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N E O L I B E R A L I S M , P A R T I A L I T Y, A N D
T H E P O L I T I C S O F FA I T H - B A S E D
W E L FA R E I N T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S
Jason Hackworth
Faith, Charity, and the Welfare State
One recourse [for poverty], and in many ways the most desirable, is private
charity. It is noteworthy that the heyday of laissez-faire, the middle and late
nineteenth century in Britain and the United States, saw an extraordinary
proliferation of private eleemosynary organizations and institutions. One of
the major costs of the extension of governmental welfare activities has been
the corresponding decline in private charitable activities.1
Government must … do more to take the side of charities and community
healers, and support their work. We’ve had enough of the stale debate between
big government and indifferent government. Government must be active
enough to fund services for the poor — and humble enough to let good
people in local communities provide those services.
So I have created a White House Office of Faith-based and Community
Initiatives. Through that office we are working to ensure that local community
helpers and healers receive more federal dollars, greater private support and
face fewer bureaucratic barriers. We have proposed a ‘compassion capital
fund,’ that will match private giving with federal dollars.
We have proposed allowing all taxpayers to deduct their charitable
contributions — including non-itemizers. This could encourage almost $15
billion a year in new charitable giving. My attitude is, everyone in America
— whether they are well-off or not — should have the same incentive and
reward for giving.2
Though broadly similar in content, these two quotes, separated by four
decades, are rooted in fundamentally different contexts. When Milton
Friedman, one of the fathers of the modern neoliberal movement, wrote
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these words in 1962 lauding the virtues of private charity as a solution to
poverty, he was considered a secular heretic3 and part of the “lunatic right
fringe.”4 Keynesian-welfarism was hegemonic, and suggesting that the market
would spontaneously respond to poverty through the device of charity was
considered politically questionable and analytically myopic. When Bush,
by contrast, delivered the commencement address at Notre Dame in 2001,
the reception for such ideas within the academy, and more popularly, had
warmed considerably. He went on to note, in a bout of uncharacteristic
humility, that he was simply following through with the project that had been
initiated with the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill that “ended welfare as we knew
it.” The idea was to end large welfare entitlement programs and substantially
supplement if not replace them with the work of faith-based and private
community organizations. Bush implored that he was simply following
through on the popular mandate that had existed since 1996, and on an
intellectual consciousness that had been evolving since Friedman dared to
challenge orthodoxy four decades earlier. All seemed very well on the Rightwinged front in the United States in early 2001. The Republican Party was
in control of the presidency and Congress, and its issues, including the
Faith-Based Initiative, were represented by a wide range of extremely wellfunded think tanks and activist organizations. The Faith-Based Initiative
seemed like a Republican crowd pleaser, sure to consolidate power even
more for the Bush Administration.
It is perhaps, then, somewhat surprising to note that, scarcely five years
after Bush’s commencement address, former CATO Institute fellow and selfprofessed conservative Ryan Sager wrote that the Faith-Based Initiative was
a “policy disappointment”5 that showed “Bush, Rove and company as manipulators of the moral minority.”6 He went on to argue that the policy direction
of the Bush White House was threatening to break apart the politically
curious,7 but otherwise solid alliance of neoliberals8 and social conservatives
within the Republican Party. And Sager was not alone. His criticism of the
Faith-Based Initiative and its potential for undermining traditional Republican
coalitions was echoed by a variety of commentators from a variety of Rightwinged perspectives.9 What was it that irked the Right so much about this
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Based Initiative threatened the aforementioned alliance?
The intent of this paper is to explore this broader question by carefully
considering the complicated political and intellectual motivations that led
to the creation and ongoing existence of the Faith-Based Initiative in the
United States. In so doing, I also wish to use the case to reflect upon a more
academic debate that revolves around the extent to which large ideas like
Friedman’s neoliberalism help us understand specific policy forms like the
Faith-Based Initiative. My broad argument is that neoliberalism has a tremendous impact on efforts like the Faith-Based Initiative, but that its impact is
always and necessarily partial. Understanding this partiality helps us better
comprehend the specific impact of neoliberalism as a political project.
Top-down, Bottom-up, and Over-the-Top Neoliberalism There is a great
deal of controversy over how, exactly, to define neoliberalism, but for the
purposes of a reference point, I will do so as follows:10 neoliberalism is the
very selective reincarnation of classical liberal ideas, most of which were
generated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. These ideas
were selected, recast, and promoted most prominently by Frederick Hayek
and Milton Friedman during the mid-twentieth century.11 Though liberal
theory encompasses a great deal of variation — so much so that some such
as Gray argue that it is a self-contradicting project12 — neoliberalism, as
defined by Hayek, Friedman, and their phalanx of contemporary disciples
has tended to focus on three themes.13 First and foremost, neoliberalism
emphasizes the importance of the individual and the importance of
enhancing individual autonomy. Second, neoliberalism venerates the private
property-based market as the most efficient and effective means for enhancing
said autonomy. Third, neoliberalism frames the state as a nearly-inevitable
barrier to both individual autonomy and market efficiency.14
Though neoliberalism is important to contemporary studies of political
economy, there is a great deal of controversy beneath the surface about the
extent, geography, and mechanics of its role in shaping policy and everyday
life. An increasingly influential group of political economists has grown
skeptical of theorizing top-down neoliberalism. These skeptics have employed
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ence of top-down neoliberalism, especially the idea that it is a coherent or
consistent political project on the ground. First, critics have challenged topdown neoliberalism on geographical grounds, by arguing that localities filter
and define neoliberalism at least as much as they (i.e., localities) are filtered
and defined by such ideas.15 Within this conception, neoliberalism is simply
part of a local-global dialectic rather than being a top-down set of processes.
Second, critics have challenged the internal consistency of neoliberalism
itself. Brenner and Theodore have, for example, suggested that neoliberalism entails a form of state intervention that contradicts one of its own
basic premises.16 As such, any attempt to implement such a vision is afflicted
with a basic contradiction: in order to enact a “minimalist” state environment, direct interventions by the state are necessary.17 Third, some critics
challenge the emphasis on neoliberalism given the presence of other parallel
processes and ideologies. Jessop, in particular, has argued that the analytical
emphasis on neoliberalism as an omnipresent force elides the presence of
various other forces that are transforming European and North American
society. These parallel processes and ideas challenge, morph, and sometimes
blatantly contradict a purely neoliberal project — assuming that such a
thing exists.18 Finally, a school of thought has challenged top-down neoliberalism by arguing that the term is used to encapsulate a set of processes
that are either so different or loosely connected to the liberal project that
they have rendered the term neoliberal meaninglessly broad.19 One reason
that the term is so broad, according to this line of thought, is that it elides
a set of governing practices (i.e., governmentality) that cannot be usefully
encapsulated by the neoliberal metanarrative. Advocates of this line of
reasoning are worried about this turn of events, as they portend a politics
that is ill-equipped to focus on either the geographical specificity of neoliberalism, or to develop a counter ideology that exploits the fissures of the
project in its top-down and contingent forms. As Leitner et al. noted recently,
“a focus on neoliberalism as a top-down process can inadvertently reinforce
its hegemonic practice.”20 Emphasizing the local fissures of neoliberalism
becomes the political goal within this line of thought.
