Amazing Grace

...David Larson, a research psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health, found that religious involvement keeps poor people out of drug abuse, alcoholism, quitting school, and other lands of behavior that tend to reinforce poverty...

...Her first child started out at a local public school, but didn’t stay long...

...Many liberals still see vouchers as a frightening crack in the wall of separation between church and state, one that the Supreme Court ought to seal...

...But since then an impressive stack of surveys has pointed to the same conclusion about religious faith and inner-city residents...

...Bill Harris, himself a Gesu graduate, coaches basketball and track and runs a peer counseling program called Imani (“faith” in Swahili...

...The test that makes sense for social programs is effectiveness...

...These provisions helped to defuse the familiar liberal argument that vouchers could be hijacked by wealthier families to help subsidize their child’s last years at Groton...

...Catholic schools also tend to have an equalizing effect on students of diverse backgrounds, as public schools, alas, do not...

...Dan Coats in endorsing the Senate version of the Washington, D.C...

...In his buzz cut and combat boots, he looks more like Vanilla Ice than one of those welldressed people who knock on suburban doors and offer to tell you The Good News...

...Parents, even those who are not religious at all, appreciate Gesu’s emphasis on ethical behavior and the importance of “living for others,” the Jesuit motto...

...He ended up at Harvard in 1980 with “a terminal case of survivor’s guilt...

...While it’s true that a number of studies suggest that faith-based programs are exceptionally effective, we still don’t know what makes most of these programs tick, or how to replicate them...

...A 1997 survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies tells an amazing story about changing black attitudes towards school choice...

...When we started out this was considered a conservative issue,” says John DiIulio, the Princeton political scientist who has helped the movement gain academic and political legitimacy...

...But all of a sudden everyone wanted a piece of it...

...When Freeman’s study was first published in 1985, the research community was skeptical...

...And it’s consistent with the intent of the founding fathers...

...kvers’ church, the Azusa Christian Community, now has a semi-formal presence at the Dorchester Court, helping out with young offenders and finding alternatives to incarceration...

...Consider the Gesu School, in the all-black ghetto of north Philadelphia...

...Rivers and other ministers began to work with local probation officers, and eventually with Boston’s Police Commissioner, Paul Evans...

...But the most impressive proof of urban ministry’s power to transform a community comes from ministers like Rev...

...Gesu’s 450 students are 99 percent black and 85 percent nonCatholic...

...But there are just as many pictures of black heroes: Arthur Ashe, Teresa Parks, Martin Luther King, and even Elijah McCoy, an obscure but inventive black engineer...

...Some kids think doing well in school is ‘white’ behavior,” he says...

...bill was limited in scope and means-tested, so that only the poorest families in the areas with the worst public schools could benefit...

...The largest of these is Teen Challenge, a Christian drug-treatment program based in Texas...

...Tuition at Gesu is $2,400 a year, less than half of what the Philadelphia school system spends per student...

...In other words, a religion or religion in general could not be singled out for help or harm...

...They worked hard, but seemed to be losing ground in 1992 when the funeral of a drive-by shooting victim was interrupted by gangsters who sprayed the Morning Star Baptist Church with bullets and stabbed a young man in front of the entire congregation...

...Nor will they replace our public schools...

...This is home,” one parent confessed to me...

...The words may sound sad, but the truth is that there is hope for kids like these-or so thinks an unlikely coalition of politicians, academics, philanthropists, and writers who favor “faith-based” antipoverty work...

...Vouchers might breed their own form of competition, but some ministers think that’s a good thing...

...By the altar, under an electric-lit crucifix, a group of black and Hispanic children and teenagers clustered excitedly around a grand piano, while others stood in their pews talking and laughing...

...Students wear uniforms, and you will not pass them in the halls without hearing a prompt “hello” or “excuse me...

...The lesson Rivers drew from that disaster became a tenet of the new activism: Government needs to collaborate with churches if either one is to be truly effective...

...Felton (1997), the court approved a program that used public-school teachers for remedial education in parochial schools...

...He’s also helping a national coalition of black ministers with a plan to mobilize 1,000 churches in the nation’s 25 largest cities over the next decade...

...But 86 percent of blacks age 26 to 35 support vouchers, and the numbers are rising fast (a 10 percent increase since the 1996 survey...

...I couldn’t stop thinking about my brothers dying in the hood.’’ In 1984 Rivers and a band of fellow activists moved across the river to Dorchester to compete with pimps and drug dealers for the souls of the inner-city poor...

...But as long as they meet the effectiveness test there’s no reason not to make use of their services...

...Campolo, who has received a $1 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to help Philadelphia churches develop youth programs, is part of an emerging movement to reach at-risk youth through innercity congregations...

