Special Reports

God and government

Elena Curti 
1 July, 2000

Should religious groups run state welfare programmes? Professor Marvin Olasky, a Christian academic from Texas, thinks so and he is convincing the Conservative leader William Hague. Our reporter saw Olasky in action at a Westminster conference.

COURTING the Christian vote is a dangerous business for politicians, according to Labour's former social security minister Frank Field. Last week he described it as being on a par with championing the Millennium Dome or the euro.

None of the major parties are likely to heed that warning if last week's Religion and Welfare Conference in Westminster is anything to go by. Political tensions at the conference kept bubbling up to the surface, in between heart-warming stories of people saved by the work of faith-based groups. It was a reminder that with a general election possibly less than a year away, the parties are shaping up for a battle to win the votes of Britain's religious communities.

The cause of the tensions in the room was the presence of Professor Marvin Olasky, a right-wing religious academic from Texas who has been advising William Hague, the opposition leader. More to the point, he is behind the concept of "compassionate conservatism", a Big Idea in the campaign of the Republican candidate for the United States presidency, George W. Bush. The idea is behind a series of reforms that have seen a scaling down of direc t public expenditure on welfare and the expansion of welfare programmes run by religious groups.

Professor Olasky, a stern, bearded figure, advocated applying the same solutions to the social problems of Britain. Born a Jew, he turned in his teens to atheism and then Marxism. In his twenties he realised that Marxism was oppressing people further and he became a Christian. He traces many of society's ills to the break-up of the family - something he accuses the welfare state of encouraging because fathers have been robbed of the incentive to work for their children.

His speech to the conference centred on the definition of compassion. This did not mean sympathy. It certainly did not mean pouring millions of dollars into government welfare programmes. What it did mean, he stressed, was personal involvement and suffering with other people: something which those with religious faith could deliver and the state could not.

The professor praised William Hague for speaking out in favour of marriage and strong families. He predicted "terrible repercussions" from the growing number of children in Britain born out of wedlock. He was politely received, but his repudiation of the welfare state was criticised by three of the four MPs who spoke later.

The financial secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms, vice-chairman of the Christian Socialist Movement, described Professor Olasky's ideas as repugnant and advised Mr Hague to reject them.

He said there was a new social activism emerging in Britain, similar to the one that grew in the eighteenth century, when the Methodist leader John Wesley toured the country. But the Government would not be looking to this movement to take over its responsibilities. Rather it saw faith organisations as partners and gave examples of religious groups working with the Government on the New Deal for the unemployed, the Rough Sleepers initative for the homeless and the Social Exclusion Unit's work to eradicate poverty.

Frank Field, meanwhile, felt that the idea that faith-based action could replace the welfare state was "basically absurd"

Another American, Don Willett, put flesh on Professor Olasky's theories of "compassionate conservatism", so raising the temperature of the meeting. An adviser to Governor George W. Bush of Texas with special responsibility for faith-based programmes, his style was that of evangelist and accountant combined. He had come "from the lone star state that was rallying the armies of compassion and unleashing the best of Texas". Faith-based groups were aggressive champions conquering social ills. The facts showed that they produced better results than government programmes: they did it better and cheaper. Governor Bush did not care whether they were Christian, Jewish or secular projects: all he cared about was "results, results, results".

Willett cited Interchange as an example of a successful project that rehabilitated convicted criminals with an 18-month regime of religious education and training. This was not a hug-a-thug programme, but the gospel of tough love; it was the spiritual equivalent of Desert Storm with every waking moment filled with work.

The speaker with the task of following this outpouring was the Liberal Democrat spokesman on social security, Professor Steven Webb. He accused Mr Willett of promoting "state-sponsored evangelism". He did not think taxpayers' money should spent on projects that required people to adhere to a particular religion. Faith had to be contagious. He drew applause when he said he was not convinced that support for "results, results, results" was a Christian doctrine.

The Conservative MP on the platform, Gary Streeter, had no such reservations. Mr Streeter, the shadow secretary for international development and the parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, said that in Britain a welfare state had been allowed to grow up where one size fitted all and churches and synagogues had been bypassed. He welcomed the debate about whether faith-based groups could help people in real need and how the Government could remove obstacles in their way.

There was one speaker who managed to sidestep party politics entirely. The Chief Rabbi ,Jonathan Sacks, said that politicians had wrongly assumed there were two institutions that dealt with social problems. The left thought it was the state, the right thought it was the market, but there were what he called intermediate "third-sector" institutions: families, faith communities and neighbourhoods held together by love, loyalty and faithfulness. If they were missing there would be difficulties neither governments nor the markets could solve. He called for the long, hard, altruistic work of building communities. The Chief Rabbi drew the warmest and longest applause.

The conference was organised by leading members of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, an off-shoot of the Conservative Party that is enjoying greater influence under William Hague than under John Major and which now has an office in the party headquarters. It is they who have forged links with the religious right in the United States and who have produced a consultation paper entitled "Compassionate Communities", borrowing many of Marvin Olasky's ideas. Mr Hague is said to be considering a scheme in which all adults would be issued with vouchers to be donated to charities of their choice. This is an attractive idea for Conservatives, combining an extension of personal choice and a curb on the powers of local authorities who give grants to voluntary organisations. Likewise, enhancing the role of religious groups as welfare providers is being sold by the Conservatives as an efficient policy - Don Willett's "cheaper and better".

It was Frank Field who questioned the motivation behind the policy. How genuinely religious was it? He drew attention to the quotation from the gospel of St John, printed in gold letters high above the conference hall: "My little children let us not love in word neither in tongue but in deed and truth" (John 3:18). Politicians like himself, he reminded the audience, dealt only in words. Those who performed deeds kept the reality of God alive and made a unique contribution.