Though recognizing the importance of these arguments, I wish to
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challenge the emphasis somewhat by suggesting that they have the analytical effect of facilitating a very loose application of the term “neoliberal” to
a variety of projects, and the political impact of eliding top-down neoliberalism. Analytically, the current emphasis on exploring the ways that
neoliberalism’s implementation is highly local opens the door to apply the
term to a variety of policies, projects, and ideas that may or may not be
neoliberal in any justifiable sense. It becomes circular, then, to conclude
from this evidence that neoliberalism is so hopelessly local or contingent
that a discussion of top-down neoliberalism is counterproductive. Politically,
the emphasis on contingency and bottom-up neoliberalism has the effect of
eliding the various agents of top-down neoliberalism, like think tanks, bondrating agencies, the IMF, and American foreign policy. While it is true, as
aforementioned authors have pointed out, that emphasizing top-down
neoliberalism can inadvertently reinforce its importance, it is just as true
that emphasizing its other — bottom-up neoliberalism — can inadvertently
underestimate the importance of top-down neoliberalism.
An emphasis on partiality differs somewhat from both sides of the aforementioned debate. That is, it is important to understand that neoliberalism
is a broad, powerful, geopolitical project that does “land” in many different
places, but also that it is not the only process or idea that affects policy or
everyday life. By emphasizing partiality, the false dualism of top-down or
bottom-up is replaced by an understanding that places neoliberalism as a topdown project among many others, one that interacts with an even greater
variety of bottom-up projects. To draw out this argument, I turn to the case
of faith-based social services in the United States, mostly though not entirely
as they were mobilized during the Bush Administration.21 On one hand,
faith-based social services are driven, centrally perhaps, by the neoliberal
desire to reduce Keynesian-welfarism. Yet, by the same token, there are
several other motivations that are not related to neoliberalism. Parsing the
details of this policy experiment with an eye to the partiality of neoliberalism can thus highlight the actualized influence of top-down neoliberalism
while allowing sufficient room to appreciate the complex policy landscapes
into which it was placed under the Bush Administration.
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Faith-based Welfare
Charitable Choice and the (Re)Emergence of the Evangelical Block in
American Politics Though he is on record for stating that God asked him
to become president of the United States in 2000,22 George W. Bush was
neither the first president to campaign on the idea of lowering the wall of
separation between religion and the state, nor the first to have implemented
policy that furthered this end. Not only did Al Gore, his opponent in 2000,
run on a similar promise to expand government funding to religiously based,
social service providers, but such organizations were already actively involved
in social service delivery at the time.23 Lutheran Social Services, Catholic
Charities, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, and Habitat for Humanity, to
name just the largest and most prominent organizations, had received direct
and in-kind government aid for social services for decades. Why, then, were
Gore and Bush making promises during their contentious battle about
removing barriers to the funding of religiously based social services and
increasing funding to religious providers? Furthermore, why was it so controversial given that such relationships had been around for so long?
The political issue on the table was at once a banal matter of enforcing
an existing law and a deeply philosophical matter that galvanized very
different factions on the Right, while dividing much of the American
electorate. The banal matter at hand was simply enforcing provisions in the
1996 Welfare Reform Act that had already lowered existing barriers to the
federal government funding of social services provided by religiously based
organizations. The Act, famous for “ending welfare as we knew it” included
an obscure passage about the provision of social services by religiously based
providers. It was the brainchild of John Ashcroft, a then-little-known US
Senator from Missouri who actively and successfully campaigned to have
language included in the Act that prohibited “discrimination” against
religiously based social service providers. His efforts were meant to include
not just the aforementioned established providers like Lutheran Social
Services, but smaller congregation-based organizations and those (of whatever
size) that refused to separate their social service delivery from their proselytization efforts. After this point, it became illegal to “discriminate” against
sectarian organizations in the awarding of government contracts for social
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services. Though Bill Clinton enthusiastically signed the 1996 Welfare Reform
Bill to assure his re-election the same year, his administration’s support for
the Charitable Choice provision remained languid. He and his officials
expressed public support for both the provision and the larger issue, but
clung to the long-standing litmus test of “pervasive sectarianism” in deciding
which religious organizations would be excluded from government money.
The notion of “pervasive sectarianism” was derived initially from the
1948 Supreme Court case McCollum v. Board of Education.24 The matter
before the court involved a program of religious instruction that was offered
on the grounds of a public school in Champaign, Illinois. Vashti McCollum,
mother of James, a student at the school, objected to the program being
held there on the grounds that it violated the US Constitution’s “establishment clause” (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion”). The Court ruled 8-1 in her favour and, in so doing, established
rigorous criteria for what forms of funding religious activities could receive.
One criterion is the notion of “pervasive sectarianism” — the idea that an
institution or group is so sectarian that there is little practical hope that a
separation between its religious and secular activities could be achieved.
This standard emerged in at least a half-dozen Supreme Court cases after
McCollum and, in most of these instances, formed the basis for limiting or
eliminating a program considered too religious to be benefiting from public
funds. Ashcroft’s Charitable Choice amendment was a thinly veiled rebuke
to the idea that an organization’s “pervasive sectarianism” made it unworthy
of funds, but the Clinton Administration nonetheless held a more-or-less
consistent line of upholding the principle while in office.
So, on one hand, the election year (2000) rhetoric was simply a matter
of deciding how to enforce an existing law. Beneath the surface, though, it
involved much more. The legal-technical nature of the public debate belied
a much more popular (on the Right), much more philosophical struggle to
allow religious social service providers to fill in where state institutions had
failed. In broad terms, the debate emerged as an offshoot of the incredible
rise of the Evangelical Right in the United States since the late 1980s.
