c. 1999 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Cuyahoga County government is getting religion.

The county administration is looking to churches and faith-based organizations for help in training, teaching and supporting the tens of thousands of Cuyahoga welfare recipients who must find work.

“If we ever needed the church, we need it now,” said Ralph E. Johnson, general manager of Cuyahoga Work-Training, the county agency implementing new welfare rules.

Those rules limit most people to 36 months of welfare benefits in their lifetimes and require them to work or be engaged in a combination of work/training and educational activities for 30 hours a week to keep their benefits.

The government’s cry for help is somewhat amusing to the Rev. Otis Moss Jr.

“It’s like a millionaire saying, `This project is too expensive for me; I’d like the poor people to take it on,'”said the longtime social activist and pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland.

Nonetheless, individual congregations and faith-based organizations are beginning to respond.

An October conference in Cleveland sponsored by the county and state drew dozens of local clergy and religious representatives.

Work-Training and the Federation for Community Planning, an umbrella group for area social service agencies, are inviting faith-based organizations to smaller meetings to learn more about welfare reform and how they can help people make the transition from welfare to work.

Though Work-Training now contracts with only two faith-based organizations, the agency hopes more of the groups will bid for county contracts and compete for government grants.

Federal and state welfare reform laws were written to encourage counties to engage faith-based organizations because they can do what government cannot, said Rick Werner, Work-Training executive officer for community resources. With deep roots in the communities they serve, churches are trusted in ways a welfare agency never will be.”There are services … that a government bureaucracy is not in the best position to provide,” Werner said. “We want to take advantage of the strengths of these organizations and reach out through them.”

Commissioner Jimmy Dimora agreed. He said churches can do a better job than the county of delivering the message to welfare recipients now that the rules have changed.

“They (welfare recipients) seek out the churches on a regular basis for help,” he said. “They can lend the kind of credence we lack.”

The government-church alliance forming in Cuyahoga County is welcomed by Moss and others who see an opportunity for black churches to reassert their traditional role as the center of their community.

Inner-city churches have always fed the hungry and clothed the poor, but welfare reform is forcing them to be more creative, said the Rev. C.J. Matthews, pastor of Mount Sinai Baptist Church in Cleveland.

“It is the same call and a new call,” he said.

Mount Sinai is building a $4.2 million, 61-unit apartment building for senior citizens next door to the church, but the project is unrelated to welfare reform. But what the church wants to do across the street at Woodland Estates, a small apartment complex, typifies the kind of project government is hoping churches will carry out. The church wants to convert it to townhouses and erect a nearby “family life center” with a gym, classrooms and child-care facilities.

The classrooms can be used for continuing education and job training while parents put to work through welfare reform can leave their children at the child-care center, Matthews said.

Though they have no contractual relationship with the county, the efforts of churches like Mount Sinai to help welfare recipients find and keep work will help, said Debra Lewis-Curlee, policy and planning associate for the federation.

Among the faith-based organizations that want to answer the call to help in welfare reform is Lakewood Christian Service Center. A nonprofit corporation supported by churches in the western suburb, it runs a food pantry and offers a variety of social services but wants to do more, said director Steve Greenwell.

A federation consultant is advising the group on how to expand services in Lakewood and, perhaps, bid on a county contract.

“That’s a big task, getting a county contract, and we wouldn’t have been even able to look at the question” without the consultant, Greenwell said.

Many faith-based organizations are interested in helping with welfare reform but don’t know how to begin.

“We see the need for day care, but we don’t know what is needed to help the parent,” said the Rev. A.E. Williams, pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Collinwood.

Beulah, which operates a day-care center, would like to offer drug counseling and, possibly, adoption services, Williams said.

“We want to be a light, and we don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility to do it all,” he said.

Catholic Charities Services, the social-services arm of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, for years has had contracts with a number of county agencies to provide a variety of social services.

However, welfare reform has placed a greater demand on resources, said Catholic Charities spokeswoman Margot Klima.

In business since 1912, it has a staff of 750 and an annual budget of $83 million. It offers day care, adoption, foster care, mental health, counseling, recreation, employment and training, parenting and educational classes and other services for the poor, elderly, disabled and youths.

“We view ourselves as one of the premier health and human services delivery systems in Northeast Ohio,” said J. Thomas Mullen, the diocese’s secretariat for health and human services.

Mullen said even a nurse’s aide changing sheets in a diocesan nursing home is taught the spiritual values that drive the work: “I care about you and I have respect and dignity for you.”

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However, not everyone is welcoming the closer ties between government and faith-based organizations.

“It’s our position that there are constitutional flaws and that they entangle church and state much too dramatically,” said Christine Link, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

There are enough government and secular agencies to do the work without involving churches, she said, adding that she is unaware of any incidents of Ohio faith-based organizations imposing their beliefs on clients.

Another group, however, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, is scouring the nation for a test case with which to challenge the constitutionality of part of the federal welfare reform law.

The sticking point in the law is a clause called “charitable choice.” It frees faith-based organizations from many restrictions that usually accompany government funding for social services but still forbids using public funds for religious instruction, worship or proselytizing. That leaves too much room for publicly funded religious activity, said Julie Segal, the group’s legislative counsel.

DEA END SWEENEY