Transcript
SESSIONS:
Morning Discussion
Lunch Keynote
Afternoon Session
E.J. DIONNE, JR.: We are blessed today with the Reverend Dr. Eileen Lindner, and we have already been assigned the role of being her amen corner. So if you hear shouts of amen from this table we are fulfilling our assignment, and happily so.
As most of you know the Reverend Dr. Lindner is the Deputy General Secretary for Research and Planning in the Office of General Secretary at the National Council of Churches of Christ. In that capacity she serves as editor of the Yearbook of American and Canadian churches. And just in case you think she is not ahead of the times, long before the election, long before anything else, she decided that this year's Yearbook should be dedicated to the subject of charitable choice. So the holy spirit was working when she was putting that together.
She formerly served as director of the Child Advocacy Office and director of the Child and Family Justice Project. She's worked in the White House. Her office, by the way, sponsored the most extensive study of child care in the U.S. churches that Mary Bogle referred to, "When Churches Mind the Children." She's got so many degrees she will add to my alphabet soup. She is a Presbyterian minister, she holds a Ph.D. in American church history, a masters of philosophy from Union Theological Seminary, a masters of divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary, an MS from George Williams College, a BA from Waynesburg College, and she is a lawyer. So she could deal with either side of the charitable choice question. So whoever wants to sue on either side should consult the Reverend Dr. Lindner.
It's very good to have you with us.
EILEEN LINDNER: Thank you, E.J.
Now, I'm the mother of boys, so I know you can hear me even if you say you can't. After that kind introduction, I know the only way to have you hold a high opinion of me is to leave immediately. But, that is not to be. It is, after all, my vocation to make long speeches after heavy meals. So unless you start singing the closing hymn, I'm afraid you're mine.
I am very honored to be here and to speak with you. I am so grateful. What a good conversation this morning. What an important conversation. What a timely conversation. And I think what a timeless conversation. We are not, after all, talking about how to get more widgets into a U-Haul truck. We're talking about the future of our republic. We're talking about the future of children in our care. So the care and the politeness and thoughtfulness with which we take up this task is really quite central to the task itself.
The Brookings Institution has long been there for children and children's concerns when some similar institutions have not been there. Some of you who are of a certain vintage, as I am, will remember The Children's Cause published by Brookings Institution, Gilbert Steiner. It recorded, among other things, the development, advocacy for, passage and ultimately veto of the 1971 omnibus child care bill. You may remember that President Nixon vetoed it saying it was the broadest plan yet advanced for the sovietization of American children. I say that not to poke fun, but to note how far we have come in our understanding of the role of child care in relation to the rearing of children in this culture.
I want to say straight away that unlike all but Reverend Flake this morning, I am a pastor that happened to take up the issue of child care, not a child advocate who happened to take up the ministry. I want to be straightforward about that because I think that conditions how I see things and what we will be saying here. For those of you who are interested in the role of the church and how we got into this I want to say a word about that study.
Twenty years ago we had a hunch that the church was playing a role in child care. What we didn't know and what we came to find out is that we were the McDonald's of the industry. We occupied roughly that space in child care that McDonald's occupied in relation to hamburgers. In 1980, for every child in Sunday church school on Sunday there were nine children in church buildings on Monday morning. Think of it, for every child attending church school in the sample we looked at — I use [sample] advisedly, because at 120,000 congregations, it is a sample, but it is a substantial sample — in those congregations, on average for every child in Sunday church school there were nine children in child care on Monday morning.
So it's very important. I was in agreement with much that I heard, and these were many of my friends and colleagues for many years who spoke this morning, so I won't repeat or refute those positions. I just want to raise a couple of other issues. On the longevity matter and the history of child care in religious communities, I want to suggest that the history may, in fact, be far longer than any of us dare to suggest. You remember the child Moses. Moses was a baby found in a basket in the bulrushes. The queen saw the baby and instructed the Hebrew women to take the child and care for him. Undoubtedly did so with government funds. See, all that education wasn't wasted just for that one story.
Mary Bogle has done a wonderful job in amassing this information, and I think has really mined this original study for many of its important findings. My comments today are based not only on the quantitative research done for When Churches Mind the Children, but for the Yearbook and for, let us say, the experience of living in the intervening 20 years since the publication of the first book.
