, in one of the most startling findings, the report notes that the black clergy most critical of the Bush administration initiative were the most likely to seek and receive funding.

"It throws cold water on some hot embers of concern," said Robert Franklin, a professor of social ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, who served on the report's advisory committee.

Those "hot embers," Franklin said, include not just the fear that the initiative would become a political "slush fund," but that it would lead to an unseemly rush for money that would breach church-state boundaries; that it was a ruse for reducing existing government responsibilities to the poor; and that it would inhibit black ministers from speaking truth to potential funders.

"My sense is there has been no muffling effect," Franklin said.

Contrary to what might have been expected, David Bositis, the Joint Center research associate who conducted the study, said the survey revealed that nearly half of the grant recipients were in the Northeast. Churches in New York, New Jersey and Illinois -- states that in the realm of presidential politics have emerged as Democratic bastions -- received more grants than churches in the Republican South or in the battleground states of Ohio and Florida.

Paradoxically, Bositis said, even though conservative churches viewed the Bush initiative more favorably, churches with more progressive theology and socially liberal congregations sought to participate.

Jay Hein, the new director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, welcomed as "healthy" the finding that black ministers were "able to take a dollar and still be a critic."

The initiative was a cornerstone of President Bush's blueprint for "compassionate conservatism" and is, Hein said, an attempt to answer the question, "How do you grow the supply of effective compassion?"

While the administration says that more than $2 billion in grants were delivered to faith-based organizations in fiscal 2005, the role of the initiative is not, for the most part, to provide the grants. It is rather to encourage federal agencies to consider religious organizations for funding, and to prepare grassroots leaders of those groups to compete for that money.

On this score, the initiative still has work to do. Among the churches surveyed, only 11 percent reported applying for funding through the initiative. Only 2.6 percent reported receiving it, though many more reported receiving other government monies.

The larger urban churches, which already had more sophisticated networks of social service programs, were most likely to win out. Many smaller churches lacked the wherewithal and savvy to apply.

Black churches have long played a critical role in providing human services in some of the poorest and most troubled neighborhoods in America. African-Americans are even more likely than most Americans to direct their charitable giving to their church. And, the Joint Center study found, nearly all the black churches surveyed -- 93 percent -- reported having some kind of social justice ministry.