Mayor Relies on Faith to Deliver Services

PHILADELPHIA —  Mayor John F. Street spent New Year’s Day in jail.

With 120 ministers in tow, he visited all four of the city’s lockups, informing inmates that the time is coming when Philadelphia’s congregations will reach out to help them as soon as they are freed.

Beginning this week, Street’s voice--on tape--will contact parents whose children are absent from school without an excuse. The mayor’s phone message explains that a church volunteer will be in touch within 24 hours to find out why the student didn’t show.

Ever since he squeaked into office in late 1999, Street has been trying to harness the power of the faithful to transform America’s fifth-largest city.

Philadelphia has pulled out of its 1990s tailspin toward bankruptcy, but the middle class is fleeing and the tax base is shrinking. The recidivism rate stands at 83%; the school district faces a $200-million deficit; 60,000 vacant properties dot the poorest precincts.

Same Philosophy, Two Different Parties

Street’s efforts to attack these problems all include a component to be performed by members of churches, mosques or synagogues.

In the process, he has built the perfect test lab for the provocative religion-government partnerships championed by President Bush. A Democratic mayor--who grew up on a farm skinning muskrats to earn a dollar a pelt--suddenly finds himself aligned with the scion of a powerful line of Republican gentry.

“Coming from different places politically, they’ve reached the same place on this. It’s the same thought, it’s the same drive, it’s the same vision,” says John J. DiIulio Jr., who was plucked from the University of Pennsylvania to head the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

For Street, that vision has moved from the abstract to the earthly realm. While Bush was still busy fighting for the GOP nomination, Street already had set up an advisory committee, established a municipal faith-based initiatives office and brought in academic officials to study the results.

He also got specific early on. He wanted every ex-con linked to a congregation as soon as he or she finished serving time. He wanted each of the 259 public schools adopted by a faith-based group. He wanted religious organizations to work with the city to clean up neighborhood blight.

Now he is enlisting crusaders.

Solving complex urban problems is “a matter of scale,” Street said in a recent interview at City Hall.

“I can get pilot programs all over the place, but if you can’t bring it to scale, if it’s not for everybody, it’s not enough.” Without volunteers from religious institutions, “it will not happen,” he said, slicing the air with both hands. “You hear me? It won’t happen.”

Congregations around the country long have served the needy. Ram Cnaan, a professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania, said his surveys show that Philadelphia’s faith groups already provide social services worth about $230 million a year.

But Street’s approach is novel in several respects: The city tries to yoke these scattered efforts together, shepherding participating religious institutions toward areas where the municipal government wants help. The city offers administrative support, coming up with strategies and easing communications. The city makes some direct payments to faith groups--a sound investment, Street believes, that goes further than the same amount granted to corporations or nonprofit organizations, the more traditional partners in such efforts.

“I’m not trying to put anybody down,” he said. “But if a person is fed spiritually, they really believe: ‘This is my obligation to my fellow person.’ ”

Street, 56, speaks from his experience. A Seventh-day Adventist, he said faith has been “a serious motivating factor in my life.” After growing up in rural poverty outside Philadelphia, Street worked his way through an Alabama Adventist college, where each dorm held chapel every evening, the entire campus gathered for Wednesday convocations and religion classes were required. Law school at Temple University brought him to the city, where he made his mark as a community activist and longtime council member from the often-bleak north side.

The mayor typically avoids personal disclosures, but he clearly has spent time learning self-discipline. Years ago, he tried to settle a dispute with a fistfight on the City Council floor; now, even his detractors say he tries hard to communicate. He filed for bankruptcy; he went on to become a budget expert. He once weighed 70 pounds more; now, he rises at 4 a.m. to exercise--and he is urging the whole city to get in shape. He has hired a fitness czar and always ends his weekly radio address with the coda, “Drink your water.”

In contrast to his voluble, popular predecessor, Edward G. Rendell, Street often seems austere--a prime explanation given by two Democratic rivals who during the mayoral race decided to endorse Street’s Republican opponent. John White Jr. now says he was wrong to do so, adding that the mayor is doing “a tremendous job.”

The faith-based strategy, White added, is “brilliant.”

Yet even in its infancy, the mayor’s work has spawned concerns that echo the national debate. Street consulted with the city’s legal department before proceeding, but some critics wonder whether, here in the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution, the city will expose its poorest residents to proselytizing at vulnerable stages in their lives, or whether the government will favor one religion over another.

Some supporters also fear that interfaith rivalries could undermine the project. Imam Shamsud-Din Ali, a Muslim leader, said he hopes his counterparts focus on “a unified, dignified way we can work together.”

Some Churches Leery of Involvement

Yet some church members bridle at politicians setting their agenda. Some worry about the ramifications of accepting what one called “a few shekels” from the government.

Another glitch: Street’s appointment of a prominent preacher and campaign supporter as director of the faith-based program. After six months, a senior city official said, it was clear that the Rev. Randall E. McCaskill was moving too slowly; late last year, two additional staffers were hired to take up the slack. McCaskill kept his $96,000-a-year job until last month, when he was indicted on charges, unrelated to his city duties, of embezzling $45,000 from judicial candidates. He is now on unpaid leave.

Street is undeterred. To be blunt, he is desperate.

Government working in tandem with congregations is “the last, best hope” for the poorest of the poor, he said.

Street is impatient with “esoteric” objections. Nobody is forced to join in. “If somebody has a better idea, I’m open to hear their idea. I’m fresh out of ideas. This is my idea.” If people enrolled in a faith-based program “end up in a congregation somewhere, that’s just fine with me.”

His most energetic ally is the Rev. W. Wilson Goode, a recently ordained Baptist minister who heads the advisory committee. Goode is also a former mayor--and one-time political rival. His selection “was a wonderful symbol of healing to the city,” said the Rev. Linward Crowe, another committee member.

Goode spreads the gospel about the city’s programs as he organizes a complementary project for a group called Public/Private Ventures--seeking 10 members apiece from more than 400 congregations to mentor the children of prisoners.

On his rounds recently, Goode told a South Philadelphia preacher of his need for male volunteers. The pastor knew of two. Goode motioned the five people in the room to grab hands and form a circle, bowed his head, and prayed: “We give thanks, O Lord, for sending us men.”

Goode then met with 20 city inmates to ask them to sign up their children. He left with a dozen applications. “We need programs such as this to help our young adults become good, positive citizens,” a prisoner scribbled on his form. “Thank you for taking the time to help my family,” wrote another.

“Without the mayor,” Goode said of Street, “it would be almost impossible to get inside the jails.”

Street’s plans multiply. As his first steps take shape, he plots his next deployments of religious troops--perhaps helping drug abusers shed their habits, or aiding seniors, or marching on “faith walks” through their communities.

“Come back,” Street said, “next year.”