Connections Between Faith Communities and Their Non-profits

Findings from the Faith and Organizations Project Pilot Study

Authors:

 Jo Anne Schneider

 Katie Day

Gwynneth Anderson

With contributions from:

Kristin Doughty

Rabia Kamal

Mathew Wickens

Christy Schultze

Jill Sinha

November 2005

National Catholic School of Social Service, Catholic University of America/

George Washington Institute of Public Policy, George Washington University

Connections Between Faith Communities and Their Non-profits

Findings from the Faith and Organizations Project Pilot Study

 on the Role of Religious Culture and Theology on Social and Health Services

Introduction

Table of Contents

 

Renewed interest in faith community provision of social welfare and health services in the Clinton and Bush administrations has led to widespread discussion about the meaning and role of faith-based service in the United States. Many U.S. social service, health care and community projects started under religious auspices, and some maintain ties to faith communities today. In some faith-based organizations, links between faith and action have fostered unique programs that use the philosophy and resources of the faith community to provide service.  In other cases, faith-related organizations maintain few ties to founding religious communities, resembling secular non-profits.   Policy makers, researchers, faith communities, and non-profits founded under religious auspices alike express confusion regarding what is considered a “faith-based” organization, whether services should be provided by congregations or formal non-profits, differences between faith-based and secular service provision, as well as issues related to the separation of church and state.  These concerns have become even more important as Bush administration policies highlight service provision by congregations.

 

The Faith and Organization project evolved out of this policy milieu as a joint effort by faith communities, leaders of religious-based non-profit organizations, and researchers to understand the dynamic relationship between faith communities and the organizations they create, as well as differences in the nature of services provided by organizations founded by different religions. Recognizing that little attention has been paid to the fundamental relationship between faith communities, the organizations they create, or the people they serve, the project seeks to explore these issues.   Rather than subscribe to one universal typology that identifies an organization as faith based, the project expects that various religions would organize social welfare provision differently. We also speculate that the relationship between formal non-profits and congregations may vary among Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Peace Churches, Evangelicals, and Muslims.  In addition, participants recognize that race, immigrant status, and region of the county might also impact on the form of service provision and connections between faith communities and their non-profits.    Finally, we anticipate that faith would be expressed differently as well, varying by religion, race, and region.  Generally focusing on how faith is made manifest through non-profit activity, the project plans a four and a half year research/practice program aimed at two goals:

#                    Helping policy makers and researchers clarify the meaning of faith-based service as well as its role in social service and health provision in the United States.

#                    Assisting faith communities and non-profits founded under religious auspices to:

"                    Understand the unique differences among organizations founded by different religions;

"                    Clarify the appropriate relationship between non-profits and their founding communities for that religion and culture;

"                    Understand ways that religious beliefs and practices are reflected in the organization and determine ways to share founding values with staff and board members who do not come from the founding religion, culture, or both;

"                    Determine ways to best safeguard the civil rights of all program participants, regardless of religion and other characteristics;

"                    Clarifying the meaning of separation of church and state within organizations founded by faith communities.

Always conceived as an interdenominational effort, the Faith and Organizations project started as an initiative of Friends Board Training and Support Project, a program associated with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The project team and advisory committee quickly expanded to include scholars and practitioners from Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant backgrounds. Non-profit scholars and practitioners associated with this organization convened a series of meetings regarding formulating a research agenda on this issue starting in November 2001. Participants envisioned a program that would compare the experience of organizations from several religions, as well as agencies founded by different racial and ethnic communities. The current project includes an interdisciplinary team of scholars and practitioners from across the United States associated with several faiths working on similar issues (see project board and staffing structure, appendix B).  The project focuses on four aspects of the relationship between organizations and communities:

#                    The relationship between founding communities and organizations. This research concentrates on the connection between non-profit organization mission and its faith community or secular culture, dynamic ownership of the organization by its founding community, the ways that faith influences the nature of non-profit activity, and the ways the non-profit activity affects the founding community.  As such, the project examines both the impact of founding community civic engagement, spiritual, cultural, and social capital on the non-profit and the ways that service provided by the organization helps build civic engagement, social capital and cultural or religious values for its founding community.  Social capital refers to networks based on reinforceable trust that enable people or institutions to access resources they need to meet their goals. 

#                    The relationship between the non-profit organization and the people that use their services.  Questions on this topic compare services provided to people from the same community versus people from another religion, racial, ethnic, immigrant group or class background.  As such, research looks carefully at church/state questions raised by the Bush Administration’s Faith-Based Initiative. Research also potentially provides new insights for debates among social service academics and practitioners regarding the importance of providing services through organizations from within a particular subset of a locality like ethnic, racial, immigrant founded organizations versus service provision by larger, city-wide social service institutions.

#                    The impact of founding community culture and social capital systems on non-profit mission, organizational structure, staffing, and program design. 

#                    The impact of the larger socio-economic and policy systems, as well as the common strategies among non-profits providing a particular type of service, on non-profit goals and strategies.

The project hopes to spend three years working in United States communities in an action research project that combines qualitative and quantitative methods to understand these dynamics and develop concrete educational materials and tools that policy makers, faith communities, and non-profits can use.  The project also anticipates contributing to academic understandings of this issue.  The national research project would compare organizations created by several religions: Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Jews, Peace Churches (Quakers, Mennonite, Brethren), Evangelical Christians, independent Christian churches, and possibly Muslims. It would also contrast ministries founded by African American, Latino, Asian and white communities. Given questions regarding organizations in marginalized communities, a secular component would compare faith-based and secular organizations founded to serve particular marginalized ethnic, racial or immigrant groups.  As a first step, the project engaged in a year and a half of pilot research and planning.^[1]  The project compares organizations providing services in three sectors with different funding mechanisms and systems: social services; health and senior services; and community-based and developed services evolving from faith community organizing efforts. This report outlines results from the pilot study and suggests areas for further research.  Where appropriate, sections provide specific suggestions to policy makers or practitioners.

Faith-community Service Provision:  What We Know and Research Questions

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Social welfare service provision in the United States has always involved civil society institutions like faith communities, with religious non-profits and congregations providing the bulk of services until recently (Cnaan, Wineberg and Boddie 1999, Hall 1990 and 2005).  In the United States, government slowly became involved in health and social welfare provision after the civil war, with most current government social programs developing as part of the New Deal and War on Poverty of the 1930s onward (Trattner 1994, Cnaan, Wineberg and Boddie 1999, Mapes 2004).  However, as the U.S. welfare state expanded, government played an increasing role in funding and regulating social service and health provision.  As a result, the current system is a partnership between government and the private sector (Salamon 1995), with health and social services provided by a combination of government, secular and religiously-based non-profits, and for profit organizations. 

 

The increasing dominance of government in social welfare systems, the professionalization of social services, and the separation of church and state combined to lead to secularization of service provision in many non-profits since the mid 19^th century (Cnaan, Wineberg and Boddie 1999, Hall 2005, Smith and Sosin 2001).  Some scholars argue that government funding and regulation has turned non-profits away from their founding roots and into arms of government (Smith and Lipskey 1993).  Proponents of faith-based service see involvement of religious-based organizations, particularly congregations, as returning social service to an earlier time when faith communities were more directly involved in service provision.  Proponents believe that faith-based organizations would provide “better,” more caring, comprehensive services and cost less through a reliance on private funds and volunteers.

 

The growing body of research on faith-based service has generally focused on church/state issues (Dionne and Hsu 2001, Bane, Coffin and Theilmann 2000, Nesbitt 2001, Wineburg 2001), management issues (Queen 2000, Jeavons 1994), and the role of congregations in service provision (Cnaan 2002, Chaves 1999).  While many questions remain unanswered, several points appear consistently in this literature:

 

#                    All religions and most congregations provide some form of social welfare support to their members and others.  Cnaan (2002) reports 93 percent of congregations in one study provided some form of social service, while his Philadelphia study reported 88 percent of congregations providing services (Cnaan and Boddie 2001).  Chaves (2000) reports a significantly lower proportion of congregations providing some form of social service-- 57 percent, but still shows that the majority of congregations participate in some form of social welfare activity.  The literature also consistently shows that most congregations focus on providing emergency services (food, shelter, clothing), programs for children and youth, and the elderly (Cnaan 2002, Grettenberger 2001, Chaves 2000).

#                    Most congregations prefer to provide more comprehensive social services with a formally incorporated non-profit organization than to take on complex social service programs themselves.  Both Cnaan (2002) and Chaves (1999, 2000) show that congregations generally contribute to the efforts of non-profits through volunteering and other forms of contributions, with a small minority choosing to provide more sophisticated services like training, welfare supports and health themselves.  Given the historic role of African American congregations in social supports for their communities, African American churches appear more likely to develop formalized programs — often incorporated as separate 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations — than most other groups have (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990).

#                    Most organized religions have fostered social service and health agencies at some point in their history.  Historical research on social welfare and health shows that most faiths created organizations to provide for the health and welfare of their members and others by the early 20^th century (Trattner 1994, Cnaan, Wineburg and Boddie 1999).  Organizations like Catholic Charities/Catholic Social Services, Lutheran Children and Family Service, and the various Jewish and mainline Protestant organizations continue to dominate social service provision in many U.S. communities today.

Given the policy focus on congregational service provision, less attention has been paid to the nature of services offered by non-profits founded by religious bodies.  Some scholars observe that many non-profits founded by faith communities appear as faith-related organizations that are religious in name only (Smith and Sosin 2001), while others have attempted to create a typology of the role of faith in non-profits (Sider and Unruh 2004) ranging from faith permeated to secular organizations.  The Sider and Unruh typology focuses on observable characteristics of organizations, such as references to faith in programming and mission statements, funding from faith communities, and presence of religious symbols to determine the importance of faith in an organization.  This typology has gained some currency in policy and research circles (for example Tangenberg 2005).

Only a few scholars have looked carefully at the content of religious-based service (Jeavons 1994, Bane Coffin and Higgins 2005).  The Faith and Organizations project focuses on this topic in order to clarify how faith-based organizations relate to their founding communities today and understand unique ways that theology, religious culture and race/ethnicity play out in organizations founded by Catholics, mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Peace Churches, Evangelicals, African Americans, and Latinos.  The pilot study in Philadelphia and the Washington DC metropolitan area focused on all of these groups except Latinos. In order to understand the impact of the type of service provided on the nature of service by organizations founded by various faith communities, the project also chose to compare organizations providing three types of services: 1) social services (broadly defined); 2) health and senior services; 3) organizations that provide a concrete service in a community that evolved out of faith-based community organizing or needs assessments processes.  Examples of the last category would include a senior center founded by an African American church after discussion of community needs or a housing agency developed out of a Catholic Campaign for Human Development organizing initiative.   Research for both the pilot study and the proposed national project focuses on the four key questions and a series of subquestions:

Key Questions:

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Through a year and a half long planning process, the advisory committee and core team developed four key questions that form the basis for research and analysis.  These key questions built on a series of subquestions developed by the planning team and participating organizations prior to the pilot research and planning process:

 

1.                   How do the dynamics between organization and founding community impact the beliefs, behaviors, and resources of both organization and community?  Do relationships between organization and founding community foster the ongoing development of social capital, cultural capital and civic engagement within the founding community?

a.                   What is the relationship between the religious denomination or founding secular community and the non-profit organizations founded by that organization (governance, financial, control, volunteer participation, staffing, program content, mission?  How do bridging, bonding and linking social capital ties impact on organization behavior?

b.                   How do congregations and their members relate to faith-based organizations that function under their name, and vice versa? For secular organizations, is there a constituent group that serves the same role as the faith community?

c.                   How do faith communities ensure that the faith-based organizations have a future as faith-based institutions? That their founding values and perspectives are maintained?

d.                   What is the impact of the organizations’ work on the faith community? On its understandings of the issues the organizations address? On its understandings of those the organizations serve? On its understandings of their faith? On its sense of identity?

e.                   Under what conditions do faith-based organizations move beyond the ethos and control of the denomination and what connection, if any, does the religious body have with an organization when this occurs?

2.                   What is the relationship between non-profit organizations and the people that use their services?  How do these relationships differ when the people served either come from the same community as the organization or from a different background?

a.                   What is the relationship between the organization, the faith community, and those served who are not part of the same religion?

b.                   Does the work of the organization lead new people to the faith community? Under what terms? 

c.                   How does the organization ensure that the beliefs and rights of program participants from different faith traditions or who adhere to no religion are respected? 

d.                   How are the relationships between those served and the founding community different for secular organizations, particularly in organizations founded by a particular ethnic or racial group now serving others different from themselves?

3.                   What is the impact of founding community culture and social capital systems on non-profit mission, organizational structure, staffing, and program design?

a.                   How does the personal religious faith of key staff reflect that of the sponsoring community and influence organizational behavior?

b.                   Do the leaders of secular organizations also adhere to a set of values that reflect their founding communities, and does that influence organization behavior in similar ways?

c.                   How is this similar and different between faith-based and secular organizations? 

4.                   What are the impacts of the larger socio-economic and policy system, as well as the service sector of that organization (social services, health and senior services, community development), on non-profit organization’s form, function and resources?

a.                   For marginalized populations such as immigrant, ethnic, and racial groups, are there fundamental differences between faith-based and secular organizations in regards to their relationships with the wider community and the way that organization mission plays out in agency programs, staffing, and other decisions?

Research Methods

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As a pilot project for a national study, the Faith and Organizations project used the general methodology of comparative, multi-methods ethnography envisioned for the larger study.  Multi-methods ethnography combines a series of qualitative methods (participant observation, interviews, focus groups, content analysis of secondary source material) with analysis of administrative data bases, appropriate regional statistics, and survey research.   Participant observation is the regular observation of events in a setting over time, with the observer playing a role in the setting that allows him or her to develop rapport with others in the organization.   Comparative projects intentionally examine organizations and faith communities with similar characteristics, but which vary on key attributes.  Given the Faith and Organization’s project’s concern regarding locality, the role of religion, type of service (sector), and race/ethnicity/nationality on social welfare and health services provided under religious auspices, the pilot chose to compare organizations and communities on those attributes.  These two charts provide an outline of the organizations involved in the study by these major attributes.  Organization names for all but one of the participating agencies have been changed to protect identity and privacy.[2]

 

Philadelphia Research

Organization Matrix Philadelphia	Mainline Protestant	Evangelicals	African American	Catholics	Jews and Muslims	Peace Churches
Social Service	Lutheran Charities		Joy Ministries		Jewish Organization for the Aid of Immigrants
Health and Senior services		Christian Adult Community Day Program	Christian Adult Community Day Program			Lakeside
Agencies arising from Community Organizing		Christian Adult Community Day Program	Christian Adult Community Day Program

 

Washington DC Metropolitan Area Research

Organization Matrix Washington DC	Mainline Protestant	Evangelicals	African American	Catholics	Jews and Muslims	Peace Churches
Social Service	The Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center			Catholic GED Program, and St. Mary’s Housing Program	Muslim Charities
Health and Senior services					Jewish Aging Services and The Cohen Adult Day Program	Jubilee Association of Maryland
Agencies Arising from Community Organizing	Chinese Immigrant Services  (and Asian)	Christian Children’s Inner-city Program (and Asian)	Christian Children’s Inner-city Program(and Asian)

 

In order to ascertain differences across localities, we compared the older industrial city of Philadelphia with the cosmopolitan, national capital, and service center metropolis of the Washington DC Metropolitan Area.  We found few differences by locality through pilot research, choosing to combine analysis of organizations in each city throughout this report. 

 

The pilot study compared the following religions: Mainline Protestants (two Lutheran organizations and a United Methodist Organization founded by members of the Chinese congregation in a multicultural church), Catholics (two programs within the larger social service umbrella institution for the Archdiocese of Washington DC), Jews (one agency in each city), African American Christian (two organizations — one Evangelical and the other a mainline Protestant denomination), Muslims (one organization plus limited work with a second organization), and Evangelicals (one African American organization and another founded by Asian Americans).  Our work with two Asian immigrant communities in Washington DC provided a further comparison by nationality.  Given that the Chinese mainline Protestant organization and one of the Muslim organizations was founded by, and served, immigrants, the pilot also provided data on the role of immigrant faith communities in social service provision.  While we initially intended to include Catholic and African American organizations in both cities, challenges obtaining access to sites in a timely manner prevented a full comparison.  However, both of the Asian organizations in Washington DC had strong links to African American faith communities.

 

The national study chose to compare institutions in the sectors of social services (broadly defined), senior services and health, and programs that developed out of community organizing or needs assessments due to the differences among these agencies in funding structures, size and other key attributes.  The social service agencies in this pilot ranged from small programs targeted toward one population — for example the Catholic housing program for former addicts and the Chinese social service program — and large multi-service organizations that dominated social welfare provision in their communities.  Social service institutions share funding systems that combine government and private funds, as well as historical connections to faith communities.  The three health and senior services institutions in this study all provided some form of care to the elderly or disabled.  Organizations in the health and senior services sector compete with for profit institutions to provide service and rely heavily on fee-for-service systems combined with government voucher systems like Medicaid for funding. Agencies that evolved out of community organizing efforts tend to be smaller and younger than organizations in the other two sectors.  These institutions can provide any type of service, but tend to rely on community funds more than other social service or health-related organizations.

 

The pilot project for the Faith and Organizations project combined several forms of qualitative methodology with a pilot for a quantitative survey.  Brief descriptions of research in each of the non-profits participating in the qualitative research are provided below.  While the pilot study endeavored to focus both on non-profits and their constituent communities, our research was strongest in the organizations themselves.  Future research would include equal observations in faith communities and their constituent organizations.

 

The pilot for the survey developed a questionnaire that combined surveys previously used in other studies of faith-based non-profits with findings from the qualitative components of the pilot study.  This questionnaire was piloted with several of the organizations that participated in the qualitative research component.  We rapidly discovered that our questionnaire appeared too Protestant for many of the organizations and faith communities in our study.  Given this feedback, we worked with the participating organizations and several advisory committee members who were faith-community and faith-based non-profit organization leaders to develop a framework for a more appropriate questionnaire.  We agreed that the survey should be developed as part of the national project in order to reflect all of the faiths participating in this initiative.

 

The pilot project endeavored to explore the major research questions developed for the national study through short-term research in these organizations.  Researchers spent between three and six months in each agency, as well as some time in its founding faith communities as appropriate. Washington DC research included both new research conducted for this study and earlier interviews and observation with some of the agencies completed during Michael Foley and Dean Hoge’s Pew Charitable Trust-funded study, Religion and the New Immigrants.  Six sites were chosen in consultation with the Co-PI and advisory board members in Washington DC to fit the matrix of religions and types of service illustrated above.  Three sites represented a continuation of research from a study of social service agencies conducted by the PI as part of the Religion and the New Immigrants Study.^[3]  Sites were introduced to the study through extensive conversations with key staff as well as a host agency meeting to answer questions about the project.  Site supervisors were invited to suggest dissemination products that would be useful to them from the project.  Consultations with the host agency supervisors continued throughout the project.

 

Researchers in Washington DC came through several sources. Researchers included PhD students in social work at Catholic University of America, graduate and undergraduate students in anthropology and sociology from Catholic University of America, University of Maryland-College Park, and American University.  One primary researcher spent 16 hours per week in two sites, observing activities and participating in staff and board meetings for the agency.  Students in an ethnography class spent eight hours per week for two and a half months in their sites.  Finally, three additional researchers each spent three months in their sites.  In order to get a different perspective on larger agencies and provide more research coverage, two students worked in some sites. 

 

In Philadelphia, the five sites were chosen by the Co-PI in consultation with the PI and advisory committee.  Attention was given to maintaining diversity in religious traditions represented as well as services provided, size of agency, and racial/ethnic composition. Agencies were introduced to the project and assured that researchers would operate as participant-observers, gathering data primarily through observations and informal interviews while participating in the work of the agency itself (filing, stuffing envelopes, serving food, etc.).  An additional incentive for the agencies was having access to an outside perspective on their operations and applied research that they could use.

 

Five researchers were selected, all of whom had an interest in religion and had some ethnographic experience.  Four were doctoral students at the University of Pennsylvania and one was at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. One of these five students had recently completed her dissertation research and performed some additional research for this pilot project.  This researcher worked closely with the organization pastor to develop her report and combined her earlier work with previously-conducted research.  In their orientation to the project, Philadelphia student researchers were given the same documents and oral presentations as their counterparts in Washington, D.C.  After the orientation, the four students conducting research in their sites for the first time spent three months in the agencies.  They were on site at least twice a week.

 

The following brief descriptions provide an overview of each participating institution and also describe the research conducted at each site.  Researchers participating in the pilot project have met on several occasions to discuss their findings and presented papers on their research at the Association for Research on Non-profit and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) conference in November, 2005.

 

Mainline Protestant Organizations

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Research in Mainline Protestant organizations was conducted in two organizations in Washington DC and one in Philadelphia.  Two of these institutions were Lutheran and one United Methodist. The Philadelphia organization, Lutheran Charities, was a large multi-service organization that had recently reinvigorated its relationship with Lutheran congregations.   The organization was founded in 1922 as an agency of the church. It was operated as a program of the Pennsylvania Ministerium of the United Lutheran Church in America (a predecessor church of the ELCA). It was incorporated separately from the synod in 1965.

 

The agency serves a largely urban population, which is predominantly African American (80%).  The denomination, in contrast, is overwhelmingly white and suburban. This demographic pattern is reflected in the staff as well.  Beyond the Executive Director, who is a Lutheran clergy person but a career social service administrator, few staff members are Lutheran.  Programming is diverse and non-religious in nature.  Only a fraction of the overall program (5%) is of and for Lutheran congregants (a congregationally-based caregivers program). However, congregations participate actively in the refugee resettlement program and several other initiatives.

 

Research was conducted at this site over a period of three months, with the researcher observing approximately once a week.  In addition, she interviewed key staff at the agency and participated in several congregational activities and organizational conferences.  The co-PI for Philadelphia also interviewed a key staff person at the agency who was active in both the Lutheran and Jewish social service communities.

 

Brief observations were conducted at the Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center in Washington DC over a period of two months by one student.  A former staff person at the agency provided retrospective and current data on the site as well.  The organization was founded in the 1960s by an urban church in a changing Washington DC neighborhood as a witness on homelessness.  The congregation gradually developed a transitional housing program as well as several shelters in partnership with other religious communities in the area.  This independent non-profit has gradually moved away from the founding congregation, with its staff and board currently dominated by non-Lutherans.  Its executive director is Catholic and Jews dominate the board.  The organization also has developed a strong inter-denominational presence, drawing volunteers and other forms of support from various other religious institutions locally, nationally, and internationally.  Nevertheless, the congregation does maintain some ties to the organization.

 

Participant observation was conducted primarily with the founding congregation, while additional data were provided on the organization by current staff and members of the church.  Interviews were conducted with the current church pastor as well as agency staff.  Staff also provided retrospective data on the relationship between the organization and its founding congregation that both belonged to the congregation and who were also employed by one of the agencies associated with the housing program.

