THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509100057
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 141 lines
``Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.''
Deuteronomy 15:11.
``...if any would not work, neither should he eat.''
II Thessalonians 3:10.
Fading zinnias and a ``Parents, drop your weapons'' poster greet visitors to the Sacred Heart Center in the city's ravaged Bainbridge section, a neighborhood where three-fifths of the residents live below the poverty line and two of every three children grow up with a single parent.
Leading a tour of Sacred Heart's bustling classrooms and homey, if threadbare, offices, Father John Dear pauses to voice his outrage at the clamorous national debate over untwining government and the poor.
``Those churches that are working with the poor are totally overstretched at the moment, and we're just touching the tip of the iceberg,'' says the 36-year-old Jesuit priest. ``To think that government has the audacity to ask churches to take on more boggles my mind.''
Virginia government will be doing just that this week, however, as Gov. George F. Allen convenes a two-day conference in Fredericksburg aimed at proselytizing religious and community groups on behalf of welfare reform.
A few hundred church and community leaders are expected to gather for workshops, forums and speeches by several of the nation's leading advocates of the view that charity should start - and stop - in the home community.
The message, according to a press release from the Department of Social Services, is that for welfare reform to work, families, individuals, business, and religious and service groups must ``reembrace the natural responsibilities that were theirs long before government usurped those responsibilities in the name of compassion.''
Coming against a backdrop of congressional debate over slashing federal spending on the poor, such rhetoric is tapping a deep divide in Virginia's religious circles, interviews suggest. At issue is whether churches, synagogues and mosques can or should substitute for government in providing for the poor.
That debate is almost certain to surface in Fredericksburg. Several critics of the Allen approach said they will attend the conference.
``We're not going to be disruptive. But we want to be critical thinkers,'' said Virginia O'Keefe, social justice minister at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church in Virginia Beach. O'Keefe is part of a local group called The Coalition for the Common Wealth that opposes government retrenchment from anti-poverty efforts.
While the leaders of many mainstream religious groups, including various Jewish organizations and members of the National Council of Churches, share Father Dear's concern, leaders of some other conservative, independent churches take a skeptical view of government's ability to effectively combat poverty.
``It would be a disaster if government was to walk out this year, but when the church is ready to take its place, I would hope government would gracefully bow out,'' said Pastor Courtney McBath of Norfolk's Calvary Revival Church. The church, described as a ``Pentecostal charismatic'' fellowship, has burgeoned to about 2,500 members since its founding in 1990.
McBath was a member of Allen's Empowerment Commission, which recommended the massive state welfare reform begun last summer. Under the plan, many of Virginia's 74,000 recipients of Aid to Families With Dependent Children will be required to work, and their benefits will be limited to two years. Additional reforms take such steps as ordering recipients to name the fathers of their children and insisting that minor mothers live at home and stay in school before getting payments.
The reason religion should replace government in fighting poverty, said McBath, is that ``it's a God-given purpose for the church. The church can minister to the entire need of a person, which government cannot do.''
Theologically, in Judeo-Christian circles, the split comes between those who view the Bible as ascribing God-given rights to the poor, and those who think the Biblical mandate is to provide charity.
Marvin Olasky, the author of ``The Tragedy of American Compassion'' and the dinner speaker at Allen's conference, said he thinks the apostle Paul's directive to Timothy on the treatment of widows is one the Bible's clearest guides regarding the poor.
In I Timothy 5, Paul says the church should care for poor widows if they are godly, but not if they're running around gossiping and seeking pleasure.
``The message there is to be discerning, be careful because you can do harm if you put people on the list who should not be on the list,'' said Olasky, who is one of the gurus of the Republican movement to overhaul the nation's social welfare policy. His book cover bears the tag line: ``Recommended by Newt Gingrich.''
``Today, not only have we put widows on the list, we've put women on the list who've never been married, we've put men on the list who have disabled themselves with alcohol. We have been promiscuous with charity,'' said Olasky, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the editor of ``World,'' a Christian news magazine.
Asked if he believes individuals with solid values will lift themselves out of poverty, he added, "there may be exceptions, but in general in American society that has been the case."
An opposing view comes from individuals such as the Rev. Dow Chamberlain, director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy; and Stephen Colecchi, assistant to Bishop Walter F. Sullivan of the Catholic diocese covering southern Virginia.
Chamberlain points to the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy in explaining his belief that the poor have a right to government assistance. Chapter 15, which lays out various laws of the Jewish people, is clear that ``it was not a matter of, if you did for the poor, you were being generous. You were giving them their legal right or due,'' he said.
Colecchi added that in Catholic teaching, tasks such as caring for the poor are to be handled at the lowest level at which they can adequately be addressed, starting with the family and moving on to the community or government.
While there may be times when government help is sought too readily, ``I don't think it's realistic to assume - given how pervasive poverty is in our country - that individual charitable response will be adequate to the need,'' he said.
A major purpose of Allen's conference, said spokesman Martin Brown, is to show religious and community groups how they can take the place of government by mentoring welfare recipients, offering day care and transportation, or helping with job training and education, he said.
Others questioned whether Virginia's roughly 20,000 churches can assume as large a role as some Republican theorists envision. When GOP legislators introduced their ``Contract With America'' last year, the plan called for about $60 billion in Social Services cuts.
Bread for the World, an anti-hunger organization based in Silver Spring, Md., estimated that it would cost each American church $170,000 to fill the gap.
Obviously, many churches are too small to contemplate such a sum, McBath said. But that only increases the obligation of thriving ministries such as his to do more, he added. His church devotes $200,000 to $300,000 annually to social outreach. That sum is 10 to 15 percent of Calvary's annual budget.
``It's our belief that there's a great deal of room for the church to do more,'' he said.
Jim Branscome, treasurer of the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church, disagreed. Methodists' giving in Virginia last year approached $10 million, he said.
Noting that ``more and more mainline churches are struggling for funding,'' he said, ``the chances of churches being in a position to do a whole lot more in terms of dollars is pretty limited.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Fighting poverty is ``a God-given purpose for the church,'' says the
Rev. Courtney McBath. He was a member of a state commission on
welfare reform.
by CNB