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Axelson Symposium Focuses On Faith-Based Initiative
CHICAGO, IL (May 16, 2001) - The role of faith-based organizations in the delivery of social services was the focus of attention for more than 400 people attending today's symposium on the campus of North Park University.
The symposium, an annual event addressing contemporary issues of interest to the nonprofit community, is part of The Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management. This year's event, presented by The Alford Group, Inc., addressed the topic: Faith in Action: The Role of Faith-Based Organizations In an Era of Welfare Reform.
Much attention has been focused on the relationship between government social services programs and faith-based initiatives since President George W. Bush launched his faith-based initiative proposal in January after assuming office. The President seeks to expand opportunities for faith-based organizations to compete for federal social services dollars.
"Now that we're invited to the table, what do we bring to the table?" asked Stanley Carlson-Thies of the faith-based community as he opened the morning's first session. Carlson-Thies, former director of social policy studies at the Center for Public Justice in Annapolis, Maryland, now serves as associate director for law and policy in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at The White House. He outlined the historical and contemporary context for the ongoing public debate over the Faith-based and
Community Initiatives program, originally adopted in August 1996 as part of federal welfare reform. He challenged faith-based organizations to have confidence - that they can be on an equal footing with government in a collaboration process. While acknowledging that "the government won't keep everyone faithful," Carlson-Thies expressed hope that faith-based organizations
and the government can meet in a "coincidence of goals" that can better serve "the least, the last and the lost."
Key philosophical questions surrounding the issue of faith-based initiatives were addressed by Dr. Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches and a former U.S. congressman who served Pennsylvania for six terms. He confessed a degree of nervousness about the initiative.
"It sounds like they (the federal government under President Bush) want to take programs and dump them on the church," Edgar said. He warned that the initiative will not have a significant impact without more money, more appropriate regulations, more technical assistance and more research.
Framed by a number of cautions, Edgar expressed support for efforts that provide a larger role for faith-based organizations in social services programming. He expressed his belief in the concept of separation of church and state, "but not in the separation of people of faith and government institutions."
He criticized the current effort as lacking adequate research and hard data, charging that the effort is based largely on "anecdotal evidence," a charge later addressed by the third presenter, Carl Esbeck.
Esbeck, professor of law at the University of Missouri-Columbia, is also director of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom. Currently he is serving in the deputy attorney general's office of the U.S. Department of Justice. His role is to work on legislative efforts associated with faith-based initiatives and monitor various pieces of proposed legislation that may have an impact on those initiatives.
"Even non-faith-based efforts are not based on good empirical data," Esbeck said during a later interview. Esbeck said that the kinds of studies Edgar recommends - which Esbeck says are under way - will take from five to eight years to complete, noting that problems faced in social services areas are immediate and require attention.
Esbeck was the originator of Charitable Choice, a provision in the 1996 Welfare Reform Act designed to enable faith-based social service charities to cooperate with state and local agencies in delivering services to poor and needy individuals. Noting that Charitable Choice is not a new source of federal dollars earmarked for religious institutions, he stressed that organizations that
meet government standards should be able to obtain existing federal funds as easily as any other agency or institution. "No longer are we asking, 'Who are you?' It is 'What can you do? Can you
deliver the services our way,'" Esbeck said.
Terry Anderson, held hostage by Shiite Muslims for nearly seven years while working as the Associated Press bureau chief in Beirut, Lebanon, delivered the keynote address the symposium luncheon. Anderson was taken captive in 1985 and released in 1991.
His personal life shattered by the ordeal, Anderson told how his newly rekindled faith sustained him during those years of torture, sharing warm and personal insights into the lives of the other captives who shared cells with him at various times. He also spoke candidly about his continuing struggle to come to grips with the biblical command to forgive his captors and tormentors.
Addressing the President's faith-based initiative proposal, Anderson recommended caution, suggesting that when an organization accepts government money, the organization inevitably will have to accept the government control he believes will follow.
Linda Baker, secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services, discussed her experiences in working for and with faith-based social service agencies during the afternoon session. She shared the stage with Mary Nelson, president of Bethel New Life, and Dr. Amy Sherman, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute Welfare Policy Center and urban ministries advisor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management is under the direction of Dr. Melissa Morriss-Olson and is named in honor of the late Nils Axelson, who served 40 years as president of Covenant Benevolent Institutions for the Evangelical Covenant Church. For more information about the center and its programs, contact Chris Nicholson by telephone at 773-244-5518 or by email at cnicholson@northpark.edu.
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