 

Chinese Immigrant Services is a program of the Chinese congregation of a merged United Methodist church that now combines a historic African American AME congregation with the largest Chinese United Methodist congregation in the Washington DC area.  The program has a separate EIN,^[4] but is not a separately incorporated non-profit.  The organization was created in the late 1970s when the Chinese congregation was still an independent church.  It was begun by Chinese immigrants who had been in the United States for many years in order to provide support to newly arriving Chinese immigrants and other Chinatown residents. It now offers a number of programs including computer courses, ESL, business development, and crime victim services through a combination of government funding and private contributions.  All of the staff and volunteers are Chinese immigrants, with key staff volunteering as a ministry from the church.  The agency is located in the church social service building, which is also located in historic Chinatown.  The congregation also supports a seniors program that was created by the African American congregation and continues to serve exclusively African American elderly.  While worship services for the two congregations have merged, the two social service activities appear completely independent of each other.  They do share a receptionist as well as space in the congregation-owned building.

 

The PI conducted extensive interviews with agency key staff during the Religion and New Immigrants project.  Fieldwork was conducted at this site for six weeks by a student researcher who visited once a week as well as communicating via telephone and email with agency staff.  He also attended one worship service at the congregation.

 

 

 

 

Evangelicals

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Two organizations in the pilot study came out of Evangelical Christian witness.  One of these organizations was also African American, and will be discussed with the African American organizations below.  In Washington DC, Christian Children’s Inner City Program was founded by Asian Americans who had converted to Evangelical Christianity as part of their campus, college experience.  This was the only organization in this study that claimed that it had no affiliation to particular congregations nor to geographically-based faith communities.  Instead it depended on networks of young adults who had participated in the Asian Evangelical campus ministries.  As such, the organization drew its support from across the country as well as from Evangelical churches (Asian, white and African American) in the greater Metropolitan Washington DC area.  Staff and active volunteers belonged to several area churches, some that were predominantly white and others that were African American.  The organization also maintained close ties with an Evangelical African American church and its CDC.  The organization founder often worshiped with the African American congregation.

 

Founders for this organization were the U.S.-raised children of recent Asian immigrants who had businesses in inner-city, primarily African American and Latino, neighborhoods.  The organization was created as a mechanism for the Asian community to give back generosity to the neighborhoods that had provided their parents with their livelihood, as well as to uplift the at-risk members of those neighborhoods.  The program focused on children and youth through an after-school tutoring program, bible study and support programs for teens, and a summer camp.

 

While initial interviews with the executive director/founder were conducted as part of the Religion and the New Immigrant Project, this site also hosted a participant observer for five months.  The researcher visited the site approximately once every other week, participating in the homework club, youth programming, and staff meetings.  In addition, a focus group with staff members was conducted later in the research project.

 

African American Christian Organizations

 

Two Philadelphia African American ministries participated in the pilot project.  The Christian Adult Community Day Program was one ministry of an Evangelical megachurch, a seniors program that offered a variety of day activities and meals to African American seniors.  This large and rapidly growing church is in a low income neighborhood in northern Philadelphia.  Combining all of its congregations, it is the largest and the fastest-growing Protestant denomination in the United States.   The church was founded in 1966 as a tiny store-front ministry.  Today, the church’s sanctuary seats 3,000 people and is located in a new and strikingly modern building of 37,000 square feet.  The new sanctuary was built to share walls with a newly renovated 36,000 square-foot ministry building that houses executive offices, a chapel and approximately 35 classrooms, as well as dining and assembly halls.  Currently, the church is beginning the third phase of construction, building a gymnasium as a hub for the sports-centered activities of the community.

 

According to their website, the church runs over seventy different ministries including family services and counseling; tutoring; adult literacy programs; home and foreign Mission outreach; a Day School; after school programs; hospital, nursing home, and prison ministry; day camps; food distribution programs; drama guild, etc.  In the past, it owned and operated a full shelter for more than 190 homeless men.  Other major current ministries include a full family shelter and welfare to work programs.  All in all, the church and its CDC employ over one hundred full and part-time staff making them one of the largest employers in the community.

 

In the fall of 2002, the pastor started a program for seniors, expanding upon an informal senior citizens’ group within the church.  The Christian Adult Community Day Program increased the size of this informal group, the number of activities offered, and instituted a formal schedule, opening the doors to the community at large.  Since its inception two years ago, the program has grown rapidly to include 92 active participants, over half of whom (52) are not members of the church.  Most live nearby.

 

The researcher participated in the senior center as a volunteer for four months, plus some follow up contact, serving meals and otherwise providing support to the program.  She also attended worship services and conducted informal interviews with staff and participants.

 

The other African American organization was a program of a cluster of African American United Methodist churches. The lead church is the only congregation in Pennsylvania to run a welfare-to-work program through the church with a separate EIN.  At this site, the researcher had conducted research with the welfare to work and youth programs for several years.  For the pilot project, the pastor and researcher worked together to develop a report on a new initiative for youth, incorporated as a separate 501(c)(3) non-profit under the care of the cluster.  The program brought together eight United Methodist congregations located in North Philadelphia in a program for at-risk youth.  Of the eight churches in this cluster, three were historically white. The other five cluster churches were formed as African American Methodist Episcopal congregations.

 

The program was initially developed by youth associated with the founding congregation, as a teen lounge concept, and expanded into an alternative learning program for at-risk youth. Most of the staff and volunteers are associated with the founding churches, and youth tend to come from these predominantly African American neighborhoods.  The researcher observed this program for two years.  She also conducted interviews with youth and others involved in the project.  Working closely with the pastor, her research builds on several years of previous research with other programs started by this congregation. 

 

Catholic Organizations

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Two organizations under the auspices of the greater Washington DC archdiocese umbrella social service agencies participated in the study.  The umbrella organization had been interviewed as part of the Religion and the New Immigrant Study, providing initial background on the parent institution. In addition, the study PI interviewed executive staff in this parent institution about the relationship to the archdiocese, agency structures and the two programs that served as sites for the pilot study.

 

St. Mary’s Housing program is a support and transitional housing program for people recovering from addictions.  The clientele is primarily African American, most with Protestant African American religious backgrounds.  A white nun leads the staff, but most of the counselors are African Americans who have also recovered from addictions.  Research at this site was conducted for approximately four months, with the researcher going to the site one evening a week.  She also interviewed key staff at the archdiocese and participated in gaining access to the umbrella agency.  As such, her research provided insights both into this individual program and the structures of the larger umbrella social service agency.  While this student did not perform any research in parishes, she is herself Catholic, participated in other archdiocese activities as a student in social work at Catholic University, relying on her familiarity with the archdiocese and its parish activities through her education and personal experience to supplement research in the non-profit.

 

The second site, a Catholic GED program, was part of a center that provided education, computer courses and emergency services for people in a particular neighborhood in Washington DC. The demographics for clients at this site were: 59% male, 41% female, 86% African American, 7% Caucasian and 4% Hispanic. The staff consists of 8 full time employees and 1 part time. One of the leaders of the program was Catholic, with family members in leadership roles in her parish, while the other was in the process of converting to Catholicism.  Four of the staff are African American and the rest white.  Besides the two center leaders, only one other staff person was Catholic.

 

Research was conducted for three months, with observations at the agency at least twice a week and visits to other locations such as various parishes in the diocese. Interviews were conducted with the director and the parenting staff.  A focus group was conducted with the GED staff and some other staff members. The researcher shadowed the liaison with Catholic parishes. In addition, he input information about how homeless people use agency services into a database and to complete intakes of clients. In addition, he tutored a student preparing for the GED.  He also attended the initial orientation for all new employees and volunteers at the parent organization and participated in staff meetings. Informal conversations with many of the staff provided data on how they came to the agency and their experience with it. Additionally, he spoke often with some of the clients in the computer room and his GED learner about their experience with parent organization and this site.

 

Jewish and Muslim Organizations

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The pilot project conducted research in two Jewish organizations — one in Philadelphia and one in Washington DC metropolitan area, as well as one Muslim organization in the Washington DC area.  Another Muslim organization had been the subject for research for the Religion and the New Immigrants study.  While the pilot-study researcher was unable to observe at this second site, he did communicate with its executive director by telephone.

 

Two students conducted research in the Cohen Center over a six month period.  The center is a medically certified Adult Day Care program, which provides a structured and supportive environment for aging adults suffering from physical, cognitive, or emotional problems, who are in need of social stimulation under medical supervision.  It is one of many programs offered by the Jewish Aging Services, an organization founded with a mission “to help older people remain in the homes of their choice and in life's mainstream as long and as independently as possible.”  In addition to the Cohen Center,  -the parent agency offers a number of other services designed to “ensure dignity, self-determination and independent lifestyles for Jewish elders and others in the Greater Washington community.”  These programs include informational telephone helplines, transportation services, computer and employment skills training, as well as a senior community center.

 

The Center generally has approximately 85 to 90 participants enrolled in its program, and it can accommodate 55 of those participants a day.  Demographically the Center’s participant composition is 95% Caucasian, 1% Latina/o, 2% African American, and 2% Asian American (including individuals of Indian and Chinese decent).  Religiously the Center’s participants are approximately 80% Jewish and 19% Christian, with approximately 1% of the participants coming from Hindu or Muslim traditions.

 

Senior staff are predominantly white, and predominantly Jewish, including the current director, the assistant director, and three of the four nurses and social workers.  The other two professional staff are white Christians.  All but one of the activity directors and aides were phenotypically Black, most immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean.  The remaining activity director was white.  All of these quasi-professional staff identified as Christians, with a mix of Protestants and Catholics.

 

Both students worked as aides in the program, observing activities and participating as volunteers.  The first student observed twice a week over two months, assisting with the seniors program.  She also conducted interviews with key staff and focus groups with the remaining staff.  The second student observed over two and half months, primarily working with the outreach coordinator to do presentations on the agency to synagogues, Temples, and health care institutions.  This student also observed the senior program and conducted interviews and focus groups.  In addition, the PI interviewed the director for the Cohen Center, the executive director for the parent organization, a key board member for the parent organization and staff at Federation.  Additional content analysis of agency and Federation documents was also developed.

 

Originally founded as the Association for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants, the Jewish Organization for the Aid of Immigrants has provided rescue, protection, legal and technical assistance to thousands of immigrants, refugees, students, visitors, visiting scholars, temporary workers and others on behalf of Philadelphia's organized Jewish community. The organization's current name reflects its affiliation during the 1920's with JOAI, Inc. the Jewish Organization for the Aid of Immigrants. While JOAI and Council still maintains relationships through shared volunteer leadership and refugee resettlement contracts, with JOAI, Inc. (New York), JOAI and Council Migration Service of Philadelphia is a fully independent, 501(c)(3) legal aid and social service organization, funded primarily by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, private contributions, charitable foundations and nominal client fees.

 

As the number of Jewish refugees declined in the 1990s, a previous executive director began to expand pre-existing immigration services to provide support for people seeking a wide array of assistance with immigration applications, asylum and other needs for immigrant communities.  This work expanded the agency focus beyond the Jewish community.  The current executive director has further expanded this aid to non-Jews, now working with people from many countries and religions seeking help with immigration related issues.

 

Research at this agency was conducted over nine weeks, with the researcher observing twice a week.  She also conducted informal interviews with the executive director and other staff as well as several clients.  She attended outreach events on immigration at other sites.  In addition, the co-PI interviewed a former executive director as well as the current director of this agency.

 

Research in the two Muslim organizations started as part of the Religion and the New Immigrant Study.  Interviews were conducted with key staff as well as some brief observation.  Muslim women founded both Muslim Charities and the second organization with professional credentials as a way to support community members in need.  Both provide a range of emergency services for anyone in need and adjustment assistance for new immigrants, working through a referral system within the greater Muslim community in the Washington DC area. 

 

The Virginia-based Muslim Charities initially had a concern with domestic violence because an active volunteer had survived an abusive relationship.  The organization is the only domestic violence program for Muslims in the area.  In addition, the current executive director is a social worker who provides counseling and support for Muslim women with many needs.  As with its sister organization, all of the staff and active volunteers with the organization are Muslim women who practice the dress codes and other religious observances of their immigrant communities.  Most of these women are also professionals — social workers, doctors and other helping professionals who have worked outside of the Muslim community.  The organization has offices in a social service building associated with many Muslim organizations, and was at one point housed in one of the Islamic Centers.

 

Its sister organization in Maryland began to address the needs of Muslim children placed in foster care.  This organization also provides emergency services and other supports through the same referral network.  A much smaller and more informal organization, it was founded by an African American convert to Islam who is a licensed social worker.  This woman also practices the more traditional forms of Islamic dress and other religious observances.  The organization is run out of her home with the support of the wider Muslim community and a few volunteers.

 

A student researcher conducted research for the pilot study over a period of two months.  This student communicated with staff at both organizations by email and telephone to gain initial data.  He observed at Muslim Charities on three occasions, but found that his access was limited as a male, non-Muslim.  His research was supplemented by extensive interviews and communications conducted during the earlier Religion and the New Immigrants study.

 

Peace Churches

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The pilot study conducted research in two organizations founded by Peace Churches — a retirement community founded by Quakers outside of Philadelphia and an agency that provided supportive housing and social programs for developmentally disabled adults in the greater Washington Metropolitan Area founded by Mennonites.  Both organizations had been founded by one congregation and maintained ties to that congregation today.

 

The Mennonite organization was founded in the late 1970s out of a concern of members of a local Mennonite church who had been involved in deinstitutionalization of the developmentally disabled in Maryland.  A member of the church founded the organization as a church ministry, and it initially relied on church support and volunteers. The program began through volunteer efforts of the church to found one group home meant to serve four people.  After several years, the current executive director — a member of the church as well as a social work administrator — was asked by the congregation to take on the ministry.

 

Since that time, the organization has grown from one group house to 40 locations, including 13 group homes and additional apartments or other quasi-independent living situations. Ninety-five people are served by the organization, none of them Mennonite.  The organization initially employed one staff person with the support of two Mennonite-church stipended volunteers.  It now employs 120 people from a variety of racial and religious backgrounds.  Only a few staff members are Mennonites.  The organization is considered a leader in its field.  While some families seek out the program as a Christian facility, it serves people of all faiths and has both Jews and Christians on its board.  However, agency by-laws require that the majority of board members be Mennonite. 

 

Research at this organization included participant observations at the group homes and Faith and Light — a non-denominational religious program for the developmentally disabled, over five months.  The researcher visited the group homes approximately once every two weeks, attending additional Faith and Light events, agency staff meetings, and other activities sponsored by the organization. She also attended services at the founding Mennonite church. In addition, the PI and two other researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with key staff and board members.  These researchers also attended the organization’s orientation program for new employees as well as the Christmas party and several other events.  Annual reports from the church and the organization, as well as other written materials, were reviewed for additional data.

 

Lakeside, which opened in 1967, is a Quaker, continuing care facility located 25 miles north of Philadelphia. Lakeside consists of a residential community of nearly 400 older adults, with an average age of 80. Residents live either in independent apartments, assisted living, or skilled care (nursing home). The Lakeside campus is self-sufficient, with dining facilities, a fitness center and pool, a hairdresser, library, pharmacy, bank, and mailroom. Employees do not live on site. Lakeside currently has a very strong reputation, and is considered to be a leader in the industry.

 

Demographically, one third of Lakeside residents are Quaker. The vast majority of residents are white, highly educated, and from middle to upper income levels. Aside from Quakers, there are large contingents of Episcopalians and Jews (each approximately 20%). Most residents come from the greater Philadelphia area (or Eastern Pennsylvania). In its earlier years, residents came from farther afield, as facilities like Lakeside were more rare. Now, given the boom in continuing care facilities around the country, more people move in from surrounding areas.

 

The vast majority of staff are not Quaker; at this time, only two members of the senior staff are Quaker, notably the CEO and Director of Nursing. Lakeside hires staff irrespective of religious faith. By contrast, the by-laws of the Board mandate that 75% of the Board be active Quakers.

 

Research at this site combined participant observation, interviews, and analysis of documents.  The researcher spent 4-6 hours per week at Lakeside over 10 weeks. This included attending Quaker Meeting for Worship, attending a meeting of the Board of Directors, eating with residents in the dining room and the coffee shop, attending events, visiting residents in their personal apartments and rooms, as well as in the common community spaces. Given the spread-out nature of Lakeside’s campus, she did not take on a particular staff role (volunteering at reception, for example), as she wanted the opportunity to move between different areas of the facility. Open-ended (semi-structured) interviews were conducted with 11 staff members and with 8 residents. These interviews each lasted from one to two hours. 

Document analysis included reviewing a range of documents pertaining to Lakeside, including the Lakeside website, Lakeside promotional materials, a book written by a resident about Lakeside, literature on Quakerism, documents from Board Meetings, the Lakeside Handbook and Guidelines given to new residents, and a Resident Feedback Survey conducted in May of 2004. In addition, the Co-PI interviewed the Executive Director.

Suggestions for Future Research

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This pilot study drew together two teams of researchers who conducted quasi-independent projects connected through locality specific team project meetings and occasional events that allowed opportunities for staff from the two projects to communicate with each other.  Communications across sites was handled primarily through the two PIs visiting the other team.  Consistency across projects came from shared training materials and ongoing conversations.  While the general framework for study methods worked for the pilot project, additional types of fieldwork were necessary in order to adequately respond to all study questions. Specific additional strategies include:

#                    Conduct equal amount of research in both organizations and founding faith community venues.  Given the limited scope of the pilot, all researchers performed some observations and interviews in the founding faith communities.  However, truly discovering the social capital connections between non-profits and their founding communities would require regular observations at worship services, community-wide events, and other venues.  Interviews and focus groups should also be conducted with members of the founding religious or secular community.

#                    Focus both on congregations and higher level judicatory bodies.  As discussed in more detail below, some religions organize social welfare systems through community-wide structures like an archdiocese, a Jewish federation or a synod.  Even the mainline Protestant and Peace Church organizations responded to advice, support and oversight from synods, clusters of churches, and other higher-level judicatory structures. Many of these organizations also belong to regional or national umbrella groups associated with their faiths. Understanding the role of these higher level institutions in faith-based service would provide an important additional component to the project.

#                    Follow organizations to venues with secular counterparts in order to understand the role of these agencies in the sector.  The planning team for the national study considered comparing faith-based and secular organizations, ultimately deciding that focusing on faith-based institutions was sufficient in most cases.  However, our pilot research also showed these organizations participating in activities with peer organizations founded by both secular communities and other faiths.  Observing interactions in these events would provide data on the sector.

#                    Perform comparative research with secular organizations in marginalized racial and immigrant communities in order to disentangle the role of race, immigrant status, and faith in these organizations.  Research with African American Christian, Muslim and Asian Protestant organizations raised numerous questions regarding the relative importance of providing appropriate services to the racial, ethnic and immigrant communities and the role of religion in these institutions.  For example, was the Chinese church offering services to immigrants through the church as a ministry or because the church served as a mediating institution that brought together Chinese with similar concerns?  How would this organization's services differ from those provided by a secular agency?  Would a secular agency draw its support from different parts of the Chinese community or the same people and institutions?  In order to adequately understand the complex dynamics between these factors, the project ultimately decided to include comparisons between faith-based and secular organizations in these communities.

#                    Institute uniform training, reporting and communication systems across sites.  The Faith and Organizations project is meant both as independent research in local communities and as an action-research initiative with specific goals to provide useful information to practitioners and policy makers.  The uniform training and communication structures of the pilot suggested some strategies to achieve these goals.  The national project also envisions a core team of specialists in particular sectors and faiths that would work closely with researchers across sites to maintain consistency.  The pilot experience also highlighted the need for uniform reporting and communications to ensure consistency across sites.

Major Themes

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Several major crosscutting findings came out of the pilot study.  These themes provide important hints to the ways that faith communities organize social welfare and health provision through their non-profit organizations and congregations; the relationship between faith communities, congregations and their non-profits; and the ways that theology, religious culture and religious identity are expressed in organizations founded by different religions.  This next section focuses on four key dynamics that influenced faith-based service provision:

1.                    Institutional vs. congregational approaches to service provision.  Various religions organize social welfare provision for their members and others in different ways.  We found two different forms of service systems: Institutional systems (Catholics, Jews, perhaps Muslims) focus on service provision through centralized entities like an archdiocese or Jewish Federation while Congregational systems (Mainline Protestant, African American Christians, Evangelicals, Peace Churches) see congregations as central for fostering and maintaining religious-based non-profits.

2.                    The role of theology and religious culture in service provision.  Each religion had its unique understanding of the theological basis for service provision and religious culture that significantly structured that nature of service provision in organizations founded by that faith.  This section provides a brief overview of the theology for social justice and social supports for that religion, its history of social justice and social welfare work, and discussion of that faith community’s system for organizing worship and social welfare activities.

3.                    The importance of social capital to faith-based non-profits: Social capital played a significant role for all organizations.  The types of social capital among the founding faith community, the sector, and individual congregations varied among organizations.  Likewise, some organizations had stronger ties to faith-community institutions (congregations and higher judicatory bodies), government and other institutions in their sector than others.  Given current stress on congregations’ role in service provision stemming from the Faith-based Initiative, some non-profits coming out of institutionalized systems reached out to congregations for the first time, only to find limited social capital connections to these congregations.

4.                    Forms of religious expression.  Explicit or expressive faiths (Evangelicals, African Americans) actively use god-language or references to their religion in service provision while other faiths (Jews, Peace Churches, sometimes Catholics) practiced embedded religion where theology and religious culture played a profound role in faith-based service yet very few symbols of religion or references to faith appeared in service provision.  Mainline Protestant service provision mostly appeared as embedded faith to program participants, but activities among some staff and outreach activities to congregations sometimes used expressive modes.

Both Smith and Sosin’s (2001) discussion of the varieties of religious-based organizations and the Sider and Unruh typology (2004) presume that the most religious organizations would have firm connections to congregations or higher-level judicatory bodies like an archdiocese or Jewish Federation.  These typologies also presume that organizations that are more closely tied to faith would express their religion through staffing decisions, mission, funding, use of religious symbols, religious practice as part of programming or staff practices and other mechanisms that clearly denote religious affiliation.  Our findings agree with Jeavons’s (2004) observation that the Sider and Unruh typology is profoundly influenced by the theology and cultural expectations of Protestant faith, particularly Evangelical forms of Christianity.  Our findings further challenge assumptions that faith-based service should necessarily grow out of the activities of individual congregations.  The various religions in our pilot study created different systems to provide for the health and social welfare of their members and society at large, and expressed their faith in different ways.   

Institutional vs. Congregational Service Provision

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The policy focus on congregations as providers of social supports has led to comparisons of the levels of congregational involvement among different faiths.  Mainline Protestants and African American churches generally appear most active in all forms of civic engagement, including social welfare service provision.  A number of studies note that Catholic parishes appear less active than other faiths (Bane 2005, Schlozman, Verba and Brady 1995).  While studies of civic engagement note that Jews are highly active (Bane 2005, Schlozman, Verba and Brady 1995), pilot study research suggested limited connections between synagogues, Temples, and non-profit organizations.  While individual Muslims actively supported the non-profits we studied, relationships between mosques and these organizations were not always clear.

 

However, despite this apparent lack of involvement from individual congregations, all of these organizations had significant ties to their founding religions.  The faiths that showed less congregational support instead connected to their faith communities through community-wide structures: Jewish Federations, Catholic archdiocese, and the Muslim Zakat system. This finding led us to develop a comparison between faiths that relied heavily on congregational support and those that organize social welfare provision through wider community or hierarchical structures.

