Can Religious Charities Take the Place of the Welfare State?

[rug]

Supporters of Trump’s budget are eager to restore the central role of faith-based organizations in serving the poor—but it’s not clear they can be an adequate substitute for government.

EMMA GREEN 5:00 AM ET

President Trump’s initial budget proposal would end aid for poor families to pay their heating bills, defund after-school programs at public schools, and make fewer grants available to college students. Community block grants that provide disaster relief, aid neighborhoods affected by foreclosure, and help rural communities access water, sewer systems, and safe housing would be eliminated. Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, suggested recently that even small amounts of federal funding for programs like Meals on Wheels, which delivers food to house-bound seniors, may not be justified.

With billions of dollars worth of cuts to federal social services likely ahead, the wars of religion have begun. Bible verses about poverty have suddenly become popular on Twitter, with Republicans and Democrats each claiming to better know how Jesus would think about entitlement spending. While conservatives tend to bring religion into public-policy conversations more than liberals, the valence is often switched when it comes to the budget: Liberals eagerly quote the Sermon on the Mount in support of government spending, while conservatives bristle at the suggestion that good Christians would never want cuts.

But it’s more than posturing. If government steps back, religious organizations may need to step up. Much of the infrastructure and money involved in the charitable provision of social services is associated with religion, whether it’s a synagogue’s homeless-sheltering program or a large aid organization such as Catholic Relief Services. People like the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner believe these private services could potentially be expanded even further. While some government programs should be scrapped altogether, he argued, “other programs may well be replaceable by private charity—either dollar-for-dollar, or more likely, they can be done more effectively and efficiently.”

I spoke with roughly a half dozen scholars from a variety of ideological backgrounds who study religious giving, and they were all skeptical that churches, synagogues, mosques, and other faith-based organizations could serve as an adequate substitute for the government in providing for the needy and vulnerable. The scale and structure of government services, the sectarian nature of religious programs, and the declining role of religion in public life are all challenges, they argued; if anything, states would have to step in to take on the burden, or some current services would go away entirely. The budget debate may seem like a wonky back-and-forth about economic forecasts. But it probes long-standing questions about how society should provide for people’s needs. As David Campbell, a political-science professor at the University of Notre Dame, put it, “No religion is on the sidelines when it comes to caring for the poor.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/budget-religion/520605/

It is clear - they can't. Michael Tanner is an ass.

[jzola]

1. Oh Please---

These people have NEVER provided for the needy. That's a right wing Christian fantasy. They've had 2000 years to prove their concern for the vulnerable.

[rug]

3. You confuse republicans with the documented acts of charity by all sorts of relgions for centuries.

Conflating hatred of religion with republican policy is ignorant.

[hrmjustin]

10. That is a rather broad statement.

My church does plenty of good charity work thank you very much.

[MFM008]

2. NO

Why should lives depend on that charity bull shit.

[edhopper]

4. I am not going to degrade what charities do

to help people.

But there is no way they can take the place of the social safety net (welfare state is a loaded phrase)
And when things get bad, their donations go down (people have less money to give) just when they are needed most.

[rug]

5. It's just another way for republicans to blame others for the misery they're inflicting.

"If you really cared you'd help them."

"if you won't, why should the government?"

All the while adding $50,000,000,000 to the defense department.

[phylny]

6. My church does a great deal to help the poor and aged in

our community, as do other churches in the area. The need is far too great for this to be the solution.

[TEB]

7. Yet they want to increase military spending

[rug]

8. Welcome to DU.

[TEB]

9. Thanks

[AtheistCrusader]

11. No, because religious charities like to discriminate against people who need help.

Some charities like to discriminate more than they like state funding.

The collision of constitutional rights poses irreconcilable demands. When religious organizations work for the common good — the welfare of children — and accept taxpayer money from state and local governments, the attached obligation is to treat all comers equally. For Catholic organizations to comply is to violate Church doctrine.

“In the name of tolerance, we’re not being tolerated,” Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., told the New York Times when Illinois dioceses stopped adoption services rather than comply.

Similarly, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., ended an 80-year “legacy of high quality service to the vulnerable in our nation’s capital” when the city informed Catholic Charities in 2009 that “the agency could no longer serve as a provider of foster care and public adoption services as a result of the D.C. same-sex marriage law,” said Sheridan Watson, communications manager for the Office of Media and Public Relations at the archdiocese.

“This is because under the new law, in order to have a contract with D.C. to provide such services, providers were required to certify the marital status of adoptive and foster care families and to place children with same-sex married couples, which would violate the tenets of the Catholic Faith.”

https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/ByIssue/Article/TabId/735/ArtMID/13636/ArticleID/14666/Tough-times-for-Catholic-adoption-agencies.aspx

First example among many why we should never trust a religious org to implement social safety net mechanisms.