...DiIulio, who made his reputation as a “get tough” crime analyst, quit his prestigious post at Brookings and cut back his Princeton teaching schedule last year to found the Partnership for Research on Religion and At-Risk Youth...

...David Kuo, a former staffer to William Bennett who is now trying to attract corporate and philanthropic support for churches, says, ‘We want to take some of the most successful faith-based programs and do for them what Ray Kroc did for the first McDonald’s.’’ That’s a tall order, given the difference between hamburgers and souls...

...When you ask him why he’s dedicated his life to the struggling churches of north Philadelphia, he doesn’t mention God at all...

...Even if I didn’t believe in God I would work in the inner-city church...

...I’ve tried both systems and I don’t want to go back...

...The Philadelphia Story Meanwhile, one religious institution has already replicated itself successfully throughout our inner cities, with extraordinary results: Catholic schools...

...What is clear on the ground, under the radar screen, is that there’s a whole generation of young people whose lives have to be saved,” says Eugene Rivers...

...If an institution is effective in helping the poor, its religious orientation shouldn’t matter...

...He also tells you what he has seen in recent years: a new baby boomlet of disaffected ghetto youth, raised in the era of crack cocaine and absent fathers, that is learning to play Mortal Kombat with real guns...

...Support for vouchers is higher among blacks than in any other segment of the population, including Christian conservatives...

...One of the girls, no more than 16, held a baby in her arms...

...According to surveys conducted by Harvard economist kchard Freeman, children who become involved in church activities are far more likely than other kids from the same backgrounds and neighborhoods to escape poverty, crime, drug abuse, and joblessness...

...But after calling attention for a brief prayer, Tom managed to get the entire group to sing a song called “There is Hope”: In a world of broken promises, Where the faithful are chosen and few, Where men of valor are vanishing, What can you do...

...It is an elementary school...

...This is consistent with our national experience: Countless Americans have benefited from the GI Bill and Pel1 grants, which allowed them to get an education at the school of their choice, whether that was Harvard or Notre Dame...

...Last spring the billionaire investor and conservative activist Foster Friess toured churches and clinics in several cities with a retinue of Republican congressmen, soakmg up inspirational stories and handing out checks...

...In Catholic schools the percentage of students taking Algebra I1 is actually higher for students whose parents lack a college degree-65 percent...

...Gesu has managed to blend structure with a curriculum that elicits confidence far more effectively than the cheap Afrocentrism that mars so many inner-city public-school classes...

...That would eliminate the danger of church competition for state contracts (which some religious leaders have cited as a reason to oppose charitable choice...

...The success of the collaboration has become a legend: Boston has not had a single gun-related homicide since July 1995, and Paul Evans is quick to claim that part of the credit has to go to Rivers and his fellow ministers...

...Like the existing voucher programs in Cleveland and Milwaukee, the D.C...

...Meanwhile, a variety of liberal foundations were getting involved-Pew, Ford, Lilly, and others...

...Eugene Rivers of Boston’s Azusa Christian Community...

...That’s where the church comes in...

...As statistics go, this is huge, and very significant for the kids: In today’s labor market, those who finish high school earn at least 15 percent more than dropouts...

...there are required religion classes every day...

...The same principle should apply to faith-based welfare services...

...The school’s success is not just a matter of the notorious Jesuit discipline, though that is clearly in evidence...

...Make no mistake: Faith-based facilities cannot pick up all the slack, especially if welfare caseloads begin to rise again...

...There is no instruction in the sacraments or traditional Catholic doctrine...

...But not all of the “faith-based” outreach work is done by churches...

...Half of them come from households with incomes below the federal poverty level, and almost two-thirds are in single parent homes...

...But in such cases the federal courts could put a stop to any abuse on the grounds that religion (or a religion) is being favored...

...Rivers helped organize the Ten Point Coalition (an alliance of inner-city churches) in the late 1980s, and he calls their collective struggle against poverty and crime an act of spiritual warfare, or “jihad...

...population-of any race-in which a majority opposes vouchers is blacks over 50...

...To cite just one example: Dr...

...The cops were wary at first, but before long they found that Rivers and his fellow ministers were a tremendous asset in anti-gang policing and juvenile probation monitoring...

...Jon Meacham wrote about the black church‘s crimefighting potential in The Washington Monthly back in 1993: and in the past year the potential of inner-city religious institutions to help the poor in this and other ways has inspired a number of newspaper columns and a long New Yorker piece by Joe Klein...

...What they really need...

...The media have begun to get religion too...

...BY ROBERT WORTH BART CAMPOLO IS NOT YOUR TYPICAL Christian evangelist...

...Converted from a street gang to Christianity at the age of IS, Rivers wandered in the desert for over a decade, unsure how to reconcile his faith with the legacy of the civil rights era...