 

Faith communities fell into two categories: Jews, Catholics and possibly Muslims organized social service provision through institutionalized systems (Hehir 2002) where social services are centralized through a community-wide system separate from worship communities: mosques, synagogues and Temples, parishes.  In the Jewish community, social welfare services are provided through professional organizations affiliated with the Jewish Federations and councils, which is responsible for planning, fundraising and other supports for these institutions. Community-wide oversight draws on civic engagement from the faith-community through participation in Federation activities and committees.  Likewise, the Catholic archdiocese holds responsibility for most social services through Catholic Social Services or Catholic Charities, agencies that are under the church hierarchical structure.  Mechanisms for volunteering and for garnering support from the faith community come from the archdiocese.  While organizational structures were much more nascent in the Muslim communities, similar expectations regarding social supports appeared to operate in this religion.  For example, both of the social service agencies studied for this study and a related study had boards drawn from all of the area mosques, not one mosque or Islamic Center.^[5]  Likewise, their support and referral structures drew from the entire community rather than one congregation.

 

The differences between institutional and congregational approaches to social welfare service provision stemmed from religious culture.  The various Protestant religions, Evangelicals, the Protestant African American congregations, and Peace Churches all see the congregation as the fundamental unit in that religion.  While each of these denominations has larger judicatory bodies that sometimes provide support to non-profits under religious auspices, social welfare activities are generally founded either by   particular congregations, or several congregations working together.  For example, one Mennonite congregation founded Jubilee, the Mennonite facility.  The current executive director is a member of that congregation who was asked to take on this ministry.  Similar connections between individual congregations and organizations existed for all of the congregational organizations in the study.

 

In contrast, non-profits in institutional systems responded primarily to the centralized entities in their region, and cultivated only tangential relationships with individual congregations.  This was most clear in the Catholic organization, which was part of the archdiocese.  Further, during the study period, the archdiocese decided to reorganize its social welfare systems by combining several previously independent social welfare organizations under one umbrella structure.  The archdiocese encouraged local parishes to work with this archdiocese-wide social welfare system to meet the needs of its members.  While one of the programs we studied drew volunteers from a nearby parish, structures for volunteering were generally handled through archdiocese-wide structures.

 

Our research in the Catholic GED Program revealed this agency’s preference for social welfare flowing through the archdiocese rather than the parishes working independently.  For example, the archdiocese has a formal system to work with parishes to find support for people in need. While parishes might refer people who are their members, they also referred non-Catholics who came to a parish for help. On several occasions staff asserted that they preferred parishes to refer people seeking aid to the formal social service arm of the Church where they could be appropriately evaluated and monitored for services rather than try to provide support through parish resources.  Likewise, the archdiocese is in the process of developing a system to link parishes to each other for social welfare support and activities, also working through the archdiocese as an organizational structure.

 

This organizational system with the archdiocese as the center for social welfare support may help explain why many Catholic parishes appear less active in social welfare provision than Protestant churches.  If the archdiocese is considered the appropriate venue for seeking aid, volunteering, and donating funds for these kinds of activities, then individual parish initiatives would be contrary to the established system.  Parish activity may be supported in addition to contributing through archdiocese sponsored activities, but they would not be the culturally appropriate first-response contact to support members or others in need.

 

While Jewish synagogues and Temples in the United States are generally independent of each other like in the congregationally focused religions, Jews as a cultural group and religion organize social welfare through community-wide systems.   The Federation movement started with the Boston Federation in 1895 as a mechanism to rationalize and consolidate fundraising and planning for Jewish organizations.  The movement quickly spread across the country. Currently United Jewish Committee (UJC) lists 189 Federations in the U.S. and Canada (www.ujc.org).

           

The Federation system harkens back to Kehillah, or the community administrative bodies in Europe that were responsible for Jewish life prior to the establishment of modern nation states.  The modern Federation differs from the Kehillah in that Federations are voluntary organizations.  Members join by donating as little as ten dollars to a Federation fundraising campaign.  Not all Jewish organizations are under the umbrella of a local Federation, nor does the Federation hold administrative authority for Jewish life as the Kehillah did in Europe (Roseman 1974, Bogen 1917). 

 

UJC and other Jewish national organizations differ from the Catholic structures in two important ways.  First, Jewish institutions are created from the bottom up — they are professional associations for their constituent members rather than hierarchical organizations that provide guidance to lower level organizations.  Second, while UJC reflects Jewish culture and religion, the religious organizations are separate from philanthropy, cultural, education, and social service agencies.  As with the local Federations, synagogues and Temples are voluntary organizations formed by their members.  While umbrella organizations and rabbinical training colleges exist for the various forms of Judaism in the United States, Jews lack the hierarchical religious structures of the Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations.  Authority comes from the constituent members and their local leaders for both the congregations and the various non-profit organizations.

 

This disconnection between the religious institutions and social welfare systems influenced the relationship between individual members, the congregations, and the Jewish non-profits in the study. The Philadelphia Jewish organization maintained an ambivalent relationship with its Federation, but had no relationship with any of the synagogues or Temples.   The organization had no outreach to synagogues or Temples prior to our study.  Our researcher found that congregations that she contacted to schedule presentations on the organization showed little enthusiasm for congregational outreach activities.  Presentations by individual social service agencies were simply outside the norm for this community.

 

At both the national and local level, Federations brought together a number of pre-existing organizations.  Jews have maintained an obligation to care for members of their community themselves since early migration to the United States (Bogan 1917). Federations are either generally linked or merged with local United Jewish Appeal (UJA) offices, the umbrella fundraising organization for the Jewish community.  Early on, synagogues and fraternal societies took care of most needs.  Many larger communities had Jewish settlement houses and the precursors to Jewish Family Service before the creation of local Federations. 

 

The Jewish Federation of Philadelphia was established in 1901 “as a way of uniting the efforts of a number of Jewish agencies which had been set up to assist people who were ill, poor, old, orphaned, or out of work, including many immigrants who had fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe” (Task force on Resettlement 1980, 7).  The Washington DC metropolitan area Federation is much younger, evolving out of the local UJA and founded in the late 1970s.    The Washington DC metropolitan area Jewish community has a stable core population, but also many transient members due to nature of work in the nation’s capital.  While the area had a United Jewish Appeal organization for many years, it only decided recently that it had a large enough stable population for community-wide social welfare planning typical of other community Federations.    

 

Our research among Muslims in Washington DC was insufficient to provide a clear picture of the organization of social welfare in this faith.  In addition, most of the Mosques and other social welfare structures in this community had developed fairly recently, so that independent social welfare systems were just beginning to evolve. However, our research revealed several elements that suggest the beginnings of an institutionalized system similar to Islamic economic systems in other countries (Weiss 2002).

 

Both of the social service agencies developed in response to concerns among members of several mosques about a particular issue.  One organization drew its board and supporters from several mosques.  While one organization was founded by women at a particular mosque and drew much of its early support from this mosque, it still claimed to be a part of the wider Muslim community.  Both organizations relied heavily on the Internet and word of mouth within the greater Muslim community to draw support, find people to serve, and provide them with assistance. While formal structures like a Federation or archdiocese did not exist, the Muslim community did show a sense of group ownership for these organizations and their activities more similar to institutional systems than congregational social service provision.

 

The strong relationship between congregations and non-profits even held true for the large Lutheran organization in our study.  As Thiemann (2005) points out, while Lutherans are a Protestant denomination, they and the Episcopal Church both maintain closer relationships to Catholicism.  While this organization was founded by the Pennsylvania ministerium in 1922, it nevertheless consistently reaches out to individual congregations to support activities like refugee resettlement and elder care.  This organization represents a middle ground between congregational and institutional forms of social welfare service provision.  It benefits from the strengths of both systems – drawing on the critical mass and hierarchical systems of the parent ministerium, while also developing relationships with local congregations. 

 

At the same time, the organization also shows the weaknesses in each system.  Given that decision making for the organization is independent of individual congregations through higher judicatory body and its relatively independent status, organization decisions to focus on groups like GLBT youth may not fit the ideology of the local congregations.  While the organization depends on congregations to perform some services, others – like foster care and other services for children – are funded primarily through government and serve primarily non-Lutheran people. The organization was concerned to learn that few Lutherans use their services yet congregations always ask how many Lutherans are served by its programs when it attempts to reach out to local congregations.  As such, the organization faces mixed expectations that it will both be a creature of the congregations and the Lutheran community as a whole.  

 

Fundraising and Civic Engagement

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Fundraising in institutionalized systems also flows through central structures.  While all organizations relied on some outside funding through government or private sources, their support from the founding faith community came from community-wide systems.  Jewish agencies received part of their funding through the UJA.  Catholic agencies received support directly from the archdiocese and through Bishops appeals and similar fundraising efforts from the centralized archdiocese to the parishes. Saint Vincent de Paul and other donation systems also relied in part on this centralized structure. Muslim support for organizations is codified into religious law:  Zakat is a mandatory religious obligation by Muslims to donate a percentage of their income to provide for the poor or others in need (Weiss 2002: 20-26).  The bulk of the funds for the organizations studied here came through Zakat donations. 

 

Fundraising in congregational systems likewise focused on individual congregations rather than faith-community-wide structures.  While a large Protestant agency might use a higher judicatory body to obtain a list of congregations, fundraising was done through outreach to congregations.  Lakeside, the Quaker organization, received funding from the Meeting that founded it.  Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center also maintained fundraising and other ties to its founding church even as it reached out to other faiths to assist in developing its non-profit organization.

 

While worship communities may provide for people in need in their midst, they are far more likely to refer people in need to these formal social service structures.  For example, Catholic Social Services parish outreach efforts attempted to encourage parishes to rely on this formalized system to provide for people who sought financial support from a parish.  This involved a referral system, which would link people in need to Catholic Social Services formal intake system, thus potentially providing greater, more integrated support than parish donations.  In the Jewish community, the adult day care center’s new outreach began by providing information to synagogues about their services.  Community members were more likely to turn to centralized intake through Jewish social service and aging agencies than to look directly to one of the member agencies.  The Muslim organization functioned largely as a referral organization — people with a particular need asked the agency for help and the agency found someone in the larger Muslim community to address the issue.  Mosques referred people in need to these agencies.

 

Likewise, civic engagement for the faith community often flowed through these larger structures.  Catholic Social Services had a centralized volunteer system that drew on the parishes for support.  For the Jewish agencies, civic engagement largely came through governance — boards and advisory committees drew from this community.  Muslim organizations depended on informal networks for service provision, governance, volunteers and staff.

 

In contrast, congregationally organized systems directly linked to worship communities for resources and participants.  Mainline Protestants, Peace Churches and Evangelicals all relied on congregational supports.  For example, even though the Protestant Social Services was a large structure serving the wider community, it relied on congregations to provide refugee and aging services.  Both the Quaker and Mennonite organizations were under the care of specific congregations that provided a portion of their board members as well as other resources.  For example, the land for Lakeside was donated by one Meeting, maintained through rent of one dollar per year.  Jubilee Association of Maryland drew the majority of its board members from the Mennonite community, particularly this congregation.  Christian Adult Community Day Program was seamlessly integrated into the congregation, involving participants in larger worship services and church activities.

 

Only Christian Children’s Inner-city Program claimed no links to a particular congregation, instead its key founders and volunteers came through a network of Asian campus evangelical organizations.  Yet, despite this supposed independence, most staff and volunteers came from a couple of congregations and the organization turned to Asian Christian churches for support rather than any umbrella group.

 

Congregationally organized systems relied on congregations for a range of supports.  In the larger agencies, fundraising was accomplished through letters to the congregations as well as individual appeals. The same was true for volunteers and staff.  Christian Adult Community Day Program had a system of missionary interns that provided support for the senior center and the staff regarded their work at the agency as a ministry that paid far less than outside employment.  Christian Children’s Inner-City Program turned to various Asian churches and campus ministries for volunteers, interns, fundraising and board members.  The Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center relied on its founding church for volunteers as well as other resources.  The key board members and staff for Chinese Immigrant Services came from the founding congregation, the organization was housed in the social service building for the church, and volunteers came from the same source.

 

Program participants were far more likely to give back directly to these founding congregations in a congregational system.  For example, Lakeside residents contributed toward the building fund for an addition to their founding Friends Meeting.  Christian Adult Community Day Program senior center participants were active in the church, including participation in worship and other activities.  Christian Children’s Inner-city Program participants prepared to sing at local congregations that had sponsored their activities.

 

The differences between institutionally and congregationally organized systems suggest that the structure of community involvement and support can look very different depending on the defining organizing principle for social support.  Rather than expectations of direct links between individuals and organizations common in many of the complaints about lack of civic engagement in the U.S. (Putnam 2000), involvement in institutionalized systems is mediated through centralized structures.  In this case, civic engagement is not missing; to the contrary it is expanded through a larger, less personalized system.

 

Implications for Policy and Practice

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#                    Policy focuses on congregations as the appropriate venue for faith-based service may be misplaced.  Instead, initiatives to promote faith community involvement in social welfare should support both congregational and institutional forms. This finding potentially impacts the evolution of public policy like the faith-based initiative and other efforts to enhance civic engagement.  Most of these initiatives presume congregational systems, considering institutionalized social welfare systems as examples of impersonal bureaucracies.  If, as this pilot study suggests, institutionalized systems represent different forms of civic engagement rather than lack of support, policy would need to adjust to accommodate both forms of engagement.

#                    Non-profits in institutionalized systems may find it appropriate to strengthen relationships to the faith community through their wider community systems rather than work to mimic outreach to individual congregations as in the congregational systems.

Implications for Future Research

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#                    Future research should focus on comparing these two systems to further test findings from the pilot and understand differences between congregational and institutional systems better.

 

#                    Research on relationships among non-profits and faith communities in institutionalized systems should pay particular attention to the role of community-wide entities like the archdiocese or Federation rather than focusing on congregation/non-profit relations or the interactions between individual members of that faith and the organization.  Comparing institutional and congregational systems calls for modifications in research design.  Rather than study relationships between congregations and organizations, work in institutionalized systems would require more focus on the mediating structures: Jewish Federations, archdiocese systems, Muslim community-wide systems.  In the pilot, we were surprised by the lack of connection between congregations and agencies in these institutionalized systems.  This finding suggests that research should focus elsewhere, instead looking at connections between the congregations and these mediating structures. 

Religious Theology and Culture

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Denominational belief systems influenced every aspect of these organizations: structure, staffing programming, and relationships to participants. This section briefly outlines the major theological and religious cultural attributes of the faiths that participated in the pilot project and provides a few preliminary examples of ways that faith plays out in organization behavior.  More detailed discussion of connections between faith and works are discussed later in this report.  Discussion of religious values and culture and organization for each participating organization is available in Appendix A,

 

In this report, theology refers to the codified belief systems of the various faiths.  We focus specifically on each religion’s approach to social welfare and social justice.  In addition to discussion of belief systems, this section also discusses the ways that theology plays out in the organizational structure of the religion — for example contrasting the hierarchy of the Catholic Church with the experiential, non-hierarchical structures of Peace Churches.

 

Religious culture refers to elements of organizational form and practice that stem from the ways that a particular faith is practiced in the United States today.  We use culture in the anthropological sense of a whole way of life of a people, including its organizational systems, economy, family systems and belief systems.  In a complex democracy like the United States, faith-based culture is in fact a subculture — a lifestyle that both depends on the larger structures of society, but consciously establishes variant behaviors and beliefs consistent with its separate identity.  Cultures both reflect their past and grow and change over time.  For example, Jewish culture reflects a combination of biblical beliefs, the Diaspora experience of Jews as a persecuted people, and modern U.S. Jewish experience as a relatively affluent, educated ethnic group within the United States.  While this section focuses on the unique elements of each faith, later sections that discuss the impact of service sector on each organization show how faith-based institutions negotiate the dynamic between living as part of larger U.S. culture and socio-economic systems while attempting to maintain their faith-based identity.

 

Peace Churches

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The historic peace churches — Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren — developed as one strand of the reaction against established state churches during the early enlightenment.  While founded in different countries and with some significant variation in core beliefs these denominations share several common elements:

 

#                    An emphasis on experiential religion

 

#                    Belief that all members — not just ordained clergy — are vital members of the religious community called to live out their faith

 

#                    Communal and non-hierarchical decision-making systems and organizational structures

 

#                    Commitment to equality and respect for the beliefs, values and lifeways of everyone, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, gender, or disability

 

#                    Central value placed on living in peace and creating a peaceful world.  While Peace Churches are best known for their anti-war stance, commitment to peace includes non-violence in all aspects of life and is closely linked to the commitment to equality and respect for all peoples. 

 

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers^[6]) started around 1652 in England (Punshon 1984: 53-58).  A small sect of followers of George Fox, Friends base their worship and practice on “waiting upon the Lord” in silence (Brinton 1994: 1-15).  Quakers have no formal creed, but share a commitment to “seek that of God in everyone.”  As a religious institution, Friends have a bottom up structure, with the Monthly Meetings (congregations) as the central organizational entity.  Friends practice an experiential religion, based on evolving faith through everyday activity.  Central tenets of early Quaker faith include abjuring all outward signs of traditional religion such as baptism, holidays and even a formally structured worship service.  There was no formal hierarchy nor were there paid ministers.  These beliefs and practices are continued in “unprogrammed” Meetings today.  Instead, faith and practice are based on “continuing revelation” of the word of God through the experience of believers. 

 

Friends believe that each individual — regardless of membership in the Religious Society of Friends or any other religion — contains the light of God within himself or herself.  Participants in Friends worship wait in silence for divine messages.  Occasionally prompted to speak by the Spirit, any participant can rise to give a message.  Worship thus consists of the voice of the spirit flowing through people engaged in the community of worship.  In present day Meetings, anyone can come to worship and everyone technically has equal right to speak.

 

While Friends practice allows participation by everyone in attendance at a given meeting for worship or business, the community has always controlled membership and patterns of speech and behavior.  Authority in the Religious Society of Friends resides in the “Monthly Meetings”: small groups equivalent to a congregation.  Individuals join a particular Meeting, one can not declare oneself a “Quaker” without first joining a Monthly Meeting.^[7] The entire community agrees to admit a new person to membership after a committee has determined that they are “clear” about their calling to membership and understand the basic beliefs and practices of this particular meeting. Quaker communities consist of known people who participate in shared decision-making processes. People who have been part of the community longer or who are known for culturally appropriate behavior and wise council are given more “weight” in the decision-making process.

 

By the end of the 17th century, Friends had also developed larger structures, which played a role in maintaining the religion. The structure partially reflected boundaries created by horse and buggy modes of transportation.  In the northeastern United States, “Quarterly Meetings” consisted of several Meetings in close proximity to each other which met on a quarterly bases to carry out business in common for those Meetings. Quarterly meetings are grouped together into Yearly Meetings. Both Quarterly Meetings and Yearly Meetings are creatures of the Monthly Meetings, not the other way around.   While Yearly Meetings have more voice and formal functions than the Quarters, they also exist to serve the members of individual Meetings, not determine policy for the local level.  As larger administrative bodies, the two Yearly Meetings in this pilot study have educational and administrative resources used by the Monthly Meetings and the social service projects under the care of those meetings.

 

As Friends spread across the United States, adapting to the local culture and responding to variation within society, the religious community split into several factions.  “Unprogrammed” Meetings continue the practice of silent worship with no formal structure.  Many of these meetings belong to the larger umbrella group of Friends General Conference (FGC).  FGC functions as a resource organization to its constituent Monthly and Yearly meetings, with limited joint decision making.  In some other parts of the country, particularly the Midwest and parts of the Pacific coast, Quakers adopted the belief systems and worship practices of the other Christian sects in their communities.  “Programmed” meetings often resemble Methodist or Evangelical churches with paid ministers, a formal worship structure, and more Christocentric belief systems than the most liberal unprogrammed Friends.  However, programmed Quakers share core beliefs and communal decision-making structures with unprogrammed Meetings. Friends United Meeting (FUM) and Evangelical Friends International are the two largest Friends conferences for programmed Meetings in the United States.  Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) attempts to draw together these various strands of the Quaker community in joint meetings and through providing some general resources.

 

Like Friends, Mennonites evolved out of the reaction to state church in the early Renaissance.  Mennonites developed in central Europe in the early 1500s as one of several Anabaptist sects with a strong belief in the separation of church and state (Ediger 1983: 3-5).  The more traditional forms of “Old Order Mennonites,” and their cousins the Amish, continue separatism from modern culture through limited use of modern conveniences like electricity or cars, separate schools, and largely independent governance structures (see for example Wenger 1966: 280-281).  Mennonites share a bottom up structure similar to Friends where the local community determines communal practice.  As a result, Mennonite practice varies widely and some Mennonite communities participate in most aspects of current culture like present day Quakers.

 

Mennonites are a far more Christocentric religion than some Friends, with a strong focus on all members following the teachings of Jesus.  Like Quakers, Mennonites depend on group discernment of faith rather than a formal theology created by a clergy.  Herr and Herr (2001: 61) comment that “Following Jesus as known through community discernment has always been more important than developing careful theological systems to direct social behavior or theological understanding.”    Every member is part of the “priesthood of believers,” responsible to the faith and practicing this faith in daily life (Nuefield and Wert 1983: 259).

 

As with Quakers, Mennonites believe that both the laity and clergy play an equal role in faith practice and community decision making.  However, Mennonites have more formal structures, with preachers, deacons and bishops chosen from among community members.  Deacons focused on community support or “alms work”, preachers, the word of God, and elders or bishops administrative oversight (Wenger 1966: 278-279).  Until the 1930s, preachers had little formal training, although currently several seminaries exist.  Decision-making structures reside within the congregations.  As with Quakers, Mennonites have joined together in various conferences, but the local congregations still hold authority.  Joint decision making in the United States is handled through Mennonite General Conference, with a larger structure of Mennonite World Committee (Wenger 1966: 232-233). 

 

“Work in the world” has long been important in the Religious Society of Friends.  As with other promptings of the Spirit, individual Friends are led to work on social issues.  Most Quaker social service stems from the concept that there is that of God in everyone.  As with Friends like John Woolman and Lucretia Mott who sought to end injustice toward native Americans, slaves, women and the poor, this sense that everyone is equal in the sight of God leads to work to foster equality and justice for those excluded from social goods.  In many cases, Friends work is characterized by one on one contact, which seeks to expand boundaries in the best sense of sharing social capital.

 

Quaker business practice in both Meetings and organizations that follow Friends practices rely on the theological patterns of waiting on the Lord for decisions and group discernment processes similar to worship services.  A “meeting for worship for the purpose of business” involves Friends gathering together to discern the will of God regarding a particular point of community business.  Quaker process calls for the group of people gathered to conduct business to develop a shared sense of Meeting on any given issue.  There are no votes and all must agree or “stand aside” before the Meeting can proceed with a decision.

 

Members that feel called to develop a ministry bring their project to their Monthly meeting for discernment and support.  Many Quaker organizations evolved out of either individual “leadings” or Meeting-wide discernment that the community should engage in a particular service.  For example, Lakeside developed out of a concern for housing for Quaker seniors in one Meeting near the current facility.  These “social concerns” are tested by Quaker Meetings and supported by the individual Meeting and sometimes larger structures like Quarterly or Yearly Meetings. While Friends ministries represent the will of God working through an individual or group, each ministry is operationalized through individuals who are part of an existing social structure.

