Quote:
Originally Posted by ISiddiqui
There was a reason that President Bush created and President Obama continued faith based charities and it wasn't because he wanted to convert everyone  . In a lot of poor neighborhoods, especially African-American ones, it is the church that has been reaching out for generations and knows the needs and concerns of the neighborhood. Also, for that reason, it is the church that is one of the main institutions that is respected by the community. Why wouldn't you want to use that expertise and the 'boots on the ground' that already exist?
It's all fine and good to say work with non-faith based charities, but you start looking around and realize that faith based charities are the ones who are more active in the inner cities.
It is somewhat the same issue with the ebola crisis. Overwhelming it is Christian missions who are over in west Africa to help folks with ebola. There simply aren't nearly as much non-faith based charity workers. It may be a decent sentiment (I don't think it is, FWIW), but it doesn't seem to correspond to what is actually happening. |
That's so true. We have two really good homeless shelter/community outreach centers in my city. They're both faith-based, and have weekly services, but no participation in any of the faith-based stuff is required. I know people are cynical about that but it's really true. Some people have so much resistance to getting help there. So they choose homeless city under the bridge instead.
It's getting really tricky with the drug treatment stuff in the criminal sentencing world too. The faith-based programs are there, most of them like, like AA, have some higher power language but they don't require conversion or anything. Those are there, those are available, but you can't require a defendant to go there as part of his probation. There's a few private secular options but they're much more expensive, and, usually, franchise-based scams. They process way too many people, get the government check and get people in and out of there as fast as possible. When one group is motivated by spiritual inspiration, and the other by turning over as many people as quickly as possible, guess who gets the better results?