TNJ - October 2001 - Editor's Note - Initiatives Rigged in Controversy by Njeru Waithaka

Editor's Note
November 2001

Initiatives Rigged in Controversy

by Njeru Waithaka

In a nation in which the separation of church and state is fundamental, it is dangerous for churches to be funded by the government. Certain black church leaders, however, particularly those on the religious right, have embraced the “faith-based and community initiatives”, spearheaded by the government to fund social programs through the church, in spite of opposition from the political left, right and center.

Proponents of the religious right view faith-based and community initiatives as the extension of the “charitable choice” of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act signed by former President Bill Clinton, and see no wrong in a program providing an alternative to the welfare state. They claim that the program has little government regulation, and that it subsidizes food kitchens and drug rehabilitation clinics. The religious right also sees the initiatives as payback for their years of loyalty to the Republican Party.

Opponents, however, see the church programs as a blatant attempt to win black voters for the Republican Party, coming right on the heels of affirmative action, which Republicans outwardly condemn.

President Bush, who saw the faith-based and community initiatives as central to his “compassionate conservatism” policy, garnered only 10 percent of the black vote in the 2000 presidential elections. He needs another 10 percent to win the elections in 2004, and his prayer is that his faith-based and community initiatives will take him a step closer to that number.

“I don’t think you’ll see six out of 10 black people voting Republican in 2002 or 2004, but the faith-based and community initiatives could build some bridges,” Congressman J.C. Watts, the highest-ranking black Republican in Congress, told Fortune in July.

The Reverend Calvin O. Butts of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem warned that the black church faces the danger of compromising its historical role of activism.

“Sure, I can take government money and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and so on, but I am not going to allow the government to shut my mouth,” Butts told Africana.com recently. Butts said that when he criticized New York’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for governing minorities with a heavy hand and a racist attitude, he saw federal, city and state money in his church’s nonprofit wing reduced.

Butts is not alone in warning against the danger of flirting with federally funded programs. Some church leaders have charged that faith-based and community initiatives are a sure way of inviting the government to church.

“If government provides funding to the thousands of faith-based institutions but demands in return that those institutions give up their unique religious activities, then their very raison d’etre may be lost,” Pat Robertson wrote in the Wall Street Journal in March.

Regardless of how well it is received by the religious right in the black church, the President’s faith-based and community initiatives is no choice to affirmative action. Time will tell the ultimate prize for the black church, but as always happens in cases of financial dependency, the first to go will be the people’s voice.

Click here for January 2002 Editor's Note - A Bright Economic Horizon

Click here for November 2001 Editor's Note - Initiatives Rigged in Controversy

Click here for April 2001 Editor's Note - The Good Competition

Click here for February 2001 Editor's Note - The Perennial Debate

Click here for January 2001 Editor's Note - The Beleaguered Media

Click here for October 2000 Editor's Note - Selling Out Cheaply

Click here for September 2000 Editor's Note - A Question of Trust

Click here for July / August 2000 Editor's Note - Value In Differences

Click here for June 2000 Editor's Note - Be Wary of Numbers

Click here for May 2000 Editor's Note - A Sobering Reminder