 

As noted in earlier research (Schneider 1999), Friends values of equality and answering that of God in everyone often leads to rapidly including the people served by the organization in decision-making structures, regardless of their class, race and religious backgrounds. Pilot research suggests similar patterns for Mennonites. While organizations like Lakeside make efforts to orient staff and people served into Quaker culture and process, organizations that have been less careful to socialize outsiders into Quaker process can eventually come to resemble secular organizations dominated by people from the various groups that staff the organization or use its services (Schneider 1999, Jeavons 1994).  As relationships between the Religious Society of Friends and organizations created by Quakers but largely dominated by non-Friends become attenuated, the various religious entities among Friends have questioned those connections (Schneider 1999, Fager 1988).  In these instances, organizations sometimes make an effort to re-engage with Quaker practice. In other cases, the relationship between the religious community and non-profits remains conflicted with both organization staff and the wider community of Friends expressing frustration with each other due to mismatched expectations and cultural misunderstandings.

 

Mennonite social missions share many characteristics with Friends organizations, but maintain stronger ties to the religious community than many of the older, more established Quaker non-profits.  Given separatism from state structures among traditional Mennonites, this faith began work with social concerns much later than Friends, starting with activities to support their own members in need.  Redekop (1996: 107) comments that Mennonites formed few organizations before 1900.  Mennonites engaged in some missionary activity in the late 19^th century, which later led to work throughout the world.  However, Mennonite Central Committee, the organizational entity responsible for many social welfare activities sponsored by Mennonites from North America was founded in the 1920s to aid Mennonites in south Russia during a period of famine (Redekop 1996: 108).  MCC also played a key role in supporting Mennonite conscientious objectors during World War II in their work in health care and other U.S. institutions.  This generation of men involved in the conscientious objector activities in turn spawned additional social welfare activities throughout the world.  Redekop (1996:123) notes that participation in MCC activities has, in turn, acculturated several generations of Mennonites into the larger world, both secular and sacred.

 

Mennonite social welfare activities share with Friends a belief in the value of all persons, working with local communities as equals, and shared decision-making processes. However, many Mennonite non-profit institutions differ from Quaker organizations in subtle, but significant ways (Jeavons 1994).  MCC organizations are under the care of this umbrella entity for Mennonite General Conference. Other Mennonite non-profits have affiliated with umbrella groups that maintain similar close connections either with individual Mennonite congregations or affiliate organizations connected to the Mennonite conferences, For Example, Jubilee Association of Maryland draws the majority of its board from its founding Mennonite church and its executive director is an active member in that church. The organization has also affiliated with an umbrella organization for Mennonite health care institutions that is a spin off from MCC (Nuefield 1983). The umbrella organization provides administrative oversight to some of the organizations under its care and supports all of its member agencies to maintain the founding religious ethos in organization structure and programming.

 

Social welfare activities among Mennonites are strongly tied to the faith, as a witness to the world.  Herr and Herr (2001: 58-59) comment: “We engage other communities, and those shaped by them, including government, from the context and categories of our community.  Our existence is our witness.... theology is social theory.”  Participants in MCC activities are expected to act from their faith, with the support and discernment from their congregations.  Schlabach (2000:47) notes that the most successful MCC staff “possess a modest lifestyle, social awareness, and — to sustain their commitment and struggles — an authentic Christian piety.”  This close connection between religious practice and social welfare activities informed the organization in our pilot study.

 

Experiential theology and religious cultural elements common to all Peace Churches, as well as those unique to Quakers or Mennonites, permeated the two organizations in the pilot study.  A few examples include:

 

#                    Both organizations had flat organizational structures and engaged all staff in shared decision-making processes.

 

#                    Both organizations functioned as communities, with staff and participants working together to maintain community life.  At Jubilee, program participants and staff worked together to perform the daily chores such as cooking in the group homes.  Each group home was part of the larger community of the organization.  Likewise, Lakeside participants created many of the activities at the retirement community. 

 

#                    Program participants remained at the center of organization activities.  In the Mennonite organization, the organizational chart consisted of a group of interlocking circles with the program participants at the center of each circle.  Despite developmental disabilities, program participants were involved in all aspects of organization planning and governance.  Lakeside had numerous resident committees that made decisions for the retirement community.

 

#                    In keeping with the Peace Churches emphasis on working with populations served and on equality, organizations stressed the value and rights of program participants, regardless of their physical or mental infirmities.  Participants were expected to function as full members of their communities to their full capacity.

 

Catholics

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Social welfare through Catholic institutions echoed the hierarchical structure of its parent church and reflected the various church teachings on charity and social justice.  Hehir (2002) describes Catholic social welfare as institutionalized because most social welfare service provision is managed through institutions like Catholic Charities rather than local parishes. Local Catholic Charities affiliates are connected to the diocese, one of several social welfare programs under diocesan auspices.  A national Catholic Charities office generates public policy positions and offers other supports to local agencies (Hehir 2000: 107).   The Washington DC organization studied for this pilot project was one of several Catholic non-profits organized under one umbrella name by a recent planning and consolidation effort.  The organization is under the care of the archdiocese, with board members and key staff closely affiliated with the Church.

 

The Catholic social service system in the U.S. reflects the concept of subsidiarity, or local control over services.  This idea acknowledges a partnership between the state and organizations of civil society like Catholic social service agencies.  However, private organizations should first try to help those in need themselves, only turning to government when their resources fail (Hehir 2000).  In the United States, subsidiarity often meant creating separate Catholic institutions initially designed to provide religiously appropriate services to the Catholic population.

 

Social justice and charity have been the subject of numerous church teachings.   Degeneffe,  (2003: 378), quoting Kelly, states that “a Catholic specialized service agency is not just a social agency.  It is an official charitable arm of the Church.  Our services, therefore ...are an expression of an article of faith.”   Program models theoretically stem from church teaching elaborated through doctrinal assertions of belief and statements on social policy.  “The moral and social teaching in turn is embodied in the work of multiple social institutions cutting across society” (Hehir 1998, 63-64). 

 

Proponents of social justice teachings promoted after Vatican II highlight that Catholic social activities should reflect an active laity and a vision of social change rather than simply providing for those in need (Bane 2005, Steidl-Meir 1984).  However, most observers of Catholic social welfare systems and service provision through parishes note continued reliance on traditional Catholic systems in which priests establish policies that the laity follow.  Catholic social welfare systems reflect various aspects of teachings on social justice and charity, with a dynamic tension existing between the more social justice-oriented programs and those that reflect traditional values of charity.  Cochran (1999:32-33) identifies three forms of tension between these two approaches to social welfare as 1) internal to Catholic institutions, 2) external tensions between serving the Catholic community vs. serving others and 3) “good citizenship” by contributing to the well being of society in its current form vs. social transformation.

 

Traditional social welfare programs respond to church teachings on charity. Charity involves assistance to the needy, “Charity is the greatest social commandment...Charity inspires a life of self giving” (USCC 1999: 7).  One Catholic theologian explains “Catholic Charities has traditionally seen itself as a very important and intimate part of the mission of the church, as a servant of the poor, and as a sacrament or sign of the church’s care and concern for the needy of the world” (Curran 1997, 101).   Catholic Charities developed at the turn of the century as a formalization of the “apostolate of charity” given that needs were too great for local parishes to fulfill (USCC 1999: 12). The model for charity is the Good Samaritan who helps an injured man on the side of the road.   Providing food, shelter and guidance meets enjoinders to serve the poor and needy.

 

More recent thinking on social welfare highlight several church teachings (Winkworth and Camilleri 2004, Cochran 1999):

 

#                    Human dignity and human rights: Church teachings stress that each individual is a child of God of equal value and entitled to dignity and basic human rights.  Social services should reflect the inherent dignity of the individual.

 

#                    Promoting the common good: Catholic social teaching supports the common good over individual interests (Cohcran 1999: 484).

 

#                    Solidarity.  The concept of solidarity came out of post Vatican II teachings in reaction to the individualism of modern life.  Solidarity highlights the responsibility that individuals have for each other (Stiedl-Meir 1984:303-305, Winkworth and Camilleri 2004: 318).

 

#                    Preferential option for the poor.  This teaching suggests that the poor should be a primary concern for Catholic social institutions with an emphasis on serving those most in need.  This teaching is reflected in such activities as ensuring health care for the uninsured and providing income supports for those not covered by government social programs and without sufficient resources.

 

These social teachings are reflected in the mission statements of Catholic welfare organizations.  For example, Catholic Charities mission is “to provide services to people in need, to advocate for justice in social structures, and to call the entire Church and other people of good will to do the same.”  One social service agency studied for the pilot stresses that “justice for the poor” drives it

 

In addition to these general principles, Catholic social welfare institutions also follow Church dictates on other aspects of social life, for example church policy on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality.  These more specific issues appear in policies that affect staff — for example the agency in the pilot study did not cover birth control in staff health insurance policies due to Catholic teachings on contraception.

 

While Catholic social welfare and health institutions evolved as a system separate from the Protestant dominated state social welfare system and private institutions, in the present era, Catholic social welfare and health entities work closely with government and often dominate social service provision in their sector.   Catholic Charities is the largest private human services network in the United States (Curran 1997, 101), yet various authors note that half to two-thirds of annual revenues come from government (Curran 1997, Monsma 1996). Cochran (1999: 480) notes that in 1997 four of the largest integrated health systems in the U.S. were Catholic and six out of ten largest non-profit systems were Catholic.

 

As Catholic social welfare and health systems have expanded their reach beyond their constituent community and taken federal government funds to provide social services, they have become more professionalized in their staffing structures and played down the faith base in their programming and choice of staff.  Our researchers for this pilot study found a dynamic tension between an organization that reflected Catholic teachings in its structure and values, but that also hired many non-Catholic staff and played down sectarian messages in its programming.  This mixing of Catholic values and secular exigencies was evident in the “core values” statement of the organization in the pilot study:

 

Following the example of the teachings of Jesus...we believe in the gospel message of faith, love and hope.  The sacredness and dignity of all human life.  Personal responsibility and social justice.  Service to all regardless of race, religion or national origin.  Uncompromising integrity and personal stewardship.

 

  A few examples of Catholic teachings as reflected in this organization included:

 

#                    Hierarchical structures in staffing and decision making, with religious or active Catholic laity in key staff positions.

 

#                    Emphasis on serving the most poor and needy in the community.

 

#                    Reference to Catholic teachings in staff communications and materials.

 

#                    Structured outreach to the parishes through centralized systems.

 

#                    The organization was part of the archdiocese, relying on archdiocese administrative structures and funding for some of its programming. 

 

Jews and Muslims

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While tensions between Jews and Arabs following the creation of the state of Israel have highlighted differences between these two peoples, this pilot study revealed similarities among the social welfare teachings and systems of these two Semitic religions. In addition to similar theologies of social justice and social welfare provision, Jews and Muslims in the United States share a history as religions different from the Christian majority and as a result they have felt it necessary to set up institutions to meet their unique needs.  Given that most of the U.S. Muslim population arrived after the 1960s, particularly in the Washington DC metropolitan area, social service provision in this community is in its infancy and reflects the twin concerns of supporting new immigrant communities and a marginalized religion.  Since literature on social welfare systems among Muslims in the United States is almost non-existent, and our pilot research only provided limited experience with two organizations, discussion of Muslim systems outlined here remains preliminary and suggestive.  

 

As discussed under institutionalized social welfare systems above, the U.S. Jewish community has established a community-wide system for social welfare provision through the Federations and UJA.  Judaism in the U.S. functions both as a religion and an ethnic group, as Jews have maintained a separate sense of peoplehood throughout the Diaspora (Schneider 1988). The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, for example, has financially supported and otherwise encouraged Jewish agency programs that enhance a sense of peoplehood.   Jewish identity is established by birth — any child of a Jewish mother is considered part of the community.  Membership in a synagogue or Temple is voluntary and many Jews consider themselves “cultural” Jews with little religious affiliation.  The separation between Jewish identity and religious faith is even stronger for Jews who came to the U.S. from the former Soviet Union as few Jews practiced their religion under Soviet rule yet all were identified by the nationality of Jewish on their passports.  As a generally well-educated and affluent community that has largely assimilated into U.S. society, most of the Jewish community both maintains the separate structures of the ethnic group and participates fully in U.S. socio-economic and political systems.

 

Much of the Jewish social welfare system developed as an alternative to state and private social welfare systems that were fundamentally Christian in origin.  In addition to a felt need to provide for Jews to protect their wellbeing and so that they would not become a burden on the state, Jewish institutions also developed to provide culturally and religiously appropriate services to members of the community.  Despite a focus on serving one’s own, sensitivity to being outsiders, as well as a spiritual conviction to do good and heal the world, has led many Jewish institutions to offer services to the wider society in a manner consistent with Jewish values but without stressing religion.  Both of the organizations studied in the pilot project offered services to everyone, regardless of race, religion or national origin. 

 

The Council of Jewish Federations, now known as United Jewish Communities, is the national umbrella organization for Jewish Federations in North America. ^[8]  At the local level, Federations are member benefit organizations designed as the fundraising and planning arm for Jewish social service, Jewish education, and Jewish communal life in constituent communities.  While Federations and their constituent agencies are separate from congregations, the religious and social welfare institutions maintain strong social capital ties, each recognizing the importance of the other.  As the planning arm for the Jewish community, Federations set community priorities for social welfare, education and recreation, establish fundraising rules for constituent agencies, and provide funding and other supports to organizations under their aegis.

 

As mentioned under institutionalized systems, above, Muslim social welfare systems show similarities to these Jewish structures.  As with Jews, Muslims do not necessarily need to join a mosque to practice their faith — in fact the development of incorporated Islamic centers and mosques in the United States in part reflects accommodation to U.S. systems for organized religion (Nimer 2002:  39-47, Leonard 2003: 108-109).  Some mosques do offer a range of social services like immigrant Christian churches (Nimer 2002: 46-47, Alkhabteeb 2002: 36-40).  However, many of the social service agencies appear to be established outside of the mosques, but with support of the wider Muslim community (Nimer 2002, Alkhabteeb 2002).  More established or larger Muslim communities appear to be developing community-wide institutional systems.  Nimer (2002: 75) reports that the Washington metropolitan area’s diverse Muslim community has formed one committee for area wide Eid celebrations and our research suggests that similar structures are supporting the two non-profits studied in this project and the earlier Pew study.  

 

Although the Jewish social welfare system began as institutions to serve Jews in a largely Christian world, many of these agencies have expanded their missions to provide services beyond the Jewish community.  Like the Catholic system, many Jewish organizations receive significant government funding and provide services to anyone in need.  For example, Carp (2002: 193) reports that in 1994 55 percent of the funding for Jewish hospitals, 76 percent for Jewish nursing homes, 61 percent for Jewish family services, 77 percent for Jewish vocational services, and 5 percent for Jewish community centers came from government.  While nursing home payments through Medicaid may support Jewish elderly, the fact that significant funding for other social services comes from government suggests outreach beyond the core community.

 

Despite involvement with wider social welfare systems, concern over Christocentric approaches to social welfare systems led both Jewish agencies to strongly state that they were NOT faith-based organizations for two reasons.  First, Jewish sensitivity to separation of church and state based on continuing struggles with Christian practice in the wider society leads organization staff to react against any initiative that brings religion to the forefront.  Second, Jewish focus on professionalization, combined with a felt understanding that the faith-based initiative might be designed to increase the role of Christian congregations in social welfare provision, created a line in the sand where these Jewish agencies did not want to associate with a government program that went against their core values of quality, professional service.  

 

Jewish social welfare organizations were most likely to hire trained professionals or those with experience with populations served by their agencies.  While most of the leadership of the Jewish agencies tended to be Jewish, Jewish organizations also hired people from many religions and backgrounds.   While the values of the Jewish agencies reflected American Jewish culture, most Jewish social welfare agencies maintained strict separation of church and state.  As one non-Jewish staff person at a Jewish agency recently commented, “I as a non-Jew feel comfortable with the values in the mission (even though I am not Jewish).”

 

The theological basis for Jewish communal service is codified through Jewish law and practice.  Carp (2002: 182) comments that “the responsibility for those in need is a Jewish requirement that is rooted at the very foundation of our communal processes...Jewish people have always understood that caring for the poor and sick was too important to be a matter of individual conscience alone.”  Two concepts embody Jewish philosophy on social welfare tikun olom (to heal the world) and tzedakah.  While the Hebrew tzedakah roughly translates as charity, the concept combined charity, justice, and righteous duty.  As Bogen (1917, 18) explains:

 

...the Jewish sages laid down as the leading principles of charity on the part of the individual the duty of the more fortunate to take care of the less fortunate, and on the part of the representatives of the community the responsibility of the material and moral welfare of those dependent upon the help of others.

 

Earlier in Jewish history, tzedakah served as a required tithe of 10 percent of income for communal social welfare, but requirements have long since been replaced by voluntary donations — often through organized Jewish philanthropy like the United Jewish Appeal or Jewish Federation campaigns.  Jewish custom stresses that a person lives on through the good deeds done for others, leading to a practice of generous philanthropy identified through named gifts to social welfare institutions.  For example, the Cohen Center is named after a major donor.

 

Muslim social welfare theology resembles Jewish forms, but is more concretely codified into religious law.  Present day Jewish tzedakah is probably somewhere between the two Muslim concepts of Zakat (mandated alms) and Sadaqa (voluntary charity) (Kogelmann 2002: 67). Zakat is the fourth pillar of Islam, a requirement to commit 2.5 percent of individual or family wealth to care for the needy.  In the U.S, Islamic centers and mosques participate in collecting and distributing Zakat, but people can also choose their own charities to donate required alms (Nimer 2002: 5).  As in the Jewish systems, Zakat represents community-wide support for those in need rather than individual donations.  The two social service organizations in this study relied heavily on cash and in-kind Zakat donations for resources.

 

Tikun olom is currently interpreted in two contradictory ways in the Jewish community.  The holocaust signified to many American Jews that their community could not depend on the non-Jews for support in a time of crisis.  For these Jews, healing the world refers to providing supports for the Jewish community because others may not provide needed aid.  On the other hand, many Jews interpret “healing the world” as Jewish witness to provide succor through professional, quality social and health services to anyone in need.  Throughout U.S. Jewish history, this second interpretation of tikun olom has led Jews to participate actively in the civil rights movement and other social justice issues.

 

This pilot study revealed a tension between these two interpretations of tikun olom reflective of ongoing divisions within the Jewish community about their relationship to people of other faiths.  This debate dovetails with cultural discussions of assimilation versus maintaining separate cultural identity, as well as concerns over who should be the primary constituency for Jewish social service agencies.  Jews that interpret tikun olom as saving the Jewish community are more likely to expect Jewish institutions to target their services toward other Jews while those interpreting the concept as reaching beyond the Jewish community support non-sectarian service provision by Jewish institutions.  As discussed in more detail below, the two Jewish institutions in this study found themselves in the middle of debates over this issue.  The immigration agency had branched out from primarily serving Jews to providing assistance to immigrants regardless of religion while the adult day care center intentionally advertised its services to the wider community.

 

As with other organizations, Jewish and Muslim institutions reflected their founding religious principals and structures:

 

#                    All institutions intentionally upheld religious and cultural practices such as dietary restrictions, holidays, and — in the Muslim organizations — dress for women.

 

#                    Leadership in these organizations belonged to the founding religions as well as key staff.  However, professional credentials remained an equally important value for all staff.

 

#                    All four organizations drew resources from throughout their community through community-wide systems.  None appeared a creature of a particular congregation and all performed outreach primarily through the community as a whole rather than outreach to congregations.

 

#                    Underlying values of care for people in need as part of the larger community reflected core values behind Zakat, tzedakah and tikun olom.

 

#                    All organizations were initially founded to serve this particular religious community, but all stressed that they would provide aid to anyone.  Jewish organizations paid particular attention to offering services that would be comfortable to Jewish and non-Jewish program participants alike.

 

#                    Reflecting the community-wide systems of their founding religions, organizations structures and decision-making systems were relatively non-hierarchical.  However, Jewish and Muslim systems did recognize authority based on title and expertise, unlike the Peace church systems.

 

African American Christian

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“If we in the Black Church don’t do it, who will?” is a not-just-rhetorical question often heard around African American churches when describing their community ministry programs.  Whether operating a soup kitchen or organizing a housing development project, there is at the core of motivations a sense that finally only the Church can be depended upon to respond to social needs within African American communities.

 

A culture of self-help has been central to the African American people since slavery.  In order to survive, slaves needed to rely on one another for health care, education, moral support, child care and myriad other needs.  Inter-dependency in the “new” harsh world was vital, and built upon the communitarian traditions brought from their African cultures.  The value of mutuality permeated social relations as freed Blacks organized both mutual aid societies and churches. 

 

In 1787 Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, free Blacks in Philadelphia, formed the Free African Society.  According to the Preamble its purpose was "to support one another in sickness, and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children."  Allen and Jones were compelled both by their Christian faith as well as necessity—indeed there was no safety net at that time for widows and orphans of African descent.  These two leaders went on to found the first African American Episcopal Church (St.Thomas) and the mother church of the first African Methodist Episcopal Church (Mother Bethel A.M.E.).  These churches were on the frontlines of serving those stricken in the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, after George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and most prominent leaders had fled the city.  The two churches continue to the present with thriving congregations and community ministries.

 

Although the Free African Society was the first such mutual aid society, it was by no means alone.  Such societies proliferated, as did Black churches.   Growing up together, they have been described by historians as in a “symbiotic relationship. Sometimes mutual aid societies led to the formation of Black churches, and at other times these societies were organized under the rubric of the churches” (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990). The boundaries between the two institutions—the only two independent Black institutions—were permeable.  Congregations quite naturally incorporated charitable works within their church life and aid societies were often so permeated by the language and forms of faith that they were considered quasi-churches themselves (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990).

 

We saw this same permeable relationship between the churches and social service activities in the pilot study.  For example, Christian Adult Community Day program recruited its staff and volunteers from its founding church and continuously invited its program participants to attend worship services.  Joy Ministries intentionally chose to remain a program of its founding church, rather than create a separate 501(c)(3) non-profit, in order to ensure a close relationship between the church and the organization.

 

African American churches, especially those in urban areas and in the North, have historically been responsive to the waves of migration into cities and out of the South.  Churches became social brokers, finding jobs and housing for the newcomers.  At the end of the 19th century W.E.B. DuBois described the high degree social capital of the African American churches in Philadelphia which enabled incorporation into the city:

 

The Negro churches were the birthplaces of Negro schools and of all agencies which seek to promote the intelligence of the masses; and even to-day no agency serves to disseminate news or information so quickly and effectively among             Negroes as the church. Consequently all movements for social betterment are apt to center in the churches. Beneficial societies in endless number are formed here; secret societies keep in touch; cooperative and building associations have lately sprung up; the minister often acts as an employment agent; considerable charitable and relief work is done and special meetings held to aid special projects (DuBois1899: 207).