In a final introductory comment I want to say that I've adapted the conference title, and that whole series of conferences. E.J., I want to commend you, and Brookings, and Pew and everybody involved. This is a terribly important national discussion. And you're leading the way in an important field. I want to amend, however, the title for my own remarks, amend it to call it "Sacred Places: Not Quite. Civic Purposes: Almost." Let me tell you what I mean by that.
First, "Sacred Places: Not Quite." The churches and congregations that provide space for child care generally do not provide their sacred space for that activity. That is to say, it does not take place in the nave or the sanctuary and my guess is, there would be a whole lot of other issues if that were the space we were using. So it's very important to know that this is not quite a sacred place. It is, in fact, the educational wing that came along with the mortgage for the sacred space. It is the basement underneath the sanctuary. So I think that's an important thing for us to remember, because how the congregants feel about that space really isn't quite the way they would feel about what is truly a sacred space. That may seem like hair splitting, but when we come back to it I think maybe it isn't hair splitting.
Now, as for "Civic purposes: Almost." I think that's almost the right frame to put on this. But the congregants probably don't entirely think so. In the Christian tradition we would say that we engage or allow our buildings to be used in this capacity so that children might live the lives for which they were created. Now, I'm not sure that that would meet the test of a civic purpose. So, when we look at these things from inside the religious community they're not quite on square with how we would look at them from a secular perspective.
Now, a couple of years ago I was in your fair city on the Friday before Christmas, and I learned a lesson in what it means to get the right question. There was about an inch and a half, maybe two inches of snow. As a New Englander I couldn't really understand what the issue was, but I could see it was an issue. I came to National Airport on a Friday afternoon, trying to get that aeronautical cattle drive up to New York known as the shuttle. And you know the people limited to two bags who have been augmented by their Christmas packages. There's nothing quite like several thousand people in a small space all smelling of wet wool. Something you look forward to.
I came up to the desk and a very harried looking airline employee said, "Did anybody you don't know give you anything you don't know about?" I'm a person of the cloth, I'm not supposed to lie, so I said, "I don't know." She said, "I said that wrong. Let me try again. Do you have anything you don't know about from anybody you don't know." I said, "I don't know." She fixed me with that gimlet eye. I saw this was my last chance to get home to my family for the holiday. She said, "Do you know what I'm trying to ask you?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Did they?" I said, "No." She said, "Here's your ticket."
It matters what question we ask. If we ask, "Can the churches, can the congregations of our society, of our land, provide child care?" That answer is yes. In fact, they will continue to provide more child care than any single institution in this land. "Should they and under what terms?" Those are different questions. Those are the questions that are really before us.
The questions I'm going to try to address — before I had children I answered questions, now I address them — are (1) what have we learned about child care that might be instructive to us as we look at the broader range of faith-based initiatives, (2) the contemporary discussion, and (3) and even about child care itself. What I call church-housed child care grew up — and this is terribly, terribly important what I'm about to say to you — church-housed child care grew up in a direct response to local impulses all around this country. Not one single denomination suggested to its congregations that it ought to provide child care. Not one single national parent church organization suggested it, nor did any ecumenical agency. So the fact that child care is so predominant in churches means that it is highly responsive to local wishes.
Now, by contrast, we have worked hard to get churches to respond to Habitat for Humanity, for example, or something called Crop Walks, where people walk on behalf of the hungry. No one asked local congregations. As we say in the book of Judges, there was no king in the land, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. And in the eyes of many, many, many congregations it was right to provide some weekday child program. Following World War II, as you may know, the church either suffered or profited from what has been called the edifice complex. It was a time of the highest affiliation rate in American history, quite an aberration really, almost a third again as much church affiliation as in any other period of American history. During that time new communities were built, and it was a standard practice with the Levite brothers to leave corner lots vacant for churches or banks — god or man, I suppose — to occupy.
Now, I'm a Presbyterian; we say debts and debtors. Money is important to us. So we have no argument with that. But, the Levite family left the corner lots so that churches and banks could occupy those spaces and develop programs. Those programs, by and large — not entirely, but by and large — were initiated as mother's morning out programs. They were places where mothers could come with their children. The fittings and furnishings of those buildings were just right. And over time those programs evolved into three-day nursery schools. It was a very common pattern all through the 1950s and into the '60s. Of course, who was enrolled there? The largest age cohort ever to hit that age, the baby boomers. So it was the initiative was local, and the evolution of it was by and large local.
