Guest Post by Morbo
President George W. Bush and members of his administration constantly assert that “faith-based” organizations provide services to those in need more effectively and cheaper than secular or government-run entities.
There is no empirical evidence to back this up. Bush and his chorus in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, his congressional backers and those in the private sector salivating at the prospect of riding the faith-based gravy train just say it over and over, knowing that in time people will accept it as a fact.
Every now and then nasty old reality rears its ugly head. This happened recently in the wake of hurricane Katrina. According to an account that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle by David L. Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, the administration’s insistence on relying on faith-based groups undercut recovery efforts for one group of folks displaced by the storm.
Kirp reports that the Red Cross and a collection of secular relief providers in Tulsa, Okla., joined forces a few years ago to devise a strategy to help deal with refugees in the event of a disastrous hurricane like Katrina. They were thinking ahead, and they wanted to be prepared.
It was a smart move. The groups had a plan and were ready when the refugees started arriving in Tulsa. Unfortunately, officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) bypassed the Red Cross and its allies in favor of a faith-based group – Catholic Charities. As it turns out, that organization simply wasn’t up to the task. As Kirp put it:
[I]n deciding which Tulsa agency to turn to, FEMA chose Catholic Charities — which wasn’t part of the coalition, had no relevant experience with long-term placement of disaster victims and whose mission is “bringing Christ’s merciful love to people who suffer in our midst.”
FEMA, Krip notes, was determined to rely on faith-based providers. It also worked with a Southern Baptist group that shipped people to “a remote corner of the state, a site described by the faithful as ‘the most prayed place.'”
Meanwhile back in Tulsa, Kirp writes, “because Catholic Charities lacked the necessary personnel for the assignment, local fire departments were enlisted to help in doing the job. While firefighters are trained to do many things, they don’t know how to help victims of natural disasters start a new life.”
In the end there was no long-term plan for the hurricane victims, and the Baptist camp was not even able to account for how many people stayed there or where they ended up.
Opponents of the faith-based initiative have been saying for years that shifting social services from the secular/public sector to the private/religious sector puts the most vulnerable members of our society at risk. What they failed to point out is that it only takes one storm like this to add just about anyone to the ranks of the most vulnerable.
The Tulsa experience is telling. The administration and all those who insist that faith-based services as always better and always cheaper ought to learn from it. They won’t, because the initiative isn’t about helping the poor and never has been. It’s about keeping the Religious Right happy, eroding the wall of separation of church and state and giving the Republicans a big slush fund they can use to lure black pastors away from the Democrats.
Every now and then, a mighty wind comes along and exposes the truth.