 

Today African American churches continue to roll up their sleeves to extend the ministry of the congregation beyond church walls.  In fact, the “church walls” are not the solid social boundary that they are in other faith groups.  Visitors to Black churches are often surprised by the frequent mention of social and political issues in worship services and even the accessibility political candidates have to the pulpit.  Our fieldwork in African American churches revealed similar trends.  For example, the church affiliated with the Christian Adult Community Day Program both supported liberal social causes and was targeted by Republicans who insisted that the church allow their candidates to speak in order to maintain “neutrality.” There is just not the same demarcation between the sacred and secular realms as there is in other Protestant churches—a characteristic of African American churches that has endured since their very inception.

 

Therefore it is no surprise that consistently research data show African American churches to lead other religious groups in the production of outreach ministries to their communities (Woolever and Bruce 2004: 70).    Although larger congregations with bigger staffs and more resources can provide more substantial social ministries, African American churches of all sizes allocate a greater proportion of their budgets to community outreach (Cnaan 2002: 89).  Beyond the more predictable programs which address the basic human needs for food and clothing, African American churches are much more likely to get involved with economic development issues (organizing credit unions, CDC’s, small business development or even commercial strips), housing (including the development of affordable housing units), health care (including mental health services), prison ministries, and education (often developing their own parochial or charter schools) (FACT 2000).  Indeed, “if the Black church doesn’t do it, who will?”

 

The two Philadelphia Washington DC organizations and Christian Children’s Inner-city Program all reflected the connections between faith and works characteristic of the African American faith community.  While Asian American Evangelicals founded Christian Children’s Inner-City Program, it was closely affiliated with an African American church and CDC with which it shared a building.  Organization founders often worshiped with this church and some of the youth served by the program attended this faith community.  Ties between the African American church sponsored CDC and the youth program were very close, with the executive director of the youth program commenting “We serve the children and they serve the adults in these families.”

 

Examples of connections between African American faith and these organizations include:

 

#                    Both African American organizations were closely tied to founding churches, and the Asian program showed some similar ties.

 

#                    Boundaries between congregation and social programs were permeable.

 

#                    The sophistication of these programs went well beyond the kinds of youth and adult programs usually sponsored by other churches.  All included sophisticated programs with paid staff designed to provide a range of supports to their program participants.

 

#                    In keeping with the tendency to develop a wide range of programs targeted members of the community considered most in need of support due to class background, age or other issues.  Joy Ministries programs tackled the difficult issues of welfare reform and at-risk youth that most congregations prefer to leave to professional social service agencies.  Likewise, the CDC associated with the Washington DC program and the other ministries supported by the megachurch that sponsored the seniors program fit the faith-community outreach profile.

The church remains the oldest and arguably most central independent institution in the Black community.  African Americans have higher rates of attendance and participation in their communities of faith than do other groups.  Their faith informs their outreach to others more strongly than it does for those of European descent.  An added dimension to their participation in such activities is that here Black men are also more likely to learn leadership skills, such as planning meetings and giving presentations (Harris 2003: 132).  In other words, there is a double benefit for the African American community in their civic engagement:  those within and outside the community benefit.

 

Despite the strong commitment to social ministry, which is grounded in the history and traditions of the Black churches, there are two trends, which could have an impact on their outreach.  The first is that while most African American churches report that they cooperate with social service agencies and work in ecumenical coalitions, only a small percentage cross racial lines to work with white churches (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990, Day 2001).  This segregation of altruistic efforts limits everyone’s effectiveness.

 

Secondly, as middle class African Americans continue to move out of the city, urban congregations are increasingly comprised of commuters rather than folks from the immediate neighborhood.  While suburban members appreciate having a vehicle for linking with the old community, and “paying back,” these ministries on the frontlines of social needs have the potential to feel out of touch to the neighbors being served.  If volunteerism declines with the congregation, the service can become professionalized.  Efficiency might be improved, but the important human connection across social class, which has always been a mark of Black faith communities, will be limited.

 

African American churches have had a unique formation as faithful servants to their community.  As they experience some of the same trends as their white counterparts however (suburbanization, and a plateauing of membership among most denominational groups) the future forms of their community service might change.  But if the Black church doesn’t respond to the social needs of the urban poor, who will? 

 

 

Mainline Protestants and Evangelicals

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Protestants in the U.S. have exemplified the best and the worst of faith-based social programs.  They have generated theological rationales for both action and inaction, privatism and communitarianism, individual pursuit of wealth as well as altruistic service to the poor.  In other words, the legacy Protestants bring to formulating community ministries is a mixed bag. 

Puritan Protestants landed in America bringing their Calvinist baggage with them.  While their namesake had emphasized that the world is the stage on which God’s glory is made manifest (and set about designing and running his own model city in Switzerland), faith had become an individual concern.  The individualism and the spiritual anxiety created by the belief in God’s “election” of some (and condemnation of many more) fit hand in glove with the emerging capitalist ethic in the new country (Weber, 1930).  The Calvinist communities of faith (Presbyterian and Congregational especially) taught that believers could not earn their salvation but insofar as material resources were a sign of God’s blessing, it became apparent who were the sheep and who were the goats.  In Weber’s well-known argument, the “Protestant work ethic,” came from these religious roots and came to characterize the dominant culture.

But by the early 19th century the winds of theological reform began to blow, developing from small gusts to gale-force winds.  The parched piety of the austere Protestants was under assault by a second wave of revivalism.  Emotionally charged preachers expounded a message in which the salvation of souls was not already sewn up in heaven but was the result of individual decision.  All were guilty of sin, all were offered redemption, all could be reformed—these ideas were an explosive combination, which led to a number of unexpected outcomes including a reconsideration of the unmentionable shame of slavery.  After all, all and not just some, had favor and dignity in God’s eyes.  Therefore mega-evangelists such as Lyman Beecher and Charles Finney preached passionately against slavery.  They sought to convict slaveholders of their guilt, to lead them to repentance and into the sanctified action of releasing their slaves.  The revivalism of the 19th century also acknowledged the dignity of women, so it is not surprising that the spiritual energy released found expression in the women’s suffrage, as well as the anti-slavery, movements.^[9]

Not all Protestant critics of Calvinism were comfortable with the forms of revivalism.  Theologians such as Horace Bushnell, Theodore Munger and Washington Gladden were publishing books, which further explored the ideas of social reform as central to the project of living out the Christian faith.  The Social Gospel Movement was most strongly articulated by a Baptist pastor-turned-seminary professor, Walter Rauschenbusch.  He explored building the “kingdom of God” as the call of the church, rather than only seeking the salvation of individual souls.  Even as sin was not just a personal but also a social reality, so too was salvation to be social.

The infusion of evangelistic energy and new theological ideas oriented to social reform occurred in the context of wider social trends.   Social realities such as the illiteracy of former slaves, urbanization, immigration, the consolidation of poverty, and the plight of industrial workers had gained the attention of the Mainline Protestant Churches.  In wedding ministry within and without, Congregational minister Thomas Beecher re-visioned the use of physical space.   Beecher added building space to his church in Elmira, NY to accommodate physical, social, and spiritual needs of those in community — lecture rooms, a library, free baths and a gymnasium.  This more holistic approach to ministry utilizing the church building became a trend at the turn of the century.  By one count almost 200 Mainline Protestant churches had expanded their ministry to incorporate humanitarian outreach  (Hudson, 1973).  Usually they were “tall steeple” churches in cities, with affluent benefactors as members whose consciences had been pricked by the preaching of the Social Gospel.

The Settlement House Movement, best known through the work of Jane Addams and Hull House in Chicago, also drew widespread denominational support.  By 1910 there were over 400 settlement houses, many sponsored by Protestant groups and most staffed by volunteers from the Mainline churches.   The houses not only provided food, shelter, education and social support for the poor, but also had a transformative effect on those volunteers in residence who ministered to them.  Not only did they offer opportunities for middle class Protestants to cross social boundaries in ministries of charities, they also became hubs of social research and advocacy.  Although they were finally overwhelmed by the Depression, as social work became a more professionalized field, settlement houses left a template for a faith-based, hands-on approach to outreach ministries.

It is important to recognize that in these early movements, both Evangelicals and those who identified with Progressive and later Social Gospel theologies, have a shared legacy.  Both were reacting to a stifling Calvinism. Movements that sought to recover an understanding of the gospel message and encouraged love of and service to our neighbors inspired both.  Emblematic of the two streams is the Salvation Army.  Begun in 1880 in this country, “the Army” took its mission to seek and serve the lost to a new level of organization. 

However old theological battles re-emerged to snuff out this brief period of kindred purpose.  The debate over Darwinism became a bitter disagreement over the authority of the Bible.  Lines were drawn in the theological sand, institutions split, and the Protestant house was divided.  The understanding of “social salvation” developed by the Social Gospel Movement, as well as its adoption of a non-literal approach to the Bible, was incompatible with a more fundamentalist orientation, which stressed individual salvation and a “higher view of Scripture”.  Amazingly the Salvation Army has been able in the last century to resist categorization in a single camp.  Straddling both Evangelical and Social Gospel commitments, they continue to respond to the poor by providing for both spiritual and physical needs, although they have never taken on the role of advocacy for social change.

As the twentieth century progressed, the two trajectories continued in diverge.  For Mainline Protestants, this was a time of institutionalization.  Denominations bureaucratized, building not only complex administrative structures but professionalized social services as well.  Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists and some Baptists developed nursing homes and social service agencies in addition to further growing their hospitals.  These were heady days for Mainline Protestants, identified as they were with the dominant culture.  The establishment of these denominations was epitomized in the building of a corporate structure in New York, on land donated by John D. Rockefeller, to house the National Council of Churches as well as a number of the head offices of Mainline groups.  President Eisenhower was present at the laying of the cornerstone in 1958.

Meanwhile the Evangelical groups were also building institutions, directed not at social services but furthering the evangelistic project—schools, publishing houses, mission groups, and campus evangelistic organizations proliferated.  Still sidelined from the dominant culture, Evangelicals were strengthening their identity, their resources, and their social and political capital. As the Mainline Protestants began experiencing decline in number and status beginning in the 1960’s, the Evangelical movement was growing.  They were poised for the organization of the Religious Right, which emerged as a political force in the 1980’s during the Reagan Era.  The Mainline groups were in a period of disestablishment—denominations merged, moved from the East Coast to the Heartland, and began waves of staff cutbacks.  Focus shifted from the judicatory structures and the public voice they had afforded the groups to strengthening local congregations.  Evangelicals filled the void, finding a voice in advocating conservative political causes. 

There are several interesting and important wrinkles in these developments:

#                    Congregations emerged as the predominant religious social grouping.  This is where Mainline denominations focused resources and research.  Evangelicals, drawing on their strong suit of recruitment, focused their attention on growing mega-churches.

#                    Concurrently, it became apparent that the old demarcations of liberal/conservative, Social Gospel/Evangelical could not be neatly predicted along denominational lines.  Congregations aligned with conservative theological and political views within the Mainline Protestant denominations began networking.  Definitive issues such as women’s ordination, homosexuality, and abortion emerged as faultlines within the denominational families, reflective of the larger “culture wars”.

#                    Evangelical groups became self-critical of their historic disengagement from social ministries.  As they garnered the political capital to advocate for, and benefit from, first, charitable choice of the Clinton Administration (1996) and, then, the faith-based initiative of the Bush Administration (2000), they could appeal to a history in revivalism when salvation and social justice were linked (Smith, 1998; Sider, Olson, and Unruh, 2002).

All of this makes for a dynamic and sometimes confusing context in which to study faith-based social services.   Researchers were able to sort Protestants in the U.S. neatly into four categories according to denominational affiliations:  Liberal Protestant, Moderate Protestant, Conservative Protestant and Black Protestant. (Niebuhr, 1929; Roozen, McKinney, Carroll, 1984).  However, data cannot be so cleanly aggregated.  While much research still draws on the denominational categories, many studies sample by congregations or individual believers.  An Evangelically-oriented Presbyterian church, for example, might provide their service to homeless people wrapped in the language of personal faith (a more expressive approach), while another Presbyterian church might deliver the same type of service in much the same way as a secular agency might—yet consider that they too are acting out of their faith, albeit in a more embedded way.   Both have a religious impulse for their action although toward different goals: ultimately converting a client to their belief vs. serving those in need as an end in itself.  Indeed theological variation also exists within the same congregations, wreaking havoc for researchers who want to categorize denominations and congregations into neat liberal/conservative categories.

The dynamic landscape of Protestantism lends itself, therefore, to often confusing research results.  For example, some studies have found a high level of participation in social ministries.  The FACT study, drawing on data from 14,000 congregations found 85% to be involved in some form of social ministry.  Others find lower levels of participation.  The Congregational Life study found that 26% of members were involved (Woolever and Bruce, 2004) and the National Congregational Study found 57% of congregations participated in social ministries coming out of their churches (Chaves, 2004). 

Within that, the findings have also differed on whether theological identity makes a difference.  In some studies conservative Evangelicals do not have significantly different rates of involvement in social ministries than do those from more liberal affiliations (Cnaan, 2002; Ammerman, 1997).  Historically research suggested that liberal Protestants could be predicted to have higher rates of involvement in social ministries (Warner and Lunt, 1941).  Some current research still finds that to be the case, with Evangelicals being drawn into evangelistic activities rather than social ministries (Roozen, McKinney, Carroll, 1984; Wuthnow, 1999; Ammerman 2002; Woolever and Bruce, 2004; Chaves, 2004).  Different sample techniques and definitions of what constitutes social ministry could partially explain the variation.

What does become clear is that race matters.  If African Americans are grouped with Evangelicals according to theological categories, most certainly the rates of social ministry would increase.  Most studies have shown dramatic differences in the participation of Black churches in social ministry, if not in degree (Cnaan, 2002; Chaves, 2004) at least in the types of involvement.  (Lincoln and Mamiya, 1990; Bartowski and Regis, 1999; FACT, 2000; Woolever and Bruce, 2004; Cnaan, 2002; Chaves, 2004).  African American congregations are much more likely to provide counseling, day care, prison ministry, tutoring, healthcare, employment help, drug rehabilitation, economic development, and voter registration than are their white Protestant counterparts. 

These convergences and divergences between mainline Protestants and Evangelicals were reflected in the organizations in this pilot study.  For example:

#                    Mainline Protestant organizations stressed tolerance and often reached out to other faiths in their organizational activities.  For example, Lutheran Charities downplayed their identity as a mainline Protestant organization for many years.  Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center sought support from several other religions — Catholics and Jews — in developing their organizations.  As a result, organizational activities often appear nondenominational, despite continuing links to the founding faith community.

#                    Evangelical organizations, on the other hand, maintain strong links to founding faith communities. The Asian campus ministry community and evangelical Asian churches provided the bulk of support for Christian Children’s Inner City Program.

#                    Mainline Protestant organizations tend to background faith in their programming while Evangelical organizations express their faith in all aspects of programming.  This was true of all of the organizations in the pilot study.

#                    Evangelical organizations are most likely to proselytize of any of the organizations in this study.  This was true of both the African American and Asian organizations.

#                    Both Mainline Protestant and Evangelical organizations stress the importance of individual faith in seeking volunteers.  Evangelicals tend to stress the personal faith commitment of their staff as well, while this varies greatly in Mainline Protestant organizations as many of these organizations seek staff from many different religious backgrounds.  In Mainline Protestant organizations where faith is discussed, staff referred to personal faith.  For example, several staff members at Lutheran Charities mentioned their important role of their personal faith in their work at the agency.

#                    Both Mainline Protestant and Evangelical organizations seek support from congregations directly rather than through larger judicatory structures for the faith community.

At this junction of studying Protestants engaged in social ministries, it is clear that the shifting alignments have to be taken into account in structuring research programs.  Research is best done at the congregational level; the old theological identities can no longer be uncritically attached to denominational groups.  Mainline Protestants have more Evangelical congregations than was assumed earlier.  Evangelicals are moving out of the cultural sidelines into the dominant culture and finding new energy and resources for social ministries.  African Americans still minister to through their churches to their own, but as congregations continue to diversify demographically, perhaps those categories will become more fluid as well.  At the very least it is clear that this is an important and fascinating time in which to study the involvement of Protestants and other faith groups as they engage their social context.

Implications for Policy and Practice

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#                    Differences in the ways these two denominational strands of Protestantism reflect faith in their organizational structures suggest that the Sider and Unruh (2004) typology emphasis on expressive faith may not provide an accurate indication of the role of religion for all Protestant religions.

 

#                    Focusing on congregation/organization links is appropriate for Protestant organizations.

 

Suggestions for Future Research

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#                    Develop a clear understanding of the way that faith plays out in mainline Protestant organizations in order to clarify whether some of these organizations have indeed moved away from their founding faith or if they have embedded faith into organization practice focused on tolerance.

 

#                    Clarify ways that the overwhelming emphasis on expressive faith in many evangelical organizations plays out for program participants.  This would involve understanding if participants self-select evangelical organizations because of their comfort with expressive faith — as in the senior center in this study.  It would become equally important to understand how participants from other denominations or religions feel about the religious messages of the organization.  Finally, since these organizations actively proselytize, clarifying church/state issues for these organizations would be particularly important.

 

Social Capital

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Detailed discussion of social capital in pilot study organizations will be covered under the first major study question below.  This section briefly defines the concepts of social capital and cultural capital, outlining major forms of social capital found through the pilot study.  Social capital refers to the social relationships and patterns of reciprocal, enforceable trust that enable people and institutions to gain access to resources like volunteers, funding, or government contracts.^[10] After publication of Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam’s influential treatise that U.S. communities were in decline because people no longer built social capital through face to face participation in voluntary associations, social capital became an increasingly visible concept in research and policy circles.  Along the way, its initial meaning has become confused.  Some proponents of the faith-based initiative suggest that reliance on formal social service agencies has fueled the decline in social capital.  In this view renewing congregational involvement in social welfare provision would enhance social capital in U.S. communities.  As with the discussion of institutional vs. congregational forms of social welfare provision discussed earlier, pilot study findings suggest that all of these organizations rely on social capital to obtain resources, but that the forms of social capital and major sources of support vary depending on several factors.

 

Social capital is much more complicated than simply knowing who to contact to develop funding sources, obtain program participants, or foster partnerships with service providers to enhance organization work. A connection is defined as social capital only if it includes three elements: 1) networks, 2) trust specific to that network, and 3) the network enables access to resources.  The kind of trust typical of social capital involves specific trust among network members, not generalized trust in the community or city as a whole. However, specific trust can extend to all members of a religious, racial, ethnic or disability community through known institutions.  For example, Jubilee, the Mennonite group home for developmentally disabled adults, has a solid reputation among people with disabilities in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area through word of mouth referrals from people who have used agency services.  As reputation of the agency spreads through the community, people seek it out without a specific referral from someone using services due to wider community knowledge of its reputation.  Jubilee Association of Maryland still receives the bulk of its referral through the extended network of people with developmental disabilities and their families.  However, not all members of this network know each other personally.

 

This definition of social capital does not require face-to-face interaction to develop relationships.  Social capital links can come from wider community networks or institutional connections.  For instance, the Cohen Center, the Jewish adult day care center, seeks participants through referrals from two types of institutional links.  Seeking connections through its religious community, referrals come through the Federation-sponsored Jewish social service agency referral system as well as its parent agency’s hotline. In this case, general trust in the agency as a member organization of Federation served as social capital necessary to garner clients.

 

In addition, the agency relies on sectoral affiliations to seek new clients.  For example, the outreach coordinator did presentations to hospital social workers at facilities outside of the Jewish community in an effort to build relationships to area hospitals for referrals. At one of these events, one social worker who had interned at Cohen Center praised the center based on her previous experience.  This connection between a non-Jewish social worker and the agency is an important element in building social capital among peers at her workplace.  Her personal trust in the Cohen Center provides a bridging link between her coworkers and the center that may lead to additional referrals.  As more social workers at the hospital begin to make referrals to Cohen Center based on this original individual network link, social capital can become institutionalized.  In institutionalized social capital, the key gatekeepers in an organization learns that another organization can be trusted as providing quality services.  Referrals become a matter of course, rather than relying on individual networks.    

 

All of the institutions in this study relied on social capital to secure funding, program participants, volunteers, and other resources.  In general, agencies relied on social capital through the following sources:

 

#                    Individual networks through the religious community.  For example, Lakeside’s original residents came from the founding Friends meeting and its networks.  Muslim organizations relied on Internet-based referral networks in the greater Muslim community to find resources to meet the needs of individual program participants.  Referrals to the agency also came through personal networks among Washington DC area Muslims. 

 

#                    Organizational networks through the faith community.  In institutionalized systems, Federation and archdiocese served as major referral sources.  In congregational systems, organizations were more likely to seek supports from congregations in their social capital network.  For instance, Christian Children’s Inner-city program garnered in-kind supports, funding and volunteers from among a network of evangelical Asian churches.  Lutheran charities relied on Lutheran congregations to host refugees in its refugee resettlement program.

 

#                    Staff individual and institutional connections.  Staff used their social capital to help agencies in a variety of ways.  For example, Cohen Center staff arranged for a connection between the agency and a Jewish school because a key staff person’s children attended that institution.  The executive director at Jewish Organization for the Aid of Immigrants used her personal connections among institutions serving immigrants in the Philadelphia area to garner funding for the organization.

 

#                    Sector affiliations.  All agencies except the smaller, evangelical organizations belonged to coalitions and umbrella groups of organizations providing similar services.  These sector-wide affiliations fostered social capital among like institutions.

 

#                    Program participants.  Many of the organization drew additional program participants, volunteers and other resources from among the people they served, regardless of whether or not they belonged to the founding faith community.  Cohen Center and its parent organization received funding and volunteer support from the families of its program participants.  The participants at St. Mary’s housing program continued to volunteer for the program after graduating.  Sometimes, program participants were linked through race or disability rather than religion.  For example, Christian Adult Community Day Program developed a network of program participants who did not belong to the church, but were part of the wider African American Christian community.

 

Scholars recognize three kinds of social capital, which provide access to different networks, often with different resources.  Closed or Bonding social capital refers to networks within homogenous communities like a faith community or a coalition of agencies that provide similar services.  Bridging social capital crosses boundaries of culture, usually among equals.  For example, trust based relationships across religions — such as interfaith activities like IAF, PICO or Gamaliel organizing efforts (Wood 2002) or projects that class racial, immigrant or class lines involve bridging social capital.  Finally, scholars at the World Bank (2002) identify linking social capital and trust based vertical relationships among people or organizations in different places in a power hierarchy.  The relationship between a faith-based organization that contracts with government and that government agency would represent linking social capital.

 

Cultural Capital

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Developing the reciprocal, enforceable trust characteristic of social capital requires ability to display the right cultural cues for that network or community. Functional social capital has two ingredients: 1) trust-based relationships with people or organizations that have access to resources, and 2) knowledge of cultural capital cues,^[11] which indicate that an individual or organization is a member of a group and should be given access to those relationships.  This definition links social capital to community culture.  Organizations that have the right kinds of context-specific relationships and know the cultural-specific cues required to access resources, achieve their goals.

