The Uncomfortable Challenge of Welfare Reform (II)

July-August 1994

SPECIAL CONFERENCE ISSUE: Excerpts from papers prepared for the Welfare Responsibility Project and from speeches at the national conference on Public Justice and Welfare Reform, May 19-20, 1994

The Importance of Gender in the Welfare Debate
Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Eastern College

A Christian worldview opens our eyes to the simultaneous working out of the themes of creation, sin, and redemption in all areas of life. A Reformed theology of creation supports the conviction that women and men of all ages, abilities, classes, and ethnicities are equally made in God's image, and equally called "to diligently develop and use their God-given gifts for the good of home, church, and society."

When we look at that great passage from the creation account in Genesis 1:26-28—the passage containing what Reformed theologians often call the "cultural mandate" to humankind—we do not find God saying to the first female, "Be fruitful and multiply," and to the first male, "Subdue the earth." On the contrary, both are called both to accountable dominion and to accountable sociability and fruitfulness: "And God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it..." There is no warrant here for rigidly gendered spheres or activities, nor (in either of the creation accounts) for male domination. Both women and men, made in the image of God, are called to unfold the potential of creation in all areas of life, to engage in good, stewardly and God-honoring activities together, whether those activities take place close to the hearth, within the worship setting, or elsewhere in the social and natural world.

[The importance of involved fathers for the maturation of children of both sexes is highly important, as one set of feminist voices recognizes.] By reassuring both sons and daughters that they are valued and loved as unique individuals, and by raising them in a fashion that is nurturant as well as appropriately authoritative, fathers can implicitly certify their children "masculine enough" and "feminine enough" to get on with the more important business of being human. In other words, nurturant fathering helps relieve children of the anxiety of "proving themselves" adequately masculine or feminine (boys by engaging in truculent and misogynist activities, girls by becoming prematurely and too indiscriminately sexual), and can thus free their energies for the acquisition of more adaptive—and less rigidly gender-stereotyped—relational and work skills.

One might legitimately ask if mothers are not equally important in this process of certifying children "masculine enough" and "feminine enough." Indeed they are; still, it is not mother absence from families, but father absence (physical and/or psychological) that has been the greater problem in our society since the Industrial Revolution. And the bottom line appears to be this: children of both sexes need interaction with nurturant, authoritative adult role models of both sexes in order to develop a secure gender identity, which then (paradoxically) allows them to relate to each other primarily as human beings, rather than as reduced, gender-role caricatures.

One of the central questions of welfare reform is this: "How can we put children first without putting women last or putting men on the sidelines?"

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty
Cynthia Jones Neal, Wheaton College

Welfare reforms to encourage responsibility must not ignore the pernicious effects of poverty on the development of young children. Development occurs along pathways that shape conceptions of the self, views of relationships and place in society, and ultimately the ability to parent. Taking appropriate responsibility for one's self and family requires a conception of the self as competent and able to nurture.

Parents who suffer the stress and despair of poverty may lack the emotional resources necessary to provide the warmth and affective behaviors essential for their children's healthy emotional development. Many of these parents were themselves poorly nurtured as children, leaving them ill-equipped to nurture their own children well. Many of these families live in neighborhoods dominated by violence and the drug trade. Many poor families are headed by teenaged mothers who have not yet developed beyond dependency into adulthood.

Those interested in helping families that are distressed both economically and psychologically must recognize the importance of the parents' developmental history and its effects on their ability to care for their children.

The Question of Being Human
James W. Skillen, Center for Public Justice

The true dependency of children on parents is sometimes overlooked by government programs that aim to help children directly rather than helping the parents who hold primary responsibility for their children. At the same time, the kind of responsibility that properly belongs to adults is sometimes ignored by government in its attempt to help citizens by treating them like children.

Two conclusions follow: The first is that no institution in society, outside the family, should be allowed to displace parental responsibility for child rearing. The second is that public policies should not treat adults as dependents in a way that would allow the state or some other institution to hold boundless (undifferentiated) authority over them.