Throughout the mid-twentieth century, the Evangelical Movement actually
had an ambivalent relationship with electoral politics in the United States.25
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As Green describes, the history of the Evangelical Movement in the United
States, and in particular the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE),
its main public policy arm, has been one in which debate was rife about
what the proper role of the movement should be in electoral politics.26
Between 1920 and 1940, movement politics27 in the form of opposition to
teaching evolution dominated, and then quiescent politics, after larger public
opinion turned against the former during the Scopes Trial,28 reigned. In the
early 1940s, especially after the 1941 formation of the NAE, Evangelicals
began to engage more formally in mainstream politics, particularly in the
form of adamant opposition to communism or anything that vaguely resembled it. There were, however, still quiescent factions within the movement
until the 1970s, when various groups began to gain political power. After
the early 1970s, movement and regularized politics were predominant
features. Opposition to abortion choice and gay rights have been particularly influential focal points in this transition. The influence of evangelicals
began to grow steadily — save for the embarrassing televangelist scandals
of the mid-1980s — until becoming, arguably, the most important
constituency on the American Right by the early 1990s. The movement,
through its various institutions like Jerome Dobson’s Focus on the Family,
the aforementioned National Association of Evangelicals, and Ralph Reed’s
Christian Coalition, funnelled millions of dollars to politicians like John
Ashcroft to sponsor legislation like Charitable Choice (and a great deal
more, to be sure).
Thus, the passage and (subsequent lack of ) enforcement of Charitable
Choice was much more than a technical quibble about social service funding.
It represented a fundamental philosophical disagreement with secular governance that was underpinned by an increasingly successful political movement.
Though it would be a stretch to suggest that the Faith-Based Movement
had a large number of mainstream scholars behind it, there also emerged in
the 1990s a group of scholars whose work attempted to carve out a morally
and intellectually justifiable space for “faith-based welfare” in the United
States.
The neoliberal viewpoint — i.e., to eliminate state intrusions “disguised”
as compassionate welfare and to continue the pattern of local, non-profit
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provision rather than government-led provision — was the most established
school of thought in this regard. The antistatism inherent in this view has
a long history in the United States, but had been re-energized during the
Reagan years by the larger growth of nongovernmental social service
providers, and by the rise of neoliberal think tanks like the CATO Institute
(not to mention sympathetic ones like the American Enterprise Foundation
and the Heritage Institute). The ideas were also promoted by a cadre of
economists, political scientists, and business professors around the world.
But while the neoliberal camp was the most established, it was also seen as
vaguely (if not acutely) mean-spirited when it came to matters involving
the poor, and few outside of the Republican Party held the view. Its application to the realm of social welfare gained little ground among
nonideologues until a peculiar school of thought began to merge this premise
(i.e., neoliberal antistatism) with a paean to the system of religiously based
social welfare that had existed more prominently in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
Marvin Olasky, a controversial journalism professor at the University of
Texas, was by far the most prominent figure in this regard. Olasky’s 1992
book, The Tragedy of American Compassion, received relatively little attention among the mainstream social policy community,29 but was wildly
influential as a more-or-less intellectual justification for the policies of Rightwinged politicians like Newt Gingrich and ideologues like William Bennett
— both of whom promoted the book aggressively from the start. The promotional endorsements on the book’s cover read like a Who’s Who of the 1990s’
American Right: Gingrich, Charles Murray, and Charles Colson. The
acknowledgments, which include God and Milton Friedman, situate the
work even more clearly. In it, Olasky argues that the “tragedy” of American
welfare has long been its inability to distinguish between the “deserving”
and “undeserving” poor. Giving alms to the poor without consideration of
whether they deserve it undermines their ability to help themselves, to link
with a community, and to find salvation in God. Olasky argues that this
problem has been around at least since the late nineteenth century, but that
it accelerated considerably after the Great Society welfare programs of the
late 1960s. According to Olasky, the Great Society was a great secularizer
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of welfare, even those forms of welfare that came from churches and faithbased institutions. The poor, in his view, need a form of spiritually driven
tough love if they are ever going to rise from their predicament.
Not surprisingly, Olasky’s Tragedy was either ignored or lambasted by
mainstream critics and historians, most notably for “cherry-picking” historical examples while completely ignoring others (most notably slavery) to
venerate an idyllic time in the eighteenth century when families, not the
state, “took care of their own.”30 Most just saw it as a mean-spirited tome,
only lightly cloaked in language that made the position appear to be more
intellectual and less ruthless than it actually was.31 But while the reception
was tepid among academics, the influence among the American Right was
tremendous. Not only was his book promoted aggressively by the aforementioned Murray (famous for arguing that Blacks are intrinsically less
intelligent than Whites), Gingrich (who, as newly elected speaker of the
House in 1994, gave a copy to every incoming first-year Republican
congressperson), and William Bennett, it also caught the eye of a rising Texas
politician and businessman named George W. Bush. From the early 1990s
onward, the ideas, policies, and strategy of Bush and Olasky would become
intertwined. Olasky became an advisor to Bush during his days as Texas
governor, his run for the presidency, and eventually his administration.
But while Olasky’s Tragedy had tremendous influence among a cadre of
high profile Right-winged ideologues in the United States, more serious
theologians also pointed out that the faith-based social service movement
in the United States was built upon two much older and established
European traditions.32 Though Olasky’s book and ideas were used for more
high profile political debates, the German Catholic notion of “subsidiarity”
and the Dutch Calvinist model of “sphere sovereignty” were used to persuade
more narrowly focused audiences.33 Karl Rove, the President’s main political advisor, Bush, and even Olasky himself were known to invoke these
two principles when speaking to audiences of religious folk who were not
yet persuaded that faith-based welfare was right for the United States. As Daly
explains, both principles emerged in the nineteenth century as a reaction to
the idea that socialism and social universalism were threatening to undermine the power of the church in social welfare in continental Europe.34
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“Subsidiarity” is the idea that the state — even the secular state — should
provide funding to religiously based social welfare agencies, and “sphere
sovereignty” is the idea that the state should do so without interfering with
the methods of welfare delivery. Though Olasky did not deal with these
matters in great depth until recently, and they rarely come up in public
debates about the topic, the parallel drawn with “tolerant” European
countries served to morally and intellectually legitimate the position that the
ostensibly-secular US federal government should actively promote sectarian
forms of welfare. It helped extinguish, or at least complicate, the view that
such an arrangement might lead to a soft theocracy in the United States, and
conversely a softening of the antistatist neoliberal viewpoint that was seen
as mean spirited.
