Faith groups perform works of service among those in need for a variety of reasons, but most often as an expression of their faith in God, the love they are taught, and the humility they seek to engender. Most faiths teach that all humans are made in the image of God and are therefore worthy of love and mercy. When a faith group offers a bowl of soup, it usually does so as an explicit faith act. “God has loved me, and in offering this soup to you, I share His love with you. You are valuable in His eyes. I love you.”
Faith groups operate for a reason. They love God and His people. While some government workers love people, governments by nature cannot and do not. Hence, government programs serve people but do not love them. There is a key difference.
When a faith group offers a bowl of soup, they offer more than food. Theirs is a gift not merely for the body, but also for the heart, mind, and soul. It is a wholistic offering. The government's offering again, by nature, is not.
In other words, the motives of a faith group are faith-based. When the government becomes involved, such involvement automatically revokes that faith motive. The motive is no longer welcome. In effect, the government says, “We want you to do what you do but not for the reason you presently do it. We want you to do it now on behalf of the people, or the government, rather than on behalf of God.” When that transition occurs, a ministry ceases to be a ministry and instead becomes a social service agency.
Social service agencies are helpful and important. However, they are not ministries. Ministries are true faith-based initiatives. Faith initiates the action. A secular government cannot initiate an action that is rooted in faith. Thus, Bush and Obama both have made a grievous error. Their ideas of a “faith-based initiative” is ultimately neither faith-based nor an initiative. Rather, it is just another soul-less government program done by volunteers who originally volunteered because of their faith and got hijacked in the process.
Worse, when you suck out the motive from a faith-based ministry, you suck out the personal investment its members make. Gifts of time and money slowly diminish because the members begin to look to the government rather than to themselves, God, or their faith organization for direction and purpose. Their sense of ownership, entrepreneurship, and personal investment slowly dissipate. Ultimately, what is left is a government program housed in the shell of a formerly faith-based group.
Finally, the injection of government funding into faith ministries creates a final, lethal dynamic. I am seeing this dynamic right now all over the country, and in my own state of Georgia. As government revenues decline in a recession, politicians immediately look to make spending cuts where they will get the least political pushback. In Georgia, this year, dozens of formerly faith-based groups that serve children in need, and especially children with mental health challenges, have closed. They lack funding as the state government eliminates its spending in this area because mentally challenged children do not vote nor do they have a loud voice. Other groups, like the Murphy Harpst Children's Center with whom I help, scramble to make budget cuts, and re-motivate sleepy donors who have grown accustomed to the government's source of funding only to discover that one who relies on the government may well die on the government.
The letter to Attorney General Holder is neither right nor wrong in and of itself. It merely points to the larger issue: faith-based initiatives that lose their missions, their funding, and their souls when the government comes knocking with an offering of funds with an array of strings attached. It is time for President Obama to do what President Bush did not: end the whole flirtation with “faith-based initiatives and community partnerships.” For everyone's sake.