To be human is to exist in the image of God, and this means that people are not individually self-sufficient and not autonomously self-governing. They are creatures responsible for one another in a diversity of relationships and institutions. Government's task in a differentiated society should be to uphold public justice, to reinforce the accountability structures in which people hold a variety of different obligations. Governments should do everything possible to encourage and strengthen families for the care of truly dependent children, and likewise governments should refrain from treating adults as if they are children who may legitimately remain dependent on a paternalistic government.

Beneath and Beyond the State
Max L. Stackhouse, Princeton Theological Seminary

Among the factors prompting debates about welfare reform, none are more important than the crisis in civil society. Below the state, the tissues of social civility and the fabric of basic institutions are eroding. And beyond the state, new global patterns of economic interaction and technological development are transforming opportunities for employment and creating institutions of mutual interest that are beyond the control of any local community or national government. These two factors invite a revitalization and a redesigning of civil society, precisely as they tend to increase demand for welfare services and decrease the capacity of states to respond.

The crisis of civil society in our cities and towns can be seen in patterns of substance abuse, criminality and isolation, but especially in broken families. These are on the increase in all "modernized" countries. The educational, cultural, social and economic institutions that form persons and cultivate civility are fragile if not absent, and most are in decline where religious institutions are weakest. Those with fewer resources find it more difficult to cope and greater percentages of the population fall into depressed conditions.

[In the future], what shall form the consciousness of persons, sustain those institutions that enable whole societies to flourish, guide a moral response to the needy, and create institutions able to generate wealth justly? Historically, that role has been played by religion. But the neglect of religion as a key factor in modern, secular social theory, plus certain ways of understanding the separation of church and state, and confusions about how to deal with the pluralism of religions has meant that we ignore decisive forces that actually change people's lives, evoke productive discipline, and enhance commitment to, and participation in, civil society.

While government may not establish religion and must continue to provide a base of minimal support for the most needy and isolated people as well as constrain crime and exploitation among the poor, government will best serve the well-being of the population by encouraging the free exercise of religion--especially by encouraging and funding those religiously based activities that directly aid those in need of personal focus and discipline, that further spawn community and economic participation, and that shape the fabric of civil society in an increasingly global civilization.

Lessons for U.S. Welfare Policy in Guatemala?
Anne Motley Hallum, Stetson University

In Guatemala, government's only welfare "policy," for all practical purposes, is to leave the job to charitable organizations, primarily the churches. These entities provide direct, personal services to the poor, as well as community development projects such as building schools and clinics.

The poor in Guatemala and throughout Latin America are flocking to the churches (especially Protestant ones) because the churches speak to their needs in a unique way. They encourage disciplined lifestyles in a supportive community setting; they provide opportunities for socializing as well as assistance and comfort in emergencies; they have members who have improved their lives and act as role models; and they teach a simple theology of hope. American society may not approve of the simple theology and emotional style of these churches. But we have much to learn from them about the key anti-poverty role of religion.

Balancing Care and Cure in Health Policy
Clarke E. Cochran, Texas Tech University

Welfare reform must not be done in isolation from health care reform. Poverty and poor health are closely associated, and federal health policy is tied to public assistance and social security. From a Christian perspective, justice, responsibility, and health care should be related in accord with three basic principles: (1) meeting the needs of citizens, (2) protecting vulnerable members of society, and (3) maintaining human dignity. These principles affect the responsibilities for health care that belong to individuals and families, to voluntary associations and government. Health care access for all members of society, especially for preventative and basic medical treatment, is a fundamental part of the "good ordering of society" as a matter of justice. Providing health insurance for major illness and injury fulfils the social responsibility for "emergency relief" and the philosophical and biblical value of protecting the vulnerable.

Reconceptualizing the Poverty Debate
Gina Barclay-McLaughlin, University of Michigan

The Center for Successful Child Development, also known nationally as the Beethoven Project (serving a section of Chicago high-rise buildings comprising the Robert Taylor Homes, which is the country's largest public housing development with approximately 20,000 residents), uses a family-centered model for early intervention in children's lives.

Parents in the program consistently expressed feelings of helplessness in their attempts to deal with barriers that prevented them from having successful outcomes with their children. For many, life in these circumstances was a matter of constantly trading off long-term aspirations for short-term survival.