By the time that the 2000 race for the presidency arrived, the movement
(political and intellectual) had gained so much ground that it was almost
axiomatic that an appeal to its ideas would have to be made on the campaign
trail, regardless of party affiliation. The Evangelical Movement was no longer
ambivalent about whether to participate in electoral politics; rather, it was
aggressively flexing its muscle during the campaign. Candidate Gore
fashioned a faith-based initiative of his own to tap into this movement, but
it was clear that Bush was “their” candidate. On the campaign trail, Bush,
with his advisor Marvin Olasky35 and countless other sympathizers,
continued to outline a program for lowering the barriers to faith-based
welfare. They invoked the language of civil rights, arguing that religious
folk, particularly mainstream Christians, had been discriminated against by
secular governance for years.
After the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency in 2000, his new
administration made no effort to steer clear of controversial, potentially
divisive issues like faith-based welfare upon entering office. One of the first
tasks the new administration assumed was to establish the institutional
architecture for implementing faith-based welfare.36 First, the White House
Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Office was established to coordinate
efforts, generate promotional material and position papers, organize conferences and workshops, and above all, to placate the Evangelical base, which
was eager to see action on this front. This was followed by the creation of
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similar offices in the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education,
Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban
Development, Justice, Labor, Veterans Affairs, the Small Business Administration, and the Agency for International Development.37 The central goal
of these changes was to eliminate “barriers” to faith-based providers who
had hitherto been “discriminated against” by the federal government.
After establishing the institutional architecture within the White House
and executive branch, the Administration issued a series of executive orders
and pressured Congress to pass regulatory changes that would lower barriers
for religious social service providers, and provide tax incentives for charitable
giving. Finally, in 2002, the new administration established the Compassion
Capital Fund (CCF) to build the capacity of faith-based community organizations that had been ill-equipped to seek out funding before because of
small staffs, high turnover, difficulty complying with existing regulations,
difficulty applying for funds, or difficulty managing existing projects. The
nature of the CCF made it clear that the Administration was not aiming to
enhance the ability of established organizations like Catholic Charities, but
rather to support small, primarily Evangelical Christian, often congregation-based organizations (many of which would have been rejected for aid
by the Clinton Administration because of “pervasive sectarianism”).
Gauging the Impact of the Faith-Based Initiative It is hard to isolate the
figures on the Faith-Based Initiative’s exact impact, in part because funds
had been allocated to organizations like Lutheran Social Services and the
Salvation Army (who agreed to separate their efforts to proselytize from
their efforts to serve the needy) for decades before the White House FaithBased Office was even conceived. It is also true that many of the President’s
legislative initiatives were stalled in Congress, or backgrounded after the
events of 11 September 2001, so no seismic legislative shift did occur,
much to the dismay of Evangelical leaders and even White House officials
like David Kuo.38 The Administration itself published figures that showed
a marked increase in funding to faith-based organizations (FBOs), but as
Kuo and others pointed out, they were not very careful about identifying
which of these funds and organizations are new.39 More reliable figures
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were available from a Congressional General Accounting Office (GAO)
study released in June 2006. It found that a total of $24 million had been
spent on establishing and administrating the aforementioned White House
Office and its subsidiaries, and that, between 2003 and 2005, competitive
grants (most of which were allocated to states that then released the funds
to local organizations) to FBOs increased 21 percent.40 By 2005, the total
figure for competitive grants to local FBOs exceeded $2.1 billion. As far
as the CCF was concerned, again the impact was difficult to isolate, but
the same study found that the Administration had spent more than $500
million on efforts (including, but not limited to the CCF) to encourage
FBOs to participate more actively and competently in social service
contracting in the future. Given the overwhelming size of the larger US
federal budget, the figures reported in the GAO report appeared modest.
But while the quantitative impact of the Faith-Based Initiative was
questionable, the qualitative shift in the federal government’s treatment of
openly sectarian social service agencies was unmistakably clear. The Bush
Administration showed a marked disinterest in prosecuting cases that might
violate even the most basic rules set forth by the courts in matters of this
sort, namely that a separation between an organization’s religious and social
service functions must be present, and options for secular alternatives must
be provided. The aforementioned GAO study found that 4 of the 13 cases
that they studied appeared to be openly violating one of these two guidelines. Moreover, The New York Times ran a series of articles in fall 2006 that
documented a growing sympathy in the courts for openly-religious, statefunded social services. The latter documented court cases in which
church-based social services were permitted to terminate employees on the
basis of their religious affiliation (and, in one case, because an employee
was terminally ill) and be “fast-tracked” on local zoning changes, all in the
name of “religious liberty.”
On a basic political level, the Evangelical Faith-Based Movement has
achieved this by marshalling the language of “civil rights.” Though many
Evangelicals have struggled with the state concessions provided by the civil
rights movement, the Bush Campaign (and eventual Administration) made
it their intent to situate Right-winged Christians as a discriminated group
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whose views were being suppressed. Upon entering office in 2001, the
Administration made it clear just how serious it was about this notion. One
of the first acts of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community
Initiatives (OFBCI) was to generate a document entitled “Unlevel Playing
Field: Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based Community Organizations
in Federal Social Service Programs.” Its author was John DiIulio, a onetime Democrat reportedly converted by the “compassionate conservatism”
rhetoric of the Bush Campaign. Bush appointed DiIulio as head of the
White House Office and he immediately set about the task of methodically
proving why the American federal government systematically discriminates
against religious social service providers. The language of persecution went
on to shape the Office’s political and policy stance towards the issue during
the Bush Administration’s years in office. The Office set upon the task of
righting the discriminatory wrong that had been perpetrated by secular
governance and welfare.
The ethos of persecution did not stop with the White House Office of
FBCI either. John Ashcroft, the original author of the Charitable Choice
amendment, was now Attorney General, and he quickly made it known
that he was sympathetic to the ends (and blind to the means) of faith-based
governance. He set up a “religious rights unit” within the Civil Rights
Division of the Justice Department and made it clear that he agreed with
the persecution trope being marketed by the White House. When a group
claimed that the Salvation Army was using taxpayer dollars to proselytize,
the Justice Department sided with the alleged discriminator for the first
time in its history.41
Critics argued that this was an affront to the establishment clause of the
constitution.42 Administration officials responded that such actions would be
violations only if they favoured one religion over another. All faith-based
communities were welcome to apply for funding, they argued, so their government was not, in fact, promoting the establishment of any particular religion.