Now, to show you the degree to which pastors were unaware. This will not strike any of you as news: [pastors] are often unaware. I personally am a church historian. I won't even care about any of this for another 100 years. It is our way to be either occupied in the Eighth Century, or some time in the eschaton. We have a little trouble with the present time zone. Anyway, [NCC pastors] were able to do this study of child care, because no one else had access to the infrastructure of the Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican Communions, six historic black churches, eight Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the like. The way we did this study is that we wrote to all those pastors and asked them if they had child care or daycare. We had to write almost half a page to describe what that might look like. When we got it back, we asked them if they had infant care, toddler care, or preschool care. They could check any or all of those. We began to get more responses. In fact, it began to look like we had more infant care available than there were infants in America.
So we made some calls to pastors, and they would go like this typically: "Good morning, Reverend. I'm from the National Council of Churches. You responded that you have a child care program." "Yes, we do. It's Noah's Ark Preschool. We're very, very proud of it." "Fine, Reverend, don't get rolling. Just a few simple questions. How old are the children in that program? Is it an infant program, or a toddler program, or a preschool program?" "They're little." "Yes, Reverend. How little are they?" "Very little." "Reverend, do they walk?" "Well, yes, they walk." "Do they talk?" "Kind of." And then we would discuss some more. And sometimes the pastor would say things like, "well, I'd go down and ask them how old they are, but they're on a field trip to a zoo today." Well, of course, infant centers don't go to field trips to the zoo.
I'm not doing this to poke fun at largely the brothers in my profession, but to say the church in its ecclesiastical and theological persona had almost nothing to do with the rise of child care in its midst. And that ought to be the first lesson here, not only for child care but for drug counseling or any of the other issues that we might think.
A second factor that I think is important that we learned, on this issue of quality — and it's probably not worth it right now to prosecute in great detail this issue of quality — but in the religious landscape of the American people, churches that run child care programs are a distinct [inaudible]. It's just not happenstance. There are predictable denominations, and non-denominations as it turns out, who operate child care rather than allow their space to be utilized [by other providers]. Similarly, the curriculum point that was raised earlier is closely related to quality. Programs occupied only, or almost exclusively, by the center are in the more conservative churches, both theologically and socially. Other churches are more apt to use as curriculum Marie Montessori or Head Start-based curriculum than to have church-based curriculum. I think this is an important issue. When we start fixing the issue of quality, we have to take great care that we don't wind up fixing that which is not broke. And we don't want to have others slip out under the provision of exemption from licensing, standards, and all the rest. So it's a very difficult problem.
That brings me to a second point that I think is terribly important to bring to your attention. I think it's very important to underscore that the church — and now I want to say the faith community... we're not talking about churches — we're talking about congregational presence — and religiously affiliated organizations bring three things to any party. In ascending order, they are as follows. First, they bring their material resources. That is the physical plan. They have parking spaces and cribs, and small tables, and so forth. And sometimes theirs aren't so nice, but quality has to be measured not in some universe, unrealistic universe, but in relation to what is available in the community.
Second, they bring human resources, sometimes in the person of volunteers, and some other kind of attributes. Now, there are problems. It's a well known reality that the refrigerator at the child care center belongs to the church when it works. When it breaks it was the child care center's and they ought to replace it. I mean, this is not a perfect love match. I don't want to suggest that it is.
The third thing that the church brings, and to my mind, both pastorally and strategically, the third thing it brings is moral authority. Mary Bogle said today that the churches have become responsible, perhaps in part due to the report, in fact, we only conducted research so that we would have the basis to say to churches, it is unethical, nay, amoral, to use your church status to exempt yourself from health and safety regulations that appropriately should be the safeguard of every child in your care. And, in fact, this goes back again in a circle to that question of quality. The churches that seek and utilize that exemption to offer substandard care are generally outside the sample that we sampled here. And that tells us who we ought to be talking to in the religious world. We don't have the same thing to say to all these different churches.
Now, on the matter of church-state relations. Child care has a lot to instruct all of us about the nature of church-state relations. It is quite a conundrum. Why have there not been more suits? There are two realities that we need to internalize. When Aunt Hester walks out of the church on Sunday morning and slips on the ice and breaks her hip and winds up with stitches and ruins her new dress, she praises the Lord that she lived through it. She doesn't sue the church. I mean, that's the way of it. She's bleeding, the pastor comes over, "Ms. Hester, what happened?" She said, "I'm blessed; I'm still alive." People who bring their children to the child care center may not have such devotion. And one of the realities that churches are going to have to grapple with is the issue of ascending liability.
