America’s Way Is to Help Thy Neighbor

This week I returned to the White House--not for nostalgic reasons, but to meet with religious leaders and witness a landmark event in American politics: President Bush’s unveiling of his plans for promoting faith-based and community solutions. The president is sincere; he knows from his own life and from experiences as governor of Texas that faith makes all the difference.

Three years ago, then-Gov. Bush gave my ministry, Prison Fellowship, permission to operate the first Christian prison in America, known as the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in Houston. For 18 hours a day, prisoners who volunteer for the program are immersed in intensive life-skills training and Bible study. After 18 months, they are released, matched with a mentor, given a job and welcomed in a local church.

So far, it has demonstrated remarkable effectiveness. Of the 80 prisoners who have completed the program, only three are back in custody. That’s a recidivism rate under 5%, compared to a national average that runs between 40% and 60%.

What the experts have shown is that crime is caused by the lack of moral training during the morally formative years. There has to be a moral solution, a transformation of the individual. In 25 years of ministry, I have seen nothing apart from the life-changing power of Jesus Christ that can lift a person out of a life of crime and restore him to being a good citizen.

This is an idea whose time has come. But will churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious communities get out of their comfort zones and get involved with those most in need? I believe they will. The most effective volunteers are those motivated by their faith. I have watched them walk alongside ex-prisoners--criminals they might have feared meeting in a dark alley before--treating them like brothers and friends, mentoring them back to being responsible citizens.

In Detroit, one such mentoring program is called Transition of Prisoners, or TOP. It does not require any profession of faith on the part of participants, but it matches them up with local churches and mentors. The result? Less than 16% of TOP’s graduates have gone back to prison, compared with 57% from a control group. Why did the churches and mentors do it? Out of a deeply held religious conviction that no life is without worth, that the power that transformed them, Jesus Christ, can transform these inmates.

When Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in this country in the early 19th century, he was startled by the extent to which citizens helped their neighbors and those at the margins of society. He said that he did not know 10 men in all of France who would do what ordinary Americans did every day as a matter of course. People of faith are engaged in much the same work today. It is often unheralded and largely operated on a shoestring. The president has given notice now that their efforts are to be recognized, encouraged and given aid for their services.

Congress and the bureaucracy need to back the president’s initiative for faith-based social services. Congress should provide tax incentives and increased deductions for specific areas of nonprofit social services. Religious organizations providing such services should be allowed to compete for government funding and assistance on the same footing as other nonprofits and without having to sacrifice their faith identities.

The federal government can also provide leadership by offering training to community and religious organizations in management, business and performance measurement skills to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

But the stiffest challenge will come from those groups most hostile to religion’s role in public life. The case law is clear. The U.S. Supreme Court in Bowen vs. Kendrick upheld the delivery of social services by faith-based providers subject to certain tests. Bush’s plan is carefully structured to pass constitutional muster. Programs like ours, after all, are voluntary. They are open to all. The participants can leave at any time. They stay because they want to break the cycle of crime in their lives.

Bush has signaled a new era in American life when government and private organizations--including faith-based and religious groups--can work side by side to solve America’s most intractable problems. But the implications can go far beyond simply solving the problems of recidivism in prisons or the problems of the homeless on the streets. This movement can motivate people of faith across the country to get out and give their neighbors a helping hand. We can revitalize what was once considered the cardinal virtue of our republic: a sense of civic duty and responsibility.