They were simply promoting the rise of faith-based service providers as an
alternative to secular providers. At first, the hard (Christian) Religious Right
expressed public worry over this stance. To them, the Faith-Based Initiative
was always about returning the United States to “its Christian roots.”43 But
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soon it became clear that the Administration’s claims of religious pluralism
were, at best, misleading. It became clear that the project was not being
governed according to a multireligious subsidiarity model, as its advocates once
suggested, but rather as a replacement of secular social services with Christian,
particularly Evangelical, social services.44 And until the congressional midterm
elections of 2006, the Administration paid no discernable political price for
maintaining such an unwavering stance on the issue. Quite to the contrary,
their actions cultivated and galvanized one of the most loyal voting blocs in
recent memory: Evangelical Christians who were thankful for the
Administration’s efforts to “return America to its Christian roots.”
The Faith-Based Initiative also spawned a genre of books and articles
written by insiders and sympathetic outsiders professing the virtues of faithbased compassion in the realm of social services (and beyond, to be sure). John
DiIulio,45 the initial director of the Faith Based Office, published a series of
articles and reports celebrating not only the underlying philosophy, but the
Administration’s implementation of it.46 Stanley Carlson-Thies, who helped
write the aforementioned “Unlevel Playing Field…” report with DiIulio,
contributed a series of paeans,47 as did Ram Cnaan, an associate dean at the
University of Pennsylvania who declared the initiative as nothing less than
an enlightened “New Deal.”48 Others who were less vested wrote similarly
positive books and articles, including, but not limited to, Black, Koopman,
Ryden,49 and long-time supporter (of the idea) Robert Wuthnow.50 With the
exception of Wuthnow, most of this work was so uncritically laudatory or selfserving that it hardly counts as independent scholarship, but collectively this
genre of Faith-Based Initiative paeans served to legitimate the effort as more
than just a mean-spirited attempt to constrict aid to the poor, or to impose
a theocracy, as critics were arguing at the time.51
Fissures, Betrayal, and Second-Guessing Though the rise of the FaithBased Movement and the literature supporting it was important for
understanding its impact on social policy in the United States, even the
most casual student of American public affairs today could persuasively
argue that it is misleading to end the story here. At least since 2006, it is
not the supporters of faith-based welfare that stand out, but the resurgence
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of its long-time detractors and even the emergence of internal defectors.
The fissures exposed by this, more critical, literature are emblematic of larger
fissures on the American Right that shed some light on the partiality of
neoliberalism. The critiques against the Faith-Based Movement were (and
continue to be) as varied as the people making them. Given the Evangelical
Right’s virtual lock-step loyalty to the Bush Administration, perhaps the
most surprising source of dissent has come from former sympathizers and
OFBCI defectors. Lew Daly, a theological scholar who is otherwise
supportive of the idea of faith-based welfare, lambasted the former
Administration’s implementation, saying that it was a betrayal of the
European principles (i.e., subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty) upon which
it was ostensibly built.52 Much more prominently and critically, David Kuo,
a former high-level official in the OFBCI, took the Bush Administration to
task for exploiting the loyalty of Evangelicals. In particular, he argued that
the Administration misled the religious community about how much new
money was going into the program, and that many in the Administration
saw it simply as a vehicle to garner African-American votes (by favouring
African-American churches in the allocation of money).53 Kuo summarized
his critique by suggesting that he, and the Evangelical community, were
simply “useful idiots” to be placated in superficial ways in exchange for
electoral loyalty. But perhaps the most biting critique came from John
DiIulio, the OFBCI’s first director, who revealed his antipathy for the machinations of the Bush White House in an interview with Esquire Magazine
published shortly after his resignation.54 In it, he conveys exasperation with
the lack of interest in governing the faith-based program (or any other social
program for that matter) in any serious fashion. He argues that the White
House was governed by ideology and its main ideologue, Karl Rove. DiIulio
went on to profess his continued loyalty to the principles of faith-based
social welfare and even Bush himself, but dismay at the way that ideologues
like Rove were able to set and execute the Administration’s agenda.
The political troubles did not end there. The chorus of criticism from
ideological sympathizers was parallelled by criticism from more predictable
sources — the “liberal” media, critical scholars, and activists — whose ideas
have recently gained more political traction than before. The New York Times
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ran a series of scathing articles detailing the use and abuse of Faith-Based
Initiative changes in the past several years. They found instances of federal
funds being used in explicitly religious ways, employees being dismissed for
not holding the right religious or political views, and local zoning rulings
being over-ridden — all traceable to changes made since implementation
of the Faith-Based Initiative began in 2001. Activist groups like Americans
United for the Separation of Church and State have also gained political
traction in recent years.55 The tenor of their message was not surprising
coming from a group whose purpose is to advocate a meaningful separation
of church and state, but it is perhaps more surprising that their message is
beginning to resonate more broadly. Also, in the realm of predictable if
previously ignored criticism, has been the response of several noted academics who are critical of the Faith-Based Initiative and its implementation.
Among many others, Mark Chaves, a sociologist at the University of Arizona,
has conducted a spate of studies that challenge many of the assumptions
underlying the Faith-Based Initiative.56 Among these is the notion that
congregations are already more philanthropic than other social groups and
that Evangelicals are more giving of their time for volunteer work than other
religious groups. Again, it is not terribly surprising that Professor Chaves or
the many other academics who agree with him should be critical of the
Faith-Based Initiative, but it is notable that the ideas he and others have
been voicing for years are now becoming part of a broader public discussion. When Professor Chaves was invited to testify before Congress on the
Faith-Based Initiative in June 2001, his ideas were virtually ignored by the
Republican-controlled Congress. Now, he is routinely invited to write opeds and give his view in a variety of forums.
It is not only the views of erstwhile critics and defections of one-time
supporters that undermined the Faith-Based Initiative. The political basis
upon which it was originally built also crumbled independently of the particularities of the Faith-Based Movement. Most superficial was the high-profile
fall of several of the movement’s most important ideological and political
supporters including, but not limited to, Ted Haggard, former leader of the
influential National Association of Evangelicals and prominent homophobe,
for (eventually) admitting to having an affair with a male prostitute; Ralph
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Reed, founder of the Christian Coalition, for having a role in the Jack
Abramoff lobbying scandal; and Tom Delay, an important fundraiser and
supporter of the Religious Right, for being indicted for money laundering.