Nobody ever successfully sued a local child care center. I mean, they could succeed, of course, and have all 27 cents net worth available to that child care center. But, let's talk about the Episcopal church in America. Now, there are some pretty deep pockets. So one of the questions is, in the era that is before us will child care centers be welcome in church facilities, or will it be too expensive.? Will they need to indemnify themselves? Now, we have been speaking, and just a caution here, I think we have been speaking as though a separate 501(c)(3) is a magic tonic. It isn't. It isn't. I mean, it's a good first step. But one of the tests spoken from the other side is when the pastor, priest's, or rabbi's study becomes a social service administration office, it doesn't matter how many 501(c)(3)s you have hold of. You have changed your essential raison d'etre.
So these are a number of issues. I know that this complicates, perhaps, and not clarifies the issue. But I think these are things we wish to have raised among us. What's the future of church-housed child care itself? Church-housed child care does not exist in a vacuum. Indeed, it exists as a feature along the highly dynamic, changing religious landscape of the American people. And we try to catalogue that in the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. It's a difficult and ever changing process. You all know the statistics that there are more Muslims than Episcopalians in America. Well, that kind of a statistic is an indication of what I mean by changing.
Yesterday, Hartford Seminary released some very interesting findings. Half, just over half of all congregations in America now have less than 100 adults participating in their worship life. They still have the educational wing; you know, the educational wing that was there when they had 800 people at worship every Sunday. So they still have the space, but some of our concerns that the church will take this over in an ironclad march to doctrinal rectitude is borrowed from the Crusades. That was 1,000 years ago. That's just not going to happen. In many, many, many congregations there are also notable differences that we couldn't and haven't begun to explore; in terms of social location, racial factors, we did speak a little bit about rural. Half, again, just about half of all churches today are in towns or in suburbs, not in inner city communities.
I am not qualified to speak for the Jewish community, or the Muslim community, but I think I can speak for child care. It's a local response to need at the door. I believe there is a danger. I'm a historian, not a prophet. So I would recall that to you as you hear this prediction, which I probably shouldn't make to begin with; that complicated education EJ cited didn't qualify me as a prophet. I think there is a distinct possibility that two hermetically sealed strains of church-housed or religious-based child care may emerge in America. One that utilizes child care as a part of its witness and ministry, in faith formation and faith development. And one that offers it as a part of its mission identity, unrelated to its faith training. The struggle for those of us who care about the whole field of child care will be to understand how the issues of quality, availability, and affordability can be addressed within that two-stream picture.
I would predict also that before- and after-school programs, as they have since the time of this study, will continue to burgeon. Middle school programs, especially. I see all over the country congregations, sometimes at the behest of their local school boards and sometimes at the behest of parents in the neighborhood, having various after-school programs.
I want to say a word about the historic black churches that have reported an extraordinarily high rate of the development of after-school programs in tutoring in historic black churches, and I think this is well worth paying attention to. For so many in the community the school has been the place of failure. It has been the instrument of failure. And the church has had a different place in the life of the community. So we particularly see burgeoning in that field. But everywhere, in every quarter, after-school programs are up.
Another factor is, as with all other faith-based initiatives, that property is somewhat in inverse proportion to need. That is to say, to use a New York example, at the First Presbyterian Church of Larchmont in Westchester County — I don't even know that church, but I'm pretty sure that it has Louis Tiffany windows and a lot of parking spaces and excellent furnishings, and finishings, and so forth — there are probably relatively few people who are looking for entry level keyboarding skills. And when they need drug rehabilitation they check into some place in Hilton Head. Now, the Temple of El Raventur on 67th Street in Manhattan is a store front. Its members and friends have need of such programs, but they have very little space. So before we get ourselves all wound up about whether or not faith-based initiatives are going to be crashing down the wall of separation we have so cherished, we ought to remember the inverse proportion of the facilities to the population of need and gear back our estimation of what's possible. Then, I hope, pursue the question.
Now, in the area of church-state relations, I do remember the days when, and some of you in this room remember those days in early childhood education when we used to make sure the churches removed the Jesus picture, the little 69 cent cardboard picture of Jesus. Every Monday morning it would get put away in a drawer someplace. And every Friday afternoon they had to hang it back up so it was there for church school. Now, we never seemed to bother that the $3.2 million dollar steeple with the crucifix on top stayed in place all week long. Children are short. And they are young. But they are not stupid. My own son went to child care in a very diverse population in northern New Jersey. A mother was coming out from dropping off her child, a Japanese mother, and she stopped a few feet from my son, as he did from her. She said, "konichiwa." He said, "konichiwa." We nodded hello, she went by, and my three-year-old son then turned to me and said, "she speaks only Spanish." He was only a little bit wrong, you understand. He was only a little bit wrong.
