Contact: Mark Chaves, 520-626-2560 or [email protected]
Some Religious Groups Willing to Apply for Welfare Support
Welfare in the United States has already changed substantially since the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. States and local governments now have more autonomy in how welfare support is distributed. What's more, religious congregations may also become a significant part of the future of welfare.
Mark Chaves, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has studied this particular aspect of the federal welfare reform legislation. Chaves used data from a 1998 study of more than 1,200 religious congregations nationwide as a gauge to see how willing religious groups are to apply for government support for social service activities, and which of those may be more willing than others.
His results are published (Religious Congregations and Welfare Reform: Who Will Take Advantage of 'Charitable Choice'?) in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.
Chaves says that about one-third of faith-based organizations surveyed were open to pursuing government funding to fund human service programs. And congregations identified as either liberal or moderate were more likely to pursue "charitable- choice" opportunities than conservative congregations, with African-American congregations most likely to move in this direction.
He says the results of his study "are surprising in the context of the national politics of charitable choice." This presents an interesting dichotomy because many religious and political liberals at the national level oppose charitable choice as an entanglement between churches and government. Many religious conservatives, on the other hand, support charitable choice because it offers new opportunities for religious groups to become socially active.
Currently, only about three percent of congregations receive any government funds, so a huge potential is open to deliver services. And, says Chaves, "the results ... show that, if charitable-choice initiatives are successful in reaching American congregations, the congregations most likely to take advantage may not be the ones our political and religious leaders expect to come forward."
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