Bill May Restore Faith In Welfare

‘And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor … and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”

- I Corinthians

Welfare is cheap - a lot cheaper than providing counseling, training, supervision and child care to get unskilled welfare mothers into the workforce, and keep them there.

Welfare is easy. Just mail the check, and the job is done.

Welfare is cold, impersonal, bureaucratic. Stand in line. Show proof of residency. Fill out a form. Show birth certificates of children. Fill out a form.

Welfare is hated - by recipients as well as taxpayers - as a system that keeps people poor, dependent, helpless, hopeless, isolated, despised.

We’re going to get a welfare reform bill, I think. If the House-Senate conference committee comes up with something that’s not too far right of the Senate version, President Clinton will sign it.

One part of the Senate welfare bill is intriguing. It makes me nervous, but I think I like it.

Missouri Republican John Ashcroft - the same guy who told Bob Packwood it was wrong to have sex with staffers - has included a provision that would make it easier for religious groups to provide social services in a religious setting, with government funds.

Many religious groups get public funds to help the poor, and often provide help very effectively. Catholic Charities, for instance, helps immigrants become citizens, resettles refugees, feeds seniors, arranges shared housing and runs a foster grandparent program.

But when a religious organization contracts to provide a social service, it must divorce the provision of services from the religious mission in order to avoid a church-state conflict.

The Ashcroft provision would relax the rules; the divorce wouldn’t have to be absolute.

Religious service providers couldn’t use government money to fund evangelizing, or anything else not specified in the contract. States that chose to contract with a religious service provider would have to make sure the same help was available in a secular setting, for those who prefer their soup without the prayers.

It’s likely that many people would prefer social services with a spiritual element. It’s also likely that separating government support of charity from government support of religion will be tough.

Mississippi, one of the least generous states in terms of welfare cash, already is trying to use churches to help poor families get off welfare. The state wants congregations to volunteer to provide a support network for welfare recipients, helping them look for work, find child care, get the car fixed, etc.

Faith in Families hopes churches will help welfare recipients with “spiritual needs,” but without proselytizing.

There are 5,500 churches in Mississippi and 59,343 families on welfare, about 11 families per church. In nearly a year, Faith in Families has signed up 55 families, and 165 churches.

Churches can’t replace welfare. But they are capable of providing the kind of help that goes a lot farther than a welfare check.

Help is personal. Churches may offer counseling that reflects shared religious values. Members can be role models and friends.

Help is practical. There’s likely to be someone to offer a job lead, or emergency baby-sitting, or an interview outfit, or a place to stay to get away from an abusive relationship.

I don’t think many poor women get off welfare without a support network of family, friends or someone. Fellow church members, for instance. It’s just too hard to go it alone.

In “The Tragedy of American Compassion,” Marvin Olasky argues that church-based charity offers “affiliation” to the poor, a chance to reconnect to a caring community. By contrast, he writes, government aid is demeaning and demoralizing, impersonal and ineffective at building personal responsibility.

Also influential is Gertrude Himmelfarb’s praise of Victorian virtues in “The De-Moralization of Society.” A history professor, Himmelfarb is the mother of GOP strategist Bill Kristol, making her the grandmother of the “Contract With America.”

Her book argues that the poor kept their human dignity in Victorian society because they were treated as moral actors, capable of sin and redemption, not as hapless victims of their environment.

Dignity rarely comes before feeding the kids on a poor woman’s priority list. But it’s not trivial either, because the demoralized poor are going to stay that way.

Our welfare system is such a mess that I’m willing to try anything to break out of the despair in which so many families are trapped. Even at the risk of mixing church and state. Perhaps religious groups can supply the compassion that government can’t.

“And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

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