 

Behaving in ways considered appropriate by the people who are part of social capital networks is as important as having the right contacts. This knowledge about the correct ways to behave and speak in order to succeed is called cultural capital.   For instance, the director of one of the Muslim organizations is an African American woman raised as Baptist who has converted to Islam.  She has carefully learned the culture of Islam, maintaining the most strict dress for women and handling her daily life and organizational activities within the Muslim community according to its cultural systems.  However, as a social worker from a Christian background, she can easily switch into the speech patterns, language and understanding of non-profit management through faith-based organizations she learned in her youth.  Her ability to use several forms of cultural capital has served her and her organization well when moving between the Muslim and interfaith contexts. She has used this dual cultural capital to develop bridging ties with other faith-based organizations.  She actively participates in interfaith activities in her county and has garnered the holiday basket contract from interfaith for her agency.

 

Links between cultural capital and social capital permeated many of the critical connections for these institutions.  The two Muslim institutions were supported by their community precisely because they provided culturally appropriate services.  Participants in the Christian Adult Day Program shared the cultural characteristics of African American Christianity, even if they were not members of the church.  Participants commented that they preferred this program to a better funded public senior center because they enjoyed the references to Christianity.  Youth participants in the Christian Inner-city Youth Program also came out of this same African American Christian culture, sharing this link with agency staff even though the majority were from a different race and class background.

 

Cultural capital played a key role in garnering resources even in institutions that did not highlight their religious background.  For instance, despite attempts by the Cohen Center to downplay its Jewish affiliation, program participants and members of the wider Jewish community supported this organization precisely because it was one of the few organizations that offered kosher meals and other Jewish cultural attributes.   The same embedded culture fostered links between Chinese Immigrant Services and its participants.  However, in this case, Chinese immigrant culture appeared more important than religious culture.

 

In some instances, the cultural reputation of an agency or cultural injunctions within the faith community led to resources.  For example, Jubilee Association of Maryland drew some clients because of the positive reputation of Mennonites among the wider community.  Others sought out the organization because it clearly identified itself as a Christian organization.  The Catholic social service agency received funding through the Bishops appeal for the archdiocese and the Jewish agencies received support through Federation.  In both cases, members of that faith donated to the wider institutional appeals because of religiously-based cultural injunctions.

 

Missing or Attenuated Social Capital

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Several of these organizations had limited links to their religious community or congregations associated with their faith.  In these instances, missing or attenuated social capital stemmed from the relationship between social capital and cultural capital.  This took two forms.  In institutional systems, congregational involvement with social service agencies went against the cultural norm of that religion.  For instance, the Cohen Center had limited success with its outreach to congregations due to the disconnect between congregations and the social welfare system characteristic of that culture.

 

In other cases, relationships between founding communities and organizations attenuated due to disagreements within the community about culturally coded aspects of faith-based service.  Both Jewish agencies experienced this for similar reasons. In both cases, organization directors interpreted tikun olom as Jewish witness to the wider community, and thus were caught up in intracommunity debates about appropriate relationships between Jewish agencies and non-Jews.  The Jewish Organization for the Aid of Immigrants had recently lost most of its funding from Federation because most of the immigrants that it served were not Jewish.  Agency staff explained that Federation no longer considered immigration a priority issue, but the fact that the organization had moved beyond its original mandate to serve Jewish immigrants and refugees played a key role in this decision.

 

Conflict between the Cohen Center’s parent organization and its Federation was much milder as the organization continued to serve mostly Jews and had embedded Jewish cultural attributes in its programming.  However, Federation staff complained about the organizations outreach beyond the Jewish community as well as its affiliation with outside organizations.  The agency executive director reported debate within the board about whether the Jewish community should be its sole target population.

 

Lutheran Charities reaffirmed its relationship with local congregations after a survey revealed limited knowledge of the organization among Lutherans.  This return to original cultural forms partly came out of reaction to the Faith-based Initiative’s emphasis on religious values in service and congregational links.  This organization experienced some conflict with its founding community over its support of programs for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth.  However, the programs that continued its initial form of congregational support like refugee resettlement and eldercare continued to receive support.

 

Implications for Policy and Practice

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#                    Social capital links come from several sources: religious affiliations, sector affiliations, individual networks through staff and program participants and program participant communities.  Strong organizations maintain all these forms of social capital. 

 

#                    Social capital systems are organized differently in institutionalized systems and congregational systems.  Both policymakers and agency administrators should pay attention to the appropriate targets for resources in expanding social capital links.

 

#                    Given links between social capital and cultural capital, agency administrators should pay attention to cultural cues in efforts to expand or develop new social capital.

 

Suggestions for Future Research

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This pilot study suggests that the next phase of research include particular attention to the following issues:

 

#                    Understanding differences in social capital systems between organizations sponsored by institutional vs. congregational systems. 

 

#                    Disentangling the connections and differences between race, immigrant status and religion for organizations founded by African American or immigrant faith communities.  Research in the pilot showed significant overlap between racial, ethnic or immigrant community networks and those of religious communities.  Future research would explore this relationship through comparing organizations in these communities founded under secular vs. faith-based auspices.

 

#                    Exploring the connection between cultural and social capital for faith-based organizations.

 

Embedded versus Expressive Religions

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Our research also revealed significant differences in the ways that the various faiths used God language and included faith-based messages in their programming.  In contrast to the assumptions of the Sider and Unruh typology (2004), the pilot study suggested that organizations could strongly rely on their faith traditions without exhibiting any of the open expressions of faith that this typology uses to identify an organization as faith-based.  In fact, several of the organizations that clearly follow through on religious teachings in their programming – the two Peace Church organizations and the Jews, consciously do not use any reference to religion in their décor or programming.  Organizations appeared on a continuum from Jews, where religious values were embedded in organizational practice but rarely mentioned in programming or materials to Evangelicals, where all aspects of programs were suffused with religion.  In general, religions that see faith as individual commitment, such as the Evangelicals, African Americans and some mainline Protestants, were more likely to use expressive language while religions with strong focus on communal religion by birth or commitment such as Jews and some Catholics used fewer references to faith in their organizations.  Thus the more institutionalized religions often relied on more embedded forms while congregational denominations used more expressive forms.  In addition, the pilot study suggests that those religious traditions that strongly emphasize religious tolerance and a positive appreciation for diversity tend to embed their religious commitments more implicitly within their service organizations, rather than making those commitments explicit.  This appears to be driven by a desire to avoid imposing religious views on others, independent of other factors analyzed here.

 

On the one hand, there were those in the pilot study that literally packaged service delivery in expression of their religious beliefs. At Christian Adult Community Day Program, for example, there was a seamless relationship between the congregation — and its language, culture, and beliefs — and the senior day care program. Although less than half of the program participants were church members, the program had the same cultural flavor as the worshiping community.  What made the program distinctive for participants was that they could attend a day time program which afforded them not just physical and social nourishment, but spiritual as well.  Therefore at a weekday luncheon, they prayed, sang and discussed the Bible, much as they would on a Sunday.  From the congregation’s perspective, the program (as well as others within their 501(c)(3) umbrella) was a direct extension of the ministry of the megachurch.  At the heart of the church’s theology are exclusivist claims to the truth, that is, Jesus is the only way to salvation and those who do not believe in him are “lost.”  Therefore it is an essential matter of integrity to “share the good news” with all the lives touched by the church.

 

Similar connections between faith and programming were evident at Christian Children’s Inner City Program.  Here, youth development activities also started and ended with prayer, and counseling focused on encouraging “god-like” behavior among program participants.  For the middle-school-aged children that were part of this program, religious messages had less currency than for the seniors in the Philadelphia program.  However, the program did also play on the strength of religion as part of participants’ background culture, particularly for children whose parents attended the evangelical African American church located in the same building.

 

There were also several case studies of agencies, which were much less verbally expressive of the tenets of their faith tradition, yet were no less motivated and guided by them.  Their core beliefs were much more embedded in the ways they carried out their mission.  Often “religious tolerance” was at the very heart of their faith. For mainline Protestant agencies, such as Lutheran Charities and the Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center, and the agencies coming out of the Historic Peace Churches, such as Lakeside and Jubilee, a conscious commitment to a more inclusive view of truth led to very different practices.  While significant portions of their boards and senior staff represented the religious bodies, which originally sponsored them, their program staff and participants were much more demographically diverse.  Therefore the religious culture of the sponsoring tradition did not predominate in the iconography, language, holiday celebrations or day-to-day practices of service delivery.  However, we found that rather than attributing such practices to encroaching secularization, the leadership of the organizations clearly articulated these practices as being faithful, that is, generated out of the tradition.

 

Embracing diversity as part of faith-based practice clearly played out in both Jubilee and the Jewish adult day care center.  Jubilee Association of Maryland residents were encouraged to practice their religion, in fact several parents commented that they had sent their children to this program because of the Christian values and support for religion that was evident in its programming.  However, Mennonite faith played a small part in the religious values within the organization.  Instead, participants were encouraged to participate in a non-denominational program — Faith and Light — which originally was founded by a Catholic Priest.  Jews, Catholics and Protestants participated in this program.

 

The Jewish adult day care center carefully asserted that it was open to everyone, even though 80 percent of its participants were Jewish, it served kosher food, and offered a brief Sabbath service on Fridays.  Tolerance for other faiths was particularly evident in decorations around December holidays, where “happy holidays” banners proclaimed celebration for Christmas and Kwanza in addition to Chanukah.  Non-Jewish participants’ families felt comfortable at the center and commented that religion was not an issue here.  Despite the emphasis on inter-faith tolerance, the program also showed a careful attention to the prevalence of Christian beliefs in U.S. traditions.  This was particularly evident at Valentine’s Day, which was transformed into “sweet heart” celebrations.  Our fieldworker was reminded that it was Saint Valentine’s Day, a Christian holiday, when explaining this change.  However, this attention to the Christian roots of this holiday also reflected the interfaith tolerance of the organization as it showed sensitivity to the needs of the Jewish residents similar to that for non-Jews expressed through other holiday traditions.  Moreover, it is important to note that not all Jews share an awareness or concern for the Christian roots of such secularized holidays as Valentine’s Day.  Similar attention to the needs of non-Jews played out in attention to diet — two Hindu participants were vegetarian — and other practices. 

 

We envision a continuum of faith-based practices in which some are more expressive of the particulars of their faith tradition while in other agencies beliefs and practices are more embedded in the why and how of their social services.  Between the purer forms there is a lot of variation.  For example at one Jewish agency, Jewish Organization for the Aid of Immigrants in Philadelphia, the religious identity was conflicted, with the broader issues of Jewish identity emerging as conflict around the practices of the agency.  The sponsoring Jewish Federation felt the agency should be more expressive of the religious tradition by primarily serving Jews.  However the current director and staff had a more embedded vision of their mission, which placed a belief of religious and ethnic tolerance at its core.  This agency would therefore be somewhere in the middle of our conceptual continuum.

 

Implications for Policy and Practice

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These differences in ways that religion is expressed impacts on interpretation of faith-based service by policy makers and practitioners.  The following policy and practice implications emerge from this pilot study:

 

#                    Policy makers should be careful to avoid expectations that faith-based organizations are identified by expressive language.  Instead, the ways that an organization expresses its faith stem from the theology and culture of each religion.  Recognizing these differences and supporting various forms would also go far to avoid church/state issues that currently dominate the debate over government sponsored service by religiously based organizations.

 

#                    Practitioners should carefully identify the ways that faith is appropriately expressed in their religions, shaping programming to fit appropriate beliefs and practices.

 

#                    Practitioners and denominational leaders in traditions more inclined to the “embedded” approach to religion should carefully consider how they can assure that religious values and motivations will be maintained over the long term in the service organization.

 

Suggestions for Future Research

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What would influence the shape of a social service agency vis-à-vis its faith base?  Are there identifiable variables that significantly impact whether an agency is more overtly expressive of its faith tradition or intentionally embeds its faith orientation in its practices?  Several possibilities emerged in the pilot study that should be pursued in the next stage of research:

 

#                    Certainly the weight given to the value of tolerance, or inclusivity, as a religious commitment seems to be central.  But how and why does this value come to be central?

 

#                    Does the age range of the clientele influence their receptivity to more overt religious practices?  Are older clients more amenable to, say, prayer in the context of service delivery than young adults might be?  The data at this point is not clear, but suggestive that generational effects might be at work.

 

#                    What is the role of race and ethnicity as an important influence on shaping how faith operates in faith-based programs?  When there is ethnic correspondence between the sponsoring organization, the social agency staff and the clientele, the likelihood of a more naturally expressive mode of religious practices seemed to increase.    However, when there is a disconnect demographically between sponsors and staff and clientele, our limited data suggest that it is more likely that tolerance will become an important value and religious beliefs will become more embedded.

 

#                    How does socioeconomic class function in shaping service delivery?  Certainly at a service such as Lakeside which has some religious diversity among residents but who are overwhelmingly white and economically secure if not privileged, tolerance is universally affirmed.  But are more economically disadvantaged participants in other programs more receptive to sectarian services?  Class can be an elusive variable to tease out but is so influential that it needs to be pursued.

 

#                    Finally in the pilot study the role of the Executive Director emerged as a critical factor in every agency.   For some agencies, they were intentional representatives of the sponsoring faith tradition, even when few on staff were.  Here their role was both symbolic and interpretive.  Even in agencies committed to tolerance, diversity and embedding religious values, it seemed to be important that the executive director be a visible link to the sponsoring group. In the two Jewish agencies studied here, the Executive Director bore the conflict between the expressive expectations of the sponsoring group and his or her own inclinations to embeddedness.  Executive Directors must balance the quality of social services with fund raising.  This often means being torn between two different constituencies, their Boards/donors and their clients, representing two different agendas.  In the next stage of research, these ED’s deserve particular attention.  Their role is critical in forming the religious practices in faith-based 501(c)(3)s.

 

Findings from the Pilot Study

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The pilot study for the Faith and Organizations project provided preliminary insights into the ways that various religions organize and carry out social welfare and health services in the United States.  The pilot study also raised a series of additional questions and areas for research.  This section outlines key findings on project research questions.  Each section provided some preliminary suggestions for policy makers and practitioners, as well as questions for future research.

 

Dynamics Between Founding Faith Community and Non-profit Organizations

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1.       How do the dynamics between organization and founding community impact the beliefs, behaviors, and resources of both organization and community?  Do relationships between organization and founding community foster the ongoing development of social capital, cultural capital and civic engagement within the founding community?

In general, we found that most founding religious communities took steps to ensure a continuing relationship between the faith community and the organization through a series of formal mechanisms like board appointments, mission statements, and sometimes volunteering relationships and funding.  However, in some cases, as organizations evolved, these measures proved insufficient to maintain strong ties between organization and faith community.   However, this pilot research suggests that social and cultural capital connections between organization and community are more important than formal measures in maintaining relationships between community and organization; further research to explore this key question is needed. 

We also found that institutional and congregational systems envisioned the relationship between faith community and non-profits differently, particularly in respect to direct connections to congregations and volunteering systems.  In addition, the role of religiously based non-profits as an expression of the faith communities work or witness to the world on social justice and social welfare differed dramatically between these two systems.  In both cases, differences tracked back to the religious culture and theology of the founding religion.  Embedded and expressive religions also construed this relationship differently. 

Responses to the subquestions illuminate various aspects of this relationship.  This section focuses exclusively on dynamics between organization and community. While we touch on staffing issues here, the impact of these dynamics on internal structures like programming is discussed under question three, below.

a.                   What is the relationship between the religious denomination or founding secular community and the non-profit organizations founded by that organization? (Governance, financial control, volunteer participation, staffing, program content, mission).  How do bridging, bonding and linking social capital ties impact on organization behavior?

Most of the faith communities in this pilot study institutionalized their relationship to the non-profits they created through various formal mechanisms like mission statements, governance structures and other mechanisms.  These strategies reflected the social and cultural capital connections between faith community and the non-profits they created.  Newer non-profits and those founded by mainline Protestants and Evangelicals were less likely to formalize these relationships through board appointments and mission statements than the other faiths.  This section discusses the ways these relationships were carried out in terms of governance, financial control, mission, and — to a limited extent — staffing.

Governance

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Founding communities influence governance by the ways that they structure the boards of organizations and the formal and informal ties between faith community and organization.  Institutionalized systems organized these relationships differently than in congregational systems.  In institutionalized systems, relationships stemmed from connections to the wider community structures.   For instance, the chair of the board for the umbrella Catholic organization was the local archbishop, and administrative structures for the organization were managed by the archdiocese.  Both of the Jewish organizations were members of their local Federations, and both stipulated that their board members   must make financial contributions to the Federation as well as to the organization.  This rule came out of a time when board members were generally appointed to the organization by Federation.

 

Organizations founded by congregational systems relied on connections to the founding congregation or congregations in order to maintain these relationships.   These relationships appeared more organic and less formalized than in the institutionalized systems.  It some cases, it appeared as if these congregations presumed a long-term relationship between congregation and a mission project.  For instance, neither Christian Children’s Inner-city Program or the Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center instituted a formal system to connect faith community to organization through administrative structures or board appointments.  In both cases, the organizations drew on a strong group of ministers that shared a faith commitment and vision for the organization for its initial board.

 

As with other mainline Protestant organizations (Hall 2005), Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center did not create their organization strictly as a ministry by and for Lutherans.  While the program began as a ministry of this one congregation, it quickly reached out to other faith communities to carry out its work.  At the time of the current study, the founding pastor had moved on, and the organization had grown and evolved to a point where it drew from a much wider faith-based community to sustain its efforts — including Jews, Catholics and other mainline Protestants.  While the founding congregation did appear to continue informal relationships to the non-profit across the street, people of other faiths dominated the governance structures of the organization.

 

Christian Children’s Inner City Program intentionally draws from many congregations as it came out of Asian-American campus ministry networks rather than one congregation.  Board appointments and access to resources come through social capital ties in this system and among Evangelicals in the Washington DC metropolitan area.  Every aspect of the organizations systems and structures reflect Evangelical culture and theology. To our knowledge, the organization has not felt the need to formalize this connection through stipulating board appointments or other mechanisms.

 

Other organizations founded by congregational systems have created more formal systems to back up the strong organic ties between congregation and ministry.  In the organizations directly created by founding congregations, these relationships come out of the ongoing administrative support of that congregation as well as physical proximity.  For instance, its founding church appoints Chinese Immigrant Services advisory committee and its administrative systems are under that congregations’ care.  Likewise, Christian Adult Community Day Program is identified as the Pastor’s idea and is administrated by the Congregation’s CDC.  Both programs are housed in congregation owned service buildings. 

 

Large, older social service agencies founded by mainline Protestants had the hardest time maintaining social capital ties to congregations, but did create formal governance structures that assured some relationship to the founding religion.  For instance, 51 percent of the board for Lutheran Charities was appointed by the local synod.  When an organization survey of local congregations revealed limited connections between the organization and congregations, it formed a larger umbrella organization with several other Lutheran non-profits as a mechanism to address this issue and instituted a series of activities to reconnect with its founding beliefs and local congregations.

 

Other congregational system organizations continue strong informal social capital connections to their founding communities but have also formalized these relationships through board appointments.  For example, Jubilee’s by-laws dictate that the majority of its board members are Mennonite, and that the majority of the Mennonite board members come from the founding congregation.  Joy Ministries board is appointed by the eight congregations in the cluster that created the 501(c)(3).  Lakeside requires that 75 percent of its board be active Quakers, but does not stipulate that these people come from the founding Meeting.  However, some board members continue to come from this Meeting, joining due to personal conviction rather than formal obligations for the Meeting to appoint the board.  As such, these appointments represent continuing social capital connections between founding congregation and organization.

 

Board appointments remained the most obvious formal way to create a connection between organization and founding faith community.  All of the organizations in this study maintained connections to their founding faith communities through these mechanisms.  Many of these organizations formalized this relationship through their by-laws, but informal social capital remained a strong factor in influencing who gets invited to agency boards.  For example, while Muslim Charities has no formal stipulation that Muslims govern the organization, all of its board members are members of this faith and one Immam serves on the board.  At Jewish Aging Services, boards by tradition are very large — including lifetime members, most of whom are large donors.  The current board consists of 92 people, three panels of 12 plus 9 officers who are responsible for many matters of agency governance, as well as Past Presidents, life members, honorary members and representatives from other select agencies.  While the organization would like to include non-Jews on the board, only a small fraction of the board members are Christians.  Both informal social capital and the overwhelmingly Jewish culture of board discussions limit outreach beyond the founding community.  The executive director comments:

 

So of that board, currently of our executive committee, one hundred percent are Jewish.   The executive committee about to be installed in October, one of the eleven is not Jewish. Of the big board, currently, two are not Jewish and of the board coming in, two are not Jewish. Frankly, the organization would like to welcome more non-Jews to the board, but we find that many non-Jews in the past have felt uncomfortable being what they felt was a token. It wasn’t intended as such, but they would sometimes be turned to in the meetings: what do all the Christians say about this kind of thing? And it is uncomfortable! You know, I can squirm and others can, but the question gets asked. 

 

Another common way to ensure relationships between the faith community and its organization is through the choice of the executive director.  Since the executive director sets the tone for the agency, selecting someone who shares agency core values will influence the future direction for the organization.  Boards usually choose executive directors, and with one exception, all of the executive directors in these organizations were members of the founding religion.  These decisions were not explicit, but it appeared that organizations chose administrative leadership that reflected their beliefs and values.  In the one case where the executive director came from another religion — Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center — the board was not dominated by the founding faith and appeared to be moving away from its founding congregation.

 

These executive directors, in turn, tended to hire key staff that reflected the religious-based values of the organization, which sometimes meant that they also belonged to the founding faith community.  For example, the Director of Nursing at Lakeside was also Quaker and key staff at the various Catholic organizations (some of them founders of formerly independent programs) also were members of the founding religion with strong ties to the faith.  However, particularly in professionalized, institutionalized organizations practicing embedded faith, key staff may share the general values of that faith without actually belonging to the same religion.  This was true of the previous director of the Cohen Center and many current Jubilee Association of Maryland staff, as well as senior staff at the Lutheran and Catholic organizations.  Sometimes, interactions between senior staff and members of the founding faith community through governance activities drew them to the founding faith or fostered an appreciation for it.  For example, the development director at Jubilee Association of Maryland joined the Mennonite congregation after learning about it through her job.  Other key staff at the Lakeside, the Quaker organization, expressed appreciation for the values of the religion learned through their activities.

 

The importance of religious culture and social capital in key staff appointments become glaringly apparent for Jewish Organization for the Aid for Immigrants when it hired a non-Jew as development director.  This person had problems raising funds from the Jewish community both because she was unfamiliar with the social capital networks and did not know appropriate cultural capital cues.  A board member commented:

 

We need somebody who is really in touch with and understands the Jewish community. That’s what I think you need…you need to know, if you want to raise funds from the Jewish community. If you have access to money in the general population, and you have those contacts, and you know how to approach that, then it doesn’t have to be Jewish. I’m just saying, where are you going? You know part of any fund-raising is you have to solicit your own board members and the people that you know.