Hearing the experiences of families faced daily with poverty can increase our knowledge and understanding of poverty and its formidable influence on the lives of the poor. The perspective of the poor can give to the poverty discourse a better balance, eliminating the stereotypes and myths that prevent truthful understanding and impede fruitful welfare reform.

Free Schools and the Revival of Urban Communities
Charles L. Glenn, Boston University

A broad agreement has emerged across the policy spectrum: the weakening of social and family structures, especially among African-American and Puerto Rican inner-city residents, has serious consequences for the well-being of children and for their prospects of living productive lives as adults. Although schools can and should do more than they do at present to respond to the heightened needs of inner-city pupils, the capacity of schools to do so is itself undermined by the weakening of family life.

American public schools as currently governed, however, also contribute to the marginalization of families. Minority communities in several industrialized nations have organized alternative forms of schooling in order to regain a measure of control over the education of children. Spontaneous efforts of this sort can contribute to the development of habits of trust and cooperation essential to the revival of urban communities and the strengthening of families, and should be supported as a matter of public policy.

Schools that truly belong to the parents who send their children to them provide settings of unparalleled intensity for the development of the habits of responsible activity on the part of adults and children alike. Accepting the promotion of such schools as an appropriate goal of public policy would be consistent with other "reinventing government" measures such as tenant management and ownership of housing developments. It would help to create the framework within which healing could begin.

Social Services and Religious Freedom
Julia K. Stronks, Whitworth College

The tension between the identity of non-governmental institutions and the religion clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is important to understand.

Many judges today seem to believe that neutrality means "non-religious," equating this with the "secular." The line is drawn between religious and religiously neutral, rather than treating the religious the same as that which is irreligious or secular. This means that in licensing cases, religious interests may get special treatment at the hands of some judges or some legislators, but in funding cases the religious institutions lose out.

Many religious organizations consider this to be an acceptable trade-off: money for freedom. However, is there a better way? Is it not possible to preserve the faith identity of institutions while still allowing them to receive a fair share of the money that government decides to give to all social service agencies participating in helping citizens to fulfill their responsibilities?

Towards a New Model for Church-State Partnership
Ronald J. Sider and Heidi Rolland, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary

A problem as complex and entrenched as long-term poverty can only be overcome by a holistic approach that addresses both spiritual and material needs. The best way—perhaps the only way—to change the tragic reality of long-term welfare dependency is to make religious transformation central to the process. A renewed, reconciled relationship with God improves physical and emotional health, personal choices, and relationships with neighbors. Structural changes are also vitally needed, but unless we understand the importance of the inward spiritual transformation of belief and character, we will not get to the root causes or produce lasting change.

One promising way to advance this aim, without violating the First Amendment, is for government to use vouchers, which individuals could redeem for services at any approved agency. Public support would thus enable people with needs to get the most effective assistance available from religious or secular providers of housing, drug rehabilitation, job training, medical care, or other services.

Poverty and Religiously Based Nonprofit Organizations
Stephen V. Monsma, Pepperdine University

Nonprofit organizations, including organizations as diverse as K-12 schools, child care centers, family service agencies, drug treatment centers, and adult job-search programs, possess several advantages over large, centralized government bureaucracies in preventing and overcoming poverty. Two problems remain in realizing the full potential of a cooperative relationship between government and religiously based nonprofit organizations. One is that Supreme Court interpretations of the First Amendment have barred almost all public money from religiously based K- 12 schools.

A second major problem is that the Supreme Court has used a type of reasoning that poses a major threat to the independence of religious nonprofits receiving public money. The Court has decreed that no public funds may go to support religion, and therefore it has had to base its approval of funds going to religious nonprofits on a secular/sectarian distinction, which does injustice to the integrity of the religious organization. According to the Court, only nonprofit organizations that are not "pervasively sectarian" may receive public funds.

What is needed are new principles or theories of legal interpretation that will allow the government to adopt public policies that make full use of all nonprofit organizations with a potential to help the poor, and to do so in a way that safeguards the religious autonomy of the nonprofit organizations.