Children probably can't tell you the difference between blood theories and substitutional theories of atonement, and then again, probably the pastors can't either, but they know they're in a church. And hiding the 69 cent Jesus picture, that's really not confusing to them. It is what is expected, even demanded of them by the adults all around them that determines whether or not they're right to religious freedom is honored. So we can't fix this by talking about cardboard, or even — I have this fantasy of some helicopter implanted cover on steeples.
Well, so there you have it. I want to say one last thing. Church-housed child care has existed as a wonderful laboratory for research and development of child care in America. When we did this study, which by the way we are now seeking to redo, we were hampered in some ways that we would not be now, with computer science being where it was 20 years ago and where it is now. But when we did this study, we sorted the responses into infant care, child care, preschool and the like. Then we had a box that said "other." And we just threw the ones that didn't fit into one of those places into that box called "other."
When it came time to analyze the data, we did all the "others." In that leftover box, we found magnificent programs. One was in a United Methodist Church in a place called Cherry Valley, Colorado. When we asked them what kind of child care they had, they said they had everything, from birth to age 16. We asked them what were their hours of operation. They said, "5:00 AM to 7:00 PM." And then they noted: "for four months a year." It turns out it is a program in which, for those four months, women primarily of the church arise at 4:00, go out to the fields and take the children of the pickers who are in town because the crop is ready to be picked. They take [the children] to the church and they provide child care, some tutoring, a family meal in the evening, and the like. Now, that's completely off anybody's radar. But doesn't any civilized society want to provide those children with food? Don't we want to help in some ways? Whoever we are, church or the government, we need to find some ways.
There was another place in Florida where a group of senior citizens have respite care for children with terminal diseases. They're diagonally across the street from one of those exotic children's hospitals. And they wrote on their form, "we, like the children, are near life's end. Their predicament is not nearly as frightening to us as it is to their parents." They provide child care on a drop-in basis from 10:00 to 3:00, three days a week. Parents don't need to say why they need the time off. Maybe to fill out insurance forms. It may be to go home and cry. It may be to go deal with the other children who are not ill. Or to go get your hair done. Or to pretend this whole horrible dream is not happening to them. We don't know. But don't we want to be responsive? Say, if those children are also poor, we want them to be fed. And if the church is too poor to feed them in a program like Women, Infants and Children, we want them to be available. These are not programs with religious content, unless one calls kindness and courtesy religious content.
Well, those are some reflections of a pastor making a long speech after a heavy meal. I thank you kindly for your attention.
E.J. DIONNE: Since we are in the amen corner, and it's easy in this case, amen. Thank you so much. I just want to note that pastors are famous for being good at passing the collection plate. And I love the point you made about the need to reproduce your study, because there is a terrible need, as we saw this morning, to figure out what is happening inside the churches. And instead of appealing to your congregants, you're probably appealing to foundations. But I think it's a very, very useful thing. And I think that's a very, very valuable point.
Mario Cuomo, by the way, when he was governor of New York once preached at St. John the Divine, and I'm a Catholic like Mario Cuomo. And he said, I knew I was not in a Catholic church, because there was no second collection.
The reverend, doctor, lawyer will take questions, or comments, or people inspired by her talk, which includes me.
QUESTION: I was just curious, how are you going to observe how congregations have dealt with child care in their congregations, as opposed to Vacation Bible School?
EILEEN LINDNER: I think that's a very good question, and a very important question in all faith-based initiatives. Congregations must be very careful not to be drawn beyond their competence. And I think many congregations do the right thing by seeking others in the community who have the early childhood expertise to operate the child care program. Vacation Bible School is a very different animal. It's for usually a week, two weeks, sometimes four weeks in the summer, often just the morning, and often with a group of parents that are Sunday school teachers the year round. So it's a kind of family operation. And I think they just are not comparable. And Deborah Hampton and Diana Jones Wilson spoke this morning about resources that help congregations see that these are not comparable, and that churches have to be very, very well prepared to offer a sustained, high quality program. Vacation Bible School is not such a program.
Sir?
