Few Black Churches get faith-based funding
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Thia Washington Post article talks about the lack of faith based funding for black churches:
The Bush administration's faith-based initiative is reaching only a tiny percentage of the nation's black churches, most of which have limited capacity to run social programs, hampering the initiative's promise of empowering those congregations to help the needy, according to a study to be released today.
The national survey of 750 black churches by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that fewer than 3 percent are participating in the program, which funnels at least $2 billion a year in federal social services spending to religious organizations.
Black churches in the Northeast and those with self-identified progressive congregations and liberal theologies were most likely to be taking part in the program, a finding that surprised the researchers, who concluded that the White House has not used the program as a political tool as some critics have suspected.
"Those people who were most worried can exhale," said Robert M. Franklin, a professor of social ethics at Emory University who worked as a consultant on the survey. "Churches have not been manipulated by Karl Rove. They have not sold out."
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"Some Republican strategists had thought of charitable choice as a way to broaden the appeal for the Republican Party among African Americans," said John C. Green, a senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Green said many people had asked him whether the Bush administration was being political or sincere in launching the initiative. "I think both," he said. "What you may be seeing in this survey is evidence of the sincere part of the program."
Read the whole article: liberal African American churches are reaping the biggest bennies.