These public downfalls have been parallelled by important private battles
within the Evangelical community. One important rupture that has emerged
within the broad Evangelical community was whether to broaden the base
of issues upon with the community rests politically. Traditionalists continue
to feel that the focus should remain on traditional wedge issues like (anti-)
gay marriage and (anti-) abortion, while moderates are interested in broadening the focus to issues of poverty, environmental change, immigration,
and international affairs. The battle over whether to recognize global warming
as a significant issue has been particularly divisive, pitting ancien regime
Evangelicals like James Dobson and Charles Colson against more moderate
figures like Rick Warren, Rich Cizik (vice president for governmental affairs
at the NAE), and Duane Liftin (president of Wheaton College).57 These
high-profile rifts and the downfall of many of the movement’s most prominent advocates are a sharp departure from the relatively smooth rise to
prominence that the movement experienced in the late 1990s and early
2000s. Some of these matters are superficial, while some involve actual policy,
but they have each had the effect of splintering the once-unified political
constituency upon which the Faith-Based Initiative is built.
A final reason — the one most germane to this paper — that the FaithBased Initiative has suffered politically in the past year has been signs of an
even broader fissure within the American Right, exposed by several recent
events (including the Faith-Based Initiative) and several high-profile writers.
The rift has pitted the neoliberal Right — interested in lower taxes, small
government, and individual political freedoms — against the social conservative Right. This rift is not novel, of course, if one looks at the past 100
years of the US Right, but it is a departure from their curiously stable
relationship during the past 40 years. One need only return to the midcentury work of Hayek to understand that the alliance of these two factions
is neither perfectly logical (in a political sense) nor very old, historically.58
Hayek went to great lengths to distance himself from what he saw as the
backward thinking of social conservatives, going so far as to devote a chapter
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of his opus to explaining “Why I am not a conservative.” As Sager more
recently explains, the rift was fundamental, but strangely the Republican
party was able to avoid division for the better part of 40 years.59 To be sure,
as Sager points out, the arrangement between neoliberals and social conservatives “has always been more Married with Children than Ozzie and
Harriet,”60 but the success of the Republican Party, and the Right in general,
is in no small measure due to the durability of their unlikely union. This,
Sager among others argues, could end very shortly if the Republican Party
continues to stray from values of small government conservatism (i.e., neoliberalism). Sager, a former fellow at the CATO Institute, the leading neoliberal
think tank in Washington, felt (before it was popular to do so) that the
Bush Administration brazenly turned a blind eye to government expansion,
the intrusion upon civil liberties, and the complete disregard for the separation of church and state, and has alienated purist neoliberals.
High-profile events like the unprecedented and sanctimonious61 intervention by Congress and the Bush Administration to “save” the life of Terry
Schiavo (a Florida woman whose husband had decided to end her decadelong mechanical life support after years of legal wrangling with her family)
and the passage of the Patriot Act (hailed by social conservatives, but reviled
by neoliberals as an intrusion upon civil liberties) exacerbated intra-Right
tensions. These events bolstered the impression that the Bush Administration
was beholden to the social conservative Right and placed a wedge between
the two broad factions of the Republican Party. But while these events were
important at driving a wedge between Republicans, it was the Faith-Based
Initiative that caused the most public acrimony between the two sides. As
Sager argued, “No one example, perhaps, could better illustrate the skills of
Bush, Rove, and Company as manipulators of the moral minority than the
policy disappointment/political coup that has been the president’s FaithBased Initiative.”62 He argued that the Initiative only superficially placated
the Evangelical Right,63 while completely abandoning the neoliberal Right.
In addition to the fact that it flirted with the imposition of a theocratic
order that might jeopardize civil rights, it used government funding to
achieve its ends. As Jennifer Zeigler of the CATO Institute noted in 2005
during testimony to Congress:
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Just because something is a good idea does not mean it should be a
government program. In the case of faith-based organizations, government
involvement can easily kill the very entity it is trying to nurture. During the
past decade, the federal government has recognized the successful results
that come from social services delivered by civil society, including religious
organizations.
… [but] …
Faith-based organizations are crucial members of civil society that need to
replace the federal welfare system, not be dependent on it.64
This sentiment certainly resonated among the neoliberal Right and threatened to undermine support for the Faith-Based Initiative. Whether this row
is significant enough to completely rip apart the fabric of the Republican
Party (as Sager suggests) is perhaps a question for a different paper. But for
present purposes, it has revealed the differences and extent of neoliberal and
social conservative support for the Faith-Based Initiative. The former is eager
to hand over social services to churches as a way of reducing the size of
government, while the latter is interested in using government to reform the
poor and the larger culture from which they feel poverty is spawned.
Faith-based Social Policy and Partial Neoliberalism The story of the
Faith-Based Initiative was a politically complicated one that ties together
different motivations and coalitions, but is it useful to consider it as a neoliberal policy form? On one hand, it was resolutely neoliberal. It individuated
poverty by disregarding its structural causes, while focusing tacitly and
sometimes explicitly on what Olasky and others call “spiritual poverty.”65 The
role of social structure in determining or even influencing a person’s proclivity
to be poor, in prison, or otherwise unlucky was almost nonexistent in the
faith-based policy discourse. People are not poor because of their income,
their neighbourhood, their race, or their gender; all of these are simply
correlates, not causes of their plight. They are poor, according to this
discourse, because of some personal deficiency. In addition to individuating
poverty in this way, the Faith-Based Initiative tapped into the latent desire
of almost every neoliberal to have state-sponsored social service delivery
replaced by private and religious social service delivery. If this case teaches
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anything, it is that the ideas of neoliberalism underlie many of its manifestations. But even a casual read of the development of the Faith-Based
Initiative would lead one to conclude that this is an incomplete thesis. The
coalition that created and supported this policy appears to be breaking apart,
and in so doing, revealing that there is no singular philosophy underlying
the initiative. In addition to the thousands of congregations, promoters,
and participants in this story, three broad constituencies have been crucial
at formulating the Faith-Based Initiative.
First, there are fiscal critics of welfare — purist neoliberals and institutions like the CATO Institute — who argue that the nongovernmental
sector should do its work with no help from the government. They have
always had a complicated philosophical relationship with the idea of faithbased social services, but many were able to assuage these concerns initially
by viewing it as an intermediate step towards their goal of abolishing statesponsored welfare. As it became clearer with the development of the Initiative
that this was not going to happen, many neoliberals began voicing their
disapproval more publicly. Second, there are moral critics of welfare —
social conservatives who were more comfortable with bridging the churchstate divide and financing church-managed welfare. Reforming culture, not
eliminating welfare, was always the goal of the most purist elements of this
group. The third group is really an amalgam of the previous two. It consists
mostly of Republicans who are trying to hold together the politically-curious
alliance between social conservatives and neoliberals. Marvin Olasky’s
acknowledgement of God and Milton Friedman in The Tragedy of American
Compassion is only the most humorous example of the attempt to hold
together two ideologies that are logically incompatible with one another.