QUESTION: John Holmes of the Association of Christian Schools International. I appreciate what you had to say. But at the beginning when you were talking about sacred versus non-sacred, the problem in making the differentiation or bifurcating the categories is that we've had situations where, for example, a house is left to a church, and they have a Christian school in the building. And they want to expand the CE building so they can expand the ministry. And the will said that that house or the property would be used for the good of the gospel and, you know, that type of thing.
And then the lawsuit comes when the people don't want their school to expand into their backyards, because they say, well, that's not really the mission of the church. You know, why are you going to expand that over that early childhood development program, or whatever. And it just doesn't come, because every space in the religious institution is sacred. And we have to argue that way. Otherwise we put in the position. I know exactly what you're saying in terms of dealing with the government. But coming back in the other direction, we're going to disavow who we are in terms of our leadership.
EILEEN LINDNER: I appreciate your comment. We're not, you and me, at the same place on this issue, I think. I raise the issue, of course. All the property that is owned by the church is tax exempt. I wouldn't dispute that; that's a matter of law. That's not the point I was making. If child care was a program that utilized sanctuary space, my only point was that some congregations probably would never relegate it to somebody else to do because of the nature of it being done in their congregation. That's all I intended by my earlier comment.
On the illustration that you gave about the house. This is where perhaps it is true that of the about 200 million-some Christians, there are one or two differences among us. And this may be one of them. If the church does not wish to use that property for a religious education program, I would hold the neighbors are correct that it is in violation of the bequest. And that no congregation ought to utilize child care in order to circumvent that kind of an assertion, and especially not child care that doesn't have religious content. I mean, that would be disingenuous if, in fact, you follow the illustration we're using. So I think these are things about which persons of goodwill will differ. And I think in that illustration we may not be in the same place.
E.J. DIONNE: Could I follow up in defense of the question?
EILEEN LINDNER: You have an interest in this house as well?
E.J. DIONNE: Well, on many occasions, those lawsuits are brought because they don't want poor people in their neighborhood. Or they don't want people who might have problems coming into their neighborhood. And then you argue that the mission of the church is to serve the poor, and therefore this building should be seen as entirely part of the mission of that church.
EILEEN LINDNER: Well, I would have absolutely no problem with that formulation. You said, "to serve the poor." That certainly is a good, solid, historically-based, Messiah-logical goal. Perhaps I misunderstood, I understood the gentleman to say the bequest in the hypothetical was the proclamation of the gospel.
E.J. DIONNE: Serving the poor is —
EILEEN LINDNER: Well, government has no business deciding between the various religious claims. And that's why the congregation must operate ethically. I mean, we know that the worst nightmare that could happen is for the government and the faith communities to get into a dispute where the government thought for a moment it had either the competence or the legal right to judge between the various truth claims of religious communities. So that could be argued out, but as long as the congregation says this is our sense of faithfulness, then I've got no trouble with it. But I thought I was hearing a different hypothetical.
Other comments or questions? Oh, yes, please.
QUESTION: Could you speak to the issue of hiring practices and adherence to the religious tenets of the organizations involved?
EILEEN LINDNER: Yes, I personally believe that's probably the thorniest issue in all of this faith-based initiative. Now, I think about this suit some of you will remember, Covenant House. and the late Cardinal O'Connor in New York over religious affiliation and so forth. I think this is the thorniest issue, and I don't know the answer. My personal thought is that we really need another kind of data than the kind of data we've been speaking of this morning. We do know that community-based, faith-based programs often succeed where other programs fail. But nobody has unlocked precisely the alchemy of what makes that work. And until we do we're only arguing constitutional law, we're not arguing about effective programs. I don't know the answer.
I think it's the thorniest issue, and I hope that in addition to constitutional lawyers, we will also do some research to find out what happens. I mean, is it the fact that as you come into a drug rehabilitation program, someone who has known you since birth says, "Joseph, I knew you, and I knew your mama. You need to get yourself sorted out. I'm going to be sitting here until this program is concluded, and I'm going to be praying for you. You're going to be on my prayer list. I'm going to be in deep prayer for your success. Now, wash your face, tuck in your shirt, get in there and pay attention." We don't know how that figures into the outcomes. And I think we need to take a Hippocratic oath about this. I mean, maybe we have to forestall taking public monies, too. But I think it's a very, very delicate issue. And I confess, I don't know the answer.
Shall we go right to the closing hymn? There's one more. Sir?