 

Governance and fundraising processes showed the clearest connection between faith community and organization.  Social capital influenced who was selected for the board and key staff positions.  Agency boards also relied on cultural capital to decide who would represent their organization.  As this example shows, choosing someone for a position that interacts regularly with the faith community who does not have the social and cultural capital to draw resources for the organization can become a clear mistake.  As with The Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center, JOAI and a Quaker organization in an earlier study (Schneider 1999), many organizations have boards that combine members of the faith community with people either from other religions or other constituencies associated with the organization.  If these outsider board members gain control of the organization, it can begin to lose connections to the founding faith community.  This attenuation of social and cultural capital can impact on fundraising, which in turn, impacts on internal operations for the organization.

 

Finances, Fundraising, and In-Kind Supports

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For many of these organizations, sources for funding reflected their sector rather than ties to the faith community.  Discounting the African American evangelical project that was directly tied to its church, donations from religious organizations and umbrella groups formed a small part of these agencies’ budgets.  Most received less than five percent of their budgets from their faith community and the largest percentages were 11 percent from Federation for Jewish Aging Services and 20 percent for Chinese Immigrant Services.

 

However, these small percentages mask the individual donations that some organizations received through requests to their faith communities.  Smaller, congregation-based organizations and Muslim organizations received the bulk of these individual donations.  For example, Christian Children’s Inner-City Program received 40 percent of its income from individual donors, many who found the organization through the evangelical networks or Asian churches.  Muslim Charities received 52 percent of its income from Zakat donations, as Muslims fulfilled their religious obligation to support those in need.

 

Even though financial contributions from faith communities were small, they remained large, symbolic elements in agency budgets, signifying social capital links between organization and community.  As with other aspects of social welfare provision through faith communities, institutionalized and congregational systems sought funds differently.  Institutional systems used community-wide mechanisms to raise funds:  Federation, archdiocese wide fundraising campaigns and Zakat.  While Zakat donations are considered individual donations by the agency, in fact Mosques collected Zakat envelopes from the faithful and distributed funds to agencies named by the donor, much like a United Way donor-advised fund.  Congregational systems solicited donations directly through congregations.  For instance, the fieldworker assigned to Lutheran Charities commented that most parishes she visited had a poster for her agency on their bulletin board and she recalled a donations envelope attached to that poster. 

 

Financial support also signified the faith community’s understanding that the organization carried out theological teaching and cultural understandings of social justice and social welfare.  In many cases, funds provided by faith community donations — either through individuals or institutions — allowed an organization to provide unique programming in keeping with their values.  For example, Chinese Immigrant Services was able to teach new immigrants computer skills on state-of-the-art computer equipment because they had additional funds with no government contract strings attached.

 

In other cases, faith-community funds were strongly connected to carrying out cultural interpretations of appropriate social welfare.  For example, the Jewish Organization for the Aid of Immigrants had recently lost most of its funding from Federation because it no longer primarily served Jews.  Staff understood that by moving outside of the major concerns of the Federation to care for its community, they were no longer considered a priority agency for funding.  By breaking the cultural capital rules of this Federation, the agency lost an important social capital link to community funds.

 

As in research on congregational social service (Cnaan 2002), faith communities also provide important in-kind supports to the organizations under their care.  The most prevalent one was space — almost all of the organizations in this study either relied on their faith community for space or had used space associated with that religious body at one time.  Lakeside is located on land donated by its founding Friends Meeting, and the adjacent Friends Meeting house provided space for memorial services when residents pass away—whether Quaker or not.  With the exception of Jubilee Association of Maryland and the Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Program — both housing programs that developed with the support of their faith communities, all of the organizations has some programs housed in buildings owned by their founding congregation or the community-wide system like the archdiocese or Federation.

 

In addition to space, organizations relied on their faith communities for a wide array of in-kind donations such as food, clothing, holiday baskets and other resources.  For example, the Muslim organizations collected food and clothing for a thrift shop as well as providing directly to families in need.  Other organizations offering emergency services also collected goods from their constituent congregations or through community-wide systems.  Other necessary items — like camp and school supplies for Christian Children’s Inner City Program came from the faith communities.

 

Volunteers

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Another key in-kind resource for these agencies was volunteers. Volunteers are considered a key indicator of civic engagement.  All of these organizations relied on some form of volunteering, often drawing volunteers both through the faith community and wider locality wide systems.  For instance, Christian Children’s Inner City Program ran primarily through volunteer labor, drawing volunteers primarily through the Asian-American campus ministries and local churches, but also advertising through the city-wide volunteer-match system.  Chinese Immigrant Services drew most volunteers through their congregation, but also attracted people from other backgrounds interested in learning more about Chinese Immigrants.

 

Organizations in institutionalized systems were much less likely to rely heavily on volunteers and drew them through different mechanisms.  In general, institutionalized systems recruited volunteers either through community-wide systems, sister institutions, or through individual connections among staff, board and program participants.  These organizations very rarely sought volunteers through congregations themselves.  For instance, the Catholic organizations drew most of its volunteers through archdiocese wide recruitment systems.  While the GED program claimed that it had many volunteers from a nearby parish, our researcher found no advertisement for volunteering in the program in the parish or its bulletins.

 

The Cohen Center and its parent organization also drew some volunteers through Federation wide networks.  However, the Cohen Center primarily created relationships with other Jewish organizations.  For instance, a Jewish day school had a relationship with the Center.  In most cases, these collaborations developed because staff had ties to the other organization.  Thus volunteers came through a combination of individual social capital and institutionalized city-wide systems.

 

Muslim organizations relied on widest range of volunteer supports — regularly seeking help for people in need from professionals in the wider Muslim community.  For example, Muslim doctors were asked to provide free services to low income families without insurance.  These in-kind donations also represented a form of Zakat.  In many ways, professional supports were similar to mentoring and other donated services within the Jewish community as it resettled Soviet refugees in the 1970s and 1980s.  Research in the immigration organization during that time revealed Jewish professionals providing supports to their fellow Jews with similar backgrounds to aid in their resettlement (Schneider 1988).  As such, this type of volunteering represents a clear sense of community responsibility for their own, encouraging those in need to have the same resources as the rest of the community and eventually share in the same prosperity as more successful members.

 

Organizations in congregational systems sought volunteers through constituent congregations.   This was true even for larger, established organizations — Lutheran Charities relied on volunteers from congregations for several of its programs.  Congregation-based organizations also tended to use more volunteers than those in institutional systems.  Recruiting volunteer aid through congregations was a major form of outreach to the faith community, and provided a venue for civic engagement to members of these congregations.  As organizations grew and became more professional, they relied more on paid staff than religious volunteers, however congregation-based volunteers remain important to the organization.  For instance, Jubilee Association of Maryland began through the efforts of Mennonite church volunteers, but quickly switched to paid staff as the organization stabilized.  However, members of the founding church still volunteer at the organization.

 

This partly reflected different cultural and theological aspects of these faith traditions.  The Christian denominations in the congregational systems viewed volunteering as ways for individuals to express their faith.  While the institutionalized religions all valued individual faith commitments, support came through board service or participation in Federation rather than an injunction to volunteer.  For both Jews and Catholics, this apparent lack of participation from individuals actually reflected the perspective that the entire community — through the institutionalized structures of Federation and the archdiocese — were responsible for social welfare.  As Carp (2002: 183) comments “[Solomon] Schecter taught that the Jewish people have always understood that caring for the poor and sick was too important to be a matter of individual conscience alone.”   Catholics also were encouraged to volunteer, but as in other research on this religion (Bane 2005), wider community structures such as the archdiocese sponsored organizations were seen as primarily responsible for caring for those in need.

 

Staff

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Agency staffing structures will be discussed in more detail under question three.  Here, we briefly outline the social capital connections between the faith community and staffing.  Two factors influenced connections between the faith community and the non-profit regarding staffing — 1) age and complexity of the organization and 2) firm congregational system connections to the faith community.  In general, we found that the more professionalized, stable organizations relied on paid staff drawn from a number of sources.  The Mennonite, Catholic, Lutheran and Jewish organizations fit this model. While embedded faith played a role in selecting executive directors, staff members in these organizations were chosen due to their professional credentials for the job rather than religious background. However, congregation-based organizations had started out relying on staff from the faith community, gradually evolving into diverse, paid staff systems.  For example, Jubilee, the Mennonite group home, relied on paid staff and stipended volunteers from Mennonite sources in its first few years, switching to paid staff that had credentials necessary for work with the developmentally disabled as finances stabilized.

 

Organizations coming out of congregationally-based systems that had strong ties to particular congregations drew most of their staff from networks associated with their founding congregations or their constituent racial or immigrant community.  African American, immigrant, and Evangelical-based organizations were most likely to hire through faith-community networks.  For instance, at Joy Ministries 83 percent of the staff were members of the founding congregations.  All of the staff at Christian Adult Community Day Program came from the congregation.  Chinese Immigrant Services hired from a combination of the congregation and Chinese community networks.  All of these agencies combined paid staff and volunteers to fulfill their staffing needs.

 

Mission

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An agency mission is a declaration of its founding values.  The agencies in this pilot study tended to refer to their religious origins in their mission statements.  Sometimes references reflected the original target populations, for example both of the Jewish agencies’ mission statements said that they were chartered to serve Jews, then added that they were available to serve people of other faiths.   All of these organizations’ mission and vision statements reflected the theology of social welfare or social justice from the founding faith.  Mission statements for large, established social service organizations active during the many years when government refused to fund organizations considered religious^[12] had secular mission statements, but added vision or “core value” statements that explained the faith background for their work. For example, the mission statement for Lutheran Charities was largely secular, but added a vision statement reflecting Protestant theology:

 

The Mission of Lutheran Charities is to serve children and families in need.

 

Lutheran Charities commits itself to serve vulnerable children and families in community through culturally competent ministries of care, nurturing, shelter, advocacy, and counseling, including but not limited to foster care, adoption, family preservation, education, resettlement, and job development.

 

Because Christ first loved us and calls us to follow, we have undertaken the mission of building up diverse communities of caring people through the provision of integrated, community-based services which enable the most vulnerable individuals and families to overcome barriers for participation in a more just and peaceful world.

 

Depending on their current orientation, agencies chose to foreground or background their religious identity through mission and value statements on their websites and in their literature.  For instance, the researcher at Lutheran Charities commented that during her study period the organization redid its website, moving from an explanation of mission to one that focused more on the programs that the agency offered.  Content analysis of several agency websites over time showed a tension between focusing on services and proclaiming identity.  In the case of two large social service agencies, organizations became more visibly faith based soon after the President’s faith-based initiative stated that “faith-based organizations” should get preference for contracts.

 

Faith-based Coalitions and Umbrella Organizations

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In addition to connections to the faith community through congregations or higher level community planning and administrative structures, many of these organizations belonged to local, regional and/or national umbrella organizations or coalitions of organizations from their faith.  Organizations also collaborated with other organizations from their faith.  For example, in Washington DC the Jewish organizations worked together on some projects.  The Cohen Center was located in a facility owned by another Jewish aging organization, and originally had a formal partnership with them.  Marketers suggested that the formal relationship should end, but informal collaboration continues.  In Philadelphia, refugee resettlement was accomplished through a partnership among JOAI, the Jewish social service agency, and the Jewish employment agency. 

 

Umbrella groups provided a forum to discuss common issues and often became the venue to develop strategies to maintain connections to the faith community.  For example, both the Mennonite and Quaker facilities belonged to national umbrella organizations of faith-based organizations from that religion that provided similar services.  Besides creating a forum to discuss concerns related to serving the aged and disabled, these organizations provided such tools as board and staff training materials to orient staff from different religious background to the core values of the institution.  Conferences and meetings for these groups offered opportunities to discuss issues of concern, including maintaining religious values within the institution and connections to the faith community.  Similar organizations existed for Catholic, Jewish and Mainline Protestant organizations.  African American and Evangelical organizations were least likely to belong to these faith-based professional organizations.

 

Summary

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This section focuses on the ways that agencies and faith communities use closed social capital and cultural capital to maintain connections.  However, most of these organizations also rely on bridging ties to organizations and communities of people served and other organizations offering services.  Linking social capital exists within faith communities — for example connections between the Jewish organizations and Federation.  In addition, the umbrella organizations or community-wide planning and administrative systems serve as linking agents between these faith-based organizations and entities outside of the faith community like government or other institutions that influence agency funding and programming.  For example, the umbrella organization for the Quaker retirement communities developed liability insurance for its member agencies.  The archdiocese umbrella organization managed government contracts.

 

Research in these agencies highlighted the equal importance of closed, bridging and linking social capital to maintain strong, well managed organizations.  Organizations that moved beyond the closed networks of its community in significant ways found themselves facing tensions in identity that impacted on funding and other issues.  As with JOIA and the Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter agency, sometimes these tensions were inevitable as organizations grew.  However, they also meant changes in the relationship to the founding faith community.

 

b.                  How do congregations and their members relate to faith-based organizations that function under their name, and vice versa? For secular organizations, is there a constituent group that serves the same role as the faith community?

 

This study found profound differences in the ways that institutionalized systems and congregational systems related to congregations associated with that religion.  While organizations in institutionalized systems may develop informal relationships with particular congregations — for example the parent organization for the Cohen Center ran computer seminars for seniors out of one synagogue, generally parishes, synagogue, Temples and individual mosques had limited relationships with the formal non-profits associated with the faith community.  This disconnect between congregations and organizations was most apparent in outreach activities for the Cohen Center.  Our researcher, volunteering as the person contacting congregations for the agency, described her interactions with congregation staff and volunteers as ranging from puzzlement to confusion over why the Center would want to do a presentation there.  Congregation staff was willing to put a notice regarding agency services in their newsletters, but few were interested in direct presentations. As discussed earlier, direct connections between congregations and organizations went against the norm in this religion.

 

Congregation-based system organizations, on the other hand, eagerly sought connections to congregations.  Organizations with close ties to their founding congregations — the African American organizations and the Chinese organization — had strong, organic relationships with founding congregations.  The other Evangelical organization developed ties to Asian, white and African American Evangelical congregations — as well as few mainline Protestant churches — to provide volunteers, in-kind supports and financial resources.  The larger, established social service agencies also sought connections to congregations.  For instance, Lutheran Charities regularly relied on congregations to provide services for refugees and a program for the elderly, as well as presenting information on the agency to congregations.  Regular mailings of agency newsletters and materials also connected agency and congregations.

 

Organizations in institutionalized versus congregational systems also connected to congregations for different reasons.  In institutionalized systems, organizations primarily sought to inform congregations of services available to them rather than seek supports directly from congregations.  For instance, the Cohen Center outreach activity focused on informing synagogues and Temples about their services.  Catholic GED program wanted to work with parishes to encourage them to send people needing emergency services to this social service agency rather than handling requests for aid through parish benevolence funds.  The manager for the Catholic Program stressed that relying on the formal social service agency would encourage more professional and holistic assessments of need as well as stretch religious community aid farther.  Requests for volunteers and funding were handled through higher level judicatory bodies of the archdiocese and Federations. 

 

Congregation-based organizations, on the other hand, interacted with congregations directly both to solicit support and to advertise services.  Organizations targeted primarily toward serving people outside of the faith community, such as Christian Children’s Inner City Program, focused on the role of this agency as a witness to those in need in communities connected in some way to the faith community.  For this organization, the children served by the agency came from neighborhoods where many of the faithful had businesses.  Likewise, the Mennonite congregation that started Jubilee Association of Maryland had a long term witness on providing quality, caring homes for the developmentally disabled.  While congregation-based systems first connected with congregations from their faith, they were also likely to reach out to other congregations as well.  For example, the Lutheran agencies included other mainline Protestant, Catholic and even Jewish congregations in their outreach activities.

 

Organizations with ties to race or immigrant-based groups also reached out to their constituent communities through racial or immigrant-wide networks.  For instance, Joy Ministries activities sought both program participants and staff from the surrounding African American neighborhoods.  Chinese Immigrant Services developed collaborations with secular Asian serving organizations as well as the Chinese émigré community.  Since the pilot study focused exclusively on faith-based organizations, we had no way to understand the relative role of race, ethnicity or immigrant status vs. faith communities for these organizations.  For this reason, we hope to compare faith-based and secular organizations for marginalized communities in future research.

 

c.                   How do faith communities ensure that the faith-based organizations have a future as faith-based institutions? That their founding values and perspectives are maintained?

 

Faith communities primarily relied on strategies to control governance, fundraising, volunteers and creation of formal and informal social capital links to organizations as described under subquestion “a” above.  Some organizations, in turn, developed internal programs and structures to reinforce the founding ethos of the organization.  These strategies will be discussed under question 3, below. Please also see subquestion “e”, below.

 

d.                   What is the impact of the organizations’ work on the faith community? On its understandings of the issues the organizations address? On its understandings of those the organizations served? On its understandings of their faith? On its sense of identity?

 

Given that the pilot study focused primarily on non-profits with limited research in the constituent faith communities, responses to this question are necessarily preliminary.  In general, we found that faith communities viewed their organizations as their representatives in the wider community, reflecting theological beliefs and religious culture.  In congregational based systems for religions where individual religious witness was important such as in mainline Protestant and Evangelical communities, these organizations provided opportunities for faith-community members to enact their faith-based calls to service.  For example, staff at the Christian Adult Community Day Center stressed that their work was a ministry (often underpaid), not a “job job.”  Likewise, volunteers at Christen Children Inner City Program volunteered both to share their faith with at-risk children and to perform personal calls to service.

 

Injunctions to provide for those in need took a more institutionalized form for Catholics, Jews and Muslims. Islam’s dictates to support the poor and those in need led community members to provide both funding and in-kind service through these faith-based organizations.  Donations to the Jewish Federation and support for archdiocese fundraising, goods collections, and volunteer drives fulfilled similar faith-community calls to support those in need in these two communities.

 

These organizations also became a lightning rod for disagreements within the faith community regarding interpretation of social justice teachings.  This was most obvious for the two Jewish organizations, both of which interpreted tikun olom as a witness to the wider community.  These organizations became the subject of debate in the Jewish community.  At Jewish Aging Services, occasional discussion continued on the board even after the agency had made a decision to reach beyond the Jewish community.  Federation staff noted with dismay that the organization was different from other Federation member agencies in its orientation outside of the Jewish community.  Both key staff at the agency and Federation complained that this different orientation created tensions between the organization and Federation. 

 

JOAI experienced more extreme sanctioning from Federation as more of its clientele came from outside of the Jewish community.  While this was most evident in loss of Federation funds, the debate also surfaced in other relationships with other Jews.  In response, the agency turned more toward people and organizations interested primarily in immigration rather than the Jewish community.

 

Regardless of orientation toward institutionalized or congregational social welfare systems, many of the organizations in the pilot study sought to educate their faith communities about the issues that they dealt with.  Opportunities for education included volunteering experiences, presentations at faith-community forums and written materials.  Different organizations put more or less emphasis on educating their founding faith community versus providing services or outreach to the locality based community.  The nature of educational outreach deserves additional study.

 

e.                   Under what conditions do faith-based organizations move beyond the ethos and control of the denomination and what connection, if any, does the religious body have with an organization when this occurs?

 

None of the organizations in the pilot study had moved completely beyond the ethos and control of the denomination, making it difficult to respond to this question.  The two Jewish agencies very much reflected the values of their founding faith, but were sometimes caught up in internal debates within U.S. Jewry.  Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center also appeared to be moving beyond its congregational roots, but that may have been intentional all along, following well established patterns among Protestant organizations (Hall 2005).

 

We did note that the organizations experiencing some conflict with their faith community or expanding beyond its mandate, tended to draw board members that reflected new points of view.  For instance, JOAI increasingly recruited its board from people interested in immigration as opposed to the traditional Federation volunteers who focused on supporting the Jewish community:

 

And the other thing about the agency is unlike many other Federation-affiliated agencies, many…I would say most of our board are…well, they’re not as…I don’t know how to say it, I mean, some of them are Federation people…they’re really well-connected…but these people don’t really affiliate with Federation, they affiliate with JOAI, which is a big difference. They believe in immigration, and that is their love (interview).

 

This primary connection to the organization as opposed to the faith community also appeared at Lutheran Rehabilitation and Shelter Center, where the board was described as dominated by people who did not belong to the founding congregation.  As a result, the new executive director came from another faith, unlike any of the other organizations.  The organization was engaged in internal planning activities that reflected this leadership change during the study period.

 

Implications for Policy and Practice

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#                    Connections between faith communities and organizations under their care work differ for institutional vs. congregational systems, leading to different strategies for governance, fundraising, and other mechanisms that rely on faith-community social capital.  Organization leaders would do well to rely on their culture-based strategies to seek support from their faith community.  Policy makers need to recognize that supports from the faith community are equally strong in both systems, but are organized differently.

#                    Organizations and faith communities should seek ways to support both social capital and cultural ties between organization and founding community.

#                    Given that organizations sometimes become symbols for disagreements within faith communities over appropriate forms of faith based witness, organization and faith-community leaders need to work closely together to understand these dynamics and prevent adverse impacts on the organization or attenuation of relationships with the founding community.

Suggestions for Future Research

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#                    Develop research strategies that provide ample opportunities to explore relationships between faith communities and organizations through focus on this connection and research in venues that allow understanding of both dynamics.

 

#                    Include comparisons to secular organizations for marginalized racial and ethnic groups as well as new immigrant communities.

 

#                    Include both organizations with strong ties to the faith community and those that have limited connections to that community or no longer reflect its core values in order to understand the dynamics between organizations and communities when they move apart, as in subquestion e.

 

Relationships between Organizations and Program Participants

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2.         What is the relationship between non-profit organizations and the people that use their services?  How do these relationships differ when the people served either come from the same community as the organization or from a different background?

 

2a.        What is the relationship between the organization, the faith community, and those served who are not part of the same religion?  Does the work of the organization lead new people to the faith community? Under what terms?  How does the organization ensure that the beliefs and rights of program participants from different faith traditions or who adhere to no religion are respected?  How is the relationship between those served and the founding community differ for secular organizations, particularly in organizations founded by a particular ethnic or racial group now serving others different from themselves?

 

The pilot study found a variety of dynamics between program participants and the agencies that served them.  In general, organizations targeted particular populations based on their mission, which sometimes stipulated a connection to the faith, racial, or immigrant community.  African American agencies and Chinese Immigrant Services were most likely to serve people from their racial and ethnic groups, regardless of religion.  As in other studies of programs serving African Americans (Reynolds and Winship 2005), most African American program participants shared a deep, expressive Christian background, which made them comfortable with religious expression at these agencies.  This was particularly true in the program serving the elderly. 

 

The religious background of those served by the Chinese organization was less clear, but all shared a country of origin.  The agency officially served people from any Asian group, but, due to social networks to the agency and the fact that staff only spoke several Chinese dialects, the majority of program participants also came from China. While both Muslim agencies claimed that they were non-sectarian, the strong social capital systems within the Muslim community, plus the use of Muslim cultural practices within the agency, meant that the majority of people served were also Muslim.

 

Both of the Jewish organizations had been founded originally to provide primarily for Jewish elderly or immigrants, with the understanding that other organizations did not provide culturally appropriate services to this population.  This was most clear at Cohen Center, which offered kosher meals and a voluntary Sabbath service on Fridays.  Eighty percent of its program participants were Jewish.  However, both Jewish agencies currently had a commitment to serve anyone.  While only a few of Cohen Center’s participants were not Jewish, all felt comfortable in this environment where staff bent over backwards to welcome all faiths through such actions as holiday displays celebrating many religious observances and special diets for Hindu program participants.  At JOIA all participants received the same services, although, as discussed under question 3, some staff members were ambivalent about serving Palestinians.

