There are several issues threaded into the fabric of Barack Obama's declaration that he will support the delivery of social services using the infrastructure of faith-based organizations—churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc. From a political point of view it is easy to see why Obama has taken this path, given that a substantial number of voters have strong affiliations to religious organizations, and given that the secularists whom he stands to alienate will probably swallow this pill with the FISA pill and, like Moulitsas, just cut back their contributions a few percent.
One clear issue is the separation of church and state issue, and on this the ground is pretty well prepared. The "initiative" for delivery of social services is a federal, secular one and this is different from the "faith-based initiatives" of the Bush administration where the religious organization proposed to do social services work based on their own existing and or planned work within communities. The distinction may turn out in practice to be specious, but in the initial stages, it is important to understand that community groups (including community religous groups) doing the work of government—secular social services—is different from community groups and government doing religious groups' work.
The safeguards against overt proselytization are sturdy enough, I think. I have experience as a reviewer of the Bush-era F-BI grants for my state university campus and saw these overt safeguards and the strict rules behind them. I have to say, however, that Bush's and Obama's use of religious organization infrastructure and manpower brings with it a not-too-covert message that is positive for religious organizations and provides opportunities aplenty for unauditable infractions of the separation of church and state.
But there is another not so obvious reason for Obama to embrace this sort of project. It goes directly to his experience in street-level politics and community development. It is the essence of his understanding of street-level America that is now in play, and if Rev. Wright did not get your attention to this part of Obama, then you were sound asleep. Barack Obama knows how to work the religious group for civilized ends, even political ends. So, where there are opportunties for unauditable breaches of the separation of church and state, there are also opportunities for unauditable breaches of the separation of church and politics. If what is good for the gander were not good for the goose, then many would say, go ahead and convert these people to Democratic values. The trouble is that Republican values should have the same opportunities, so back we go to square one. It will be much better to just let the light of Democratic values shine beside the glow the religious elements inevitably brings to the show.
An even more interesting and less obvious issue in the Obama plan is the manpower discipline issue. When Reagan inherited the remains of the Great Society his minions did what they could to make sure the system did not work. In many respects Reagan's "welfare queen" was a product of his deliberate maladministration of the program. This is to say that workers at the interface level were so poorly supported by management and that management was so dead-set against welfare that the system inevitably crumbled and became counter-productive.
Now, though, with the manpower issue distributed outside civil service, with authority for program management in place for other reasons, reasons that require discipline and do not promote malfeasance, and with interface people at street level bringing in their own moral code, the operation should work far better than the Reaganite saboteurs system and even better than the bureaucratic machine establish back in Johnson's era. And, if this is so, the federal government can hope to replicate these benefit facets of the system for other social services delivery systems, too.
There are hazards, but the hazards of doing nothing or opening the system to obstructionism and sabotage is far more perilous, I think. Obama must hire men and women of unquestionable integrity to run such programs.
JB
http://americanliberalism.org
James R. Brett, Ph.D. taught Russian History in several universities before becoming an academic administrator in curriculum and faculty research administration. His academic interests have been in the history of science and the history of ideas, particularly Marxism and classical liberalism, but also psychology and consciousness studies. He is a frequent contributor to liberal and progressive blogs and is the founder and publisher of The American Liberalism Project.
This might all be wonderful if Obama were the Messiah and the government overseers you recommend were the twelve disciples. But I am not optimistic about either possibility.
Doing nothing is not an option, of course. By some of your own inference, Reagan proved that. But mixing up government and religion is bad medicine. Despite what Obama may have accomplished on the streets of Chicago. this is quite a different ball game. And much more expansive one and therefore more prone to corruption, misdirected funds and falling victim to the insipid theologies of proselytizing.
Another option you failed to mention is one that government should have been doing all along: performing as an effective humanitarian change agent. This would involve the rehabilitatiion of existing government agencies at the federal, state and local levels, to do the jobs they were created for in the first place. Program and agency administrators and employees would be held accountable for their actions and the stewardship of public funds, rewarded for successes and dismissed when they failed. This is tough to do when the legislators and bureaucrats are embroiled in endless pork barreling and jobs are held out as patronidge awards...like the system that runs Chicago! Did I mention Obama is from Chicago?
Manyof us could get on board quickly if there was, inherent in any Obama proposal for faith based initiatives, a committment to first make existing agencies do their job. We should stop hiring people and putting them on public payrolls just to keep chairs warm and reward political loyalty.
If we did that, we would not need to enlist the help of the church, synagogue or mosque on the corner and risk diluting democracy with external forces with ulterior motives.
by
Ivan Hentschel (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 8 diaries, 263 comments)
on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 2:56:09 PM
(First, color matters in reading online. Please avoid bile green for the sake of your readers.)
Yes, I had hoped that people would see that I am not solidly behind this program. There is much to be done, and if he is elected, he will do a lot of it his way, not the way it has been done in the past. Perhaps we take this truism too much for granted, perhaps it is time to try a new approach. The people seem to think so.
It is going to take several Democratic presidents to clean up the mess that Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush/Cheney have made. It is going to take Herculean patience! As Rome was not built in a day, rebuilding is going to take quite a while. It is essential, though, that if we have a builder in Obama, a person who can see some distance into the murk and filth of corrupt politics, then we have to give him our best ... our critical best!
Thanks for your remarks.
JB
by
James Brett (84 articles, 95 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 90 comments)
on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at 3:10:51 PM
2 comments
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