Hispanic Religious Leaders Back Bush's Faith-based
initiative
by Rodolpho Carrasco
July 10, 2001
in Religion News
Service
Rodolpho Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif., and a columnist for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group. E-mail him at rudy@qvo.cc
As President Bush's faith-based initiative, known as HR7 in the House of Representatives, winds its way through the legislative process, Hispanic religious leaders have become some of its most vocal supporters.
Jesse Miranda, president of the Alianza de Ministerios Evangelicos Nacionales (AMEN), an association representing the estimated 7.7 million Latino Protestants in the United States, and Armando Contreras of the National Catholic Council on Hispanic Ministry joined President Bush at a recent White House press conference to endorse the initiative.
"The legislation seeks to remove barriers to accessing the resources that Latinos of faith help provide with our own tax dollars. We welcome that," said Miranda.
Contreras agreed: "This initiative brings together religious groups, government and community organizations for the direct purpose of fighting poverty."
On this issue, Hispanic clergy reflect the will of Hispanics in America more closely than any other Hispanic public voice. A recent Pew Forum survey found that 81 percent of Hispanics favor government funding for faith-based programs.
Beyond general support, Hispanics in favor of the initiative are a bipartisan group. According to the Rev. Luis Cortes of Nueva Esperanza Community Development Corp. in Philadelphia, 90 of the 130 Hispanic faith leaders who endorsed Bush's faith initiative are registered Democrats.
Traditional civil rights voices like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the National Council of La Raza are cautious about the initiative.
"We are not saying don't move forward with the initiative, but we are concerned that groups that receive funding because of this new legislation abide by the federal civil rights laws currently on the books," says Armando Amador, MALDEF's national policy analyst. NCLR President Raul Yzaguirre wonders if the initiative isn't "religiously tolerated discrimination."
The initiative, however, directly addresses these concerns, upholding all existing civil rights legislation. The big news here is that not many people know that since the 1964 Civil Rights Act religious organizations have had the right to hire individuals who share their beliefs. Which makes sense: The Roman Catholic Church should have the freedom to hire only pro-life family counselors.
But freedom to hire is not the main reason why the initiative is good for Hispanics.
Choice, results and increased mobilization are what will swell the strength of Hispanics to reach their communities.
Choice: The initiative does not compel faith-based organizations to take government funds. As Cortes said at a gathering of national Hispanic clergy, government funds are not for everyone. Cortes' nonprofit organization takes public and private funds, and it is their choice to operate by all the additional strings attached to public funding.
My nonprofit, the Harambee Center in Pasadena, Calif., chooses to neither compete for nor receive government funds. We are more interested in the president's call for increased individual and corporate giving because we rely on private donations to meet our budget.
Results: Legitimate concerns have risen about the capacity of faith-based groups new to government funding to administer those funds. I say let's give them an opportunity to try and learn. Upon an evaluation that focuses on results, as the initiative calls for, we might make some exciting discoveries. We might find out that a small, Hispanic-led, faith-based organization with a little bit of money can accomplish the same amount of social transformation as a large, historic organization that has received federal money for years.
Now, few look forward to the increased pressure of living under the microscope of results-oriented funding. After 11 years helping direct nonprofit organizations, the recent shift in the nonprofit world toward results-orientation has been a challenge. But it has been good for us. Either we deliver on our stated goals and secure more funding, or we do a miserable job and rightly have funding removed.
Increased mobilization: Analysis of the dramatic rise of the U.S. Hispanic population, now 35 million, reveals that many are immigrant poor clustered in urban centers. No force is as closely connected to urban Hispanics as the church. Cortes estimates that 90 percent of all Hispanic churches in the United States are located in barrios. Often without government funding or private grants, clusters of the faithful have long been at work meeting the needs surrounding them. Piggybacking on these efforts through the faith-based initiative is one of the smartest and most efficient moves government could make.
I joined Miranda, Cortes and Contreras in May to stand with Bush and endorse the initiative because of the direct and indirect benefits it represents -- fair competition for those faith-based organizations that choose to compete for taxpayer funds and increased charitable giving from the private sector.
In doing so, the initiative represents hope for millions of Hispanics.
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