 

In fact, resistance to Jewish practice at these agencies most often came from Jewish participants. Some participants were culturally Jewish, but averse to religious practice.  Arguments about appropriate levels of religious practice were most likely to occur among Jewish program participants, as they continued dialogue about variations on Judaism common throughout the U.S. Jewish community.   Russian Jews commented that the religion was not actively practiced in the former Soviet Union, expressing their affinity for cultural connections to the Jewish community rather than the religion.

 

As with these two Jewish agencies, organizations in institutionalized systems and those founded by Peace Churches and mainline Protestants tended to background religious expression and culture in their programming.  They all also actively sought to serve anyone, regardless of race, nationality and religion.  The more established, larger institutions like Catholic Ministries and the two Lutheran organizations predominantly served people who were low income or met other specific program criteria such as refugees or GLBT youth.  There was very little reference to religion in organization practice and no active effort to include prayer or religious practice in the organization.  Diversity was celebrated at these organizations.  For example at the family shelter at Lutheran Shelter and Rehabilitation, the researcher reported:

 

The families from the program were invited to come… and a Jewish woman who is on the staff presented a Passover meal. They’re all participated together in the Passover meal to learn about the Jewish tradition… the Islamic family presented a meal and taught the children something about Muslim tradition. Two or three Muslims families in the building, in the program who are from Sudan, West Africa.

 

Peace Churches also consciously provided ecumenical services, although clearly stating the religious background of the community.  As discussed under question 3, below, Peace church practices of communal decision making suffused these organizations, as did their emphasis on the value of different beliefs and abilities.  As a result, both organizations served people from a wide array of backgrounds, welcoming Jewish residents as well as other Christians.  People chose these services because of this background.  For example, some of the parents of Jubilee Association of Maryland residents stated that they valued the Christian nature of the organization, while Jewish families equally participated in both activities offered by Jubilee Association of Maryland and Faith and Light.  While early Lakeside residents came primarily from Quaker backgrounds due to social capital, now only 30 percent are Quaker.  The remaining residents share the liberal values and emphasis on simplicity characteristic of the organization.

 

Only the African American and Evangelical organizations actively used religious language and prayer in their activities, thus creating an environment where religious expression was expected.  The majority of the program participants expressed comfort, even preference, for this religious environment.  Joy Ministries did include prayer as one aspect of its programming, but appeared to be careful to offer to pray with participants only when they asked.  As such, it maintained a balance between expressive religious culture and nonsectarian service.  Only half of the youth involved in the program knew that prayer was an option, and none expressed negative reactions to being prayed for or openly religious practice.

 

Only the Evangelical organizations openly proselytized or actively invited program participants to join the church family.  This was most evident in Christian Adult Community Day Program, where several participants in the seniors program joined the church and all were encouraged to participate in worship.  The teen program at Christian Children’s Inner City Program regularly included prayer, bible study and traditional Evangelical Christian values in its programming, but did not encourage participants to join any one church.  The participants seemed generally comfortable with religious expression, although occasionally making faces regarding values statements.  However, this acting out appeared more in keeping with young teens responding to authority than reactions to religious statements.

 

Many of these programs encouraged program participants to volunteer with the agencies, give back to the religious community, and sometimes hired program participants.  The two Catholic agencies had a particular reputation for hiring former program participants, and all encouraged active volunteering among participants. Both Peace Church organizations encouraged program participants to play active role in organization activities and governance.  Lakeside functioned through many participant fostered committees, and these residents also gave back to the founding faith community through raising funds for the founding Meeting’s expansion and other activities.  These residents also created a mentoring program for area youth.  Likewise, the Christian Adult Day Program participants provided some services to a nursing home as part of their programming.  Christian Children Inner City Program participants sang at area churches, and Jubilee Association of Maryland participants participated in agency activities and governance, as they were able.  

 

Implications for Policy and Practice

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#                    Fears of proselytizing or forcing religious practice on program participants largely appeared unfounded.  Most agencies either self-selected program participants or have created mechanisms to background religious practice or make it optional.  While civil rights need to be guaranteed for participants in faith-based programs, this is far less of issue than is envisioned in some policy circles.  The charitable choice provision stipulates that there has to be a secular alternative to the agency readily available so that clients have a choice.  This was the case with most of the agencies in the study.

 

Suggestions for Future Research

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#                    Given that established faith-based and faith-related organizations have developed successful strategies to both protect the religious identity and practice for those from other faiths and maintain their traditions, exploring further these strategies to identify best practices would be an important component of future research.

 

#                    The pilot study involved informal conversations with program participants and observations.  Collection of participant thoughts on the role of faith in organizations could be further explored through adding depth interview and focus group components.

 

Impact of Founding Community Culture on Organization Systems and Practice

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3.         What is the impact of founding community culture and social capital systems on non-profit mission, organizational structure, staffing, and program design?

 

3a.        How does the personal religious faith of key staff reflect that of the sponsoring community and influence organizational behavior? Do the leaders of secular organizations also adhere to a set of values that reflect their founding communities, and does that influence organization behavior in similar ways? How is this similar and different between faith-based and secular organizations? 

 

All of the organizations in this pilot study were suffused by the religious culture and values of their founding faith.  However, we found two alternative approaches to the role of faith in programming.  On the one hand, African American and Evangelical organizations actively used expressive faith in their programming, and faith was clearly evident in staff practices.  On the other hand, Jewish, Catholic, mainline Protestant and Peace Churches stressed tolerance for other religions in their programming and staff practices.  For many staff in these agencies, faith motivated staff and the emphasis on tolerance appeared as a religious value.  In these organizations, religious culture influenced all aspects of organization structure, but was embedded in programming.  Finally, we had difficulty disentangling religious culture from racial or immigrant culture in the African American and Chinese organizations, leading to questions about the role of religion vs. race, ethnicity or nationality in these organizations.  Since mission has been discussed under question one, this section focuses on the role of religious culture and theology in agency structure, staffing and programming.

 

Agency Structure

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As mentioned earlier, religious culture profoundly affects the structure of these organizations.  This is evident when looking at organizational charts.  For example, the Catholic agency was extremely hierarchical while the Peace Church organizations showed almost no hierarchy, and included the program participants as active parts of the agency structure.  Jewish organizations showed some hierarchy, but much less formal top down decision making than in the Catholic institutions.  While we did not have formal organizational charts for the smaller congregationally-based organizations, religious and cultural practice played a key role here too.   For example, as is common in the African American church (Day 2001), pastors played a prominent role in starting ministries, their shape and administration.

 

Denominational structure also played a role in the decision-making culture of each organization.  While the Catholic agencies encouraged discussion of programming and administrative decisions at the program level, administrative staff dominated the conversation in staff meetings.  In contrast, decision making at the Peace Church sponsored organizations actively involved everyone, and functioned by consensus.  Jewish organizations appreciated contributions from staff in decision making, although some hierarchy was recognized in these organizations.

 

Religious culture was evident in the behind the scenes administrative structures and holiday decisions of all of these organizations.  For example, the student placed at Catholic Ministries reported constant notices of mass and requests to pray for staff on the agency email system.  Jewish Aging Services kept all of the Jewish holidays, but allowed non-Jews to take their own holidays off.  Discussion of religious values was most likely to occur in staff meetings or agency written materials than in any other form.  Mainline Protestant and Evangelical organizations sponsored prayer times for staff.

 

Overall, religious culture served as a background element in all of these organizations.  Sometimes it was literally on the walls, through religious art, in the Jewish community — reference to donors,^[13] and religious program materials or literature prominently displayed.  At Lutheran Charities, the Muzak on the telephone system played “A mighty fortress is our God.”  At Lakeside, there were cross-stitches of Quaker sayings on the walls amidst art that reflected the Quaker emphasis on nature and the environment.  While all staff recognized the religious background of their founding organization, the role of religion in programming and staffing diverged among embedded and expressive organizations beyond these background elements.

 

Staff

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As mentioned earlier, while leadership staff in all organizations came from the founding religion and most appeared active in their faith, we found two divergent patterns among other staff.  African American, Evangelical and newer congregational organizations were most likely to hire staff from the same faith and often through congregation-based social capital.  Muslim organizations also hired exclusively Muslims, due to a combination of social capital networks for hiring and practice of traditional Islamic culture for women in these organizations.  Jewish, Peace Church, mainline Protestant and Catholic organizations hired people from many faiths.

 

Most of these organizations tried to find people that shared the general values of the organization.  If, as was the case for Jews, mainline Protestants, and Peace Churches, tolerance and equality for all were core values, hiring decisions focused on evidence of similar values.  Both Jews and Muslims stressed professional credentials, and appropriate education and experience appeared a key factor in hiring here.  Personal faith commitment was most important in the African American and Evangelical organizations.

 

Some of these organizations taught the culture and belief system of the founding religion to new hires through their orientation processes.  For example, Jubilee Association of Maryland devoted about 1/3rd of its new staff orientation to discussion of Mennonite history, belief systems, and approaches to care for the developmentally disabled.  Catholic Ministries explained that church teachings influenced their work, noting that staff should not talk about abortion and contraception as well as explaining that reproductive services were not covered in the health plan for this reason.  Very little discussion of Catholic theology of social justice or charity occurred during these orientations.  We did not witness any formal orientations in other organizations, but got the impression that Jewish agencies and many of the mainline Protestant organizations had no formal orientation but were willing to informally share belief systems.

 

In a few cases, staff reacted to the religious culture of the organization.  For example, following the dictates of the Mennonite board and leadership, Jubilee Association of Maryland stresses abstinence among their unmarried program participants.  However, some staff disagree with this policy and tell their clients about contraception anyway.  Reproductive policy was also a touch point at the Catholic organizations.  One staff member commented:

 

At that time I thought, no way would I want to work for Catholic Ministries. I had some political issues with it. I’m not Catholic and I am pro choice. So that was not an option for me. But I got involved in DC’s adult education program and adult basic education program and realized that the work going on here was really great. I had to put aside all my political concerns and dig in and do the work.

 

While many staff at these organizations spoke of religious values, the mainline Protestant and Evangelical organizations were most likely to encourage open religious expression among their staff, as well as staff prayer times and religious expression by staff in programming.  This emphasis on personalized religion was in keeping with the beliefs and culture of those denominations.

 

In contrast, Jews were least likely to openly mention their faith — stressing the importance of embedded religion and tolerance in organizations.  The only time that this did not occur was in JOIA.  One Jewish staff person expressed concern about working with Palestinians based on conflict with Israel while another found herself making it clear to a Muslim participant that this was a Jewish organizations, indicating that Jews were helping members of this other faith.

 

Programming

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The contrast between embedded vs. expressive faith was most evident in programming.  In the Muslim, Evangelical and African American organizations faith was everywhere in their programming.  At Christian Children’s Inner City program, children were exhorted to behave in God-like manner whenever they acted out, and particularly around promiscuous dress or sexualized language.  Both this organization and the African American Evangelical organization sponsored bible studies and consciously included faith components in programming.  Joy Ministries also used faith in programming, but less often.  Muslim dress patterns and prohibitions about interacting with men profoundly influenced work at Muslim Charities.

 

The other agencies showed the opposite tendencies.  Tolerance was the rule here.  It influenced the type of programming and interaction with people from other faiths.  As a result, faith messages were not evident in programming, instead focusing on providing services to those in need.  Nevertheless, faith influenced the shape and choice of programming.  For example, a key Lutheran Charities staff person explained the decision to develop a GLBT program as follows:

 

[staff person’s] vision of the relationship between the agency and the church is that [the agency] is accountable to congregations, but at the same time it has a prophetic role in speaking back to congregations, showing them the needs of the world.

 

These two contrasting approaches to the role of faith in programming suggest that typologies that focus on expressive faith will miss the prominent role of religion in organizations practicing embedded faith.  As such, it remains important to understand each organization in the context of its founding religion.  This also appeared true when assessing the impact of the type of services provided by the organization.

 

Cultural practices in Chinese Immigrant Services reflected the needs of immigrants from this culture rather than faith background.  Since this program came out of a mainline Protestant tradition, it is difficult to tell if this tendency reflects religious values or simply the importance of immigrant culture.  Comparisons with secular organizations will allow the opportunity to clarify this issue.

 

Implications for Policy and Practice

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#                    Religious-based organizations should evaluate their core beliefs and the way that they are expressed in their organizations as a mechanism to clarify the role of religion in organization practices. 

 

#                    Policy makers and practitioners should understand that faith-based organizations are not determined solely by the level of religious expression in programming and staff practice nor by tendencies to hire from within the faith community.  Policies and practices need to understand the diversity of experience.

 

Suggestions for Future Research

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#                    Observations of orientation programs and other mechanisms to share founding religious faith with organization staff suggest some important strategies to enable organizations to maintain their religious ethos in their organizations.  Further research on more organizations will allow opportunities to understand these mechanisms and develop best practices or tools to share with other organizations.

 

#                    Comparisons among faith-based and secular organizations serving marginalized racial and immigrant groups will provide greater insight into the roles and differences between faith-based and secular organizations for these communities.

 

Impact of the Sector

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4.         What is the impact of the larger socio-economic and policy system, as well as the service sector of that organization (social services, health and senior services, community development), on non-profit organizations form, function and resources?

           

4a.        For marginalized populations such as immigrant, ethnic, and racial groups, are there fundamental differences between faith-based and secular organizations in regards to their relationships with the wider community and the way that organization mission plays out in agency programs, staffing, and other decisions?

 

This pilot study revealed that faith-based non-profits both responded to the ethos of their founding religious communities and reflected the exigencies of the type of service provided.  In most cases, this was a careful balancing act between these two important constituencies.  Sector impact was most evident in funding structures.  In keeping with a sector dominated by fee-for-service structures and where competition with for-profits is a real issue, the health and retirement organizations drew most of their income from participant fees or through government voucher systems.  For example 76 percent of Lakeside’s revenue came from participant fees, Jubilee Association of Maryland drew 78 percent from government voucher programs for housing for the developmentally disabled, and while only 20 percent of the budget for the parent organization of the Cohen Center came from participant fees, most of the Center’s revenues came from this source.  The parent Jewish Aging Services had the most diversified funding portfolio of any agency participating in the pilot, but also drew 25 percent of its revenue from government and foundation contracts. 

 

Health and senior services agencies also felt competition from for-profits and other non-profits most keenly.  For example, the outreach coordinator for the Cohen Center gave away bags of chocolates tagged with the agency contact information at presentations to hospitals.  She expressed concern that her little gifts could not compare to the incentives these social workers received from for profits and pharmaceutical companies on a regular basis.  The hospital social workers, on the other hand, appeared not to care — sometimes taking the tags off of the bags of chocolate as a way to remember the agency and returning the gifts to the outreach coordinator because they felt that they didn’t need them.  Lakeside discussed offering larger or fancier residences to compete with for-profit continuing care communities.

 

Both the social service agencies and health and senior services agencies in our pilot study often were leaders in their field.  This was particularly true for the larger, more established entities like Lutheran Charities, Catholic Ministries, and Jubilee Association of Maryland which were some of the largest players among agencies providing this kind of service and played an active role in the umbrella groups for agencies providing similar services. Lakeside is also considered a leader in the industry, and regularly receive awards and visits from other agencies (both Quaker and not, some from outside the United States) wanting to model their standards and setups.  Regardless of size, all of the social service agencies and health and senior services agencies were active in coalitions of organizations providing similar services, often belonging to professional associations that worked with government to set standards and address issues related to government funding.  As such, religious-based organizations played an active role in setting the tone for service provision in their locality.  Since some of these organizations also belonged to regional or national umbrella organizations, drawing information on best practices from these larger institutions, informing them of their own innovations and needs, and participating in establishing standards for service.

 

The active participation of these faith-based institutions in secular coalitions and professional associations suggests two things.  First, social capital connections to agencies providing similar services is equally important to these organization as participating in faith-based networks. Rather than make a choice between providing faith-based or secular services, these agencies draw from both pools of social capital and cultural capital, developing collaborations with agencies in both faith-based and secular networks and using these formal and informal umbrella networks to determine best practices and appropriate standards of care.  As such any dichotomy between faith-based and secular organizations appears largely specious as organizations draw from both sources of support.

 

Second, given these strong connections between faith-based and secular organizations through coalitions of similar agencies, arguments that participation in secular service provision systems dilutes the original missions of faith-based organizations (Smith and Sosin 2001), may be incorrect.  Instead, some of these institutions play a major role in setting standards for service provision in their field and actively lobby for government regulations that reflect the values of their founding faith communities.  For example, Catholic institutions have lobbied for more universal health care based on Church teachings (Cochran 1999).  As Hall (2005) suggests, through participation in secular systems, faith-based institutions inculcate their religious-based values into the wider society.  The predominantly Protestant expectations of the faith-based initiative and many of the studies of faith-based service are only one example of this tendency.  Future research should look carefully at this issue.

 

The relative importance of faith vs. secular community concerns was also unclear for organizations that came out of community organizing or community needs assessment activities.  These organizations were least likely to participate in coalitions of service providers offering a similar service, but appeared equally active in secular coalitions from the same racial or ethnic communities.  For example, the African American organizations worked with other African American institutions and Chinese Immigrant Services both actively participated in the Washington DC Chinese community and collaborated with other agencies providing social services for Asians.  For example, the organization partnered with secular Laotian and Vietnamese organizations on a government contract to provide crime victim services for the Asian community in Washington DC. 

 

As with the organizations in other sectors, these community based institutions participated both in faith-based and secular social capital systems associated with their constituency.  However, the lines between the culture of faith communities and racial, ethnic or immigrant communities appeared far more intertwined for these agencies than for organizations in the social service or health and senior services sectors. Likewise social capital resources stemmed from networks that overlapped between faith communities and racial, ethnic or immigrant communities.  In large part, these differences come out of the strategic importance of faith communities for both African Americans and immigrants (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990, Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000).  Our future research strategy of comparing faith-based and secular organizations for organizations in this sector will hopefully clarify these issues.

   

Given the focus of our pilot research on connections between faith communities and organizations, our results only hint and the impact of the sector on these institutions.  Future research would concentrate more on these issues as a way to truly assess relative impact.  However, our early findings suggest that the values and social capital systems of faith-based and secular organizations are far more intertwined than previous research suggests.  Understanding this dynamic would be an important goal of future work.

 

Implications for Policy and Practice

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#                    Presumptions of fundamental differences between faith-based and secular organizations may be misplaced.  Instead, it may be more important for policy makers and practitioner to clarify ways that concerns related to the sector and founding community ethos interact with each other in service provision.

 

Suggestions for Future Research

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#                    Further study of the relationship of organizations to sector-based coalitions would help in understanding this dynamic.  Pilot research allowed limited opportunity to attend sector wide coalitions, another aspect of research that would enhance a larger and longer study

 

#                    Comparisons between faith-based and secular organizations for marginalized populations would allow opportunities to understand the role of race, nationality, immigrant status and religion in these institutions’ activities.

 

Conclusion

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Our pilot study offers some important preliminary insights into the ways that religion impacts on the activities of faith-based organizations.  To our knowledge, this is one of few studies that uses qualitative research to understand how faith is made manifest through non-profit activity.  As such, we are able to understand the important role of culture in social capital connections between faith communities and the non-profits they create. Multi-methods ethnography shows the various aspects of relationships between faith communities and their organizations, highlighting different forms previously ignored in both the academic and practical literature on this topic.

 

Our methods also allow us to understand the ways that theology and culture play out in day-to-day operations within organizations.  Different denominations and religions highlight varying aspects of their religious values.  Some faith communities embed their religious culture and theology in the background structures of their organizations so deeply that superficial analysis or studies presuming that faith should be expressed opening would presume that these are secular institutions.  Nevertheless, faith-community ethos and values inform all aspects of organizational activities.  In other organizations, faith-community culture and theology is openly expressed in all aspects of organization staffing or programming. 

 

Research focus on the dynamics between program participants and the organizations that serve them allows a clearer understanding of ways that program participants understand the role of religion in these organizations.  Conversations with participants allow us to assess their reaction to the faith-based elements embedded or openly expressed in service provision.  While findings are preliminary, they offer insights important to ongoing discussions of the separation of church and state raised by the faith-based initiative.

 

Our preliminary findings on the impact of type of service on faith-based organizations shows an intertwining for faith-based and secular networks, culture, and concerns.  Most of these organizations participate equally in social capital systems for their faith communities and with other secular organizations providing similar services.  Likewise, both the culture of the founding religion and the standards for service provision of the secular coalitions impact on ways that organizations do business.  Funding structures and government regulations also significantly influence organization form and practices.  However, given that some of these faith-based organizations are leaders in their fields, faith-based values may in fact influence standards for secular coalitions and government.

 

Given the limited research time and small number of organizations participating in this pilot study, our findings are necessarily preliminary.  A number of findings need further testing through research in a larger set of organizations.  Future research would also look more carefully at dynamics in the larger faith communities, tracing connections between congregations, larger judicatory structures, and non-profits.  In addition, future research would consciously include organizations that faith communities believe have moved beyond faith-community control to assess these relationships and clarify remaining dynamics between faith community and organization.  Future research would also pay additional attention to the impact of the sector on these organizations.  Research on the sector would clarify the dynamic impact of larger society factors on these organizations while, at the same time, assessing the ways that faith-community values and lobbying efforts impact on U.S. society as a whole.

 

Finally, research in two cities on the East Coast does not provide enough data to understand the impact of regional differences on faith-based service provision.  Future research would also compare rural communities to metropolitan areas in order to understand these differences.  Comparing different parts of the country and different types of communities would allow us to understand the impact of locality on service provision.  What factors of service provision are common across the country and how do locality specific systems impact differently on service provision?

 

We hope to expand this pilot study into a national project that would involve four to eight sites across the county. A growing number of scholars and practitioners have expressed interest in participating in this study (see appendix C). The number of sites and depth of future research will depend on amount of funding available for this initiative.  Each site would include a larger range of organizations than in the pilot study.  Research across the country would be connected through a core team of scholars/practitioners that will work with local site directors to maintain research consistency and clarify findings across sites.  Participating organizations and researchers would meet regularly to share insights as the study progresses.  Finally, the larger project would also include a quantitative study, developed by all participating organizations and researchers that would see if key qualitative findings are generalizable to a larger sample of organizations.  As such, our study design combines quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a complete picture of the dynamics between faith-based organizations and the various constituencies — faith community, participants, and sector — that impact on their work.

 

Finally, while our preliminary results provide some usable insights to faith-based organizations, faith communities, and policy makers, our proposed larger initiative would devote particular energy to creating products useful to practitioners and policy makers.  Working with faith-community umbrella group representatives and our participating agencies, we hope to create a number of fact sheets, tools and products of use to these organizations.  We are also developing relationships with a wide array of umbrella organizations to disseminate our outcomes to their constituent agencies after this project ends.  A policy component of the project would provide insights to policy makers.

 

The project team welcomes interest from other researchers, faith communities and organizations.  For more information, contact Jo Anne Schneider at jschneid@gwu.edu.  Additional copies of this report and documents related to this study will be available at http://home.gwu.edu/~jschneid/.

.   

 

 

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Notes

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