QUESTION: I think you've answered your question with that last statement. [Inaudible.] But I wanted to ask you: what do you think is really fueling the question? Because from what I can tell, the answers are there, but the question keeps coming up. What should be the relationship between the faith-based provider, or religious provider, and the separation of church and state? What do you think is really fueling the question? Why does it keep coming up?
EILEEN LINDNER: Well, thank you for that question. It's a very thoughtful question. I really don't know the answer. But, I think I can point to some things. And others have pointed to a number of things this morning.
I think it's an extraordinarily important matter, and that's why it keeps coming up. And it is at least so far in our national life unresolved among us. And so that's another reason it keeps coming up. Now, we've already begun to articulate, I don't think nearly enough, but some safeguards we have to have in place. For example, we know that under the charitable choice provision there have to be options available, comparable options available that are not faith-based. Now, that's a very important diversity. We have the terrible phrase "rice Christians." Do you know this phrase? It comes from an era in missionary work where starving people said, "Well, no. I'm a happy member of some other organization." And then as they got hungry they said, "Now that you mention it, I believe I could declare Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior. Pass the rice bowl." That's a terrible dilemma. It was wrong for the church, it was wrong ethically and morally, and it hasn't gotten any better with time. We have to be very careful that the churches unwittingly don't put themselves in that position.
So I think we have to come, reason together, find those safeguards, begin to articulate them more precisely, and test them over time. Now, very, very few congregations have the infrastructure, financial and structural wherewithal to handle a large influx of money with or without another 501(c)(3) — Reverend Flake said this morning that only 6 to 8 percent of all the congregations in America have over 1000 members. You know already I don't think that is the magic answer. Most of our congregations would tip if they had that kind of influx.
What I think we will see develop are some intermediating structures that work as 501(c)(3)s on behalf of two synagogues and three churches to provide program in a certain area. And I think that might be very fine way for us to begin to pursue the refinement of these qualifications.
Yes, ma'am?
QUESTION: I wanted to ask your opinion about a dilemma, a discussion, a concern within the African American community as they entertain faith-based programs that are supported largely by government. The concern is that government has perhaps the power to silence the prophetic voice of the clergy. Whether or not we talk about it, it is perhaps the single most important issue. And I'm wondering if any research has been done to talk about influence of government as the religious community begins to exercise its prophetic voice. Do we have any data at all on what kind of impact participation in these government programs have had on the religious institutions that have already been participating.
EILEEN LINDNER: Well, I'm very grateful for your comment and for your question. I was trying to be very faithful to the request to me, and be a well behaved reverend this afternoon. And I thank my sister over here for giving me permission and, in fact, occasion to stand behind. If we were talking to a church organization my first concern would be the faithfulness of the faith community. That's not what you all asked. And despite my sworn membership in clergy-hood I thought just for today I would answer the question you asked, and not the one I wanted to answer. I'm very concerned. The churches' and the faith community's first concern about faith-based ought to be whether we can retain our prophetic voice.
And for those of you for whom that's a mysterious concept, we believe that on behalf of those in the margins of society, we are compelled to speak the truth to powers and principalities when they are unjust, or unfair. That's hard to do if you've just retrofitted your building with a $4 million grant, and if you now have your parking lot re-paved and lighting up, and new security doors. That could tend to mute your ability to see what's happening to the poor and to the marginalized in society. So that is a terribly important concern. And if we were in our church meeting there would be things I would want to say to the church about how we need to do that.
I don't think that's exactly on point here, but that question is very important for policy folks to hear. This is not a slam dunk, as my sons would say, from the church side of this equation. There are some very serious questions. You know the church wants your energy, intelligence, and imagination. But it also wants your soul. And the church's own soul is at stake here. So, it's a very serious question.
For your kind attention at this late hour, I do thank you.
E.J. DIONNE: Thank you so very much. I just want to make two quick points before we go off. I was struck by the notion of rice Christians. At the very first of these meetings a long time ago there was a wonderful gentleman from the Gospel Mission Movement, and he was trying to introduce himself. And he said, just so you know who we are, we are the people who hit you over the head with the Bible and pour soup down your throat. And secondly, I want for the record to note that I never asked Reverend Lindner to be well behaved because I knew that was impossible. And if we had wanted somebody well behaved we wouldn't have asked her. And I'm grateful that she wasn't.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE AND END OF LUNCHEON ADDRESS AND Q&A.]