...When commitments are crumbling around us And lives shared for years fall apart, 110 we have any hope of completion The race that we start...

...A“Jihad” in Boston What kind of evidence would make a respected political scientist start stumping for inner-city churches...

...That’s why Evangelicals for Social Action, a leftwing religious coalition with strong minority representation, joined Republican Sen...

...According to an independent evaluation, Teen Challenge has a 95 percent success rate with heroin addicts, and an 83 percent rate with alcoholics, as compared to some federal programs that report success rates in the single digits...

...At the corner of 17th and Girard, the school’s high stone edifice, constructed by the Jesuits in 1873, is surrounded on every side by vacant lots and dilapidated row houses, homes to crack-dealers and prostitutes...

...If faith-based institutions can reduce crime, bring back some respect for the rule of law, and reintroduce some sense of order, value, and meaning, I think that’s where we need to focus...

...Amen...

...Charitable choice also allows states to issue vouchers, which welfare recipients could redeem at faithbased facilities if they so chose...

...This is the generation that grew up with the promise of public education as a universal right, and they are loath to pve it up...

...A 1997 study showed that urban minority students with the same observed characteristics (parents’ education, parents’ occupation, family structure, and reading materials at home) were 26 percent more likely to graduate from Catholic high school than those who went to public school...

...It’s the one hierarchical institution left in these communities...

...There is an emphasis on black history and role models, but it is not hostile or exclusive...

...As we walked up the orange-carpeted aisle, the dimly-lit wooden church throbbed with electric bass and drums...

...Although he fiercely opposed the 1996 welfare cuts, Campolo will readily grant that government programs can’t reach these kids...

...Gesu’s success is typical of Catholic schools in inner cities around the country...

...is one adult who’s willing to be a mentor-talk to them, show them the ropes,” he says...

...Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have long touted religion as the answer to poverty, but the recent crusade is more diverse...

...It allows religious groups to become direct providers of federally funded social services, including cash assistance as well as emergency services, job training, maternity homes, and health services...

...Do parochial schools achieve the government’s educational purposes better than some of our worst public schools...

...The two supervisors, Tom and Gladys, clearly had their hands full...

...We have to deal with that.’’ The religious element is clearly important...

...Inside, there are crucifues and pictures of Christ in almost every room...

...Instead, he tells you that one in four young African-American males in this country is under some form of correctional supervisionjail, probation, or parole...

...The only subgroup in the entire U.S...

...In .4gostini ZI...

...But in fact, the court has been warming up to the notion that secular purposes can thrive in a sectarian setting...

...SO it’s really not about religion...

...The figure is only 62 percent for those whose parents do have a college degree...

...95 percent of its graduates go on to graduate from high school, compared to 35 percent for the neighborhood...

...Civil libertarians are up in arms about the “charitable choice” provision (section 104) of the 1996 welfare reform law...

...It’s about what kinds of mechanisms can allow our children to survive...

...school voucher bill in September...

...If so, there’s every reason to fund them until the public system improves...

...Of course, since the states will actually hand out the money, and since in some states religious institutions are very powerful, there’s always the possibility that the effectiveness test will be made too easy or biased in favor of certain groups...

...These numbers help to explain why low-income black parents are so eager to obtain publicly funded vouchers to send their kids to schools like Gesu...

...Independent drug-treatment and homeless shelter programs have expanded in inner cities in the past few years...

...Competition could force faithbased groups to become more serious and more intense about properly representing and properly developing their programs in ways that do what they’re supposed to do,” says Harold Dean Trulear, dean of the New York Theological Seminary...

...The Constitution’s religion provision- the free exercise and establishment clause-has two possible meanings: One was to keep the Anglican church from being preferred over others, and the other was to ensure that religion generally would not receive preference...

...What the Constitution forbids is a religious test in determining whether government help can be given to an institution...

...Up Against a Wall...

...But churches and their affiliates have already contributed to the recent decreases in crime and welfare dependency, and there’s no reason our government shouldn’t make better use of them...

...But they’re “fairly ecumenical,” says Father George Bur, the school’s president...

...He spends much of his time helping children to work through their questions about race...

...On standardized math and reading tests, Gesu’s student scores rival those of affluent suburban private schools in the Philadelphia area...

...For instance: Among public school students, 65 percent of those whose parents have a college degree take Algebra 11, versus 43 percent of those whose parents lack one...

...Catherine Hess, the former director of New York City’s first methadone program for drug addicts, calls Teen Challenge “probably the most effective rehabilitation program I have ever seen anywhere...

...The movement is rooted in battered, cash-strapped churches like north Philadelphia’s Feltonville Presbyterian, where one of Campolo’s fellow youthworkers drove me one Friday night last spring...