As the Faith-Based Movement matured into a set of actualized policies, this
incompatibility became clearer.
So what does a case like this tell us about the role of neoliberalism in a
more theoretical sense? I would like to conclude by arguing that it does not
make neoliberalism contingent per se, but rather shows how this remarkably durable global ideology is selectively used to formulate policy, that is,
the theoretical meaning of neoliberalism has not been altered by this particular policy. Policymakers and think-tank ideologues will continue to invoke
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Hayek, Friedman, and other one-size-fits-all, top-down neoliberal ideas as
justification for policies at various geographic scales. But neoliberalism was
always a (necessarily) partial, if extremely powerful, influence. To say that
neoliberalism is partial does not mean that it is contingent, but rather that
it is only one of several potential influences within a complicated political
economy. The resultant policy forms may in fact be contingent, but onesize-fits-all neoliberalism as an ingredient in this form is impressively durable.
Notes
1. M. Friedman with R. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1962), p. 190.
2. G.W. Bush, “Commencement Address to Notre Dame University,” (2001), <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/05/20010521-1.html> (accessed March 2008).
3. R. Canterbury, The Literate Economist (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).
4. H. Girvetz, The Evolution of Liberalism (New York: Collier, 1963).
5. R. Sager, The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the
Republican Party (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006), p. 150.
6. Sager, Elephant in the Room.
7. Sager argues that this alliance is “politically curious” for two reasons: first, that it did not
exist before the 1960s effort by the National Review magazine to “fuse” the two corners of
the American Right, and, second, that the endgames for social conservatism and neoliberalism
are different — the former seeks to reform “immoral” behaviour, often with the assistance
of the state, while the latter seeks to remove state intervention in personal and economic
behaviour.
8. Within the United States, neoliberals are also (perhaps more often) referred to as “libertarians,” “economic conservatives,” and “process conservatives.”
9. See, among others, J. Zeigler “Testimony to Subcommittee on Human Resources of the
House Committee on Ways and Means on February 10, 2005,” <http://waysandmeans.house.
gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=2969> (accessed March 2008); J.J. DiIulio, “Getting
Faith-based Programs Right,” Public Interest 155 (2004), pp. 75–88; D. Kuo, Tempting Faith:
An Inside Story of Political Seduction (New York: Free Press, 2006).
10. J. Hackworth, The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology and Development in American Urbanism
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).
11. F. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); M.
Friedman with R. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.
12. J. Gray, Liberalisms (London: Routledge, 1989).
13. As Naomi Klein recently pointed out, such ideas were not just abstract theoretical analysis
for Friedman or Hayek. They were both actively engaged in efforts around the globe to install
and test these ideas “on the ground,” often with brutal disregard for the human consequences.
N. Klein, Shock Doctrine (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2007).
14. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty; Friedman with Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.
15. Brenner and Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’”;
H. Leitner, E. Sheppard, K. Sziarto, and A. Maringanti, “Contesting Urban Futures:
Decentering Neoliberalism,” in H. Leitner, E. Sheppard, and J. Peck, (eds.), Contesting
Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers (New York: Guilford, 2006), pp. 1–25; K. Mitchell, Crossing
the Neoliberal Line: Pacific Rim Migration and the Metropolis (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2004); D. Wilson, “Toward a Contingent Urban Neoliberalism,” Urban Geography
25/8 (2004), pp. 771–783.
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16. Brenner and Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism,’”;
see also J. Gough, “Neoliberalism and Socialisation in the Contemporary City: Opposites,
Complements and Instabilities,” Antipode 34 (2002), pp. 405–426.
17. See also Gray, Liberalisms.
18. R. Jessop, “Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance: A State-Theoretical Perspective,”
Antipode 34 (2002), pp. 452–472.
19. C. Barnett, “The Consolations of ‘Neoliberalism,’” Geoforum 36 (2006), pp. 7–12; W. Larner
and M. Butler, “The Places, People and Politics of Partnership: After Neoliberalism in Aotearoa
New Zealand,” in H. Leitner et al, Contesting Neoliberalism, pp. 71–89; E. Isin, “Governing
Toronto without Government: Liberalism and Neoliberalism,” Studies in Political Economy 56
(1998), pp. 169–191; W. Larner, “Neoliberalism: Policy, Ideology, Governmentality,” Studies
in Political Economy 63 (2000), pp. 5–25; W. Larner, “Neoliberalism?” Environment and
Planning D 21 (2003), pp. 509–512; Wilson, “Toward a Contingent Urban Neoliberalism.”
20. H. Leitner et al. Contesting Neoliberalism, p. 2.
21. The following description has been abbreviated to fit the guidelines of this journal. For a
more extensive write-up of this study, see J. Hackworth, Neoliberalism, Social Welfare, and
the Politics of Faith in the United States (Centre for Urban and Community Studies Report
210, University of Toronto, 2007).
22. Bush initially made this claim to the televangelist James Robison in 1999; S. Mansfield, The
Faith of George W. Bush (New York: Tarcher, 2004).
23. It should also be noted that both were completely amenable to the larger trend of which the
funding of religious charities was a part, namely contracting social service provision to nonprofits. This has been the prevailing pattern of social welfare in the United States since the
1960s. Much, though not all, of the emphasis of this funding has been towards communitybased providers.
24. A.E. Black, D.L. Koopman, and DK Ryden, Of Little Faith: The Politics of George W. Bush’s
Faith-Based Initiatives (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004).
25. R. Sider and D. Knippers, “Introduction,” in R. Sider and D. Knippers, (eds.), Toward an
Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of a Nation (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Books, 2005).
26. J. Green, “Seeking a Place: Evangelical Protestants and Public Engagement in the Twentieth
Century,” in R. Sider and D. Knippers, (eds.), Toward an Evangelical Public Policy, pp. 35–63.
27. Green defines movement politics as challenges to existing political institutions, quiescent
politics as the detachment from political institutions, and regularized politics as the adaptation to established political institutions.
28. The Scopes Trial, famously portrayed in the film Inherit the Wind, involved a teacher in
Tennessee in the 1920s, John Scopes, who taught evolution in his science class in defiance
of a law that forbade the teaching of any theory that denied Divine Creation. Though Scopes
lost, the trial had the effect of marginalizing the Evangelical community as anti-intellectual.
29. As Hammack notes in his review of the book, Olasky’s Tragedy of American Compassion was
not even reviewed by a single mainstream academic journal upon its 1992 release. Most did
not consider it to be scholarship, he goes on to argue, but a thinly veiled, poorly researched
polemic (D. Hammack, Review of Marvin Olasky (1995 edition), “The Tragedy of American
Compassion,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (Spring) (Washington, Regnery
Gateway, 1996)). It is true, however, that while Olasky’s book has not inspired mainstream
academics, it has certainly inspired non-academic clergy, like Rod Parsley, to write books that
enthusiastically support Olasky’s contentions (R. Parsley, Silent No More: Bringing Moral
Clarity to America…while Freedom Still Rings (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2006)).
30. M. Massing, “The Tragedy of American Compassion — Book Reviews,” Washington Monthly
(1992).
31. In one particularly memorable and biting critique that exemplifies this position, Massing
(1992) suggests that “In its own way, The Tragedy of American Compassion is an illuminating
book. The spectacle of its author sitting in his air-conditioned aerie at the Heritage Foundation
while condemning soup kitchens for handing out too much food shows just how corrupt
our notion of compassion has become.”
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32. L. Daly, God and the Welfare State (Boston: MIT Press Boston Review Books, 2006).
33. The conservative Washington Times ran a story in which the author argues that the pluralism
inherent in “sphere sovereignty” was a useful model that the United States could use in trying
to wed secular welfare ideas with sectarian providers; L. Witham, “100-year-old Idea Inspires
Proposals to Revamp Welfare: Pluralism Offers Role for Religion,” The Washington Times (3
January 1993).
34. L. Daly, God and the Welfare State.
35. Olasky was responsible for the now-famous language of “compassionate conservatism” during
the presidential run, outlining the philosophy in a book of the same title; M.N. Olasky,
Compassionate Conservatism: What It Is, What It Does, and How It Can Transform America
(New York: Free Press, 2000).
36. Kuo, Tempting Faith.
37. This is a list of agencies that have a Faith-Based Initiative Office as of March 2007. They
were not all established immediately upon the Bush Administration’s arrival. The dates of
establishment range from 29 January 2001 (White House Office of FBCI) to 7 March 2006
(Department of Homeland Security Office of FBCI).
38. Kuo, Tempting Faith.
39. Kuo, Tempting Faith.
40. United States, Government Accounting Office (GAO), Faith-Based and Community Initiative:
Improvements in Monitoring Grantees and Measuring Performance Could Enhance Accountability
(Washington DC, 2006); The study tried to focus upon aggregate spending figures and the
specific qualitative experience of a non-probability sample of 24 faith-based organizations in
addition to processes within each of the five (at the time) Faith-Based Initiative offices.
41. G. Willis, “A Country Ruled by Faith,” The New York Review of Books 53/18 (2006), pp.
1–13.
42. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS) (n.d.) “The ‘Faith-based’
Initiative: Churches, Social Services and Your Tax Dollars,” Faith and Freedom Series.
<http://www.au.org/site/PageServer?pagename=issues_faithbased> (accessed March 2007).
43. See Parsley, among others; R. Parsley, Silent No More: Bringing Moral Clarity to America…While
Freedom Still Rings (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2006).
44. E. Kaplan, With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right (New York: New
Press, 2005).
45. George Bush deemed DiIulio “one of the most important social entrepreneurs of our time,”
and elsewhere he has been deemed the “father of the Faith-Based Movement.”
46. See, among others, J.J. DiIulio, “Getting Faith-based Programs Right,” Public Interest 155
(2004), pp. 75–88.
47. S.W. Carlson-Thies, “Implementing the Faith-Based Initiative,” Public Interest 155 (2004),
pp. 57–74; S.W. Carlson-Thies, Charitable Choice: Everything You Need to Know (Washington
DC: Center for Public Justice, 1999).
48. R.A. Cnaan, R.J. Wineburg, and S.C. Boddie, The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in
Partnership (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); R.A. Cnaan and S.C. Boddie,
“Charitable Choice and Faith-based Welfare: A Call for Social Work,” Social Work 47/3
(2002), pp. 224–235; R.A. Cnaan with S.C. Boddie, F. Handy, G. Yancey, and R. Schneider,
The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare (New York:
New York University Press, 2002); but contrast these with M. Chaves, “The Newer Deal:
Social Work and Religion in Partnership,” Sociology of Religion 62/1 (2001), pp. 132–133.
49. A.E. Black, D.L. Koopman, and D.K. Ryden, Of Little Faith.
50. R. Wuthnow, Saving America?: Faith-based Services and the Future of Civil Society (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).
51. Wuthnow, Saving America?
52. L. Daly, God and the Welfare State.
53. Kuo, Tempting Faith; Sager, Elephant in the Room.
54. Esquire Magazine, “Why Are These Men Laughing?” (1 January 2003).
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55. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS), “The ‘Faith-based’
Initiative”; A. Luchenitser, “Casting Aside the Constitution: The Trend Toward Government
Funding of Religious Social Service Providers,” Clearinghouse Review 615 (January–February,
2002).
56. M. Chaves, “Religious Congregations and Welfare Reform,” Society 38/2 (2001a), pp. 21–27;
M. Chaves, “The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in Partnership,” Sociology Of Religion
62/1 (2001b), pp. 132–133; M. Chaves, “Going on Faith: Six Myths about Faith-based
Initiatives,” The Christian Century September (2001c), pp. 20–23; M. Chaves, “Religious
Congregations and Welfare Reform: Who Will Take Advantage of ‘Charitable Choice’?”
American Sociological Review 64/6 (1999), pp. 836–846.
57. B. Hagerty, “Evangelical Leaders Urge Action on Climate Change” (2006), National Public
Radio Online, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5194527 (accessed
March 2007; story first appeared on 8 February 2007).
58. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty.
59. Sager, Elephant in the Room, p. 20.
60. Sager, Elephant in the Room, p. 9.
61. Several media sources reported that one of the key congressional proponents of intervention
in the Schiavo case, Tom Delay, had actually made a similar case to end life support for his
father, who had been mortally injured a few years earlier.
62. Sager, Elephant in the Room, p. 150.
63. As evidence for this, he echoes Kuo’s (2006) argument that far less money has been allocated
to the program than previously promised, and that it was used largely as a tool to garner
African-American votes.
64. J. Zeigler, “Testimony to Subcommittee.”
65. Olasky, Compassionate Conservatism.
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